‘Of course, of course you’re coming in,’ Trubshawe replied.
He strode down his front drive, good-humouredly shooed away the pack of urchins, opened the door of the Bentley and ushered the actress back into his house.
A few minutes later, after he had returned from the kitchen bearing a bottle of Dubonnet and three glasses, they were all seated together around his living-room fireside.
‘Now listen, Trubbers,’ said Evadne Mount, not bothering with the conventional pleasantries, ‘can I take it you’re no busier tomorrow morning than you were the other afternoon when you popped into the Ritz?’
‘Ah, well …’
He hesitated for a few seconds – it’s never easy affording others a glimpse of how empty your own life has become – before deciding that, whatever the novelist and her friend had come to offer him, it couldn’t but be more eventful than what awaited him if he declined.
‘No, I’m not,’ he reluctantly conceded. ‘Same old dull routine. Why do you ask?’
‘Because a truly wonderful thing has happened. You recall our little supper à trois at the Ivy?’
‘Naturally I do.’
‘And my having to bear the bad news to Cora about Alastair Farjeon’s death?’
‘How could I forget?’
‘Ah, but do you remember that, because of his death, his new film was due to be shut down?’
‘Yes, I remember that very well.’
‘Well, it has, so to speak, been opened up again.’
Trubshawe’s first thought was to offer the actress his congratulations.
‘Well, well, well, that’s extremely good news for you, isn’t it? I can’t tell you how happy I am.’
‘Thank you, darling,’ she said. ‘How very sweet of you to care.’
‘Oh, I do, I most sincerely do,’ he insisted. ‘But explain something to me, please.’
‘Yes?’
‘When we talked about the situation, Farjeon dying and all, you made it clear to me – in no uncertain terms, as they say – that it would be impossible for the picture to be made by anyone else because he was – irreplaceable, I suppose the word is. Yes, irreplaceable in some sense I couldn’t really follow.’
‘Except,’ she replied, ‘it turned out in this case that, because the preparations for the film were so far advanced, because the sets had already been built and the actors had all signed their contracts, that kind of thing, the studio bosses were horrified at the financial loss they were liable to incur if the thing never got made. But they just didn’t know who, if anybody, would be capable of stepping into Farjeon’s shoes.
‘Well, then, Hattie – you recall, Farjeon’s wife? – Hattie was apparently rummaging through his papers in their London flat and – what do you think? – she unearthed this rather curious document. It was written in his own hand and it stated that, if, for whatever reason, he was unable to direct the picture, the person it should be assigned to was his assistant – what we in the trade call his First Assistant. And that’s precisely what’s happened.’
‘H’m,’ Trubshawe muttered pointedly. ‘Queer, that …’
‘Oh? What makes you say so?’
‘Well, it sounds almost as though Farjeon had already suspected he might be prevented from directing it.’
‘Oh, you ex-policemen!’ exclaimed Evadne. ‘You can’t stop seeing underhand motives wherever you look. Forget Farjeon. What’s important is that the filming started last week and Cora, as you can imagine, is over the moon.’
‘Yes, yes, I repeat, my congratulations,’ said Trubshawe to the actress. ‘I couldn’t help observing how badly you took the news of the man’s death.’
‘The point is,’ said Cora, ‘the picture is being shot at Elstree and, as I think I told you, I don’t actually have all that many big scenes, but one of them is to be shot tomorrow afternoon and, because I’ve let Evie share in everything I’ve done since we were both knee-high to a brace of grasshoppers, I naturally invited her down to watch it.
‘Then the same idea occurred to both of us at once – as it still sometimes does, I may say. Since dear old Trubbers was present at the bad news, why shouldn’t he also be present at the good?
‘Besides which, I’ve got to be at the studio at some ungodly hour and Evie, who’s never been a morning person, would naturally prefer to make a later appearance, only she doesn’t drive, but I assume you do. You do, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I do. A Rover. So,’ he concluded, ‘as I understand it, you’re inviting me to become Evie’s chauffeur for the day?’
‘Ingrate!’ Cora pretended to snap at him. ‘Must you always be so officious and stiff-necked and policeman-y? I just thought, as we’d all met up together again, it would amuse you to accompany Evie. I can’t believe you’ve ever visited a picture studio before, so you ought to find it terribly interesting. What do you say?’
It was without the least hesitation that Trubshawe replied in the affirmative. Truth to tell, he couldn’t believe his luck.
‘And so, Miss Rutherford,’ he asked her, ‘Exactly what sort of new film is this?’
‘Call me Cora, darling,’ she answered airily, and the Scotland Yard man was struck anew by how miraculously rejuvenated she appeared now that, by an unforeseen reversal of fortune, her career seemed to be back on track. He was also, however, a trifle embarrassed, since he was uncertain whether she meant him to call her ‘Cora’ or ‘Cora darling’.
But she gave him no time to call her anything, instantly launching into a description of the film.
‘Its title is If Ever They Find Me Dead. Good, don’t you think?’
‘Oh, definitely,’ he approved. ‘Very enticing. If Ever They Find Me Dead, eh? Yes, that’s a picture I feel confident I’d want to see. Sounds to me like a jolly exciting thriller. And may I ask what it’s about? Or would that be giving too much away?’
‘I’m afraid it just might … It’s Farjeon’s own screenplay, you understand, and, where other directors’ thrillers often have twist endings, his have always had twist beginnings.’
The concept was a novel one to Trubshawe.
‘Twist beginnings?’
‘You never saw his Semi-Coma?’
‘Sorry. You know, I don’t –’
‘– go to the Pictures. Yes, you told us already.’
‘Then, my dear Miss Rutherford,’ he remarked tartly, ‘if I told you already, why ask me again? And, while I seem to have the upper hand for once, may I ask you something?’
The actress blinked.
‘Why – why, yes,’ she replied. ‘Please do.’
‘Hocus-Focus. Semi-Coma. An American in Plaster-of-Paris. Didn’t this Farjeon fellow ever give one of his pictures some ordinary, everyday title that actually deigned to tell you a little bit about what was in it?’
‘Trubbers, my dear,’ said Cora, who had never yielded the last word to anyone, and certainly wasn’t about to change the habit of a lifetime, ‘I seem to recall, when we first met, that you had a dog, no?’
‘That’s right. A Labrador.’
‘And his name was?’
‘Tobermory.’
‘What!’ she exclaimed satirically. ‘Not Fido?’
Trubshawe gracefully accepted defeat.
‘You win,’ he said with a smile. ‘Please go on.’
‘Well, in Semi-Coma Robert Donat plays a meek, mild-mannered bank teller who, in the film’s opening scene, goes to bed in his dingy little flat in Clerkenwell. But when he wakes up next morning – the very next morning, mind you – he finds himself, still clad in the same striped jammies he went to bed in, stretched out in a leafy clearing in the Canadian Rockies, of all places, with a solitary stag – a wonderful touch! – a solitary stag placidly grazing just a few yards away. And, of course, it takes him the whole film to figure out how – and why – he crossed the Atlantic overnight.