‘It was one of his doubles, of course.’
‘His doubles?’ queried Calvert. ‘What doubles?’
‘The very first thing Cora told Eustace and myself about Farjeon was that the man’s ego was such, he invariably introduced into the storylines of his films a scene in which a double – I mean someone, an extra, who looked exactly like him – would make a brief cameo appearance. It became such a trademark conceit, conceit in both senses of the word, that his fans would actually start looking out for it.
‘Doubles … Extras … I couldn’t get those two words out of my head. I became so intrigued by the notion that there might have been a double Farjeon, an extra Farjeon, that I immediately determined to find out what I could about these stand-ins of his.
‘It was from Lettice that I obtained the West End address of an agency which specialised in the hiring of film extras and, in the hope of learning whether any of those who had ever played Farjeon’s doubles had lately gone AWOL, I trooped along to an insalubrious back street in Soho, one of those corkscrewy little cul-de-sacs whose houses seem to be leaning out of their own windows.
‘Well, what do you know, it actually did transpire that a certain Mavis Harker, wife or ex-wife of Billy Harker, I never quite gathered which, had recently been nagging the agency for news of her husband. Not that she was pining for the poor chump, exactly, but she admitted to being on her uppers and in dire need of an influx of ready cash.
‘Billy, it seems, had launched his career in the show business as a music-hall juggler. Then, before seriously putting on weight, he reinvented himself as the Great Kardomah, an Arab tumbler, whatever that is. Then, when the onset of the War led to the closure of most of the theatres on the variety-hall circuit, like many of his type he started to eke out a precarious living as a film extra. And it was then, to the teeth-gnashing chagrin of Mrs Harker, that he vanished off the face of the earth.
‘The agency had a photograph of him in its files, a photograph they allowed me to take a peek at. I knew in advance, of course, pretty much what to expect. Still, when I found myself face to face with the chubby jowls, the pouty little mouth and the triple-layered chin of you know who, you could have knocked me down even without the proverbial feather. Harker was the spitting image of Farjeon, whose stand-in he’d been in The Perfect Criminal and Remains to Be Seen and who, I was informed, had been hoping for a repeat engagement in If Ever They Find Me Dead.’
‘So,’ asked Lettice, ‘what do you believe happened at Cookham?’
‘We’ll know the whole truth only when Mrs Farjeon, who, as I shall demonstrate, was party to the scheme, is questioned at the Yard. But I imagine it went, as cocktail-bar pianists say, something like this:
‘Alastair Farjeon, prominent film-maker and notorious womaniser, spots Patsy Sloots in the chorus line of the latest Crazy Gang revue and decides to cast her in his forthcoming film. Naturally, young Patsy, a newcomer to the business, is in seventh heaven at having been selected to play the lead in a major picture by one of the most esteemed directors in the world. It’s literally the chance of a lifetime and she is – this, certainly, must have been Farjeon’s own presumption – supremely grateful for having had it offered to her. Intending to capitalise on that gratitude, the great director then invites the gossamer wee thing down to his Cookham villa for a dirty weekend.
‘We can’t any longer know exactly what occurred there, but I think it safe to suppose that he dusts down the casting couch, plies her with expensive food and wine and eventually makes his move, only to discover that his protégée’s gratitude stops well short of – well, I don’t have to draw you a picture, do I? He consequently works himself up into a rage, a struggle ensues and whether by accident or design – that’s another part of the story which may never see the light of day – Patsy is killed.
‘Aghast at what he’s done, his future in ruins, prison staring him in the face, Farjeon at once telephones his wife, who as usual drops everything and comes running.
‘The truth, as I see it, is that, whatever his brilliance as a film director, Farjeon had as much experience of life, of real life, as a precocious three-year-old. Right into adulthood he remained very much the child he must once literally have been, the vile kind of tot who enjoys pulling the wings off insects. And, like any child, good or bad, whenever he got himself into a scrape he instantly cried out for his mummy – or rather, his wifie, which in his case amounted to much the same thing. As for Hattie, she was, I would deduce, fairly relaxed about his roving eye because she remained confident that it posed no long-term risk to their marriage; also because, in any case, Farjeon usually came a cropper on account of his taste for women half his age and a quarter of his weight. It’s true, she would turn up every day on the set to keep him relentlessly focused on the work at hand, but they were a couple, as they both knew, roped together for the duration.
‘So, panic-stricken, he rings her up, she catches the first train down to Cookham and together they contemplate the wreckage of his glittering reputation. Now – I’m speculating, you understand, but it does all appear to fit together – I couldn’t say which of the two came up with the idea – most likely Farjeon himself, since he’d spent his entire career, after all, devising murder scenes, so who would be better qualified? – let’s say Farjeon came up with the bright idea of setting the villa alight in order to conceal the evidence of Patsy’s murder.
‘But, and it was a beggar of a “but”, given Farjeon’s caddish willingness to be photographed with his latest paramour, it must have been common knowledge on the grapevine that he’d invited Patsy down for the weekend. Thus there could be no question of hers being the only body discovered in the fire. The police – the gutter press, too – would instantly, and of course justifiably, smell a rat. And here, I suspect, it was dear, sweet, calculating Hattie who, seizing a Heaven-sent – or Hell-sent – opportunity of henceforth keeping her chubby hubby all to herself, putting an end once and for all to those adulterous dalliances of his, succeeded in persuading him that he too would have to “die” in the conflagration.’
‘It’s true he was in one unholy mess,’ put in Trubshawe, ‘but that does seem a pretty drastic solution.’
‘Ah, but don’t forget, if the scandal had broken, his career would have been at an end anyway and he might even have ended on the gallows. He couldn’t have survived it – which is doubtless why he decided that he literally wouldn’t survive it. So he telephones Billy Harker. Why Harker? Because, of all those whom he regularly used as his doubles, Harker had separated from his wife, lived on his own in a furnished bedsit somewhere in the East End and badly needed a pay packet. When Farjeon (as I surmise) tells Harker he wanted to discuss the “double scene” in his new picture, even proposing that he pack an overnight bag and come straight down to Cookham, poor Billy must have thought his luck had finally turned. Not just a job, one sufficiently well paid to expunge a few of his more pressing debts, but an invitation to stay with the Master. You can visualise, I’m sure, the alacrity with which he would have accepted the invitation.’
‘How do you suppose he was done away with?’ asked Tom Calvert.
‘Well, I really couldn’t say,’ she replied meditatively. ‘Probably something that wouldn’t show, just in case the flames failed to erase the evidence as cleanly and definitively as they hoped. Poison, I should opine. Or, if no poison was to be had, then strangulation. We’ll know the correct answer only when Old Ma Farjeon confesses all, as I’m positive she will.’