A Mysterious Affair of Style (15 page)

Once again the Chief-Inspector had spoken so loudly that two startled waiters, both of them bearing trays heaped high with empty glasses, only just averted a collision as their paths crossed in the middle of the bar. First an itching bottom, now a proposal of marriage. These two fossilised old dears – you could almost hear the whisper buzz around the room – perhaps weren’t as superannuated as they looked.

‘Have you lost your mind?’

‘Not at all.’

‘But why on earth would you want to marry me? This very afternoon we’ve done nothing but quarrel like – like –’

‘Like an old married couple?’ said Evadne Mount, deftly completing the phrase for him.

Suddenly, quite unexpectedly, she took his hand and squeezed it in her own.

‘Come clean, Eustace. You’re lonely. You can come clean, you know, because you’ve already done so. More than once. Well, now it’s my turn. I’m lonely too. Terrifyingly lonely, if you really want to know. Why do you suppose I drop into this ridiculous hotel every day? Just in the hope of finding somebody to speak to – anybody, Eustace, anybody at all. And when, all those weeks ago, it was you I found to speak to, I can’t tell you how thrilled I was. So thrilled that, for days afterwards, I was hoping – hoping against hope – that you would drop in again. Really I was. It was like some girlish fantasy – that you would pretend to have dropped in by chance and I would pretend to believe you. And because it was like a girlish fantasy, it made me feel young again, almost like a girl myself.

‘Well, you didn’t drop in. All those days I spent sitting near the door, glancing up at everybody who passed through it, hoping, praying, that this time it might be you, all for nothing. You never did make a reappearance. It probably never crossed your mind for an instant.

‘But that wasn’t going to stop me. Oh no, this was my last chance and, like Cora, I was willing to do anything, abase myself if need be, to grasp it. So I waited more or less patiently for the opportunity, for the excuse I needed, to present itself. And it finally did. Out of the blue, Cora rang me up, invited me to Elstree to watch her play her big scene and I invited you.

‘And now I’m grasping the chance even more tightly by
proposing this wager. My calculation is that you’re so bloody cocksure you’ll solve the crime I doubt you’ll risk seeming a coward by refusing to pick up the gauntlet. And if you’re worried about – about, you know, S-E-X – well, you needn’t be. We’re both much too set in our ways, not to mention too old and creaky, for any of that tomfoolery.

‘So, Eustace dear, what do you say? Are we on?’

Trubshawe looked her moistly in the eye.

‘We’re on.’

He then momentarily turned away, pleading a cinder in one of his eyelashes – a cinder as big as the Ritz itself! – and, after feigning to have removed it, added, ‘But only because I know I’m going to win.’

‘At my age, love, I’ve learned not to be too picky. So long as you accept the wager, I really don’t care why.’

She cheerily rubbed her hands together.

‘So – where are you off to next in your investigation?’

‘Next?’ said Trubshawe, drinking down his whisky-and-soda. ‘Next I believe I’ll go alibi-hunting. I’ll consult with Tom Calvert and, perhaps, if we both put on our thinking caps –’

‘Make a nice change from that tartan terror you always wear.’

‘If Tom and I put our heads together,’ Trubshawe repeated between gritted teeth, ‘maybe we’ll find out just what those five suspects of ours were up to on the afternoon of the Cookham fire. And you?’

‘Me?’ said Evadne Mount. ‘I’m going to the Pictures.’

Trubshawe spent the whole of the next day following through his hunch in the company of Tom Calvert. The younger man had been intrigued by his theory that there might after all have been foul play at Cookham, sufficiently intrigued at any event to pay a series of semi-official calls on all five suspects in Cora Rutherford’s murder. The results were conclusive, to put it mildly, and it was these results that the Chief-Inspector now felt obliged to relate to the novelist. Coupled with that obligation was of course his own devouring curiosity to find out what she herself had been up to in the meantime.

Until well into the afternoon, however, Evadne was unobtainable on the telephone, and the sole hint of where she had been and what she might have been doing there had been dropped by Lettice Morley, whom he and Calvert had interviewed just after lunch in her charming bijou flat in Pimlico. It appears that Evadne had rung her up early that morning with what Lettice described as a ‘self-consciously vague’
enquiry about film extras, who they were and how they were hired. Needless to say, this tantalising droplet of information only intensified Trubshawe’s curiosity.

Later, towards five o’clock, when he had returned home to Golders Green, settled into his favourite armchair, a freshly brewed cup of tea at his elbow, and had just begun reading Cora’s obituary in the
Daily Sentinel
– no fewer than three lavishly illustrated pages were devoted to her career, her matrimonial misadventures, her untimely death and, of course, the sensational circumstances surrounding it – his own telephone finally rang. He leapt up off the armchair to take the call. It wasn’t Evadne herself, though, but Calvert, who had even more tantalising news of her doings to impart. She had rung him up just half-an-hour before to ask whether it might be possible for the Police Force to persuade Benjamin Levey to set up a screening for them of the ‘rushes’ – the word sat as oddly on Trubshawe’s ear as on Calvert’s tongue – that had already been filmed of
If Ever They Find Me Dead.

‘Good grief,’ muttered Trubshawe, ‘what’s got into Evie now?’

‘No idea,’ replied Calvert. ‘She simply asked me if I might use my influence.’

‘Did she explain why she wanted to see the stuff?’

‘No. I did ask her, as you can imagine, but she played her cards very close to her chest. All she said was that it was of the utmost importance that I grant her this favour.’

‘And what was your response to that?’

‘Well, Mr Trubshawe, it was, you recall, Miss Mount who, on the very day of the murder, was crafty enough to deduce that there weren’t forty-two suspects to be accounted for, just five. And, during those investigations that we conducted in Hanway’s office, I must say she did ask some pretty pertinent questions – brutal but pertinent. And she’s written all those clever whodunits – not that I’ve actually read any of them myself, you know, but she never stops telling me how clever they are. And she was, after all, a close friend of Cora Rutherford and she’s also, of course, your friend too. And since you and I are – let’s face it – getting nowhere fast –’

An impatient Trubshawe broke in.

‘What you’re saying is, you agreed.’

‘To be candid with you, Mr Trubshawe, I couldn’t see my way to refusing. I was struck, though, by something rather queer that she said. I asked her if, as I assumed would be the case, the scene she was keenest to watch was the one during which Miss Rutherford was murdered. Well, you can’t imagine how she replied.’

‘Tell me.’

‘She shuddered – when your Miss Mount shudders, my goodness me, she does audibly shudder! – anyway, she shuddered and said tartly that she had been called many things in her life but that she was no ghoul and, if there was one piece of film she never,
ever
wanted to see, it was that. Then I said, well, what? And she breezily answered that it was all one to
her! Anything the studio could show her of the picture, she’d be glad to watch! Can you believe that?’

‘Of Evie,’ said Trubshawe, ‘I’ve learned to believe almost anything. But it is, as you say, queer. Yet, despite her indifference to what would be served up to her, you still agreed to hold the screening?’

‘I told her I couldn’t make any promises and that it was ultimately up to Levey. But, after we ended our conversation, I did get on the ’phone to him. That man’s as jumpy as a scalded cat – all those years of persecution in Nazi Germany, I suppose – and at first he was fairly reluctant. Said it was quite unheard-of to screen the rushes of a film to outsiders, which, to be honest, I can well believe is the truth. He asked me what precisely was the reason behind it, since there have been no prints made yet of the footage – his word – of Cora Rutherford drinking out of the poisoned glass. I told him just what Miss Mount had told me – that it was of no importance what she was shown – and even though he was as mystified as I was myself, he finally gave way. I rather think he feared it might attract my suspicion if he didn’t.

‘So I’ve arranged for a little private show tomorrow afternoon in one of the studio’s screening-rooms. I thought you might want to be there.’

‘Too darn right I would!’ exclaimed Trubshawe.

‘Ah …’ said Calvert. ‘So you feel she might be on to something, do you?’

‘Pshaw!’

‘What? Would you please speak up, sir? There seems to be some interference on the line.’

‘I said, no. It’s just Evie. She’s got a bee in her tricorne as usual. But I have to tell you, Tom, I have a very pressing reason of my own for wanting to know where her train of thought might be leading her. I’ll be there all right.’

‘I hoped you’d say that. Here’s the plan. We’ll meet at the screening-room at three o’clock. Miss Mount will need a lift down to Elstree, of course, but she told me to inform you that, if by any chance you were thinking of contacting her first by ‘phone, not to bother.’

‘Well, that’s delightful of her, I must say.’

‘Instead, she proposed that you pick her up at her flat at two on the dot.
On the dot
– those were her words and she insisted I let you know they were in italics. Said you’d understand.’

‘I do,’ said Trubshawe. ‘Oh, I do.’

‘Good. Then we’ll all four meet at three o’clock.’

‘All four? There’s you, me and Evie. Who’s the fourth? Is Levey himself going to be present?’

‘Levey’s still in London, apparently, trying to salvage something from the wreckage of his film. No, at Levey’s suggestion, I invited Lettice Morley. I realise she’s one of the five prime suspects, if we really have the right to call them that, but she’s an old hand at the cinema business and she’ll be able to guide us through the thickets. You don’t have any objection to her being there, I suppose?’

‘Not at all. I can’t see the harm in it.’

‘Till tomorrow then.’

It wasn’t until they had left the city behind them, and were already in the green heart of the countryside, that Evadne asked Eustace how his inquiries had progressed. She seemed, despite Cora’s death, in remarkable spirits, even mildly elated. Her only just dormant cloak-and-daggerish instincts had been aroused with a vengeance and you could almost see her nostrils twitch like those of a hound on the scent of a fox.

Trubshawe, too, could almost see them twitch, which is why he had elected, apart from the odd and deliberately banal aside, to remain silent.

It was Evadne who finally spoke.

‘Once again, for some reason, you aren’t your usual prolix self.’

‘Me, prolix? In your company? That’s a laugh.’

‘But you must know,’ she went on, ‘how desperately keen I am to learn how you fared with your enquiries.’

‘Which enquiries?’

‘Please, Eustace, don’t play silly games with me. You told me yourself you were planning to check the whereabouts of all our suspects on the afternoon of the fire in Alastair Farjeon’s villa. And when I spoke to Tom Calvert on the
blower yesterday, he confirmed that you and he had spent the day doing just that.’

‘Did he also tell you whether we’d had any luck?’

‘Yes, he did.’

‘Then why are you asking me?’

She gave him an affectionate tap on the knee.

‘Poor Eustace, I know how disappointed you must be. And far be it from me to gloat, far be it from me to say I told you so, but … Well, if you’re honest, you have to agree that …’

‘You told me so.’

‘Precisely.’

‘You know, Evie,’ said Trubshawe, ‘you may be right, and you certainly did tell me so, but I just can’t believe there isn’t something fishy somewhere.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, look, we spent the whole day yesterday asking them, all five of them, where they’d been at the time of the fire and with whom. And every single one of them had an alibi. It’s just not normal.’

‘Why ever not? You call it an alibi, but that’s the policeman in you talking. It’s the paradox of Scotland Yard. The more unbreakable somebody’s alibi, the more suspicious you coppers become. But all it means, when you say that every single one of them had an alibi, is that every single one of them was somewhere else that afternoon, just as you were somewhere else that afternoon – with me, as it happens –
and I was somewhere else – with you, natch – and my late aunt Cornelia, God rest her soul, was definitely somewhere else, and millions, no, tens of millions of people up and down the country were somewhere else. Why should an alibi be inherently an object of suspicion?’

‘Evie,’ Trubshawe patiently replied, ‘I was forty years at the Yard and I carried out investigations into I don’t know and you don’t care how many criminal cases, a few of them just like this one, with five or six different suspects, and I can assure you that not once – not once, do you hear – did every single suspect have an alibi. It’s not the way these things happen. People don’t recall any longer where they were on a specific day or night. Or else they went shopping, except that they chose to go by themselves, and why shouldn’t they? Or else they took a stroll to clear their heads before turning in for the night. Or else they were doing a crossword puzzle or I don’t know what. It just isn’t normal for all five stories to click, for all five suspects to be able, more than a month after the event, to account for their movements not only with total exactitude but with witnesses to back them up.

‘I tell you, Evie, if I had your bottom, it would be itching now!’

Silent and thoughtful, Evadne watched the road ahead as it gently swerved through the densely forested hills.

‘What were these alibis that have put you in such a state?’

‘Let me see. Philippe Françaix was in his hotel – in
Bloomsbury, it was – writing up notes for the last chapter of his book.’

‘That hardly sounds like an unbreakable alibi to me.’

‘I’m afraid it is, though. He was in the hotel bar, not in his own room. It seems he’s got so accustomed to writing in cafés – these frogs, I’ll never understand them – he prefers to work with lots of hustle and bustle around him. The barman remembers him well. Swears he never left his table all afternoon. Served him three black coffees and a cheese-and-pickle sandwich.’

‘Hanway?’

‘He attended a garden-party at the Palace, no less. And who do you imagine he escorted there?’

‘Leolia Drake?’

‘Right first time,’ said Trubshawe. ‘And they weren’t just seen, they were photographed. They were even presented to Their Majesties. It’s true that the do lasted upward of three hours. Yet I still can’t see how either of them could have sneaked out of Buckingham Palace, motored down to Cookham, set Farjeon’s villa alight and returned in time for dinner at the Caprice, where they were also seen and photographed.’

‘What about Gareth Knight?’

‘At a club in Soho with his so-called secretary. He wore a mask and never once removed his hat – it was some kind of wide-brimmed affair that covered most of his face – but there would appear to be no question he was present.’

‘Wore a mask? Just what sort of a club was it?’

‘A club for single men – really ought to have been closed down years ago. It was hosting an Ivor Novello
thé-dansant,
if you can believe it. Fancy-dress affair. Guests were asked to come disguised as characters out of
The Dancing Years
and
Glamorous Night.
When the owner of the club cottoned on to who it was we were enquiring about, he was so relieved he himself wasn’t the chap Calvert hoped to throw in the jug that he shopped not only our own glamorous Knight but a couple of other picture actors as well.’

‘Oh yes?’ said Evadne, eyes aflame with prurient curiosity. ‘Who?’

‘Never you mind who. Let’s stick to our own business, shall we?’

‘Oh, very well. I’ll worm it out of you later, you silly old stick-in-the-mud. What about Lettice Morley?’

‘She was in hospital.’

‘What? Had she fallen ill?’

‘No. Her mother had just that day gone under the surgeon’s knife. Lettice was at her bedside all afternoon. Even though the nurses admit they were more or less permanently on the go, they’re all ready to vouch for her.’

‘So where does that leave you?’

He shook his big heavy head.

‘Up the proverbial gum tree. We have five suspects in one crime for which they all had an opportunity but no motive. And we have the same five suspects in another crime – or so
I truly believe – for which they all had a motive but no opportunity. It pains me to admit it, Evie, but the only person capable of breaking one, some or all of their alibis is Alexis Baddeley.’

‘Very sweet of you to say so. Don’t forget, though, there is at least one advantage to being faced with five separate alibis.’

‘And what might that be?’

‘It takes only one of them to crack for you to have your guilty party.’

This logical notion, which had never occurred to Trubshawe, cheered him up no end as they continued the pleasant drive down to Elstree.

The cosily raked and padded screening-room held, all in all, just three rows, counting four seats to a row. When Evadne and Eustace arrived, slightly late, both Tom Calvert and Lettice Morley were already present and making perfunctory attempts at conversation. Behind them was the projectionist’s box; and behind the projector itself stood the projectionist, primed to start the film as soon as he had been given the nod by Lettice. Seated alone at the very back was the inevitable, ubiquitous Sergeant Whistler.