IMPERFECTION

by Ray Clark

  “Name of the company, please.”

  Corndell left the room but returned quickly, with a card.

  Gardener read it, put it in his pocket, and then continued. “I’d like to ask you a few questions about our previous meeting... in particular, your phones.”

  “What about them?” replied Corndell.

  “According to the information we have, you don’t have a mobile number, and you’ve only received one call to your landline in the last ten years.”

  “Am I under arrest?” asked Corndell.

  “No.”

  “Suspicion, then?”

  “The very nature of your business means we have to carry out a detailed investigation,” replied Gardener, before adding, “if for no other reason than to eliminate you from our enquiries.”

  “Perhaps it would be better if I phoned my solicitor, Mr Gardener.”

  “Something to hide, Willie? Use your mobile, why don’t you?” suggested Reilly.

  To Gardener’s astonishment, that’s exactly what Corndell did. He picked up his mobile and placed a call through to his solicitor and asked him to return the call when it was convenient.

  “Give me that number,” Gardener demanded.

  Corndell did as he was asked and wrote the number down. He passed it to Reilly, who placed the slip of paper into his pocket.

  With a smug expression, Corndell continued the conversation. “You see, Mr Gardener, your records must be incorrect. Most of my business is either conducted online or through my mobile.”

  “Our evidence doesn’t support your statement,” replied Gardener, making a mental note of the fact that Corndell used a computer regularly.

  “Then I suggest you retrace your steps.” Corndell took another sip of tea. “Now we’ve cleared that one up, what else would you like to ask me?”

  Gardener was unwilling to show his annoyance, but he realised he was treading water. Without a warrant, he couldn’t force the issue. “Let’s talk about films. In particular, your cinema–”

  Corndell stood up, beckoned them, cutting Gardener dead. “Say no more, Mr Gardener. I shall take you.” Leading them out of the conservatory, he said over his shoulder, “I do realise that under normal circumstances you would have to obtain a warrant to do this, and we all know that if I push you hard enough, you will. I have nothing to hide, so I am now inviting you of my own free will into my cinema.”

  Gardener wondered if Corndell was recording the meeting. No one spoke like he did. They followed him up the stairs. He made a point of showing them his favourite film posters, informing them of their value and rarity. At no stage were his attitude or his expressions those of a guilty man. Before continuing up to the top landing, he turned and spoke to them.

  “I think I should take you in here first, Mr Gardener, it’s my make-up room.”

  Corndell opened the door and switched on a light. Along the back wall stood a range of mannequins dressed in a variety of guises. Gardener immediately recognised the costume from last night’s performance of The Hunchback; the Phantom was also there, and others of which he had no idea.

  “I don’t recognise all of them. Enlighten me.”

  “Over there, is the Ape Man from the film A Blind Bargain. And there you can see the Clown from the 1924 film He Who Gets Slapped.”

  “Who starred in those films?” asked Gardener.

  “Lon Chaney, of course.” Corndell had made the statement so boldly that Gardener was convinced he was trying to rile him.

  “I thought Lon Chaney only made horror films. What was the clown film about?”

  “It shows how little you know about him, Mr Gardener. He was the greatest actor the world has ever seen. The film was based on a play by the Russian writer Leonid Andreyev. It had a successful run on Broadway in the 1920s. Chaney plays a struggling scientist in Paris who is betrayed by his wife and his benefactor, Baron Regnard. The Baron stole his essays, took the credit, and his wife. Disillusioned, Chaney eventually runs away and becomes a clown in a circus, changing his name to ‘He Who Gets Slapped’, because his fellow clowns slap him no matter what he does.”

  Corndell had thrown in details that very few people left alive would know. Maybe that’s what Gardener needed, Corndell knocking nails into his own coffin. Perhaps now he could alter the course of the interview by turning up the heat and giving him the opportunity to hang himself.

  “Fascinating,” said Gardener. “Are they all Chaney outfits?”

  “Not at all. That one there which, to you, probably looks like a bunch of rags, is in fact from the first short movie adaptation of a United States version of the film Frankenstein made in 1910, in which the monster is played by Charles Stanton Ogle. A very prolific film, Mr Gardener, for which I probably have the only remaining copy. And that, may I add, cost me a fortune.”

  The atmosphere in the room was intense. The walls were dark. The floor was natural wood, stained and polished. Opposite the mannequins was a tile-topped table running the length of the wall, and above that a huge, dusty mirror. The tabletop was crammed full of paraphernalia: wigs, creams, face powders, jars of chemicals. The whole space had a distinctly unsavoury odour that he couldn’t place, a sort of sour, spicy smell.

  Corndell leaned forward and reached under the table. Producing a bin bag, he removed the clothes from the dummy wearing the Hunchback outfit.

  “What are you doing?” asked Gardener.

  “You’ll want these for forensic testing, Mr Gardener. You have my permission to take them.”

  Gardener glanced at Reilly and then to Corndell.

  “Do you require any samples of my make-up?” he asked.

  Reilly answered the question. “What would be the point?”

  “Evidence, Mr Reilly. After all, you are trying to eliminate me.”

  “Come on now, Willie, old son. You’re only offering this lot to us because you know damn well that you’ve been careful and we can’t prove a thing. On top of that, there’s no evidence that the costume you’ve given us is the one you were wearing last night.”

  Corndell turned. “That remark, Mr Reilly, implies that I am your killer. If my solicitor were here, you’d have to retract that.”

  “But he isn’t, is he, Willie?”

  Corndell glared at Reilly. “If you would be so kind, Mr Reilly, as to please use the name my mother gave me. Now, gentlemen, is there anything else you require from this room?”

  “No,” replied Gardener.

  “Then shall we move on to the cinema?”

  Gardener followed Corndell up the staircase, into the room. He glanced around, impressed. It was long and angular, and stretched across the top floor of the house. The projection booth sat at the far end, while a screen covered the wall nearest to them. The films were placed in racks on the left- and right-hand walls. There was yet another odour in the room that Gardener also failed to place. “What’s that smell?”

  After a pause, Reilly replied, “Mothballs.”

  “Not quite, Mr Reilly,” said Corndell. “What you can smell is celluloid, a plastic made from camphor and cellulose nitrate. But... as you so rightly point out, it does smell like mothballs, which were actually made from camphor many years ago.” He smiled, and Gardener was growing ever confident that the man’s pomposity would be his undoing. But had he realised it? Was he now playing games?

  Gardener strolled slowly around the room, studying each and every one of the films on display. They were contained in a number of silver canisters banded together. He glanced at the titles, recognising some but not all, wondering how many of those featured Chaney. The Hunchback and The Phantom were obvious, as were A Blind Bargain and London After Midnight. But The Dark Eyes of London didn’t ring any bells, nor did The Invisible Ghost, The Black Castle, or Imperfection. He wondered what the value of the whole collection was.

  “The last time we were here, you said it had been a life’s work trying to track down lost films from the silent era. I can see what you mean, now. It must have taken y
ou years. How did you manage to find them?”

  “It’s my life, Mr Gardener. If it’s something you’re interested in, you’ll pull out all the stops. They’ve cost me a fortune, but they’re worth it. Take this one for instance.” Corndell pulled the reels forward. “London After Midnight–”

  Gardener cut him off. “Interesting you should start with that. Isn’t it commonly known among film collectors as the Holy Grail of archivists?”

  “That’s one way of describing it.”

  “I was reliably informed that the film was destroyed by a fire in the 1960s. So how did you come by it?”

  “You’re talking about the fire in Vault 7 at MGM. That very well may have been the last surviving copy that anyone knew of, but my father passed this copy on to me. He had been the proud owner since the Thirties.”

  “Know the film well, do you?” asked Gardener.

  “Like the back of my hand.” Corndell’s answer was sharp and his expression stern, as if his intelligence had been insulted.

  From his inside pocket, Gardener produced the artist impression of the vampire, the one drawn from the eyewitness account on the night Janine Harper was killed. “Then how come you didn’t know who this was the last time we visited?”

  “Oh come now, Mr Gardener, it’s hardly a likeness, is it?”

  Gardener had to allow the man credit for not hesitating. “We have a witness who’d disagree with you. In fact, when we showed it to him, he knew who it was straight away.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  Reilly answered. “That either you don’t know your films as well as you think–”

  “I am the last word on Lon Chaney, young man,” shouted Corndell, indignantly.

  “Or, I was going to say before you opened your trap, you’re leading us up the garden path.”

  “I am leading you nowhere. I am simply answering your questions to the best of my knowledge, as I have always done.”

  “If you’re such an authority on Chaney,” challenged Reilly, “why didn’t you know who that was?”

  “Because it looks nothing like the character from the film.”

  “There is a resemblance, you could have guessed,” suggested Gardener.

  “Guess, Mr Gardener? Guess? Where would we be if I were to guess all of my answers? Some innocent person would have been locked up by now, that’s where.”

  Gardener ignored Corndell’s outburst, trying to recollect the other connection to the film, Inspector Burke, and the film clip they had first watched at the hotel in Skipton. So far, he had not recognised anything that led him to believe that it had been filmed here. But then again, he hadn’t seen the whole house yet. He walked up and down each side of the room, checking all the films. “Any of these yours, Mr Corndell?”

  “They’re all mine,” replied Corndell.

  Gardener sighed. “I meant, did you write any of them?”

  “How could I have, Mr Gardener? As you can see from the titles and the dates, most, if not all, were written before I was born.”

  Gardener turned to face Corndell, leaving Reilly to continue writing the titles in his book. “Tell me again what it is that you write.”

  Corndell sighed, as if tired. “Stage plays. I told you last time, my work is regularly shown in America.”

  “Is it fair to assume that you would know other writers who have their material accepted in America? On Broadway, for instance?”

  “Very possibly. It never hurts to be aware of the competition,” replied Corndell, choosing to move away from the films and nearer the staircase that led down into the make-up room.

  “Does the name Harry Fletcher ring any bells?”

  “Can’t say it does. Just starting, is he?”

  “Couldn’t really say. It’s just that you seem to know all of the big names, Lon Chaney, Boris Karloff–”

  “I actually met Karloff, many years back, just before he died, on the set of a film called Targets.”

  Gardener continued. “Wallace Worsley, Rupert Julian–”

  “Don’t talk to me about Julian,” scoffed Corndell.

  “Funny that. He is the one I wanted to talk about. Last time we were here, you were having a conversation with George about a director called Rupert Julian. If I remember correctly, you said ‘either Rupert Julian stands down or I’ll take my script elsewhere’. Do you remember that?”

  “Well I would, wouldn’t I?” replied Corndell. “It was me who said it.”

  “I checked out that name, Rupert Julian. He died years ago. Why are you writing scripts for a dead man?”

  Corndell suddenly burst out laughing, a high-pitched screech in which he rocked so much he held his stomach and almost lost his balance. After he had regained his composure, he answered. “Mr Gardener, you’re so funny. I’m not writing for the Rupert Julian who directed Chaney. I write scripts for his son.”

  Gardener laughed with Corndell. “Yes, you’re right, I am a little odd. Must be the policeman in me. Where do you write your material?”

  “In the study, downstairs.”

  “Do you have a computer?”

  “Who doesn’t, these days?” Corndell frowned. Gardener took it as a good sign. Time to capitalise.

  “Good, because you’re going to take me down there now, and you’re going to show me some of the scripts you’ve had accepted. You’re going to give me the titles of your most successful American plays, and then you’re going to tell me where I can reach Rupert Julian Junior and your friend George, so they can verify your story. I also want to see bills from your internet service provider and your mobile.”

  Corndell’s mood changed. Maybe the added pressure was paying off. Gardener noticed that Reilly had finished writing and was standing beside him.

  “Why should I do that?”

  “Because I’m a policeman and I want to check everything you’ve told me in order to eliminate you from our inquiries. If I find any differences, I’m coming back. And I’ll bring a warrant and a team of forensic officers, and one by one, bit by bit, we are going to turn this whole house upside down, with or without the presence of your solicitor.” Gardened paused and moved closer. “And should I find just one small spec of evidence which connects you to my investigation, Mr Corndell, I am going to wipe the floor with you. Am I making myself clear?”

  Without warning, Corndell stormed down the spiral staircase to the make-up room. Gardener and Reilly gave chase. They followed him down the stairs and into the hall, which was where Corndell stopped, glaring at the front door. As Gardener and Reilly arrived at the bottom of the stairs, Corndell made as if to open it.

  “I think you’ll find your study is that way.” Gardener pointed.

  “I know exactly where it is, thank you very much, but as far as I’m concerned your interview ends here. I have co-operated of my own free will, Mr Gardener. I have provided you with evidence to clear my name, yet you continue to persecute me. From here on in, any interviews with you will be conducted in the presence of my solicitor, and if you want personal details from me, you can damn well provide that warrant you’re talking about.”

  Gardener could tell they had physically rattled Corndell: his left eye twitched and his top lip trembled.

  “I want you out of my house, now!” shouted Corndell.

  “So soon, Willie boy,” said Reilly. “Why the change of mood? A little too close to the truth, are we? Guilty after all, maybe?”

  Corndell confidently strolled towards the door, grinning, reaching for the handle, all the while staring at Reilly.

  “That’s for me to know and you to find out, Mr Reilly.”

  Gardener stared at William. “Don’t worry, Mr Corndell, we will. And the next time we pay you a visit, we will have that warrant.”

  “I can’t wait, Mr Gardener.”

  Chapter Forty-two

  Gardener pushed open the stage door. Reilly followed him down the steps towards Albert Fettle’s office. Nothing had changed. The little spot of cleaning that Fett
le had claimed he was doing last time was still unfinished.

  He heard Fettle’s voice before he saw him. The door leading into the theatre opened and he appeared with Paul Price close behind, the latter bearing a distinctively unhappy expression as he saw the two detectives.

  “Hey up, how are you doing?” shouted Fettle. He continued without waiting for an answer. “You two know how to time things right, don’t you? I’ve just brewed a pot of tea and I’ve some of my favourites to go with it. Nice packet of fig rolls.”

  “Can I reopen my theatre, yet?” asked Paul Price.

  “Answer another couple of questions for me, Mr Price, and I don’t see why not,” replied Gardener.

  “So, it’s not me you want, then?” asked Fettle.

  “All in good time, shorty,” said Reilly.

  “Come on, get yourselves in here, this tea’s nearly mashed.”

  While Fettle continued with the tea, Gardener addressed Price. “How long have you worked here, Mr Price?”

  “I’m sure I answered that question on your first visit.”

  “Then refresh my memory.”

  “Thirty years.”

  “Does the name William Henry Corndell ring any bells?”

  Price hesitated. “As a matter of fact, it does, just can’t think why.”

  “Has he ever worked here?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “Is it likely that he has, but under a different name?”

  “That’s always possible. I can check the files, if you could give me more details.”

  Gardener turned to his partner. “Sean, will you go and check the files with Mr Price, see what you can come up with?” He then added, “Leave me your notebook before you go.”

  “Here,” said Fettle. “Best take your tea.”

  “You said I might be able to reopen, when will that be?” asked Price.

  “As soon as you find out what we need to know.”

  Price gestured for Reilly to follow him. Gardener entered Fettle’s room and took a sip of tea.

  “You still chasing this Corndell bloke, then?”

  “Any news from your friend at Her Majesty’s?”

  Both men sat down. “Aye, there is. He never played the part of the Phantom.”