He shot a swift glance at Evadne Mount. If it were a joke, she would be in the know. But she was mesmerised, petrified. For the novelist this was no hoax.
Nor for anybody else. The entire studio resembled a tableau vivant of a type one would ordinarily expect to see on the cover of a cheap thriller. No one spoke, no one moved, no one was capable of taking any action whatever. No one, that is, but the Chief-Inspector himself. Despite his age, despite his bulky frame, he rushed forward onto the set, tripping over wires, shoving technicians out of his way, until he was standing directly over the body.
He at once knelt beside Cora, lifted her arm, felt her pulse and laid his head sideways against her chest.
Though he was, of course, a stranger to every member of the cast and crew, not one of them disputed his authority to examine the actress or questioned his right to be there at all. And if many of those watching him already knew what he was about to say, they all waited tensely to hear him say it.
A few seconds later he said it.
‘She’s dead.’
PART TWO
Chapter Eight
‘Steady, old girl …’
Trubshawe crouched in front of Evadne, who was sitting at one of the empty commissary’s Formica-topped tables, her forehead glistening, her pince-nez also glistening, her face still as chalky-white as when she had witnessed the spectacle of Cora’s death.
An hour had elapsed. The police had immediately been alerted, and had undoubtedly already arrived, and on Trubshawe’s own advice none of those present on the set when the murder was committed (and, perhaps influenced by the type of picture they were making, everyone had at once assumed it couldn’t be anything but murder) had been allowed to leave. But, seeing how distraught Evadne was, he had also made the suggestion that he might absent himself to take her somewhere less crowded, somewhere more private, somewhere, in short, where she would be able to compose herself away from public scrutiny.
No objection had been raised. The memory of authority exerts nearly as powerful a pressure as authority itself and, even had anyone wished to, no one was tempted to contradict an ex-Scotland Yard officer.
‘How do you feel, Evie?’ he now enquired in a surprisingly tender voice. ‘Bearing up, are you …?’
She eked out a wan smile.
‘Eustace, you’re wonderful.’
‘Wonderful?’ he echoed her. ‘Me?’
‘Yes, you. I never realised that great big burly police officers could have such perfect bedside manners. Certainly none of those in my whodunits ever had and I realise I’ve been libelling you all. Without you I don’t know what I’d have done. Made a right Charley of myself, I dare say.’
‘Chut! Chut! You’ve pulled yourself together wondrously well, in my opinion, considering what close friends you and – and Miss Rutherford were.’
Though he and the actress had eventually made it to first-name terms, he felt awkward about being posthumously familiar with her.
‘You know, Eustace,’ replied the novelist, ‘I’ve spent the last twenty years blithely killing off my characters, devising the most picturesque forms of death for them, and somewhere in the deepest recesses of my mind I suppose I’ve always wondered how I myself would react if the same kind of fate were to befall somebody I knew. Roger ffolkes was already a test – but Cora! How could such a thing happen to Cora?
‘We’d lost touch with each other in the last few years. But you know, as they say of the last breath of a drowning man, when a woman like Cora dies, it’s also her friends who see her whole life flash before their eyes. So many good times to remember … She was a game old bird and, my God, she’d really been a game young bird. Oh, she had her faults. She could be a proper she-devil when crossed, but she never really meant any harm. She just couldn’t resist a bitchy comeback. Half the time she was genuinely surprised to discover that your feelings had been hurt.’
‘I understand,’ murmured Trubshawe, scouting the idea. ‘Of course I barely knew her, but I do believe I recognise her in what you’ve just been saying. With all her badinage it was as though she were acting in a play, if you know what I mean, as though nothing she said should affect you more than it would some actor she was playing opposite.’
‘Why, that’s it exactly. After all, you don’t start booing the actor you’ve just watched play Iago or Richard III if you meet him afterwards in the street, do you? Cora was simply playing a role, the role she was born to play, the witty, catty stage and screen star. And now she’s dead. Poor, dear, glorious, outrageous Cora. Heaven’s finally Heaven now that she’s there …
‘It’s funny,’ she added softly. ‘I’m not sure why, but I’d always taken it for granted that, of the two of us, I would be the first to go. It’s almost as though she jumped the queue.
‘Cora dead …’ she said again, still not quite able to credit it. And she was just repeating, ‘Cora dead …’ when the door to the commissary opened and Lettice Morley walked in. Behind her was a boyishly handsome young man in a fawn raincoat, a prim black bowler hat held in his hands.
‘Here you are, Miss Mount,’ Lettice said, holding out a battered silver hip-flask. ‘It’s Gareth Knight’s. Scotch, I’m afraid, not brandy, but it ought to do the trick. Go on, take a swig.’
‘Why, thank you, my dear, you really are a very sweet girl.’
She unscrewed the top of the flask, raised it to her lips and took a long, gurgly drink. Almost immediately, a splash of colour suffused each of her cheeks.
‘Ah,’ she sighed, ‘I needed that.’
Sensing that the moment was propitious, the raincoat-clad young man stepped forward and respectfully addressed the Chief-Inspector.
‘Mr Trubshawe, sir?’
‘Yes?’
Trubshawe shot a keen glance at him.
‘I’m sorry. Don’t I know you from somewhere?’
‘Well, you I’d know anywhere, sir,’ said the young man with a hesitant smile, his restless Adam’s apple bobbing up and down, ‘even if we haven’t clapped eyes on each other for longer than I care to remember. I’m Tom Calvert.’
Trubshawe peered at him.
‘Why, of course. P.C. Tom Calvert. My apologies – Inspector Thomas Calvert of Richmond C.I.D., so I’ve been reading. Congratulations, young ’un!’
The young policeman nodded, shyly twirling his bowler.
‘Thanks. I owe my success to you as much as to anyone. And may I say, sir, it’s quite amazing, but in all those years you haven’t changed a bit.’
‘I kind of thought you’d say that,’ replied Trubshawe with a sardonic smile.
‘Oh, why?’
‘No reason, no reason at all. So you’ve been assigned to this case too, have you?’
‘Too?’
‘Well, I read of how you investigated the fire at Alastair Farjeon’s villa in Cookham, and now here you are.’
‘You heard about that, did you?’
‘I not only heard about it, I’ve been following it more closely than you’d ever imagine.’
‘Well, sir, it seemed pretty logical to have me cover this business. Not that we have any reason to believe there might be a connection between the two – except that, as I’m sure you know, Farjeon, before he died, was to be the producer of the picture they’ve been making here.’
‘Director,’ said Trubshawe drily.
‘What?’
‘Take it from me, Tom, my boy. Director, not producer.’
‘Very well, sir. I see you’ve come to know the patois.’
‘I have indeed. You see, I’ve been spending the day down here with –’