Frequent Hearses Page 6

  His furtive scrutiny was interrupted by Gresson, a diminutive, futile Cambridge don whose task it was to advise on the history and sociological background of Pope’s period. In an access of nervousness Gresson had failed, at the first script conference, to be able to recollect the date of Queen Anne’s death, and this had so lowered him in the general esteem that he had scarcely been consulted since. He was not, however, much cast down by this unlucky circumstance, since his motive in accepting the post of historical adviser had been less a desire to ensure the accuracy of the film under consideration than a dream of fair women. Like Humbleby—though in Gresson’s case to a degree so extreme as to border on actual hallucination—he conceived the studios to be a sort of stalking-ground or game reservation for the male devotees of the pandemic Venus, where young and beautiful girls, intent upon fame and fortune, were to be found in immense numbers lining up for the purpose of surrendering their bodies to whomever of the opposite sex they supposed capable of obtaining a screen test for them. With any man less immitigably ensnared by lubricious fancies than Gresson, this preposterous notion would not have stood the test of observation for a single day. He, however, clung to it even yet, and it was in a satyr-like tone of voice that he said to Fen, after the conventional greetings had been perfunctorily accomplished:

  “Those girls—they’re wearing engagement rings.”

  Fen was aware of Gresson’s delusion and could not summon up much interest in it. He followed his gaze to where two indistinguishable blonde secretaries, belonging to Jocelyn Stafford and to Nicholas Crane, sat murmuring together, their notebooks balanced on their thighs, while they waited for the conference to begin.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “So they are.”

  “Now, do you think,” Gresson pursued, “that they really are engaged? Or do they just wear the rings as—as a protection?”

  “The rings are nothing but camouflage,” Fen replied firmly. He disliked Gresson and had just remembered that the fiancé of one of the girls was a heavyweight boxing champion. “As far as that’s concerned, I should say that either of them was yours for the taking. And in particular, perhaps, the one on the left.”

  Gresson laughed nervously; he was not altogether pleased at having the impulses which underlay his question thus ruthlessly illuminated.

  “Oh, come,” he said, “I wasn’t thinking of anything like that. I was just curious, that’s all… I suppose,” he went on casually, “that a girl like that would be very keen to break into films, wouldn’t she? I mean, a lot of them take these secretarial jobs just for the sake of a foothold in the studios, don’t they?”

  “You’ve only got to talk to them to find out how keen they are,” said Fen with malice. “I believe some of them would willingly murder their own mothers for the sake of a test.”

  “Ah. You really think so?”

  “There’s not a doubt about it.”

  Gresson drew a deep, contented breath. “Well, well,” he said. “Human nature’s a queer thing, isn’t it?”

  “Very queer.”

  “I think”—Gresson put a finger judicially to his lip—“I think I’ll just go and ask them about trains back to London. That’s the sort of thing they’d know, I expect.”

  “Be careful,” said Fen waggishly, “that you don’t get yourself seduced.”

  “Aha!” At this delightful suggestion Gresson’s idée fixe came leaping uncontrollably to the surface, like a salmon in a weir. “Seduced! Well, it mightn’t be so very unpleasant, at that. Which of them would you say had the better legs, now?” The penultimate word emerged as a libidinous gurgle. “Which would you say—”

  “The one on the left,” Fen answered rather shortly; being volatile in temperament, he was by now tired both of the topic and of Gresson. “You have a good look at their legs while you ask them about the trains, and then come back and tell me if you agree.”

  “Unmannerly,” said Gresson. “I’m afraid that might be unmannerly.” His nervousness was reasserting itself, and since it was clear that he would never, however complaisant the girl to whom he addressed himself, get in practice even to first base, Fen abandoned him, immured to all eternity in the priapean imaginings of his own mind, and went to intercept Humbleby, who had disengaged himself from the Cranes and was making his way towards the door.

  “All settled,” said Humbleby in an undertone. “They’re meeting me in what they call the Club here, at midday or shortly after.”

  “Did you tell them what it was about?”

  “Yes. Will you be coming along?”

  “Since I have no official standing,” said Fen, “they may not want me there. But I may as well make the attempt; and if I’m shooed off I can arrange to meet you for lunch. You don’t mind my hanging about?”

  “My dear fellow!”

  “I’ll see you later, then.”

  In the doorway Humbleby almost collided with Madge Crane. He stood aside to let her pass, and she thanked him brightly and unaffectedly. Her lack of affectation had been much publicised in the newspapers, and when strangers were about she lived up to it very resolutely. Fen had just time to note that as a consequence of his exchange with Humbleby the brothers Crane were eyeing him warily before Jocelyn Stafford, the producer, raised his voice to suggest that the conference should begin. Abandoning coffee-cups, it settled itself obediently at the table.

  Fen found himself between Gresson on the one hand and Aubrey Medesco on the other. Medesco, an elderly man of formidable height and displacement, was the scenic designer, and like everyone else there he had a particular grudge against The Unfortunate Lady and everything to do with it. On hearing that he was to be employed on a film about Pope he had not unnaturally jumped to the conclusion that the villa at Twickenham, with its grotto, would be amply represented in it, and to the successful accomplishing of this mise-en-scene he had devoted, prior to the first script conference, a great deal of careful thought. Unluckily, however, the date chosen for the film’s occurrences had been 1716, when Pope was still living at Binfield; and the discovery that Twickenham did not, therefore, come into the picture at all had so soured Medesco that even in the face of Leiper his co-operation had thenceforth been non-existent. Now, as on previous occasions, he was sitting with an air of massive disapproval, rapidly though with delicacy conveying the fragments of a two-ounce bar of milk chocolate from the table in front of him to his mouth. And the only person who had so far been able to elicit any cordiality from him was Fen, whose capacity for unobtrusive slumber had early on awoken in him a connoisseur’s interest and devotion.

  With grace and efficiency the indistinguishable blondes went about placing a copy of the revised script in front of each person present—a massive typewritten affair, this, neatly bound in green pasteboard and red ribbon. Some at once rummaged in it with an appearance of curiosity and good will, while others, Fen and Medesco among them, ignored it. The blondes thereupon settled down with pencils and notebooks at the ready, and under the chairmanship of Jocelyn Stafford the conference went cumbrously into action.

  Stafford was a well-covered man of middle age, with diminishing brown hair and slightly protruding eyes. Fingering the revised script, he paid it a number of very civil compliments. And to these its author, on his right, somewhat wanly responded. The wanness, Fen thought, was on the whole to be expected. Evan George, a successful popular novelist who had made his name with a succession of those solid, comfortable books about ordinary-people-like-you-and-me to which the female middle classes are so unswervingly loyal, had reacted to his first film job (thrust upon him by Leiper) very much as was to be expected: first with a tempered enthusiasm and confidence; then—since in spite of the lavish praise accorded to his initial draft of the script a great deal of it apparently needed to be altered—with misgiving; and finally, as he surveyed the poor flinders which were all that remained of his original cherished conception, with despair. He was a small, wiry man of some fifty years, with a creased brown face, clothes which looked as if he
had contracted the habit of sleeping in them, and a tendency to dyspepsia which he tried to alleviate by the frequent swallowing of magnesium trisilicate in capsules. At his right hand Stuart North monotonously coughed and spluttered, while Madge Crane watched him with a concern which she clearly intended him to observe. Beside her, and eyeing this byplay with sardonic amusement, sat Caroline Cecil, an actress noted in pathetic roles who was destined for the part of Mrs. Weston. And beside her was Griswold’s second in command at the Music Department, surreptitiously reading a novel.

  But of all these people it was the Cranes who were receiving most of Fen’s attention: Madge, black-haired, smooth-complexioned, unconvincingly helpful and bright; Nicholas, reserved, quiet, thirtyish, an assistant director on leaving his public school, a camera-man at twenty-three, a director at twenty-seven: and Maurice, raffish, narrow-eyed, complacent and looking—it occurred to Fen—rather unwell. There was little of family resemblance between them, unless perhaps in the impeccable shape of the nose; but they were united, it seemed, in an uneasiness which betrayed itself by an occasional wordless message delivered from eye to eye. And the reason for that, Fen thought, was scarcely obscure: the motive for Gloria Scott’s suicide had suggested itself to him some time ago, and he was tolerably certain his guess was correct.

  The Cranes, if he were right, did well to be apprehensive, since unless the scandal of the suicide and its motive could be stifled—and it was unlikely that Humbleby would abet this—it might not inconceivably put a full stop to all their careers…

  The conference dragged on. Fen was summoned out of his brooding to put a date to The Rape of the Lock; the young man from the Music Department, required to specify music for a ballroom scene, suggested the Berenice Minuet, and fell into an unexpected fit of rage when told that the piece was too hackneyed; and Gresson—with one eye on the indistinguishable blondes, whom patently he hoped to impress—delivered himself of a dreary lecture, needlessly long, about the drinking customs of Pope’s age. But it was clear that the end was in sight: suggestions for changes in the script were few and trivial, and the discussions arising out of them wholly lacking in fervour. By a quarter to midday the conference had reached a stasis for want of matter, and it must have been at about this point that Maurice Crane got up abruptly and left the room. It seems curious that Fen, in view of the nature of his thoughts, did not pay more attention to this significant departure, but in fact he hardly noticed it. A monstrous premonition held him in trance. Someone had tried to obliterate Gloria Scott’s identity. Well—why? And there came to him, like the first stirring—“Lass’ mich schlafen”—of the dragon in Siegfried, a couplet from Pope’s ode which clamoured at his intelligence like a rune or an incantation: “On all the line, a sudden vengeance waits, And frequent hearses shall besiege your gates…”

  Maurice Crane was not away for long. He came back just as Stafford, amid universal relief, was pronouncing the meeting over. His face was white and beaded with sweat: he breathed stertorously, irregularly, painfully. His lips moved once, as he attempted to speak. Then he staggered, caught vainly at the doorpost, and fell. A single violent convulsion gripped him as he lay. When that had passed there was no further movement, and they saw that he was dead.

  Chapter Two

  “You may be justified in making all this fuss,” said Humbleby. “Maurice Crane may have been poisoned—as you seem to imagine. But really, you ought at least to explain what it is that’s made you suspicious. The position at present is distressingly complicated and—um—irregular.”

  He looked for support to Superintendent Capstick, who responded with bemused signals of assent. In the twenty minutes since his arrival at the studios Superintendent Capstick had achieved a condition of bewilderment so complete and far-reaching that it had altogether bereft him of speech. By the antiphonal narrative of Fen and Humbleby his intellect had been utterly fogged, and for the moment, and in spite of the fact that theoretically he was in charge, he was capable of nothing more constructive than sitting and staring, with his mouth ajar. It must not, however, be thought that Capstick was a stupid man. He possessed, as a matter of fact, a very fair share of natural intelligence. But he had been haled away from the Gisford Police-station with his mind full of a cherished project for reforming the town’s traffic arrangements, and this preoccupation, combined with Fen and Humbleby’s allusive habit of speech, had disastrously limited his mental reach. He had not, so far, succeeded in grasping who Gloria Scott was, why she had committed suicide, what connection she had with Maurice Crane, what Fen was doing at the studios, or why it should have been suggested that in the manner of Maurice Crane’s death there was anything at all sinister; and being slightly awed by Humbleby, and much more awed by his surroundings (for he was an assiduous film-goer), he had not cared to press for a more lucid explanation of these matters than he had received so far. At Humbleby’s demand to Fen, therefore, he leaned forward hopefully in his chair: one point at least, he told himself, was going to be cleared up.

  But to his chagrin it was not. Fen grew testy at being pinned down, and spoke annoyingly of premonitions. The doctor, he said, had agreed that it might have been poison that had killed Maurice Crane; and on its being pointed out to him that the doctor had also agreed that it might not, he countered by reminding Humbleby that both Madge and Nicholas had testified to their brother s unexceptionally good health.

  “All the same, natural deaths do occur now and then,” said Humbleby rather nastily. “Just once in a while someone pops off for some reason other than malice aforethought. And the mere fact that Maurice Crane hadn’t been ill isn’t evidence. Everyone has to make a start with illness sooner or later.”

  “He was sick.” Capstick, who was becoming unnerved at his own inanition, plunged headlong in with what appeared to be one of the few incontrovertible features of the affair. “That was why he went out of the room. To be sick.”

  Both Fen and Humbleby ignored this—not because they wished to be rude but because it was so negative as to defy answering. And Capstick, brought once again to a stand, slumped back in his chair and wiped a large handkerchief across his mottled, sweating brow.

  “No, my point is this,” Humbleby went on. “Unless Crane’s death has some significant relation to the suicide of Gloria Scott, I’m trespassing on officially forbidden territory, and I must get off it, quick. But when I ask you to establish a significant relation, it turns out that all you can do is mutter about some reasonless foreboding or other…”

  “Damn it,” said Fen, nettled, “Crane was a material witness in the Gloria Scott affair, wasn’t he? You shouldn’t fret so much about red tape, Humbleby: it’s not as if there were any question of your taking charge of the case. All you’re doing is asking Capstick for his co-operation in dealing with a matter which may possibly be connected with it. Isn’t that so, Capstick?”

  “Ah,” said Capstick hurriedly. “Ah.”

  “All right,” said Humbleby, with the air of one compelled against his will to abandon all responsibility. “All right. But for heaven’s sake, why murder?”

  “Because someone tried to prevent you from finding out who Gloria Scott really was.”

  “Now, that’s an interesting thing,” said Capstick. “I remember once when we were rounding up a gang of racecourse touts—”

  “I fail altogether,” said Humbleby, “to see the connection.”

  Capstick was abashed. “I only thought,” he said submissively, “that it might be interesting for you to hear how—”

  “No, no. I mean the connection between the obliteration of Gloria Scott’s identity and the notion that Maurice Crane was murdered.”

  “Really, Humbleby, you’re unenviably dense.” And Fen stared at that officer in some suspicion. “You’d agree, I suppose, that the motive of the person who ransacked the girl’s rooms wasn’t to conceal her identity as ‘Gloria Scott’?”

  “I’ll grant you that, yes. Since she’s been in a film or two, that was bound to com
e to light pretty rapidly.”

  “The idea, then, was to conceal her real identity.”

  “Yes.”

  “And since the motive for her suicide was almost certainly something recent—that’s to say, something that had happened to her while she was calling herself Gloria Scott—then X’s purpose in turning her rooms upside down can’t very well have been to hide that motive.”

  “You mean,” Capstick interposed cautiously, “that if some chap was introduced to her as Gloria Scott and did her a mischief, and she killed herself because of it, then he couldn’t hope to avoid being tied up with the business just by cutting the laundry-marks out of her clothes and so forth?”

  “Exactly. You see, Humbleby, how readily Capstick has grasped the essentials of the situation.” And upon this unwitting irony Fen paused for breath. “Therefore X’s purpose in visiting her rooms was something quite different.”

  “There are a lot of loopholes in this exposition,” Humbleby complained. “Not to say—um—paralogisms. But go on. What was X’s purpose?”

  “As far as I can see, we’re bound to assume that his purpose was to keep secret a connection between himself and her which existed before she took the name of Gloria Scott and which ceased to exist—so far as anyone could, know—as soon as she took that name.”

  “Not bad,” Humbleby conceded. “Not bad at all… And we can trace her back for about two years in the identity of Gloria Scott…”

  “Can you?”

  “Yes. I’ve rung up Charles again, and in the last hour or two he’s had a good many telephone calls from people who’ve seen the photograph, including two from Menenford, one from the producer at the repertory theatre and one from a woman who keeps a boarding-house where the girl lived while she was working there. It seems that no one at Menenford realised that her name wasn’t Gloria Scott. In fact, no one we’ve heard from knew her under any other name.”