For a few days into the five weeks he had scoured his newspaper in the hope of gaining further information concerning the blaze at Alastair Farjeon’s villa. Once or twice he’d even bought a couple of rival rags as well, his interest in the case being, of course, all the greater in that the investigating officer was his own former protégé, Tom Calvert.
But there was less about Farjeon’s tragically premature death than he might have expected from Cora Rutherford’s effusions. Film directors, geniuses as they may be in the eyes of those who do their bidding, are of significantly less concern to the great unwashed. As for the woman in the case, Patsy Sloots, yes, she was apparently blessed with ‘oodles of S.A.’ (whatever that was) but, he also surmised, she hadn’t been so much of a star as what is termed a starlet, one of Farjeon’s innumerable ‘discoveries’.
From the scant evidence that could still be sifted through the ashes of the conflagration, it seemed that Mr Farjeon and Miss Sloots had been alone in the villa. And though nothing any longer could be ascertained with assurance, it was now pretty obvious that the fire had been started by a cigarette which one or other of the victims – both of whom had now been positively identified by their next of kin – had either dropped onto the floor, while it was still not properly stubbed-out, or else which had been so casually finger-flicked that it ended up missing the fireplace that would have been its target. Whichever it was, the cigarette had almost certainly rolled across the polished parquet flooring and brushed against the lace curtains of the living-room’s big bay window. These curtains would have caught fire at once, the flames immediately spreading to the gauzy chiffon ‘exclusive’, as wispy as a cobweb, which Miss Sloots had been photographed wearing when she was picked up earlier that same day by Farjeon in his silver Rolls-Royce. Most probably, too, in attempting to rescue her, the film director himself had been engulfed.
There was, in short, precious little to go on, but it had clearly been nothing other than a tragic and, as is frequently said on such occasions, stupid mishap.
A late postscript in the Daily Sentinel made delicate mention of the Sloots family’s grief, in particular that of her mother, who was still under sedation. There was no mention at all, however, in any of the newspapers he scanned, of how the tragedy had affected Alastair Farjeon’s ‘tame little wifie’. And then the news, like the world itself, moved on.
Which is just about when Trubshawe’s doorbell rang and he heard someone impatiently hallooing him through its letter-box even before he had time to open the door.
‘Eustace, hello!’ it boomed.
That voice again!
On this occasion, though, as he owned up to himself, hearing it thrilled him to the core.
She was standing on the doorstep in one of the hairiest and tweediest outfits he had ever seen worn, voluntarily, by a woman.
‘Miss Mount!’ he boomed back. ‘What a very pleasant surprise!’
‘I rather thought it might be,’ she replied complacently.
‘But wait,’ he said, just as he was about to invite her in, ‘how is it you know where I live?’
Like most of his colleagues at the Yard, Trubshawe had always kept his home number off-limits, even into retirement, as there were just too many ex-convicts at large who would have been delighted to learn, merely by turning the pages of the telephone directory, the current whereabouts of the copper who had been responsible for putting them out of commission. Thrilled as he was to encounter Evadne Mount again, a policeman he had always been and, if only by virtue of his own sense of self, a policeman he still was, and it was as a policeman that he was mightily interested in discovering how she had contrived to track him down.
‘My, but aren’t you the suspicious one!’ she laughed, wagging a podgy finger at him. ‘You might have said how glad you were to see me instead of subjecting me to an instant interrogation.’
‘Of course I’m glad to see you, Evie,’ said Trubshawe, made aware of how rude he had been. ‘Very glad. That goes without saying.’
‘Yes, but it would have been nicer if you’d said it. I haven’t come to nit-pick, though. How have you been these last few weeks?’
‘Oh, well, you know …’ came the policeman’s characteristically wary response. ‘Much as ever. I’ve been doing a bit of gardening now that the Spring’s here and, if I say so myself, it’s all beginning to look –’
He interrupted himself.
‘Very neat, Evie, very neat.’
‘What is?’ she asked, all innocence.
‘Changing the subject the way you just did. I asked you how you obtained my home address.’
‘If you must know, I got it from Calvert.’
‘Calvert?’
‘Inspector Thomas Calvert? You remember him, don’t you? You ought to. According to him, you took him under your wing when he was just a bobby on the beat.’
‘Of course I remember Tom Calvert. Most promising newcomer to the Force I ever came across. But how do you happen to be acquainted with him?’
‘You may or may not have heard, but Calvert was the copper assigned to that dreadful business at Alastair Farjeon’s villa. The fire? We talked about it with Cora at the Ivy, but you’ve probably forgotten all about it by now.’
‘No,’ said Trubshawe, ‘I haven’t forgotten’ – and, in his heart of hearts, he somehow knew that Evadne Mount knew he hadn’t forgotten.
‘Well,’ she went on, ‘he was investigating the affair and he questioned a few of Farje’s acquaintances to discover whether they might be able to throw some light on the subject and Cora was one of those questioned and it so happened that I was in her Mayfair flat when she was being interviewed by him and, in short, that’s how I met him. A sweet young man, very bright, very sharp. He’ll go far, I fancy.’
‘He certainly will,’ replied Trubshawe gruffly, ‘as soon as he learns not to give out confidential information, like the addresses of former Scotland Yard detectives, to complete strangers.’
‘Oh, don’t be such a fusspot. I told him how you and I had met again after so many years and how we’d had a lovely blether at the Ritz and then gone on to the theatre and how I now needed to get in touch with you. I must say, he couldn’t have been more obliging.’
‘H’m, well, all right, fair enough. But where are my manners? Come in, will you, come in.’
‘Both of us?’
‘What do you mean, both of you?’
‘For a detective,’ said Evadne, ‘you’re not very observant, are you?’
She jerked her head behind her.
‘Look who’s here.’
Trubshawe shot a swift glance over the novelist’s shoulder. Parked in front of his house, the object of admiration by a throng of street urchins, an admiration bordering on slack-jawed, gap-toothed awe, was a powder-blue Bentley motor-car. Inside it, at the steering-wheel, gaily waving at him, was Cora Rutherford.
‘Why, it’s … it’s Miss Rutherford,’ he said, waving back.
‘Coo-eee!’ called out the actress, to the uncontainable ecstasy of her tatterdemalion public. Even if not one of them appeared to recognise her, since not one of them asked for her autograph, they all knew a copper-bottomed star when they saw one. The girls had given up their hopscotch, the boys their soccer, and all of them started crowding about and practically clambering over the car, which was probably more of an attraction to them – to the boys at least – than its bewitching occupant.
‘Are we coming in,’ asked the novelist, ‘or aren’t we?’