‘The trouble with Cora, though, is that she never learned to adapt. Even when she was acting in front of a film camera, she continued to deliver her lines as though she had to pitch them to the very last row of the Upper Circle. And she continued to behave – to misbehave – as though she were a major star, which, these last few years, she was most definitely not. All the same, she had class, real class. She wasn’t like one of these fluffy little chits one finds oneself acting with nowadays who not only couldn’t play O’Neill but have never even heard of him. And for all her bitchiness – of which, I have to tell you, I was more than once the target – she could be a generous soul.’
‘I wholeheartedly agree with you,’ said Evadne Mount. ‘It’s what I was saying to my friend Eustace here. Cora was a good egg.’
‘Let’s say, rather, a curate’s egg,’ murmured the actor, adding chivalrously, ‘but by Fabergé.’
‘So,’ said Trubshawe, none too pleased to hear his deplorable Christian name afforded another reckless public airing, ‘you didn’t object to her being cast in the picture?’
‘Object? Certainly not. As a matter of fact, it was I who persuaded Farje that she’d be ideal for the role.’
‘Oh, you did, did you?’ Trubshawe said pensively. ‘Now that is interesting …’
‘Why so?’
‘Well, don’t you see, sir. Somebody obviously had his reasons for wanting Miss Rutherford put out of commission. And one way of disposing of her would be to have her poisoned in the middle of a crowded film set. Now we learn that it was you who recommended that she be cast in the picture. Don’t you see what I’m getting at?’
Gareth Knight thought this over, then said:
‘Well, no, I can’t say I do. You seem to have forgotten that there was nothing in the original script about Cora drinking out of the champagne glass. It was an idea the director had on the set, at the very last minute, just as used to happen heaps of times with Farje. Can you actually be suggesting that I knew in advance, by some kind of intimate conviction, that Hanway was going to have that idea?’
‘That’s one in the eye for you, Eustace!’ Evadne Mount almost crowed.
‘Besides,’ Knight smoothly continued, ‘I repeat, I liked Cora. It’s absurd to imply that I might have had a reason to kill her. Not only did I not, I simply cannot imagine why anyone else would. There were times I would happily have throttled her – but not killed her, if you know what I mean.’
‘Just so,’ said Calvert. ‘But tell me, Mr Knight, during the ninety minutes or so between the moment when everybody broke for lunch and your own reappearance on the set, what exactly were your movements? Where did you go? And what did you do?’
‘I spent the entire hour-and-a-half in my dressing-room.’
‘You didn’t have lunch in the canteen?’
‘The commissary? No, never. My secretary prepares my lunch every day and brings it down to Elstree from my London flat.’
‘And this secretary? Was she with you any of the time in your dressing-room?’
‘He, Inspector.’
‘He?’
‘My secretary is male.’
‘Aha … I see. Well, was he with you any of the time?’
‘He was with me all of the time. In fact, he and I lunched together. Then he helped me run through the new scene. He played Cora. I mean, he read Cora’s lines. He will absolutely vouch for that.’
‘I’m sure he will, sir, I’m sure he will.’
Changing tack, Calvert now said, ‘This picture – If Ever They Find Me Dead – it does appear to be jinxed, doesn’t it? Miss Rutherford dying as she did, right there on the set, and of course Mr Farjeon also dying only a few weeks ago. His death must have come as a great shock to you.’
‘It was a shock, yes,’ said Knight. ‘A huge professional blow. I’ve acted in several of Farje’s films, you know. I was one of his repertory company, as it were.’
‘A professional blow, you say. Not a personal one?’
Knight fell silent. It was patent that he was debating with himself whether to speak out or not. Finally, he said:
‘Inspector, I yield to no one in my admiration for Alastair Farjeon as an artist. He was, I need hardly say, a true genius, one of the very few reasons it was still possible for us to take pride in this mostly lamentable British film industry of ours. As a man …’
He shrugged his shoulders.
‘You weren’t close friends, I gather?’
‘But that’s just it, we were close friends,’ Hanway replied with a grimace. ‘That’s what I found so unforgivably cruel. You understand, I –’
‘Yes, Mr Knight?’
‘Oh well, in view of what I’ve already been obliged to confess, I don’t see why you shouldn’t be acquainted with the whole story. Now that he’s dead, it no longer matters. When I was arrested, it was Farje whom I asked to pay my bail and contact my lawyer and so forth. Naturally, that meant he had to be in on the whole sordid business. And, just as naturally, given his twisted personality, he at once realised the implications it held for my future career.’
‘He did, nevertheless, continue to cast you in his pictures.’
‘Yes, Miss Mount, I grant you, he did that. On the other hand – and, with a man like Farje, there always was another hand – he never once allowed me to forget what he knew. How with a single negligent word from him my reputation would be in ruins. How he’d always had a weakness for the strong stuff and how, when he’d been drinking too much, he had an unfortunate tendency to become a tiny bit talkative – hence it was in my interest to make sure he stayed safely on the wagon – and so on – and so forth. He taunted me and taunted me until I thought I was going to lose my mind. So, you see, it would be hypocritical of me to pretend that, when I heard of his death, I didn’t breathe an immense sigh of relief, even as I sincerely bemoaned his loss to the British cinema.
‘But to return to what you said a moment ago, Inspector, you may be right at that. There may well be a jinx on this film. I don’t want to sound ghoulish but I can’t help wondering …’
‘Wondering what, sir?’ Calvert prompted him.
‘Wondering who’s going to be next.’
*
Next, as it happened, but only in the sense that she was next up for questioning, was Leolia Drake.
She entered the room wearing a heavy, layered cashmere coat, clutching it to her body as tightly as though it were bitterly cold, which it wasn’t, or as though she were naked underneath, which she wasn’t. She accepted the chair opposite Calvert’s, pulled her skirt down over the top of her knees as showily as though they themselves were showing, which they weren’t, and waited for him to proceed with his interrogation.
Since Calvert’s preliminaries were much as they had been with both Hanway and Knight, they need no repetition here. The essential point was that the actress duly confirmed what Lettice Morley had already told him, that she had indeed been chatting with Gareth Knight when she’d heard about Hanway’s ‘super new idea’.
‘Then can you describe to me, Miss Drake,’ said Calvert, ‘at the moment when Miss Rutherford drank from the poisoned glass – poison has now been officially confirmed, by the way – where precisely were you? On the set itself, by any chance?’
‘Yes, I was. But nowhere near Cora, you know. I was standing behind the camera. I couldn’t possibly have –’
‘Why,’ Evadne Mount asked, ‘were you on the set at all if you weren’t playing in the scene?’
‘Oh, it’s just that Rex is so frightfully brilliant I couldn’t bear to tear myself away. I preferred to be there at his side, watching him be clever. It sent all sorts of funny little shivers up my spine.’