And So To Murder (10 page)

1

I
T
was past seven o’clock – blacking-out time.

Since nobody could take a holiday, the September weather was fine and mellow. Pineham drowsed towards dusk, its buildings full of a silence which indicated that the film business had come almost to a standstill.

The President of the Board of Trade had announced that he meant to repeal the Film Quota Act, which meant that the American companies could no longer profitably make pictures in England. Twenty out of twenty-six film-studios had been commandeered for ‘storage’ and other purposes. Petrol was going to be difficult to get, and so was timber: the most important necessity in film-making.

But there were a few (gradually becoming the many) who were not affrighted. Independent units were picking up. Radiant Pictures went ahead to finish
Iron Duke
. And Mr Thomas Hackett, backed by the mysterious Mr Marshlake, announced that he would do more than finish his film
Spies at Sea
, which had now become red-hot propaganda. Since several of the sound-stages were rescued, he would go straight ahead with his production-schedule until somebody strangled him.

At the Old Building, idyllic calm reigned. On the ground floor, overlooking the lake, literary inspiration was at work. Here were three little white-painted offices, all in a line. Each office had a tiny cloakroom, with wash-basin and gas-ring. Each office had a door communicating with the next one, and another door giving on the central corridor. Each office had a chair, a desk, a typewriter, a sofa, and an occupant.

In the first office sat the scenario-expert from Hollywood, busily engaged in knocking the stuffing out of the original script of
Spies at Sea
, and rewriting about half of it. In the second office sat Monica Stanton, engaged in learning how to manipulate a typewriter while she plodded away at a detective story. And in the third office sat William Cartwright, not at the moment engaged in anything.

Mr Cartwright brooded.

He sat back and stared at the keys of the typewriter. He stared at the long row of pipes – every variety of pipe, from a light little briar to a noble meerschaum shaped like a skull – which lay along his desk. But they brought him no consolation. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his coat, and stared distastefully at the ceiling. Finally, unable to bear it, he smote the desk a whack with his fist and got up.

It was intolerable.

Why, in the midst of all these other perplexities, had he got to go and fall in love with the damned girl?

2

The Old Building was very quiet. From the other two communicating offices he could hear a noise of typewriters which was characteristic. First there would be Tilly Parsons’s typewriter: rattling away in sudden rapid bursts like a machine-gun, with long pauses between. Then there would be Monica Stanton’s: mostly pauses in hard hits, but with an abrupt pick-up towards the end of the line, a pause, and then a decisive
plop
to make the full-stop. That plop had a triumphant air, as of something achieved.

He looked at the white door – closed – which separated them. At least she had left no doubt in anybody’s mind as to how she felt towards him.

‘She loathes you, Bill,’ Frances Fleur had assured him, laughing. ‘She told me so herself. What on earth did you do to her, the first time you two met? It must have been something rather awful, if you know what I mean.’

‘I didn’t do anything.’

‘Come on, now, Bill! Tell Frances. What was it?’

And Howard Fisk had been almost as definite.

‘To tell you the truth, my lad,’ the director had confided, ‘I think it’s your beard. I asked her the other day how she would like to be kissed by a man with a beard –’

‘
What the hell did you do that for
?’

‘Oh, tut, tut! Why are you writer blokes so touchy? I didn’t mean anything. I was wondering whether we’d better have Dick Conyers wear a naval beard in the fight-sequences, and how the woman would react to it. Still, if you don’t want to hear –’

‘Sorry. What did she say?’

‘She didn’t say anything. She just shuddered. It started inside her and went all over her, as though she’d picked up a spider.’

As though she had picked up a spider, eh?

William Cartwright, at this time, was not feeling any more popular with himself than he appeared to be with Monica Stanton. Like most of us in those early days, he was feeling restless. His persistent attempts to get into the Army had met with no success whatever. In his heart he admired the calm, deadly efficiency with which the Government were forcing the war, like a game of chess, to an inevitable end; without flags, without flurry, taking not one more untrained man than they needed. He knew that his best policy was to stop fidgeting and wait to be called up.

But there it was.

In the second place, he figured at Pineham as a cashiered prophet. Nothing of a murderous nature had happened. Life went on as cheerfully as anywhere else in England, though lashed to high pressure by Mr Hackett. For the blacked-out nights, when people groped and stumbled and swore, and made jokes in every street of the land, Tom Hackett had devised for himself a costume consisting of a coat with luminous buttons, and a luminous hat. It made him resemble something imagined by Mr H. G. Wells, and was not a sight for weak nerves.

Since petrol rationing would shortly come in, most of the crowd were living either at the Merefield Country Club, or in cottages and lodgings near the studios. Kurt Gagern, in the course of directing a submarine scene in the lake, fell overboard and was confined to bed with ’flu. Many of the younger men had been called up; one quiet electrician sported, surprisingly, the three stars of a captain.

And into the middle of it, chuckling, talking, endlessly laying down the law, plunged Tilly Parsons.

‘The highest-paid scenario-writer in the world,’ was a little dumpy, bustling woman in her early fifties. She had a flat positiveness of manner which carried everybody along with her. Though her lipstick always looked as though it had been put on in the dark, so that it was just a fraction of an inch sideways across her mouth, she had a good deal of charm. She was always talking of slimming, and ordered horrible concoctions in the Pineham restaurant.

‘Lamb chops and pineapple,’ she declared, in a hoarse cigarette-voice which swept the tables like the blare of a corn-crake. ‘That’s the stuff, honey. Dalmatia Divine used it in the old silent days, and it’s never been beat yet. She came down from a hundred and forty-six to a hundred and eighteen, whango! – in two weeks. I’ll do it too. You see. I always do it when I work.’

And she was working.

She first took the script of
Spies at Sea
, and went into a trance with it. She then informed Mr Hackett – to his gratification – that it was terrible, but that she thought she could fix it. Despite the prayers and curses of both Howard Fisk and William Cartwright, she was encouraged to do this.

Then she got down to business. Brewing endless pots of coffee on the gas-ring in the cloakroom, and smoking Chesterfields until the office was blue, she began the revisions. But, though she was shrewd and likeable, there were times when only her good nature saved her from assault. For Tilly Parsons refused to learn how to spell. She had a habit of suddenly flinging open the door, bursting in, and on the same instant hurling out a question as to how you spelled something, which made William Cartwright leap half-way to the ceiling.

‘For the love of God, Tilly, why don’t you get a dictionary? Are you too lazy to work a dictionary?’

‘I’m sorry, Bill. Are you busy?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I won’t do it again. How do you spell “exaggerated”?’

She would then sit down on his desk, pushing the papers to one side, and talk shop until escorted out by main force.

But it could not be denied that she had taught Monica Stanton a good deal. Tilly, tough as nails, had taken to Monica. Cartwright, himself a hard and conscientious workman, had to admit that Tilly knew every trick of a dull trade. And Monica –

The typewriters ticked and tapped behind closed doors in the other offices. Cartwright, noting that it was time either to draw the black-out curtains or shut up shop and go home, was too baffled and depressed to do either. It was one of the moods we all know. Monica –

From the noise of the typewriter, he could visualize Monica bent over it. The wide-spaced eyes would be fixed tensely on the paper in the carriage; the short, full upper lip would be out, a cigarette in one corner of the mouth in full sophisticated style, except when the smoke got into her eye; her shoe would rapidly tap the floor; and she would fly at it again, with many erasures. The first time he had ever set eyes on her, he knew he liked her. Within an hour of that encounter, he had a wild and disturbing idea that he was falling for her. Within forty-eight hours –

It was bad. It made him feel like a schoolboy. It brought palpitations of the chest and wrought strange phenomena in the nervous system. It –

With a crash audible at the other end of the building, the white door to the corridor flew open.

‘Bill,’ said Tilly Parsons, bursting out at him, ‘how do you spell “exaggerated”?’

3

Tilly had entered by the corridor door so as not to disturb Monica. Her lipstick was again on sideways. On her left hand, flopped across the knob of the door, she wore a big gold wedding-ring; she had a husband in the States, whom nobody had ever seen, but her views on marriage would have been considered cynical even by the early Fathers of the Church.

‘What ho, what ho!’ lamented Tilly, in her hoarse cigarette voice. She smiled. ‘Did I make you jump?’

He conquered the hot-and-cold wave which had swept up from his chest to his head, and made it swim.

‘No.’

‘Sure I didn’t, honey?’

‘No. But you are gradually driving me to the loony-bin. I informed you last week that “exaggerated” was spelled e-x-a-g-g-e-r-a-t-e-d. Unless the authorities have got together and done something about it in the meantime, it is still spelled like that.’

Tilly laughed, a harsh but not unpleasant sound.

‘That’s what I thought you said. – Busy?’

‘No.’

Tilly looked at him shrewdly, the half-smile still on her broad face. Then she plumped across to the desk. Carefully sweeping a heap of manuscript-sheets off on the floor, she hauled herself up and sat down on the desk, diving into her pocket after cigarettes.

‘Mind if I sit down?’

‘Not at all.’

‘Have a Chester?’

‘No, thanks. This is my tipple.’ He felt that his mood called for heroic measures. Running his eye over the row of pipes, he picked up the death’s-head meerschaum in loving fingers, and filled it out of an earthen jar.

‘Alas, poor Yorick,’ said Tilly, watching him. ‘Judas, what a sight for sore eyes
that
is.’

‘This, Tilly, is a werry handsome pipe. Tilly, how would you like to be kissed by someone with a beard?’

‘Are you propositioning me?’ asked Tilly, lighting the cigarette before he could strike a match for her.

‘Not exactly. That is to say, you are the light of my life, of course –’

‘Horse feathers,’ said Tilly, with definiteness. But she did not say it in the tone usually employed in these exchanges. She spoke in a serious, rather absent-minded voice. Ever since she had come in, he had got the impression that there was something weighty on her mind, and that she wriggled under it. She put one hand, with a swash-buckling gesture, on her hip; the red end of the cigarette glowed in the darkening room.

‘What’s the matter, honey?’ she asked, in a different voice. ‘Got the whips and jingles?’

‘Yes.’

Tilly bent forward. She assumed a look of secrecy and mysteriousness so intense that he instinctively looked round, to make sure they were not overheard. She raised her eyebrows and kept her eyes fixed on him. Stealthily she pointed to the door of Monica’s room.

‘Is it – ?’

‘Yes.’

Tilly hesitated. Her air of mysteriousness increased. Sliding off the desk, she tiptoed over to the closed door of Monica’s room, and listened. She was answered by a ragged rattle of typewriter keys, which appeared to satisfy her. She tiptoed back, bent over him, and glared at him. The tone she employed was unnerving: for unimportant information, her voice kept its normal hoarseness; for important information, she suddenly lowered it to a whisper, aided by expressive grimaces.

‘Listen,’ she said. ‘You’re one of those educated guys, aren’t you?’

‘I suppose you could call it that.’

‘Have you got any money?’

‘Some. I do fairly well.’

‘And you’ve fallen for her?’ Here Tilly’s voice became a hacking whisper, aided by a gesture towards the door. ‘Honest, I mean, and strike you dead? No fooling?’

‘Honest, and strike me dead.’

‘I don’t think you’re a fake,’ said Tilly, eyeing him. ‘Christ, how I hate fakes!’ There was real passion in her voice. ‘I think you’re all right. And I’m going to tell you two things about that girl. The first is: she’s fallen for you, too.’

The light had faded so that it was barely possible to make out Tilly’s grimace of emphasis. Evidently seeing the incredulity which struck him dumb, and turned the wits to water in his head, Tilly raised her hand as though taking an oath and concluded by crossing her heart.

‘But –’

‘
Sh-h
!’ hissed Tilly.

‘Yes, but –’

‘I ought to know, oughtn’t I?’ asked Tilly. She could not hiss this, there being no sibilant in it, but she gave the impression of doing so. ‘I bunk in the same house as her, don’t I? Her room’s next to mine, isn’t it? I see her most of the day and half the night, don’t I?’

‘Yes, but –’

‘
Sh-h
!’

As a conspirator, Tilly would have been recognized anywhere on the screen. She put her finger to her lips, and pointed to the door. There was, indeed, a suspicious silence inside; as of someone listening. So Tilly spoke in a loud, hearty, careless voice.

‘Aren’t you going to draw the curtains? Shame on you, Bill! Be a sport and draw the curtains. What’ll the Air Raid Warden think?’