The two men moved strangely together, as if they might fall over, as if they were propped up in some sleepwalking nightmare.
‘Brian?’ Pamela was screaming. ‘What happened to you?’
And then, before anyone knew it, the door to the kitchen had burst open, and Silvia Hanro was standing there, flustered and gripping the kitchen key in her hands as if in a strange triumph. But her face fell in a second.
‘Tom?’ she shouted, rooted to the spot. ‘What the blazes is all of this? Blood? Who did this to you? Good grief! Was it Brian? Or was it the police? What on earth…? Cuffs?’
For it was true.
Brian Langley and Tom Moran were indeed standing together, a pair of silver handcuffs linking them. Tom Moran’s left hand was chained to Brian Langley’s right hand. They moved as one because there was no other option.
But this wasn’t the strangest thing about the men.
Tom Moran was wearing his blue glasses again, but they were cracked and broken, and even his good side was now bloodied, and a deep gash ran down his good cheek. He seemed distinctly unsteady on his feet.
Brian Langley wasn’t quite so badly harmed. There was a residue of blood about his face, but he looked terrible. His eyes were red and bleary, unfocused, rolling desperately in his head. He was trying to hold on to his balance, as if he were a man out for the first time on a boat at sea.
Both men seemed as if they were under the influence of something.
‘Here you go! Sit here.’
Before anyone could do anything, Sidney had darted forwards and dragged two office chairs out. Both men collapsed down into them. They sat near Prudence’s desk in a heavy silence, panting and breathing heavily. Silvia dashed to her husband’s side.
‘Sorry, Miss,’ the lad whispered to Posie. ‘I couldn’t keep Miss Hanro from getting at that key. Like a woman possessed, she was, when she heard that crazy woman in pink call out Mr Langley’s name. But these two look like they’ve been hitting the snow.’
‘Snow?’ Posie said, too loudly.
The boy nodded. ‘You know, cocaine. Like Mr Fontaine – God rest his soul – at his worst, they are. Addled. Although Mr Fontaine told me that he thought Mr Moran here had all the signs of an opium addict.’
‘Opium?’
Posie was remembering the strange bowl and apparatus Tom had tried to hide in his room, the strange burning sweetness of the air, his grogginess. He had mentioned taking medication, but maybe it was an altogether stronger concoction than those prescribed by his doctors which kept him going now? It all fitted.
Again, a drug addict she had failed to spot. Were the drugs the real reason Silvia was so stingy with her money towards her husband? Why she had bought him a flat but nothing else? Was she scared he would blow all her money on drugs? Had Posie, in fact, judged Silvia too harshly?
‘Well, who’d blame him, eh, Miss?’ cut in the lad. ‘But this isn’t opium which has done this. Sweet tea and water will get them going again.’
Sidney cleared his throat lustily. ‘Anyone for tea?’
Not receiving any obvious reply he scurried off to the kitchen and made a lot of noise with water and kettles and cups.
Posie stared with barely-seeing eyes at the ring of people in her waiting room. They were placed around the desk as if waiting to start acting out a scene in a play. Or a movie. But Posie didn’t have a clue as to what would happen next, despite understanding how it was they had all ended up there. There was no obvious script.
And she seemed to have been handed the role of director…
Where was Len?
And where was the Inspector, come to think of it?
Posie breathed deeply and willed herself to get a grip of the situation. But there were so many unknowns.
Tom Moran leant forwards in his chair, as if about to be sick, and Posie remembered his violent retching when he had believed that his wife, Silvia, was dead.
Hastily she grabbed at Prudence’s wastepaper bin and placed it conveniently in front of him and tried not to look. She took in Brian Langley, who was staring hard around himself, his gaze visibly awry, his pupils going in and out of focus.
Pamela was squatting at Brian’s side. Thoughts of cocaine were obviously not far from her mind, too.
‘Who did this to you, Brian? You don’t take drugs, do you? Never in your life.’
Silvia Hanro suddenly stood up, frowned angrily and snarled at her sister:
‘What do you know of Brian Langley, Pam? Nothing! You don’t know him from Adam! And I’d watch it, if I were you, coming over all the good Samaritan again. The man’s a killer. He killed Robbie Fontaine in cold blood, and wanted me dead too: just ask Miss Parker here. The police are after him. Looks like they had him too, but he obviously got away. Got away with Tom, maybe as a hostage?’
Pamela looked about ready to physically attack her sister, when Posie emitted a shriek of relief at the sight of the stocky, familiar man standing in the doorway.
‘Chief Inspector! How good of you to join us!’
Lovelace came into the room, also still in his bloodied dinner suit, staring around himself with a professional smoothness. ‘Good afternoon, everyone.’
Posie realised that he had certainly earned his Blue Plume if he encountered danger calmly like this, time after time. His gaze, when it took in the two men in handcuffs, and Pamela, wild-eyed, betrayed no real emotion or panic, no confusion. He focused hard on Posie, as if willing her to give him his next move.
Here was a calm in the storm, and, more practically, a loaded gun in a trained hand.
Posie was trying not to think of at least one other loaded gun which she knew was in a pocket in that very room: the gun which had cost Robbie Fontaine and Constable McCrae their lives; which would undoubtedly be trained on Silvia – and maybe everyone – at some point soon. How much time did they have left?
What could she do? What could she say to warn him about the killer?
She smiled brightly at Richard Lovelace.
‘I say, sir. Did you see a telephone repair man on your way up? He seems to have gone missing.’
****
Thirty-Four
Sidney came in with the tea, handing it around among a false sort of calm.
He certainty made himself very handy, Posie noted subconsciously, in amidst her rising panic. Did Sidney realise, poor lad, the danger he was really in? Posie cursed herself now for having placed him in that danger.
But it was too late.
Lovelace was scowling at Brian Langley, who was now looking slightly more awake, and at Tom Moran, who was shaking violently.
‘What happened to you two, anyhow? You look like you’ve been in a fight.’
Lovelace advanced, and picked up the two men’s hands, chained together. ‘And who chained you together? These look a good deal like…’ He examined the handcuffs at close range. ‘Sergeant Binny’s!’
He dropped the men’s hands as if the contact had burned him. His voice was calm but there was an undercurrent of panic in it: ‘Where is Sergeant Binny, by the way?’
He looked at Posie who shrugged helplessly. Lovelace turned, anger breaking through the calm façade.
‘You two fellas need to give me some answers. Now. Langley, you go first. Why are you chained to Mr Moran and why does he look as if he’s been in a fight? Let me tell you, you’d better talk soon. Things don’t look good for you. Not good at all. I’ve half the London police force out looking for you for the murder of Robbie Fontaine and for the attempted murder of Miss Hanro here. So you’d better speak up. Right now.’
Brian Langley looked like he was having trouble moving his head. Looked like he was having trouble full stop. Like he certainly couldn’t speak.
‘Sir,’ cut in Posie. ‘I think he’s drugged. I don’t think he can talk. Or do much at all just now.’
‘Oh? Well at least he can’t wave a gun about, then, can he?’
And before Posie could answer, Lovelace was at the door of the of
fice again, on the landing. He shot Posie a look full of genuine concern, but then seemed to make his mind up.
‘You’re safe enough up here for the moment. I’m going to check on Sergeant Binny, make sure he’s all right. I have a bad feeling about this. I also need to retrieve my gun. I gave him my only revolver to accompany you here with. Two ticks and I’ll be back.’
‘No, sir, please…’
But he was gone.
It all happened very quickly after that.
For a split-second Posie could have sworn that there was a presence over at the doorway, a fleeting outline of a man – Lovelace returned, perhaps? – but when she craned her neck to look again there was no-one there.
And then there was the hideous, surprising crack-shot sound of a gun going off in the room and glass all around them breaking.
‘Gunfire! Take cover!’ shouted Tom Moran.
Then a volley of shots, on and on.
The gunshots seemed to be being fired right into the centre of the room, where they were all gathered. From somewhere around the front door. Was it possible?
The whole waiting room had become a white-fogged mist of falling paint and plaster, and crystals of glass from the windows and picture frames were dancing like treacherous icicles in the dangerous air.
Posie was down on the floor. She saw Sidney, frozen, look at her with panicked eyes, and she managed to mouth ‘RUN AWAY!’ at him.
He dropped to the floor and, crab-like, got himself to the kitchen, pulling the door tight shut behind him. Silvia Hanro was running, uselessly, away, through the office into Posie’s room.
The shots rained on. Posie screamed:
‘STOP THIS MADNESS!’
Suddenly there was silence.
The room was still clouded with white powdery debris, but the strange double figure of Brian and Tom was now becoming clearer, crouched down next to the desk, hunched over and panting. Pamela Hanro slowly became visible too: she was also on the floor by the desk, shaking and crying, but still alive.
There was a terrible stillness about the chaos of the office. The intense heat made the situation even worse, and the broken plaster and paint got in the back of Posie’s throat and itched horribly. Everyone was coughing.
Seconds later the figure of Silvia Hanro could be seen, her red dress now white, her face a deathly mask but seemingly unharmed, coming slowly back through the falling plaster. Her arms were outstretched in a pleading gesture.
‘Who was that?’
‘That’s it!’ declared Posie resolutely, angrily. She had had enough.
‘One of you here in this room knows very well who did all this, just now, because it was YOU who were doing the shooting! I don’t quite know how you worked that bit of magic from over near the doorway, but enough is enough!’
Posie marched around to Prudence’s desk and sat down heavily in her chair. She found she was moving around like normal, fuelled by a snappy anger.
Posie could see all four of them from here, everyone covered in debris and looking scared. No gun was visible anywhere.
‘The game is up,’ Posie declared, crossing her arms over her chest, willing the crispness of her anger to continue: it made it sound as if she knew what she was doing.
‘Not that it was much of a game in the first place. In fact, it’s ludicrous.’
She took in all four white powdery faces.
‘I know everything,’ Posie said softly. Strictly speaking, this wasn’t quite true: Posie could see only the outline of the story, but she could fill in the gaps easily enough. But could she hold her nerve until the Inspector was back?
She thought about the words she had written in her notebook, the truth they had contained together:
HATE, LOVE, MONEY, GUILT.
‘I told Silvia Hanro yesterday that this case would all hinge on either love, or money,’ she began, ‘and then later I thought it might be about hate, and then later still I thought it might be about guilt.’
Posie paused for effect, heart still racing. ‘But actually, it’s about all four. Equally. So I was wrong.’
‘You’ve been wrong about a lot,’ slurred Brian Langley, finding his voice at last. He still looked terrible, and he was also now coated in a film of white grit, his small angry eyes peering out like a malevolent snowman.
‘I know.’ Posie nodded. ‘And you’ll get your fee back, I promise. I didn’t solve this correctly at all. Not until this afternoon.’
‘So you know who murdered Robbie?’ demanded Silvia Hanro, looking all about her warily as if for a stray gunman to jump out at her. Then she stared hard at Brian Langley, narrowing her eyes, accusingly.
Posie nodded. ‘I do. And I know who wrote the death threats, too. Sure as bread is bread. And I know all about the complicated little drama that led up to that. It was better than any film you could make, Mr Langley, at Sunstar Films. And that’s a fact.’
‘What drama?’ whispered Tom Moran hazily. ‘And more importantly, are we still in danger? What’s happening here? Who was that who was trying to shoot us? There was a man at the doorway over there, I swear it!’
Posie gulped. Could it be? Was that even possible?
But she shook her head and carried on.
‘I think that we’re safe for now,’ said Posie authoritatively, although she felt far from safe. ‘We might be lucky enough to enjoy a little interlude. Although I think our killer will start up again for sure. It’s Miss Hanro, Miss Silvia Hanro, who they want, after all.’
There was a small whimper of fear from the movie star. But Posie ignored it. She sensed a slight movement out on the landing again – that intangible presence – and hoped against hope that Lovelace was lingering in the hopes of overhearing a confession.
But she daren’t call out his name in case she blew his cover. ‘I’ll start, then, shall I?’
Four faces watched her intently, but silence reigned.
‘This started out with blackmail. As these things often do. A good while ago. Didn’t it, Miss Hanro?’
Posie looked at Pamela, whose blue eyes were pooling like a fox caught in its hide, crouched down pathetically on the floor. Slowly the girl stood up and made an attempt to brush herself down.
‘Do you mean that despicable woman in the hat, today?’
‘Robbie Fontaine’s wife, Sheila. Yes.’
‘His wife?’
‘Yep. And Brian Langley’s Housekeeper. The two were the same; another bit of ridiculous disguise. You see, Sheila loved Robbie so much she would do anything for him, including staying in the background as a drudge so her husband could pursue a successful career as a professional eligible bachelor. She paid for his drug habit. So she needed money, and lots of it: more than Brian Langley paid her; more than Brian Langley paid Robbie, even. She turned to blackmail. Had probably done so for years.’
Pamela scowled. ‘Nasty woman. She blackmailed me over Hilda. Last year. Twice. And again, recently. Said she’d tell the world, and Silvia, about her. I couldn’t risk losing my Hilda. I paid up.’
‘Who on earth’s Hilda?’ snapped Silvia.
‘There’ll be plenty of time for that later, if you get out of here alive,’ said Posie. ‘It’s not my place to explain. But everyone else here knows who Hilda is, and that, as it turned out, was fatal for you.’
Posie turned to Tom Moran. ‘You know all about Sheila Fontaine, too, don’t you? In her capacity as a blackmailer, I mean?’
Tom shrugged, as best he could in handcuffs. ‘I suppose so.’ There was a pause. He seemed to summon up an inner reserve of strength from somewhere.
‘She said she’d reveal my true identity – as Mark Paris, I mean – to the world, unless I paid up. She was quite ruthless.’
‘Tom!’ Silvia sighed. ‘How awful! You should have told me!’
Tom shrugged again. ‘And made myself look even more pathetic in your eyes?’
Posie nodded understandingly. ‘This case foxed me all along. There were so many facts; so many suspects; so m
uch going on. Too much going on. I realised after a bit that that was all on purpose. You’re all artists, in a way, making disguises. You’re all used to making movie magic. Used to obscuring the truth.’
She paused and looked about herself, buying time.
‘The truth was what finally led me to understand everything.’
‘What truth?’ asked Silvia, stupefied.
Posie drummed her fingers on the desk-top.
‘It was one of five key things I realised today. Sheila Fontaine was an expert blackmailer, but I suddenly understood how good she really was. Quite the professional. She used the currency of truth to get money. Nothing less. No rubbishy half-stories or rumours for her.’
‘What are you getting at, Miss Parker?’ Pamela Hanro looked confused.
‘Simply that if Sheila Fontaine said she knew a story and was prepared to blackmail with it, it was almost certainly correct. It was the truth.’
‘How fascinating,’ snarled Brian Langley, his words just about distinguishable by now. ‘But we already know that she knew all about Hilda. She must have snooped around my desk and followed me to Bute Street one day, I suppose. I keep my desk and my mail at home locked up, but I suppose Sheila must have got a skeleton key to open my desk with on a regular basis. If she’s as immoral as you suggest?’
Posie nodded. ‘It almost certainly happened like that. But I’m not referring to her blackmailing Pamela over Hilda. I’m talking about a different truth entirely. I’m referring to Sheila attempting to blackmail Miss Silvia Hanro.’
She looked over at the actress, who was standing by the fireplace.
‘Weren’t you just telling me in the car over here how Sheila had spun you some ludicrous yarn and expected payment for the telling of the tale?’
The actress was puffing on a smoke, jittery as a cat. She laughed contemptuously. ‘You mean that stupid little story about Tom carrying on with Elaine?’
‘That’s the one.’ Posie nodded casually. It had been a crucial realisation, and everything else had stemmed from it.
‘I thought to myself “what if that actually happened?” and then I understood.’
Murder of a Movie Star Page 32