What in heaven’s name was she talking about? What was this it that she claimed to know? That’s how what must have been done? Cora’s murder? But the actress in the picture was stabbed on her own front doorstep in a empty street, whereas Cora was poisoned on a crowded film set! What conceivable connection could there be between the two? Where was the link? What on earth had Evie seen that he hadn’t? Curse the woman!
The lights were raised again. Nobody spoke. Then Calvert, no less baffled as to the purpose of the exercise than Trubshawe, said:
‘Well, Miss Mount …’
‘Well, Mr Calvert …’
‘What I mean is, was that of any use to you?’
‘Let me put it to you this way, Inspector. I was certain before. Now I know.’
‘Now you know what?’
‘Now I know,’ she said calmly, ‘why Cora was murdered, how Cora was murdered and by whom Cora was murdered.’
Calvert made no effort to conceal his scepticism.
‘Miss Mount, with all due respect, I have been extraordinarily tolerant of your unorthodox methods and manners, but even to my patience there’s a limit. If you truly believe you know the murderer’s identity, then let me have it at once.’
‘Ah well,’ said Evadne, ‘there’s a slight problem.’
‘Why did I think there might be?’ muttered Trubshawe to himself.
‘The problem is that I cannot, here and now, prove what I know. I repeat, what I know.’
‘For the Law, I fear,’ said Calvert coldly, ‘that’s not a slight problem. An insuperable one more like.’
‘However,’ she carried on almost as though he hadn’t spoken, ‘if you, Inspector, are prepared to indulge me just once more, I shall, I promise, furnish you with all the proof you could possibly want.’
‘Just once more, eh?’ said Calvert warily. ‘Well, what is it you want of me now?’
‘I want you to summon all the suspects here at the same time tomorrow. Not in this screening-room, but on the film set itself. I want you to make it clear to them why they’re being summoned – that I, Evadne Mount, know who Cora’s murderer is and intend to reveal his or her identity to all to them at once. By all of them, I mean Rex Hanway, Gareth Knight, Leolia Drake, Philippe Françaix and, last but not least, Lettice here.’
‘Not Hattie Farjeon?’
‘No, not Hattie Farjeon. Not Levey either. Better not even mention the idea to Levey. Well, will you grant me this last favour?’
Calvert turned helplessly to Trubshawe. Their eyes met. The older man’s eyebrows nodded.
‘Very well, Miss Mount,’ agreed Calvert. ‘I shall see to it that all the suspects are here again at three o’clock tomorrow. But you had better be right.’
‘Oh, I am, Inspector, I am.’
Whereupon she turned to Lettice Morley.
‘Just for the record, Lettice dear, does the Gareth Knight character turn out to be the murderer?’
‘You have all the information you need,’ the young woman coolly replied. ‘You’re the sleuth. Figure it out for yourself.’
Chapter Fifteen
‘If there were such a thing as reincarnation, I’m convinced I should return to earth as a sheepdog.’
Evadne Mount unfurled this mock-solemn introduction like a miniature red carpet, one that Trubshawe knew was likely sooner or later to be pulled out from beneath her audience of listeners.
There they all were again, the novelist herself and, arrayed around her in a seated semi-circle (the ideal configuration, as she well knew, for having one’s every word hung upon), Trubshawe, Tom Calvert and the five suspects whom the latter had summoned at her request. There they all were, once more on the set of If Ever They Find Me Dead, its decor now gathering dust but not yet dismantled. Like some portly Sunday-School mistress, she faced them, sitting side-saddle, as it were, on a tall three-legged bar-stool, surrounded by the empty cocktail glasses and overflowing ashtrays which had been the props for Cora’s big scene – a bigger scene, as it tragically transpired, than the actress had anticipated. High over their heads was the complex lighting gantry typical of a contemporary film studio, with its criss-crossing circuitry of lights and cables, pipes and planks. And standing watch at each of the four corners of the eerily echoing hangar was a uniformed policeman, straining not to appear too obviously on duty.
Until Evadne began to speak, when beckoned to do so by Calvert, no one had addressed a word, not even a casual, passing-the-time-of-day sort of word, to his or her colleagues. What protests there were, and they were mostly formulary, had been lodged the previous day when Calvert had initially mooted the idea of a climactic gathering. Not one of the five, however, had dared to counter with a categorical refusal.
To complete the slightly macabre tableau, there could just about be heard – was it from an adjacent sound set? or else from the commissary? – the raspy strains of a gramophone recording of Vera Lynn singing ‘We’ll Meet Again’.
‘Yes,’ the novelist reiterated, ‘a sheepdog. For, in truth, there’s nothing I seem to thrive on more than rounding up a flock of – no, no, my dears, don’t be offended, I wasn’t going to say “sheep” – rounding up a flock of witnesses and herding them back onto the scene of a crime. To be honest with you, the only thing which prevents me from enjoying this present experience as I otherwise might is the fact that the victim of the particular crime I’ve come here to solve was one of my very oldest chums.
‘But now to our onions, as our friends across the Channel whimsically have it. I’m not sure whether Inspector Calvert has already told you what’s behind this little gathering of ours, but I myself am prepared to put you in the picture without any further humming or hawing. You five are here for the simple reason that we seven would appear to be the principal – indeed, the only possible – suspects in the murder of Cora Rutherford.’
Needless to say, so characteristically blunt a statement of intentions provoked an immediate outburst of protestations.
‘This is outrageous, quite outrageous!’ spluttered Leolia Drake. ‘I’ve never been so insulted in all my life!’
‘Inspector, I insist,’ asserted Gareth Knight, ‘that these farcical proceedings be brought to an end at once.’
Rex Hanway meanwhile murmured an aside to Calvert:
‘Surely not the dog-eared old cliché of the detective confronting the suspects at the scene of the crime? Inspector, I know how much faith you place in Miss Mount’s abilities, but really …’
Evadne waved a conjuror’s hand over them.
‘Calm yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, calm yourselves. All I ask is that you hear me out.
‘As you know, Cora was poisoned from drinking out of a prop glass of champagne – more accurately, a prop glass of sham champagne. She drank out of that glass because, just as the cast and crew broke for lunch, the film’s director, Rex Hanway, came up with the clever idea of adding this little piece of business to the action, a piece of business of which only eight people were aware. Mr Hanway himself, naturally, since the idea had been his. Cora, just as naturally, being the first to have been told of it. Lettice Morley, Mr Hanway’s assistant, who had to know everything he decided the instant the decision was taken. You, Mr Knight, because it was you, precisely, who were due to play the scene opposite Cora. You, Miss Drake, because you happened to be conversing with Mr Knight when Lettice informed him of the last-minute change. And Monsieur Françaix, Chief-Inspector Trubshawe and myself because we all lunched with Cora, who couldn’t resist telling us about it.