by George Baxt
THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK
MURDER CASE
The Dorothy Parker Murder Case
Process of Elimination
The Neon Graveyard
Burning Sappho
The Affair at Royalties
“I!” Said the Demon
Topsy and Evil
A Parade of Cockeyed Creatures
Swing Low, Sweet Harriet
A Queer Kind of Death
THE
ALFRED HITCHCOCK
MURDER CASE
GEORGE BAXT
ST. MARTIN’S PRESS NEW YORK
This novel has not been authorized or endorsed by Alfred Hitchcock, his estate, or any of the individuals or companies that may be licensed to use the name “Alfred Hitchcock.” It is simply an historical novel, a work of fiction that includes Alfred Hitchcock as a character.
With the exception of a few film people of the era and, of course, Alfred Hitchcock and his family (all of whose real names are used), the characters in this novel are fictitious and are not intended to be based on any actual persons. Similarly, the novel’s story and the incidents depicted in the novel (including those involving real people) are fictitious, although some of the places and historical events mentioned in the novel are real.
THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK MURDER CASE.
Copyright © 1986 by George Baxt. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Baxt, George.
The Alfred Hitchcock murder case.
1. Hitchcock, Alfred, 1899- --Fiction.
I. Title.
PS3552. A8478A79 1986813’.5485-25162
ISBN 0-312-01716-2
First Edition
10 987654321
For Fred Terman, Barbara Ferris,
John Quested, Madge Ryan,
and also starring
Sally Ann Howes and Douglas Rae
BOOK ONE
Munich,
June 1925
One
The Furies were gaining on him. He couldn’t run fast enough; he was too fat. His fiancée, Alma Reville, was shouting a warning.
“Back!” he screamed. “Back! you sons of bitches!”
But still they came laughing maniacally, grabbing for him with fingers like steel talons.
“Why don’t you love me?” Hitch shrieked at his father, but the pudgy greengrocer brandishing a bunch of celery like a weapon continued to gain on him. The police constable at his side was huffing and puffing, waving his billy club, threatening Hitch with jail. Hitch had no idea where he was leading them. “I have no ideas!” he yelled.
“What do you mean, you have no ideas?” The voice was familiar. Hitch looked to the right, and there was Michael Balcon, his film producer, pacing him. “What the bloody hell do you mean by no ideas? I stick my neck across the chopping block convincing them you’re the perfect man to direct this film, your first bloody film ever, and you tell me you have no ideas? I arrange to have the film shot here in Munich so the money people won’t be breathing down your neck and you have no ideas? Really, Hitch!”
“Pay us what you owe us!” screamed Hitch’s creditors. Now how the hell did they get into this scene? Hitch wondered as he heard their heels pounding the pavement behind him.
“Go away!” Hitch shouted at them over his shoulder, “You’re not in this scene! I’ll have no improvisations on this film! Get out of this scene! Get out! Get out! Get the bloody hell out!”
“Hitch, Hitch,” said Alma softly. “Wake up, Hitch, you’re screaming the house down.” She shook him gently, and the bed wobbled.
“Herr Hitchcock, waking zie up!” That was Frau Schumann, the landlady of the guest house; unlike those other Schumanns, terribly unmusical and terribly loud. She jingled her key ring over Hitchcock’s face. “Waking zie up, Herr Hitchcock!”
His eyes flew open. “What the bloody hell!”
“You were having a nightmare,” explained Alma, “and Frau Schumann unlocked your door.”
“That sounds obscene.” Hitch struggled into a sitting position and greeted the landlady and his fiancee. “Good morning,” he said solemnly. “I have had a most disturbing nightmare.”
“We heard it,” said Alma. Frau Schumann said something about coffee and rolls and left them, slamming the door behind her. Hitch took Alma’s hand and recited as much of the nightmare as he could remember. After a few minutes of the litany, Alma said, “This is where I came in. You’ve been having this nightmare ever since we arrived in Munich.”
“Well, I can’t help it,” said Hitchcock mournfully. “I’d just as soon shift to a different reel, but it’s out of my hands. I wish my father would get his apron washed, and the rakish tilt of his straw hat is most unbecoming. That horse’s ass of a police constable with him is the same monster who locked me up in a cell for quarter of an hour at my father’s request when I was a child. And as for Mickey Balcon accusing me of having no ideas, why, that’s treason!”
“Hitch, dear.” Alma was standing, tightening the belt of her slightly tatty bathrobe. “Mickey believes in you, he fought for you.”
“Well, he was most disconcerting in my nightmare!” Hitch was out of bed, looking like a week-old muffin in his crumpled pajamas as he struggled into a bathrobe Alma recognized as the one she had given him for his birthday last year. “And as for those creditors with their deadly fingers reaching out for me…” He shuddered and Alma went to him and put her arms around his neck.
“My dear, you shall bring this film in on schedule and on budget. It may not be the most memorable film debut—”
“You have no confidence in me! I knew it! I could tell it on your face from the first day we saw rushes!”
“The first day we saw rushes I knew, I very proudly knew, that my intended was a man of great talent and great promise but sadly lacked a great script.”
“It is a shoddy piece of merchandise, isn’t it?”
“As long as you recognize that. But what I also see in the rushes is a beautiful ability to camouflage mediocrity with some lovely film work.”
Hitchcock smiled. “I knew I chose well when I asked you to marry me.” He kissed her lightly on her cheek. “Now get out of here while I shave, bathe, get dressed, and try to conjure up some flashy new camera angles. Oh, my God, what a deadly plot!”
The Pleasure Garden, Alfred Hitchcock’s debut as a film director, was the story of two girlfriends who danced in the chorus of a music hall called, of course, The Pleasure Garden. Two American film actresses, Virginia Valli and Carmelita Geraghty, had been imported to Germany to co- star in hopes that their names would encourage a distribution deal in America. Their co-stars were British actors, Miles Mander and John Stuart, known mostly to their own families. Somehow, the climax of the film occurred in one of those sordid Indian Ocean island villages usually favored by W. Somerset Maugham. Unfortunately, Maugham had nothing to do with the plot of this film, and neither did the scriptwriter, as far as Hitchcock was concerned, so Alma was busy doing some clandestine rewriting, displaying a marvelous talent for scripting.
An hour later, in a taxi taking them to the Emelka Studios, Hitchcock thumbed through the script and found the scenes he’d scheduled for filming that day. After a few moments he sighed and said, “We need a rape scene.” The taxi driver studied his passenger
s through his rearview mirror with a slight look of shock and distaste.
“Who gets raped and why?” asked Alma while attacking a fingernail with an emery board.
“I think Miles Mander should attempt to rape Carmelita.”
“When? Where? Why?”
“How do I know? Think about it.”
“How soon do you want it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know if we need it. Maybe the film will hang together without it once it’s been edited. I wonder if childbirth is as painful as filmbirth.”
“I wouldn’t know. I hope to someday, but at the moment I can’t much help with an opinion.”
Hitchcock was staring out the window. “What a lovely city this is.”
“I find it disturbing.”
“Why, for heaven’s sake?”
“I don’t mean Munich, I mean Germany. I find Germany disturbing. The economy’s a disaster. The mark is worth bloody nothing or next to that.”
“Thank God for that where we’re concerned.”
The taxi driver was looking hostile.
“Then there’s the rioting, those awful fascist groups and their menace. I can feel it at the studio.”
“Oh? Have you uncovered menace in our midst?”
“It’s nothing I can name or put my finger on, but I have this feeling that the smiles that greet us aren’t genuine smiles. I know they’re all glad to be working, what with so many of their major talents drifting off to Hollywood…” Hitchcock shifted and tried unsuccessfully to cross his legs. He gave up the effort with a sigh and said, “Who can blame them? Lubitsch was the first to go and sent back such glowing messages about gold in the streets that soon F. W. Murnau and Paul Leni and a whole raft of actors followed suit—and what have they got left?” He sighed again. “Me and some second-raters of their own.”
“Oh, come now! Fritz Lang’s not a second-rater, and neither is Pabst. They’re doing marvelous work. You haven’t forgotten we’re dining with the Langs tonight.”
“That dreadful wife. Thea’s a fascist. Fritz is fascinating, but Thea’s something else. Promise me when we’re married that you won’t be dreadful.”
“I’ll try my best not to be, but I do have my quixotic moments. I don’t think the film needs a rape.”
“It needs something.’ Hitch stared out the window as they passed St. Peter’s Church, which dated from the eleventh century. Alma waited. She was soon rewarded. His face lit up. “I know what we need. We need a marvelous, brutal, bloody murder! The gorier, the better.” The taxi driver cringed and narrowly avoided hitting a pedestrian.
Alma’s shoulders sagged. “Now how do I work a murder into a story of two chorus girls in a music hall? Have you a clue?”
“If I had a clue, we’d have a murder.” He folded his hands across his stomach. “I ought to be doing thrillers. That’s what I ought to be doing.”
“Well, my darling, if you pull off this one even halfway successfully, Mickey Balcon’s bound to listen sympathetically to anything you propose.”
“Let me break this to you gently. Mickey’s sent me a letter, it came yesterday, and my next film is already settled.”
“Oh, Hitch, how marvelous! Why didn’t you tell me!”
“It’s too depressing. It’s called The Mountain Eagle.”
“Set where?”
“On a mountain, where else?”
“Have you read the script?”
“Yes. Mickey’s letter accompanied the script. I think it’s what brought on my nightmare again. To be perfectly kind, the script is dreadful. And it’s to star another American actress. Nita Naldi.”
“The vamp? Is this one about a vamp? Aren’t vamps a bit passé?”
“Oh, vamps are terribly passé. That’s why Miss Naldi has so agreeably agreed to do a film in Munich.”
Alma’s chin dropped. “You mean we’re to do another film here in Munich?” Hitchcock nodded his head solemnly. Alma looked unhappy. So did the taxi driver.
Ten minutes later, they were walking arm in arm toward the stage housing their project. The sky was overcast, and the grayness of the day gave the studio the look of a prison compound. Alma was thinking it was too bleak and damp for a day in June and longed for the sunshine and warmth of Italy, where they had earlier done some location shooting.
“I thought our taxi driver was sinister,” said Hitchcock.
“Really? I never even noticed what he looked like.”
“He looked sinister. He was listening to every word we said. I could catch him reacting every so often. His reactions were terribly unfriendly. I wonder if he’s a spy. “
“What would anyone be doing spying on us?”
“Why shouldn’t they be spying on us? We’re Britons making a film in their godforsaken country with American actresses and a partially British crew. They’re probably wondering why we didn’t stay at home where we belong.”
“Surely they realize we’re here because it’s cheaper to film here. The rate of exchange from pounds to marks is so great it’s embarrassing.”
“I don’t know if they realize anything of the sort. For all they know, we’ve been set up as a project by British Intelligence to come over here for a firsthand study of this rise of incipient fascism. It’s an absolutely marvelous idea. Why hasn’t anyone thought of it before?”
“You’re thinking about it now. Do something with it.”
“What an odd-looking man.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“What a magnificently ugly face he has.”
Alma looked at the man. He was over six feet tall, terribly thin and gaunt, and his face looked as though it had once been shattered and then badly reconstructed. It was a frightening face, the chin and cheeks pitted with deep scars. She wondered if his tragedy had befallen him in the war. Surely no one could be unfortunate enough to be born with that face. He was probably younger than he looked, possibly not yet thirty. They knew the person he was chatting with, Fredrick Regner, a scriptwriter. Alma and Hitchcock liked Regner. He was in his mid-twenties and very good-looking, a Viennese by birth. The two men stood near the entrance to the sound stage.
“I must find out if he’s an actor. Someday, when I do my first thriller, I want an actor with a face like that.”
“He’d be a marvelous-looking murderer.”
“Oh, no. Not with a face like that. It would be too obvious he’s the murderer. I would use him as a red herring.”
Alma smiled. “Your MacGuffin.”
“Oh yes, he’s a perfectly delicious MacGuffin.” In Hitchcock’s parlance, a MacGuffin was the device used to fool the audience away from the truth of the story, something he had invented for several original screenplay ideas he’d been nursing but had been unable to sell. Alma had come to love Hitchcock’s MacGuffins. There wasn’t one in The Pleasure Garden. It wasn’t that kind of story. It wasn’t very much of a story. It was just a wonderful opportunity for Hitchcock to get his foot in the door of directing. He was a good director, she knew this from working with him and comparing his early results to those of the hacks with whom she had worked as continuity girl in England. Hitchcock had a magnificent imagination, a wonderfully creative eye, a deliciously sly sense of humor, and she knew that if opportunities continued to open up for him, Hitch would mature into one of the finest directing talents of the cinema. (And God bless Mickey Balcon, Hitch’s senior by only three years, for his faith in Hitch, who was only twenty-six.)
“Where did he go?” Hitch’s voice snapped Alma out of her reverie.
“Where did who go?”
“My MacGuffin. I blinked my eyes and he’s disappeared! Hey, there! Freddy!”
Fredrick Regner recognized Hitchcock and Alma, and his face brightened. “Halloo, Hitch! Alma!”
“Where did he go?” Hitch was annoyed and frustrated.
“Where did who go?” asked Regner, almost managing to look as innocent as a newborn babe.
“The man you were talking to!”
“That face! That absolutely unique face. Is he an actor?”
“I haven’t the vaguest idea.”
“But you were talking to him!”
“He was looking for Stage Three. I sent him off in the right direction.”
“Well, go reclaim him!” ordered Hitchcock, the others recognizing the irritation in his voice. “I want to know him and file him for future use.”
“Is this a joke?” Regner, along with just about everybody else at the studio, was familiar with Hitchcock’s practical jokes.
“Of course it’s not a joke. It’s a face. A wonderful face. A perfect MacGuffin.”
Regner looked as though he might be contemplating suicide. Alma came to his rescue and explained the MacGuffin. Regner laughed. “I’ll go look for him.”
“You’d better find him,” growled Hitchcock, “or I shall reveal the shame of your birth.”
Alma followed him into the sound stage while Regner reached into his jacket breast pocket for his pipe, placed it in his mouth, his face a deep study.
The Hitchcock stage was a beehive of activity. Carpenters were hammering away at the stage of The Pleasure Garden music hall, reinforcing it for the dance number Hitch was planning to shoot that morning. Electricians were climbing high in the flies like monkeys gone berserk, adjusting the arc lights and replacing burned-out gelatins. The stage manager was barking orders at invisible recipients, and in an isolated corner a three-piece orchestra, hired to provide mood music for the American actresses, was tuning up. There were a pianist and two violinists. The pianist, Rudolf Wagner, was improvising a melody that immediately caught Alma’s fancy. While Hitch went to consult with the camera operator, Alma crossed to the musicians and stood next to the pianist. “That’s so beautiful,” she told Wagner the pianist, “it’s so touching, so elegiac, so…”
“So mournful,” said Wagner.
“No, not really mournful. Not mournful in the sense of death or tragedy.”
“Mournful can mean other things.” His English was remarkably good; in fact, Alma and Hitch and the others who were not German were amazed at the perfect English spoken by so many Germans. Wagner repeated the melody. “Mournful can mean the memory of a happiness in the past that will never again be recaptured; it can allude to a loss of innocence.” Alma was humming along with the pianist. “I am pleased that you like my little melody.”