‘My scenario, it is called The Man in Row D. It tells about two women who go to the theatre and one of them points out a man who is seated in front of them and she says to her companion –’
At which point of his narrative he and Evadne chimed in together:
‘“If ever they find me dead, that’s the man who did it …”’
‘“If ever they find me dead, that’s the man who did it …”’
‘Snap,’ said Evadne gravely. Then she added, perhaps unnecessarily, ‘He stole your script.’
‘He stole my script, yes. That is why I say he is a genius but he is also a peeg.’
‘Curious …’
‘What is curious?’
‘The way Cora described the plot to us, the man was sitting in row C.’
Françaix allowed himself a mirthless laugh.
‘So there is at least one thing he changed.’
‘That, and the title.’
‘And the title, yes.’
‘Was there nothing you could do about it?’ asked Calvert.
‘Nothing. I had no proof. No copyright. Nothing. I was so avid that Farjeon is the first to read it, this scenario I write for him, that I do not show it to my friends or my colleagues or speak about it to anybody. And all that, see you, I write in the nice, timid little letter I insert inside the manuscript. I was – how you say? – the perfect sap.’
‘You can’t blame yourself,’ Evadne Mount maintained. ‘After all, how were you to know he would be so unscrupulous?’
‘But yes, I was to know!’ Françaix exclaimed, slamming his fist down hard on the desk.
‘But how?’
‘It is all there – in his films! I see it again and again, but I do not comprehend what I see!’
‘You know,’ said Evadne pensively, ‘I really must try to catch up with a few of those pictures myself.’
‘Ah yes? You are curious to discover Alastair Farjeon’s work?’
‘Well, of course I am.’
‘Then you must permit me to escort you. Tonight, if you are free. It will be a great honour.’
‘Escort me? Tonight? Heavens, where?’
‘To your Academy cinema. At midnight there is an all-night show of his films. An hommage. You did not know?’
‘No, I didn’t. Well, I hardly dare recall how long ago it was I stayed up all night, but this hommage is too important for me to miss. Monsieur Françaix, you have a date.’
*
The last of the sessions, that with Lettice Morley, was equally the briefest, in part because she had so impressively presented the case against herself in the commissary the day before and in part because she struck them all as far the least likely of the five suspects. Calvert’s questions, then, were mostly routine, her answers no less so. She had seen what everybody else had seen and had reacted much as everybody else had reacted. It was, in fact, only when the proceedings were drawing to a slightly anti-climactic close that she added anything of value to her questioners’ store of knowledge.
Just prior to that, however, there had taken place an odd little diversion. So monotonously repetitive had Evadne Mount begun to find the alternating sequence of questions and answers, she’d actually nodded off. “Nod” was indeed the word as, to Trubshawe’s amusement, when doziness eventually shaded into unequivocal slumber, the novelist’s head would tip over to left or right before at once jerkily righting itself. Then, a few minutes later, even as she was attempting almost manually to prop up her eyelids, it would happen all over again. And then again.
The fourth time it happened, she did somehow contrive to prise her eyes open before actually sitting upright. And what she saw at that instant, what proved to be directly in her line of vision, was a small wastepaper basket tucked away out of sight under Rex Hanway’s desk. It was stuffed to the brim with assorted papers – presumably old letters, obsolete contracts, pages from rejected scripts and suchlike. On top of them all, though, poking out of the basket, was an oblong strip of paper, badly singed on both sides, which had clearly been ripped from a much wider sheet. Her sleuthial instincts stimulated by the sight of one of those trifling but, as invariably turned out to be the case, vital scraps of paper, discarded if not quite destroyed, which had so often figured in her own whodunits, she shot out an arm as deftly as an ant-eater its tongue, clasped the paper between her fingers and took a few moments to peruse it before sticking it unobserved (so she imagined) inside her handbag. Then she drew herself up erect on her chair and endeavoured to give her full attention to Calvert’s interrogation.
‘Come now, Miss,’ she heard him saying, ‘you must have been sickened, to put it mildly. A famous film director invites you down to his villa to discuss plans for his latest picture and then, without warning, attempts to – well, to ravish you. What respectable woman would not be sickened by such reprehensible behaviour?’
‘At least in the film business, Inspector,’ Lettice answered, ‘only a very foolish woman would be sickened by it. A real namby-pamby. Oh, I see how shocked you are and, I assure you, it’s not because I treat rape lightly. Yes, I repeat, rape. What Farjeon tried to do was rape – not, as you coyly put it, “ravish” – me. He tried to rape me, just as I’m certain he tried to rape Patsy Sloots. Unlike poor Patsy, though, I know how to handle men, especially when, considering Farje’s reputation, I suppose I’d half-expected it to happen in the first place.’
‘How did you handle him?’
‘I tore myself away from his clutches – and, incidentally, tore a new and rather pricey Hartnell frock in the process – I ran from the villa, found a half-decent B & B in Cookham, where I spent the night licking my wounds, and caught the first train back to Town next morning. More or less in one piece.
‘Naturally, after my rejection of him, I was convinced I was off the film – I had been Rex Hanway’s assistant – and that I’d better start looking around for another position. Then I read, first, about the fire at Farjeon’s villa and, three or four weeks after that, about Rex himself being assigned to direct If Ever They Find Me Dead. I rang him up and – not surprisingly, considering how long and how well we’d worked together – he offered me his own old job.
‘So no, Inspector, to answer your original question, I was not at all devastated, as you put it, by Alastair Farjeon’s death, for the reasons I’ve just given you.’
Sitting back in his chair, Calvert almost fondly contemplated her.
‘Well, I think that’s all I wanted to know. I’d like to thank you once more for coming in, Miss Morley. If I may say so, you’ve made a remarkable impression on us all. Almost unnerving. I only wish all the witnesses I’m obliged to question were as lucid and level-headed as you.’
‘Well, thank you too, Inspector.’
She stood up and unaffectedly smoothed out her skirt.
‘Goodbye, Miss Mount. Mr Trubshawe. It’s been an interesting experience meeting you both. I do mean that.’
As soon as she had closed the door behind her, Trubshawe said:
‘There’s one young woman who’s got her head screwed on tight.’
‘She certainly has,’ agreed Calvert. ‘I’ve come rather to admire her. What say you, Miss Mount?’
‘What say I? I say I need a drink. Especially if I’m going to spend the whole night watching pictures at the Academy Cinema.’
‘Then, my dear Evie,’ said Trubshawe, ‘let me offer you, in the first instance, a lift back to Town, mais naturellement, and, in the second, a brace of double pink gins in the Ritz Bar.’
‘Both offers, my dear Eustace, gratefully accepted.’
‘Good, good. How are you fixed, Tom? You won’t be needing a lift, I suppose?’