A Mysterious Affair Of Style Part 6

Chapter Six.

The next morning he rang Evadne Mount's doorbell at exactly quarter-to-nine.

'Unpunctual,' she scowled, ushering him in. 'I might have known.'

'Unpunctual?' he exclaimed. 'Well, really! What will you say next?' He consulted his watch. 'It's just 8.45. I'm fifteen minutes early.'

'Precisely. Being early is also a form of unpunctuality, you know. Now, because I'm obliged to keep you waiting for fifteen minutes, you've made me feel guilty. No, my dear Eustace, if we're to continue seeing one another, you must learn to be on time. And I do mean on time.'

Before he could take umbrage at her Jesuitical logic, she rushed past him onto the landing. Her ancient Sealyham terrier Gilbert (named after Chesterton, as she explained to the Chief-Inspector) had waddled out of the flat as soon as he noticed its open front door and, for the sake of the Albany's lush carpeting, immediately had to be coaxed back in again.

'Like all of us, I'm afraid,' she sighed, 'poor Gilbert has become a teensy bit leaky in his declining years.'

When they were finally off, Gilbert having been safely retrieved, it took Trubshawe less than an hour to motor down to Elstree. The studio itself, however, proved a cruel disappointment to both of them. Imposing as it was, it resembled less the popular conception of a Factory of Dreams than it did some commonplace industrial plant, a tannery, perhaps, or a large brickyard. Architecturally without distinction, being all rain-streaked concrete walls and crude corrugated roofing, it was, as Trubshawe scornfully remarked, a warehouse, neither more nor less. Glamour there was none. No more was there the faintest hint of Romance.

At the main entrance, moreover, an obstreperous gate-keeper, a typical petty tyrant of the genus bureaucratum, immediately barred their way.

'Can't let you in,' he said, 'if you don't have an appointment.'

Evadne Mount, naturally, would have none of this.

'An appointment!' she barked at him. 'Good heavens, you silly juggins, do you suppose, do you really suppose, that we would have travelled all the way down here from Town if we didn't have an appointment?'

'Show us it, then,' said the gate-keeper suspiciously.

'The appointment was made in person. How can I show you what was never committed to print?'

'In that case, I can't allow you through. It would be more than my job's worth.'

'Nonsense! I tell you, my good man, we've come to pay a call on Miss Cora Rutherford at her own request. I repeat, Cora Rutherford. If you don't open up these gates at once, I shall make it my business to see that you're replaced by someone who will. You'll find out then just how much your job is worth.'

For a few seconds he nervously agonised over what to do.

'P'raps if I was to phone ...'

Evadne subjected him to her patented 'How like a man!' expression.

'You'll do nothing of the kind. My fear is that Miss Rutherford is already in a state of anxiety, perhaps wondering if we've been involved in some frightful accident. She'll be furious no, no, no, if I know Cora, she'll be incandescent! when she learns that we aren't at her side because you were just too b.l.o.o.d.y-minded to let us in. Permit us to pa.s.s, will you, if you know what's good for you.'

Still hesitant, conscious of setting a precedent he was likely to regret, he finally raised the barrier and granted the two visitors access to the hallowed inner sanctum. When the car entered the studio grounds, Evadne had to chuckle as she peered through its rear-view mirror and observed, decreasing in size as they themselves advanced, the poor gate-keeper now quite visibly appalled at the liberty he'd been gulled into letting them take.

A few minutes later, Trubshawe having parked the Rover, the question arose of locating Studio 3, in which, as Cora had told them, If Ever They Find Me Dead was being filmed. An obvious solution would have been to ask their way of some pa.s.ser-by. There was, though, a problem. Practically all the pa.s.sers-by who crossed their path seemed to be decked out in extravagant fancy-dress costume. They met Roundheads and Cavaliers, Gypsies and Musketeers, Regency Fops and Pearly Queens, from none of whom they would have felt at ease soliciting so mundane a direction.

As often happens, however, wandering among the prefabricated hangars of which the studio complex seemed to be almost wholly composed, they suddenly and providentially found themselves standing in front of the largest of all. Inscribed on its tall metal door was the legend: Studio 3. They were there.

Now literary legend has it that, once he had been interrupted by a 'person from Porlock', the poet Coleridge found himself ever after incapable of recapturing the rapturous inspiration which had produced the first few indelible stanzas of Kubla Khan. Heaven knows (was the thought running through Evadne Mount's mind as she contemplated the spectacle which confronted them when she opened the door) how anything of enduring value could be created inside a studio that appeared to be home to Porlock's entire population.

There were technicians unfurling railway tracks, or what resembled railway tracks, over the cable-strewn floor. Others, so high overhead as to be almost invisible, were fixing wires to poles, and poles to wires, and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g gigantic and, after they had been switched on, eye-dazzling arc-lights onto both. Because of the ubiquitous dust, and the equally ubiquitous cigarette-smoke caught in the criss-crossing shafts of light for every single crew member had, in defiance of various No Smoking signs, a wet Woodbine wedged between his teeth the air was literally tangible.

In fact, when the novelist sought to communicate her first impression of the cinema world, even she was required to raise her voice's already elevated decibel level.

'You know,' she thundered, 'what all this reminds me of?'

'No, what?' the Chief-Inspector shouted back at her.

'A ship!'

'A what?'

'A ship! A nineteenth-century schooner. Look for yourself. Look at all those decks and sails and masts and rigging. I tell you, it's exactly like a ship that's just about to quit the dockside.'

'Why, you're right at that. Yes, I see exactly what you mean. And you and I are like a couple of well-wishers on the quay waving goodbye to the pa.s.sengers.'

'For Cora's sake,' said Evadne Mount, 'let's hope it isn't the Mary Celeste. Speaking of Cora,' she added, 'I wonder how we ought to go about finding her.'

She didn't have long to wonder. Holding a clipboard in her hand and a script rolled up into a narrow cylinder under her arm, owlish horn-rimmed spectacles propped up on her forehead like a spare pair of eyes, an oddly elfin young woman at once swept up to them.

'Excuse me,' she said in a calm, matter-of-fact voice, 'but I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave at once. No outsiders are permitted on the set while filming is underway.'

'I'm sure you're right,' said Evadne Mount, inspecting her with interest, 'but, primo, we aren't precisely outsiders and, secundo, as far as I can make out, no filming is underway yet.'

'Why, of course it is,' answered the young woman. 'Don't be misled by the fact that the camera isn't turning and the actors aren't acting. That's merely the tip of the iceberg. This is what making a film is all about preparation. Though why I should be wasting my time explaining the ins-and-outs of the business to you I really don't know.'

Lowering her spectacles down onto her eyes, she gazed inquisitively at them.

'Just who are you, anyway? How did you get into the studio?'

'Well, you see, we're both friends ' Trubshawe began.

'You aren't extras on the Agatha Christie picture which Rene Clair is shooting on Stage 5, are you? What's it called again? Ten Little Whatnots?'

The novelist almost blew a fuse.

'Extras on the ...?!' she bridled, incapable of p.r.o.nouncing the name of the rival in whose shadow it would seem she was eternally condemned to languish. 'Certainly not!' she cried. 'Why, the very idea!'

'Then will you please leave at once. I don't want to have to call security.'

'This,' declared the novelist, drawing up the battle lines, 'is Chief-Inspector Trubshawe of Scotland Yard and I, my dear, I am Evadne Mount.'

A soupcon of interest ruffled the young woman's creepy poise.

'Evadne Mount? The Evadne Mount?'

'The same currently President of the Detection Club and oldest friend of Cora Rutherford, one of the stars of your picture, who, I might add, invited both of us down here today and is, at this moment, no doubt wondering where the h.e.l.l we've got to.'

The young woman hastily consulted her clipboard.

'Yes, yes, of course,' she finally replied, giving her scalp a vigorous poke with the sharp end of her pencil. 'Forgive me, we were advised to expect you. It's just that, as you can see, everything is so frantic at the moment and I've had so many different things to think about. I do apologise. Let me introduce myself. Lettice Morley, Rex Hanway's personal a.s.sistant.'

'Rex Hanway?' said Trubshawe. 'He's the producer of the picture, right?'

'Lord, no!' she fluttered. 'Please never let him hear you call him that. He's the director. He took over after Mr Farjeon well, I'm sure you heard about Mr Farjeon's untimely demise.'

'And Cora?' enquired Evadne Mount. 'Has she started filming yet?'

At the actress's name, what had never been more than a polite and perfunctory smile was altogether wiped off Lettice Morley's face.

'Miss Rutherford? Ah well, she is, I suppose, a great artist but I'm afraid, like not a few great artists, she now how shall I express this? she can sometimes be a touch inconsiderate of her colleagues' needs. The picture business is, you must know, a collective activity and some of our leading stars, our leading ladies in particular, unfortunately lack what might be called the collective spirit. Films are like trains. If they run at all, they have to run on schedule.'

'You mean,' said Evadne Mount, 'she's late.'

'If you're talking about this morning, forty minutes late. It really is most trying for Mr Hanway. Especially as Miss Rutherford's role is by no means crucial.'

The novelist laughed.

'Cora, I'm afraid, is one of those people who are always unpunctual and yet who always have an excuse, a different one for every occasion.'

'Yes, well, that's all very charming, I dare say, but on a film set unpunctuality is the cardinal sin, one that's forgiven and then very grudgingly only if it's been committed by a major star, a Margaret Lockwood, you know, or a Linden Travers. Whereas Cora Rutherford ...'

She left the remainder of her comment unaired, not just because she had perhaps realised she was at risk of overstepping the bounds of professional propriety but also because, at that very moment, wearing a trim little c.o.c.ktail dress, black with mauve linings, and brandishing her inevitable cigarette-holder, the actress herself finally wafted into view.

Evadne and Trubshawe watched from a distance as Cora approached someone seated on a folding canvas chair on whose back was printed, as they now noticed, the words Mr Hanway. As with the male character in the opening scene of the film itself, however, such as it had been recounted to them by Cora, no more than his own back, along with a mere pinch of his profile, was visible to them; and it was only when he turned his head to hear what the actress's excuse might be for holding up the proceedings that they were granted a more complete view of his facial features. His age, difficult to judge, could have been anywhere between thirty and forty. His face was somehow both intense and expressionless, with eyes of an unnervingly gla.s.sy inscrutability. He was wearing, of all improbable items of attire, a labourer's boiler-suit, but a boiler-suit so flawlessly fashioned that his elegant silk tie seemed not at all a mismatch. And on his lap sat an exquisitely bony Siamese cat, washing its face with those nervy little paw-flicks that are irresistibly reminiscent of the hapless flailings of a punch-drunk prizefighter.

'Rex darling!' cried the actress. 'I know, I know, late again. But I swear to you, it wasn't my fault. When I'm late, it's always for my art, and surely any artist, especially the kind of perfectionist I am, may be forgiven for that.'

After a brief silence, while starting to caress the cat with such vigour he risked wearing it out, Hanway replied, 'My dear Cora, what I want from you isn't perfectionism but perfection. What was the problem this time?'

Cora tugged heartlessly at her c.o.c.ktail dress.

'This was the problem. I had to ask Vi to take the waist in again. It was so unbecoming it made me look, well, can you imagine, blowsy. Blowsy, me? Wouldn't do at all.'

She leaned over to stroke the silky, sulky cat, now all the sulkier at having her ablutions disturbed.

'Nice p.u.s.s.y,' she cooed nervously. 'Who's a pretty p.u.s.s.y?'

Hanway donned a mask of heroic patience.

'Let me remind you, Cora, you are supposed to be playing the dowdy neglected wife. We can't have you looking too alluring.'

The director suddenly snapped out of his languor. Lifting the cat up off his lap, he disengaged its claws from the hem of his boiler-suit as cautiously as a hiker untangling a strand of his jumper from a barbed-wire fence and plumped it down on a canvas chair that was next to his own and on the back of which was printed the name Cato. Then, leaping to his feet, he clapped his hands together.

'All right, everybody in place! We're going to rehea.r.s.e the scene!'

Turning to Lettice, who had been diligently hovering over him throughout his brief exchange with Cora, he said, 'I want all the extras on set.'

Cora, meanwhile, aware of her friends' presence, mouthed a flighty 'Yoo-hoo!' and waved over to them. Raising her kohl-rimmed eyes as though to say 'No rest for the weary!', she then huddled together with Hanway while he presumably gave her a few final instructions on how the scene was to be played. At the same time, the extras had begun to position themselves as ordered. There were a dozen of them, half male, half female, all in smart evening dress. And, bringing up the rear, chaperoned by a spinsterish, stern-faced nanny, were two children, a cherubic boy of about ten, the picture of brattish disgruntlement in his starchy sailor-suit, and a shy little girl less than half his age who, in her beribboned white party frock and miniature ballet pumps, was a Mabel Lucie Atwell postcard teased into dimpled, pink-cheeked life.

Then it was the turn of the film's two leads to walk onto the set. If Gareth Knight was no longer quite the jeune premier, yet with his raven-black moustache, his suave throw-away manner and above all his smile, that fabled smile of his that had broken many a shopgirl's heart, he still managed to cut an enviably dashing and devil-may-care figure. As for Leolia Drake, the actress who had been chosen to replace the late Patsy Sloots, she certainly had what is known in the trade as a photogenic physique, being luscious, gorgeous, curvaceous, voluptuous and all those other quintessentially feminine adjectives that end in 'ous'.

'By the Lord Harry!' exclaimed Trubshawe, smacking his lips. 'Now that's what I call a real corker.'

Without for an instant compromising his stencilled-on smile, Knight bowed curtly to Cora and shook Hanway's hand. The director stepped over to offer a few words of encouragement to the two children. The scene was ready to be rehea.r.s.ed.

And it was a scene, as Trubshawe remarked at once, that bore a striking resemblance to the premise of Evadne's Eeny-Meeny-Murder-Mo. The setting was a chic c.o.c.ktail party and, even if he was still almost totally ignorant of the ramifications of the film's plot, he had soon worked out, from the dry runs which the actors were put through by Hanway, not only that the party was being given by Knight and his wife (Cora's role) but also that the latter, while playing the perfect hostess, was keeping a watchful eye on the rather too attentive court her husband had started to pay to the very youngest and s.e.xiest of their guests, the film's heroine (Leolia Drake's role).

It was when Knight actually went so far as to whisper sweet nothings in Drake's ear, sweet nothings which may not have been audible but were certainly visible, that the crisis erupted. A gla.s.s of champagne in her hand, Cora was seen to become so enraged by her philandering better half that she ended by snapping its stem in two. At which point, even though the camera hadn't been turning, the director bawled out, 'Cut!'

In all there were four run-throughs. None of them, however, appeared to satisfy Rex Hanway. Each of his 'Cuts!' sounded more fretful than the last. And, after the fourth and final rehearsal, nearly sliding off his canvas chair in frustration, he cried out: 'No! No, no, no, no, no! This won't do at all!'

Everyone, cast, crew and extras alike, fell silent. No matter how insecure his authority had been in the first few days, Hanway now commanded a silent respect from his underlings.

Lettice got to her knees in front of him.

'But, Rex, it's exactly what we have in the script.'

'What do I care?' said Hanway intemperately. 'The script is wrong.'

'Wrong? But '

'It isn't The Brothers Karamazov, for G.o.d's sake. It's just a blue-print.'

'Of course, Rex, of course.'

'No, no, there's something missing, there's definitely something missing. It's boring. It's a big nothing of a scene. It's not even a big nothing, it's a small nothing, it's a nothing nothing.'

He held up a clenched fist hard against his brow in a possibly conscious imitation of Rodin's Thinker.

'Perhaps, darling,' ventured Cora, 'if we '

'Be quiet, please!' he snapped. 'Can't you see I'm thinking?'

'I was only going to suggest '

Again, though, she was prevented from completing her sentence. As suddenly and dramatically as he had planted it, Hanway removed the fist from his brow.

'I've got it!'

He stood up and marched purposefully onto the set, led his trio of princ.i.p.als off to one side and began whispering to them. When they had understood his new instructions Cora fervently nodding in agreement, Leolia Drake beaming up at him, Gareth Knight shaking his head in mute admiration Hanway snapped his fingers for the little girl to be brought over. More whispering on this occasion, it took her somewhat longer to comprehend his intentions. Yet she too, once light had dawned on her, started to giggle. Then he had a few quiet words with his cameraman, who at once proceeded to make the necessary adjustments.

The scene was now ready to be filmed. Silence was repeatedly called for one hapless member of the crew being collectively cursed by his mates for sneezing three times in a row and Hanway, poised expectantly on the edge of his chair, finally shouted, 'Action!'

At first nothing had changed. Holding the same gla.s.s of champagne, Cora made the same desultory chit-chat with the same dinner-suited male extra, all the while spying on Knight, who, exchanging the same monosyllabic pleasantries as he zigzagged across the crowded room, nevertheless made the same circuitous beeline for Leolia Drake. She, meanwhile, as though fearful of the intensity of her feelings towards him, attempted to avoid catching his eye as she slowly sidled away towards the door.