He turned to Evadne.
‘– with the well-known mystery writer Evadne Mount.’
‘Ah yes, of course,’ said Calvert warmly, shaking her hand. ‘Very pleased to re-make your acquaintance, Miss Mount. And just let me say how terribly sorry I am. I know that Cora Rutherford was a very old friend of yours.’
‘Re-make her acquaintance?’ said a baffled Trubshawe. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Have you forgotten, Eustace?’ said the novelist, ‘When I wanted to invite you down here, it was Mr Calvert who was kind enough to give me your home address.’
Before Trubshawe could reply, Calvert, who had to stifle a smile on hearing the Chief-Inspector’s Christian name, explained:
‘That’s right, sir. I did give Miss Mount your address. I know we’re not supposed to do that, even for retired officers like yourself, but she insisted you’d be glad to hear from her and I assumed …’
‘Not at all, not at all,’ Trubshawe answered genially. ‘As a matter of fact, I was extremely glad. Unfortunately, what started out so very pleasantly has now turned into a nightmare.’
‘It’s a nasty one all right.’
‘She was poisoned, I suppose?’
‘It’s what all the signs point to, sir. Of course, the doctor’s only just arrived, and even he won’t be able to give us anything conclusive until he’s performed an autopsy. Poison, though, would seem to be the obvious bet so far. Which poison is another matter.’
‘No lingering aroma of burnt almonds, I suppose?’ asked Evadne Mount.
‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Calvert. ‘But I’m afraid, Miss Mount, since we’re in the real world here, we can’t rely on having that kind of clue served up to us on a plate.’
He turned to address Trubshawe again.
‘The police surgeon – that’s Dr Beckwith, by the way, you probably remember him from the old days –’
Trubshawe nodded.
‘Well, he’s a cagey one, the type that won’t say much till he’s two hundred-percent sure of his facts and figures, but I did get it out of him that he thought it most likely to be one of the acid-based poisons. They’re quite tasteless and colourless, you see, and, even if they’re pretty horrendous things to swallow, it’s all over in ten seconds. As I say, though, we won’t really know until the autopsy.’
‘A tricky case, Calvert,’ said Trubshawe, ‘with so many people milling around.’
‘You can say that again,’ replied Calvert with a sigh. ‘Between the lunch break and the moment Cora Rutherford dropped dead, do you know that there were no fewer than forty-three people on the studio set? And all of them had an opportunity to administer the poison. We already know when the lemonade was poured into the glass, and by whom, but that’s it.’
‘Lemonade? I thought it was champagne.’
‘Can’t have the cast quaffing champagne, you know. No, it was some kind of transparent soda pop. As the doctor was examining the body, this chap came forward – almost in tears, he was – he’d been in charge of props and it was he who, at one o’clock, just as the afternoon filming was about to start, opened a bottle of the fizzy stuff and half-filled the champagne glass, as per his instructions. He wanted to get his defence in before he was questioned, and I can’t say I blame him. The first person we would have gone after was whoever actually filled the glass.’
‘And he’s to be believed, you think?’
‘Oh, I really can’t imagine why not. No motive, you see. Been in the picture business upwards of thirty years, so he claims. And, above all, he’s got witnesses.’
‘Witnesses?’
‘It appears that his assistant, the chap who brought the bottle of lemonade from the studio canteen, actually hung around long enough to see him unscrew the top.’
‘I don’t suppose the bottle could already have been tampered with in the canteen itself?’
‘Not a chance. It was picked up at random out of a couple of dozen on display. And the top was unscrewed in the presence of this lady here’ – he indicated Lettice – ‘who also verified that the glass had just enough liquid in it.’
He hesitated, turning to Lettice herself to complete the explanation.
‘Tell us again, Miss, what you just told me.’
Lettice answered with characteristic composure.
‘The fact is,’ she said to Trubshawe, ‘I’m responsible for what’s called continuity, for making sure that, if there’s a red handkerchief in an actor’s jacket pocket in one scene, it hasn’t turned into a yellow handkerchief in the next, that kind of detail. Well, when Props – his real name’s Stan but everybody calls him Props – when Props came on set with the bottle of lemonade, I had to be present to check that there was going to be exactly the right amount of “champagne” in Miss Rutherford’s glass. And I can testify that Props opened the bottle in front of me.’
‘So that puts him out.’ Calvert sighed once more. ‘Which leaves us with just forty-two potential suspects, any one of whom could have introduced the poison. I’ve already gathered – these picture people are a pretty talkative lot, I can tell you – I’ve already gathered that it takes so long to set up a new shot, as they say, that the glass sat on the table for about an hour while everyone went about their respective jobs, installing lights, laying cables, making up the actors and actresses and I don’t know what else. I haven’t a clue where we’re going to start. In fact, I haven’t a clue, full stop.’
‘Then may I offer you one?’ said Evadne Mount, who had been paying close attention to the exchanges between Calvert and Trubshawe.
‘One what?’
‘Clue. An important one, if I’m not in error.’
‘I’d be grateful, Miss Mount, for even the most trivial of clues.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘as Eustace here will confirm, we watched this morning’s filming together before going off to the commissary to lunch with Cora. And it was during our meal that she mentioned how Rex Hanway, the director, had taken her aside just before the break to tell her about a new idea he’d had for the afternoon’s big scene, the idea being that there should be some champagne, or lemonade, still in the glass and that Cora should swallow it before throwing it at Gareth Knight. In the original script, you see, she was simply to pick up an empty glass, which was naturally how everyone expected it to be filmed.
‘Ergo,’ she ended, taking evident pleasure in hearing the Latin word trip off her tongue, ‘whoever decided to poison Cora could only have hatched the plot between twelve noon, when Hanway apprised her of his idea, and two o’clock, when she herself drank the lemonade.’
‘Curses!’ Trubshawe berated himself. ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’
‘Which means, of course,’ she went on, once more raising her arm like a policeman to control the conversational traffic, and more especially to warn the Chief-Inspector not to venture down what she regarded as her own private one-way street, ‘that the murderer would also have had to belong to what must surely be an extremely select group. That’s to say, only those who were actually privy to Hanway’s change of plan.’
Both Calvert and Trubshawe instantly saw the justice and relevance of her words.
‘My God, Evie!’ cried Trubshawe. ‘Poor old Cora has just been murdered and already you’ve come up with an important clue. You’re the real thing.’
‘Yes, bravo!’ Calvert chimed in. ‘With that one insight you’ve considerably narrowed the scope of the investigation. Now all we have to do is draw up a list of everyone whose job would have necessitated their being told of the business with the champagne glass. My word, we’re actually getting somewhere.’
‘Is there any reason, Mr Calvert, why we don’t start right away?’ asked the novelist. ‘This crime isn’t going to solve itself.’