A Mysterious Affair of Style (12 page)

‘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.’

‘I can see you have a high opinion of him as a film director.’

‘Of course I have,’ she replied. ‘I mean to say, we
are
going out together.’

‘Is that a fact?’

‘Well, to tell you the truth’ – she couldn’t resist a naughty-little-girlish giggle – ‘we’re
staying in
together, if you follow me.’

‘Is that why he gave you a part in the picture?’

‘What?’

‘I asked you if that was why he gave you a part in the picture?’

The actress was outraged by the question.

‘What a beastly thing to say!’ she finally cried. ‘It wasn’t
my fault Patsy Sloots got hers in that fire. Inspector, I don’t know who this woman is, but I simply refuse to stay here and be insulted by her.’

‘Yes, Miss Mount,’ said Calvert, ‘I do have to agree with Miss Drake. I cannot accept there’s any call for you to be so systematically hostile to witnesses who, after all, are doing their best to be of assistance to us. If you don’t mind, I’ll take charge of the inquiry from now on.’

The novelist mutely declining to reply, he began to pursue his own line of questioning.

‘Miss Drake, what were your personal feelings towards Cora Rutherford?’

‘I really don’t know what to tell you.’

‘Just tell me what you thought of her. It’ll go no further than here.’

‘She’s not somebody I gave much thought to one way or the other. She was foisted on Rex, you know. He didn’t choose her for the film and, if he’d been, well, a free agent, I don’t suppose for a single second he would have.’

‘That may well be true. Yet, in this very room, just a little while ago, Mr Hanway himself voluntarily admitted to us that he had been wrong. That he’d been tremendously excited by the way her performance was turning out.’

‘Did Rex say that?’

‘Yes, he did.’

‘Oh well,’ she replied carelessly, ‘that was very handsome of him. But so like Rex. He’s such a generous person.’

‘You yourself were not impressed?’

‘I’d rather not speak ill of the dead, Inspector.’

‘You just did,’ Evadne Mount muttered under her breath.

There ensued a silence which, even though it lasted only a few seconds, began to seem awkwardly protracted to the young actress, who must eventually have felt it incumbent on her to bring it to an end.

‘Oh, Cora was all right in her way, if you like that kind of thing. But really, Inspector, let’s face it. I mean, she was a bit – well, quite a lot more than a bit – past it. So p’raps,’ she ended pleasantly, ‘p’raps what happened was, you know, all for the best.’

‘All for the best?!’ Evadne let out an indignant snort. ‘Do my ears deceive me, you – you – or are you actually suggesting that Cora ought to consider herself lucky to have been murdered?! Is that really what you’re saying?’

‘Oh no, no, no, that’s not at all what I meant! I think it’s most unfair of you, taking the words out of my mouth like that. And out of context too. Of course, it’s dreadful that Cora was killed, dreadful. All I meant was – well, she didn’t really have too much of a future, did she, so it’s not so bad – I mean, it’s not
quite
so bad – as it would be if somebody like – well, somebody younger and prettier – oh, now you’ve got me so mixed up I’ve quite lost track of what I do mean.’

‘That’s all right, Miss Drake,’ said Calvert diplomatically, ‘that’s all right. It’s been a trying situation for you.’

Sensing that it would be futile to prolong the interrogation, he offered his hand to her.

‘And thank you so much for coming in. You’ve been most helpful.’

‘I tried to be, Inspector, I really tried.’

‘I know you did. And you’re free to go. But – this is just a formality – please don’t make any travelling plans without first advising me.’

‘Oh, I do understand. In any case, now that this picture looks as though it’s up the spout, I hope quite soon to start rehearsing a play in the West End.
The Philadelphia Story
? It’s by Sir James Barrie, you know?’

‘Is it really?’ Calvert tactfully agreed. ‘Well, I do wish you better luck in your theatrical career than you’ve had so far in the films. Thank you again and goodbye.’

‘Goodbye to you, Inspector,’ she mumbled almost tearfully. Then, looking neither at Trubshawe, who had said nothing at all, nor at Evadne, who had said much too much, she once more gathered her coat about herself and hurried out of the room.

A moment later, Calvert turned to the novelist and wagged an emphatic index finger at her.

‘Really, Miss Mount, really …’

‘Sit down. Please.’

Without offering a word of thanks, grasping a bizarre carpet-bag decorated with ornate, cod-Oriental motifs, out of which protruded a formidable pair of knitting-needles, Hattie Farjeon sat herself down in the chair towards which she had been motioned by the Sergeant. Since she accorded only the briefest of glances to Evadne and Trubshawe before turning wordlessly away again, Calvert didn’t this time feel any obligation to make the usual excuses for their unorthodox presence or even to introduce them to her by name.

Fiftyish and frizzy-haired, dumpy, frumpy and also, or so it already appeared, permanently grumpy, Hattie Farjeon, it has to be said, was not an attractive woman. Yet there was something perversely frustrating about her physical and sartorial drabness. It was almost as though she had laboured hard to present the least prepossessing image of herself to the world. True, she was never going to win first prize in a
beauty contest. Yet, one couldn’t help wondering, did her hair
have
to be as unkempt as it was? Did her complexion
have
to be so speckled and blotchy? Did she really
have
to wear a blotter-green two-piece suit fraying at every hem at once? Above all, did she
have
to confront her fellow human beings – human beings who, given encouragement, might well have been prepared to meet her halfway – with such an insulting absence of curiosity?

But that, it seems, was Hattie. Take me or leave me as you will, her ungiving corporeal language seemed to be saying, but don’t expect me to care either way.

‘I’d like to thank you, Mrs Farjeon,’ said Calvert, politely neutral, ‘for agreeing to be interviewed. We have met before, you may remember, when your late husband’s villa burnt down in that terrible fire.’

There was no response from Hattie.

‘And – and, eh, I do assure you, I won’t take up more of your time than I absolutely have to.’

Still no response.

Calvert started to feel that, if he didn’t ask a direct question soon – the sort of question a refusal to answer which could no longer simply be ascribed to natural taciturnity but would constitute an outright provocation – he’d become too unnerved to be capable of posing any question at all.

‘You are Hattie Farjeon, are you not?’ he asked.

‘I am.’

‘The widow of Alastair Farjeon, the film producer?’

‘Director.’

‘Ah, yes. Ha ha, sorry about that. Yes indeed, I always do seem to get it wrong. For a layman like me, uncoached in these matters, the difference between the two isn’t as clear-cut as it might be, but I suppose, for you people in the picture business …’

His voice trailed off. Silence.

It was time to come to the point.

‘Tell me, Mrs Farjeon, why have you been turning up at the studio every day?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I asked why you still regularly make an appearance on the set. I mean to say, I realise that this picture was originally your husband’s project, but after his tragic accident there would seem to be no practical reason for your presence. Or is it that you see yourself as – well, as they say, the Keeper of the Flame?’

Immediately recalling the literally incendiary circumstances of Alastair Farjeon’s death, however, he realised how ill-chosen that last phrase of his had been.

‘I do apologise. I’m afraid I expressed myself rather badly. No pun intended, I promise you.’

‘And none taken, I’m sure,’ she replied sniffily. Then she fell silent again.

‘But you haven’t answered my question.’

‘What question is that?’

‘I have been led to understand, Mrs Farjeon,’ Calvert said
in a voice now so pitched as to call attention not only to his put-upon patience but also to the fact that it was fast running out, ‘that when your husband made his films here at Elstree you yourself would always be present in the studio. But your husband is no longer with us. So why have you continued to journey down here when this film,
If Ever They Find Me Dead,
is being made by someone else?’

‘Alastair would have wanted me to.’

‘Alastair would have wanted you to? But why would he have wanted you to? Precisely what purpose do you serve?’

‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand what I’m about to say, Inspector, but Alastair always liked to have me near him on the set as a sort of good-luck charm – he was an extremely superstitious man – and, if I’ve kept coming, it’s because I feel I represent a silent guarantee of fidelity to his vision. After all, it worked in the past. Why shouldn’t it work now, even if it’s no longer Alastair himself who’s directing the film?’

A real answer. Even a rather intriguing one.

‘And why are you here today? The picture, after all, has been closed down.’

‘Till further notice, yes.’

‘Do I take that to mean you don’t believe the project has been abandoned?’

‘Of course I don’t.’

‘But Miss Rutherford’s murder …?’

‘The fact that Cora Rutherford is dead alters very little.
Her part was relatively unimportant. There are dozens of actresses in this country who could play it just as well. If you must know, the main reason for my coming to Elstree today was to discuss with Rex Hanway just who we might consider offering it to.’

‘Oh, I see, I see!’ Evadne erupted with her habitual precipitation. ‘Poor Cora not yet in her grave and already you’re thinking of who will replace her!’

‘Naturally, we are. This is a business. Our obligation is to the living, not the dead. Upward of sixty people were employed on
If Ever They Find Me Dead
. Surely it would be more humane to try and save their jobs than to spend valuable days, even weeks, mourning Miss Rutherford’s death, unfortunate as it is.’

‘If I may change the subject, Mrs Farjeon,’ said Calvert, nipping back in before the novelist had time to remount her hobby-horse, ‘I understand that, if Mr Hanway was commissioned to take over the direction of the film, it was because you found a particular document among your husband’s papers?’

‘That’s right.’

‘You wouldn’t have that document on you, I suppose?’

‘Of course not. Why should I? When I came here this afternoon, I had no idea I was going to be questioned by the police. Even if I had, I doubt it would have occurred to me to bring it along.’

‘I trust, though, it’s still in your possession.’

‘Naturally.’

‘And there’s no doubt at all that it was written by your husband?’

‘None whatever. I ought to know Alastair’s handwriting.’

‘When you were going through his papers, was it that specific document you were looking for or did you come across it by chance?’

‘I could scarcely have been looking for it. I didn’t even know of its existence.’

‘What
were
you looking for?’ Evadne Mount asked.

Hattie Farjeon’s withering tone, when she answered, conveyed the impression that she was so utterly undaunted by the novelist’s discourtesy she couldn’t even be bothered to take offence.

‘If it really is any business of yours, I was looking for Alastair’s will.’

‘Ah … his will,’ said Calvert. ‘Did you find it?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘No unpleasant surprises?’

This time the implication
was
visibly upsetting to her.

‘Certianly not. Alastair and I drew it up together. And may I say I find that an impertinent question to be asked, Inspector.’

‘I’m sorry, it wasn’t intended to be. But to come back to this strange document – from what I’ve been informed, it stated that, if anything were to happen to your husband which might prevent him from shooting the film, the direction
was to be handed over to Rex Hanway. Was that the gist of it?’

‘It was not only the gist, it was all there was to it. Just that one statement. And Alastair’s signature, of course.’

‘H’m. Did your husband go in fear of anything, Mrs Farjeon? His life, maybe?’

‘What a preposterous idea.’

‘Why, then, would he entertain such a queer hypothesis?’

‘To be honest with you, Inspector, it wouldn’t at all surprise me to discover that Alastair had drawn up a similar document before each and every one of his earlier films. Naturally, I cannot say for sure since, if he had, he’d doubtless have torn it up it once the film was completed. My husband was a brilliant man but, like many brilliant men, he simply couldn’t cope with the real world. He was, as I already told you, childishly superstitious. And my own belief is that, by committing such a statement to paper, he was actually hoping to outwit Fate. You know, by what they call reverse psychology? Or perhaps what I mean in Alastair’s case is reverse superstition. By pretending to Fate that he feared something dreadful might happen to him, he hoped that Fate, being as contrary as we all know it to be, would then make sure it didn’t. I realise how infantile that must sound – but then so, in many respects, was Alastair himself.’

‘That’s interesting, really most interesting,’ said Calvert, who couldn’t mask his surprise at having received such a detailed response to one of his questions.

‘None the less,’ said Trubshawe, taking advantage of the momentary silence, ‘it would be useful for us to know if your husband actually did have any enemies. Or, should I say, given his power and prominence, if he had
many
enemies.’

‘Childish as Alastair could often be,’ his widow replied after a moment of reflection, ‘he was at least shrewd enough to make friends of those with power and enemies of those without.’

There was suddenly a faint, thin-lipped trace of menace in her voice.

‘I was the sole exception to that rule.’

And on that chilling note the interview was brought to its end.

After Hattie Farjeon’s departure the three friends glanced at one another.

‘That woman,’ Trubshawe eventually remarked, ‘knows more than she’s prepared to let on.’

‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Calvert.

Calvert began his questioning of Françaix, as he already had with his previous interviewees, in a blandly conversational mode. He assured the Frenchman that the interrogation to which he was about to submit himself was no more than a formality, that all he sought of him was that he relate whatever knowledge he had, no matter how trivial it might initially
have struck him, of the circumstances surrounding Cora Rutherford’s death.

‘
Mais
naturellement.
I will tell you everything I know.’

‘Then just let me first run over a few of the chief points. Your name is …?’

‘Françaix, Philippe Françaix.’

‘And you are, I believe, a film critic?’

Françaix made a moue of squirming deprecation.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Calvert, ‘have I got that wrong? I was certainly advised you were a film critic.’

‘Oh, it is not, as you say, the large deal. It is just that I prefer the term
théoricien
. How you say in English? Theorist?’

‘Ah. Well, I don’t have a problem with that. But what exactly is the distinction you’re making?’

‘The distinction …’

The Frenchman leaned back in his chair in a manner ominously suggestive to anyone who’d already heard him expatiate on the topic.

‘I would say that the distinction between a film theorist – one who writes in the obscure journal, no? – and a film critic – one who writes in the daily newspaper – it is the same as between an astronomer and an astrologer. You comprehend? The first one creates a theory in order to describe the cinematic cosmos. The second concerns himself only with the stars.
Avec les vedettes, quoi
. I think that you in particular will appreciate, Inspector –’

‘Actually,’ said Calvert hastily, ‘What I’d really like to –’

‘No, no, you please must let me finish. You and I, we are like a pair of peas. And why? Because we both have theories,
n’est-ce pas
? For what are detectives but the “critics” of crime? And what are critics – true critics, theoretical critics – but the “detectives” of cinema?’

While Trubshawe could be glimpsed mouthing ‘Potty! Absolutely potty!’, Calvert made a new attempt to stem the flow.

‘Interesting … So shall we agree that you’re a purist and be done with it?’

‘A purist, yes, yes, that is the truth, we French theorists are all of us purists.
Par exemple
. I have a colleague who claims that the cinema, it died – it died, you understand – when it started to talk. Pouf! As simple as that! I have another colleague who is such a purist he will watch only films that were made in the nineteenth-century. For him
mil neuf cent
, 1900, it is the end of everything.
Moi
, I specialise in the oeuvre of a single
cinéaste
, the great, great Alastair Farjeon.’

Relieved that Françaix had done him the favour of at long last coming to the point, Calvert pounced on the name.

‘Alastair Farjeon, yes, precisely. You’re writing a book on his work, I believe?’

‘I am, yes. I study his films for many years. He made many
chef-d’oeuvres.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t quite hear that,’ said Trubshawe. ‘He made many what-did-you-say?’

‘Chef-d’oeuvres
. Masterpieces. He was a very great director, the greatest of all British directors. You know, we French sometimes say that there is an
incompatibilité
– what is the expression in your barbaric language? – an incompatibility? – between the word “Britain” and the word “cinema”. But Farjeon, he was the exception. He made films that are the equal –
qu’est-ce que je dis
? – that are more than the equal, much more than the equal, of any in the world. Beside Farjeon, the others are so much
vin ordinaire
.’

‘Monsieur Françaix,’ said Calvert, ‘if I may now come to the business at hand.’

‘Ah yes, the death – the murder – of poor Miss Ruzzerford. It is very sad.’

‘It is indeed. You, I believe, were actually on the set when it happened.’

‘That is correct.’

‘Then you must have seen her drink from the poisoned glass?’

‘Yes, I see her.’

‘And collapse on the ground?’

‘That too. It is horrible, horrible!’