A Mysterious Affair of Style

by Gilbert Adair

The young man coolly returned the novelist’s gaze, stepped up to the table and nodded to Cora. Conjuring an impromptu smile as adroitly as though inserting a set of new false teeth between her lips, she extended her right hand towards him. He held it for a moment, raised it to his own lips and lightly kissed the button of her suede glove.

  (‘How very Continental!’ Evadne Mount mouthed to the Chief-Inspector.)

  ‘Ah, Mademoiselle Ruzzerford,’ he said in a near-impenetrable French accent, ‘you are looking as charmante as evair.’

  ‘Why, thank you so much, Philippe,’ Cora replied. ‘Perhaps you’d care to join us for lunch? As you see, we have a free fourth place.’

  ‘Oh, but that would be most kind,’ said the Frenchman, who had in fact already begun circling the table towards the unoccupied seat.

  ‘I don’t believe you’ve met my friends,’ said Cora. ‘This is Evadne Mount, the mystery novelist. And Chief-Inspector Trubshawe, formerly of Scotland Yard. And this,’ she explained to both of them, indicating their new lunch companion, ‘is Philippe Françaix. He’s a critic,’ she added grimly.

  Once hands had been shaken and how-d’ye-does exchanged, Evadne turned to Françaix.

  ‘So you’re a critic? A film critic?’

  ‘Mais oui – how you say in English? – but yes. I am a film critic.’

  ‘How interesting. Tell me, though, isn’t it rather unusual for a critic actually to watch a film being made? I don’t think I ever heard of such a thing before.’

  Françaix shook his head.

  ‘See you, it is quite usual in France, where many unusual things are usual. In your country, no, you have reason, it does not ’appen much. But this is a special case – a long story.’

  Cora was quick to intercede.

  ‘That’s right, darling. Philippe has been writing a book on Farjeon. A book of interviews, isn’t it? The French admire Farje enormously. They don’t just regard him as an entertainer, a confectioner of stylish thrillers, but as a – a – do tell me yet again, Philippe, what the French regard him as.’

  ‘Where to begin?’ he sighed. Then, having always known where, he duly expatiated:

  ‘For us, the French, Alastair Farjeon is not just the Master of Tension, as you call him here. He is above all a profoundly religious artist, a moralist but also a metaphysician, the illegitimate offspring, if you like, of Pascal and Descartes. He is – how you say? – a chess master who plays blindfold against himself. A poet who decodes the messages which he himself has sent. A detective who solves the crimes which he himself has committed. In brief, he is – mille pardons, he was – a supremely great cineáste, one who has been cruelly – how do you say? – sous-estimé?’

  ‘Underrated?’ ventured Evadne Mount.

  ‘Underrated, mais oui. He has been supremely underrated by you English.’

  ‘But, darling, I keep telling you, we English actually like –’ Cora began to say, before being interrupted.

  ‘Like! Like! It is not a question of “like”.’ He held the verb up as distastefully as though he were handling somebody else’s stained underwear. ‘The man was a genius. You do not “like” geniuses. Do you “like” Einstein? Do you “like” Picasso? Do you “like” Poe? No, no, no! You worship them. You idolise them. Just as we French idolise Farjeon.

  ‘Of course,’ he ended with startling abruptness, ‘he was a crapule – a cochon – a peeg – of a man. Ah, but there you are. Bad manners, the infallible sign of genius.’

  ‘If you say so,’ the novelist politely demurred. ‘But still, Monsieur Françaix, considering that Farjeon is dead and the picture is being directed by Rex Hanway, there’s surely no longer any point in your hanging on?’

  Was it a trick of the light or did an almost imperceptible shadow cast itself across Françaix’s face?

  ‘I ’ave my reasons,’ was all he replied.

  Perhaps afraid of saying something he might regret, he continued in a more equable tone:

  ‘D’ailleurs, this picture, it was Farjeon’s project. It will ’ave his fingerprints on it, no? It is Hanway who directs, but the result will be totalement Farjeonien. And because I nearly finish my book, I will add the shooting of this last – alas, posthume – work of his as an appendix.’

  ‘It certainly does seem,’ said Evadne, ‘that young Hanway has learned from his mentor. The scene we watched this morning, with the two leads exchanging kisses through the little girl? I’m told it wasn’t planned at all, yet everybody felt that it was as brilliant as anything in the original script. Worthy of Farjeon himself.’

  ‘That is true. It was definitely not in the original script,’ said Françaix, laying an audible stress on the adverb.

  An awkward moment followed. Then the novelist, whose hatred of a vacuum was possibly even greater than nature’s, remarked for want of anything more pertinent to say:

  ‘So you’re a French film critic, are you? How amusing. We don’t see too many French pictures in this country. Not too many foreign pictures altogether.’

  ‘Ah no, Mademoiselle, there you are wrong, very wrong. In my experience, you English, you like to watch nothing but foreign films.’

  ‘Why, Monsieur Françaix,’ she protested, ‘only a very few foreign films open in London, mostly at a cinema called the Academy. And what a godsend it is for us devotees of the Seventh Art.’

  ‘Mademoiselle, I was making allusion to the films of ’Ollywood.’

  ‘Hollywood films? But those are American.’

  ‘Précisément. They are not British. So they are foreign films, no?’

  ‘We-ll, yes,’ she said uncertainly. ‘It’s a funny thing, though. We somehow don’t really think of them as foreign.’

  ‘Perhaps you should, as we do,’ replied the Frenchman with a brusqueness which succeeded in remaining just this side of insolence.

  There followed another awkward pause, before Trubshawe, who hadn’t said anything up to that point, finally spoke.

  ‘I saw a French film once.’

  Françaix stared at him, nakedly, offensively disbelieving.

  ‘You? You saw a French film? I confess you surprise me.’

  ‘I happened to go with a few of my former colleagues from the Yard. After our reunion dinner last November.’

  ‘Really? And which film was it?’

  ‘Bit of a letdown, I’m afraid. It was called The Dames of the Bois de Boulogne.’

  ‘Ah yes. That one, it is a classic. A pure chef-d’oeuvre.’

  ‘A classic? Is that a fact?’ said Trubshawe ruminatively. And he repeated, ‘A classic? Well, well, well.’

  ‘You are not in accord?’

  ‘Well, for me and my chums – and, I must confess, the dinner had been a little too bibulous, a little over-lubricated, if you know what I mean – it did seem awfully tame.’

  ‘Tame? What is “tame”?’

  ‘We were expecting something a bit ruder, a bit naughtier – you know, ladies of the night and all that. Of course, it’s ironic, if that’s what it actually had been like, we might have been obliged to have the cinema closed down, all of us being ex-coppers. But no, under the circumstances, we did feel like asking for our money back.’

  After a few seconds spent wondering whether to take umbrage, Françaix threw his head back and convulsed with laughter.

  ‘You English! Your wonderful hypocrisy! I think I like it even more than your famous sense of humour.’

  Not quite knowing what to make of this, Evadne turned to Cora.

  ‘Well, dear, it’s your big scene this afternoon. Do tell us something about it.’

  Cora stubbed her cigarette out in a cheap tin ashtray.

  ‘As I already did tell you, darling, the scene as it’s going to be played is quite a lot juicier than it was to start with. I managed to persuade Hanway that it ought to be developed so that the neglected wife – that’s me – becomes a more rounded character, psychologically speaking. But there’s no need to go into that. All you have to know is that, becau
se of my husband’s blatant dallying with Margot – that’s the part played by Leolia Drake – I’m about to blow a gasket.’

  ‘That Leolia Drake …’ murmured Trubshawe appreciatively. ‘She can put her high heels under my bed any time she likes. Pardon my French, ladies,’ he said to Cora and Evadne with an apologetic twinkle in his eye, while Françaix treated him to a look of bewilderment.

  ‘Men!’ sneered Cora. ‘It doesn’t matter what age you are, you just can’t help slobbering over a pair of bee-sting lips and eyelashes out to here. Be warned, Trubbers, don’t let little Leolia fool you. She’s about as sweet as a swastika. And you should hear the way she talks about herself – as though she were the next Vivien Leigh. The silly cow has only just made it to the first rung of the ladder and already she’s dizzy.’

  ‘What a spiteful cat you are,’ Evadne grunted at her. ‘You were young once, I can just about recall.’

  ‘As I was saying,’ Cora went on, declining to rise to the bait, ‘I confront my husband after a cocktail party, a horrific row ensues and I end by hurling a champagne glass at his head.’

  ‘Mightn’t that be dangerous?’ asked Trubshawe.

  ‘Oh well, it isn’t actually a proper glass glass, you know. It’s made out of something called Plastic. On the big screen, though, nobody will be able to tell it from the real McCoy.’

  ‘Any chance, do you suppose, of Hanway coming up with another last-minute improvement to the scene?’

  ‘Oh, he already has.’

  ‘He has?’

  ‘Just as we were packing it in this morning, he told me that he’d thought of a little gag to add a certain piquancy to the row. That champagne glass I mentioned? In the script it’s empty, you understand. Well now, as I raise it above my head, I happen to notice that there’s still some bubbly left inside and I polish it off before I actually throw the glass. Isn’t that just too brilliant? The fact that this woman is not even prepared to waste a few drops of flat champagne on her wastrel of a husband conveys to the audience, far more effectively than would a dozen lines of dialogue, the depth of her contempt for him. Yes, I really do believe that Hanway could be the next Alastair Farjeon.’

  *

  Back on the set, the novelist and the policeman endeavoured more or less successfully to steer clear of the technicians who were scurrying past them, back, forward, this way and that, rushing out of the studio, then back in, then back out again. Cora, meanwhile, was having her forehead, her chin and the tip of her nose softly dusted by a delicate little Chinese lady of indeterminate age. Gareth Knight was silently rehearsing his dialogue while an effeminate young man with a canary-yellow bandanna, one so tightly knotted as to cause the veins in his neck to stand out, was combing his hair back into wavy perfection. Rex Hanway, a copy of the script tucked under his arm, was peering repeatedly and, it seemed, indiscriminately through his viewfinder. And Hattie Farjeon was sitting alone in her own private nook, her own private world, sublimely indifferent to the hubbub surrounding her, still knitting away as though her life depended upon it.

  Everything was finally ready for the first ‘take’. Hanway settled himself into his chair next to the camera, Cato curling up on his lap, while Lettice, clutching a sheaf of notes to her breast, took her place at his side. The set began to echo to repeated cries of ‘Quiet, please!’ Then it was just ‘Quiet!’ Then, finally, ‘Will everybody please shut up! We’re going for a take!’

  ‘Right,’ said the director to his two performers. ‘This is supposed to be the mother of all marital rows, so I want it to have lots of vigour and vinegar. Don’t forget, Gareth, even though you give as good as you get, you do have an underlying sense of guilt. You know that what Cora is accusing you of is all too true. So, when you start shouting back at her, I still want to see, lurking behind those soulful baby blues of yours, a real defensiveness, a real insecurity. At this stage in the picture we don’t want you to lose the audience’s sympathy.

  ‘And Cora? This may not be the last straw but, for you, it’s the latest one and you’re not prepared for an instant to let Gareth off the hook. You understand?’

  He turned to the camera operator.

  ‘Camera okay?’

  The operator nodded.

  ‘Sound?’

  The sound recordist nodded.

  Now it was his own turn to nod, to everyone and no one at once.

  ‘Okay, let’s go. And – action!’

  The clapper-boy read out, ‘If Ever They Find Me Dead, Scene 25, Take 1,’ and clapped his clapper-board.

  It was a juicy scene all right, just as had been promised, and both performers, as they prowled about the set, a sumptuously upholstered drawing-room strewn with cocktail-party debris, played it well beyond the hilt.

  Cora, a consummate actress when given the opportunity to be one (as Trubshawe was already saying to himself), contrived to be, all at once, warm and abrasive, sensitive yet as tough as old boots. Like a virtuoso ascending, then dizzily redescending, the scales of human bitterness and resentment, holding in her hysteria all the better to let it explode, she never once delivered two different lines of dialogue with the same intonation, never once repeated an effect.

  Knight’s performance was almost as thrilling to watch. There were moments when he struck one as no more than an ogreish, drunken, sinisterly jovial bully wearing a fixed grin that could hardly be told apart from a snarl. At others, straining to avoid the gale force of Cora’s fury, her shrill voice and jabbing forefinger, he would protest his innocence with such apparent candour and sincerity that one felt forced to revise all one’s preconceptions as to which of the two bore ultimate responsibility for the failure of their marriage.

  So powerfully acted, so nerve-rackingly tense and realistic, was the row – to the point where it felt almost obscene to be eavesdropping on such an intimate tragedy – that, even if everybody on the set had not been ordered to remain silent, they would surely have done so in any case.

  Suddenly Knight, drawing himself up to his full six-foot-two height, loomed over a momentarily cowed Cora.

  ‘Admit it, Louise,’ he said, his voice dropping an octave. ‘Our marriage is a sham.’

  ‘A sham?’

  ‘Yes, it’s always been a sham. Right from the day I proposed to you. I asked for your hand, but, as I see now, all you were willing to offer me was your arm.’

  ‘What on earth is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You didn’t want a husband. What you were looking for was an escort.’

  ‘That’s absolutely –’

  ‘As for love, it’s something you could never give me, because you don’t know what it is. You’ve never known what it is. Which is why,’ he ended sadly, ‘I admit it, I did turn elsewhere.’

  By some indefinable alchemy, its secret known only to the greatest actors, the anger that had so disfigured Cora’s features was abruptly replaced by a brief but vivid flash of self-realisation, when one saw not just the woman’s emotional frigidity but also, terrifyingly, that she too had seen it. It was an epiphany which rendered the character, if only for a second or two, sympathetic, even faintly pathetic.

  Not more than a couple of seconds later, however, the virago reasserted herself.

  ‘Why, you …!’ she shrieked, raising the champagne glass above her head. It was at that instant, of course – and everyone simultaneously realised what a brilliant conceit it had been of Hanway’s – that she noticed it was still half-full. A queer, misshapen smile on her lips, she swallowed the champagne at a single go and, raising the glass again, prepared to hurl it at Knight.

  Then it happened.

  Time itself was suspended. One moment Cora was holding the empty glass above her head, the next she had let it fall onto the floor. With both hands at once she clasped her throat so tightly that her bulging eyes appeared about to pop out of their sockets. Whereupon, straining to scream but managing only to moan, the colour draining from her face, she collapsed in a heap on the floor.

  Not agai
n!

  The two words resonated in Trubshawe’s brain. It seemed only yesterday that he’d watched a similar scene being played out on the stage of the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. That one turned out to be an April Fool’s hoax. Would this scene, too, prove to be some sort of tasteless practical joke?

  He shot a swift glance at Evadne Mount. If it were a joke, she would be in the know. But she was mesmerised, petrified. For the novelist this was no hoax.

  Nor for anybody else. The entire studio resembled a tableau vivant of a type one would ordinarily expect to see on the cover of a cheap thriller. No one spoke, no one moved, no one was capable of taking any action whatever. No one, that is, but the Chief-Inspector himself. Despite his age, despite his bulky frame, he rushed forward onto the set, tripping over wires, shoving technicians out of his way, until he was standing directly over the body.

  He at once knelt beside Cora, lifted her arm, felt her pulse and laid his head sideways against her chest.

  Though he was, of course, a stranger to every member of the cast and crew, not one of them disputed his authority to examine the actress or questioned his right to be there at all. And if many of those watching him already knew what he was about to say, they all waited tensely to hear him say it.

  A few seconds later he said it.

  ‘She’s dead.’

  PART TWO

  Chapter Eight

  ‘Steady, old girl …’

  Trubshawe crouched in front of Evadne, who was sitting at one of the empty commissary’s Formica-topped tables, her forehead glistening, her pince-nez also glistening, her face still as chalky-white as when she had witnessed the spectacle of Cora’s death.

  An hour had elapsed. The police had immediately been alerted, and had undoubtedly already arrived, and on Trubshawe’s own advice none of those present on the set when the murder was committed (and, perhaps influenced by the type of picture they were making, everyone had at once assumed it couldn’t be anything but murder) had been allowed to leave. But, seeing how distraught Evadne was, he had also made the suggestion that he might absent himself to take her somewhere less crowded, somewhere more private, somewhere, in short, where she would be able to compose herself away from public scrutiny.