A Mysterious Affair of Style

by Gilbert Adair

  ‘I do,’ said Trubshawe. ‘Oh, I do.’

  ‘Good. Then we’ll all four meet at three o’clock.’

  ‘All four? There’s you, me and Evie. Who’s the fourth? Is Levey himself going to be present?’

  ‘Levey’s still in London, apparently, trying to salvage something from the wreckage of his film. No, at Levey’s suggestion, I invited Lettice Morley. I realise she’s one of the five prime suspects, if we really have the right to call them that, but she’s an old hand at the cinema business and she’ll be able to guide us through the thickets. You don’t have any objection to her being there, I suppose?’

  ‘Not at all. I can’t see the harm in it.’

  ‘Till tomorrow then.’

  *

  It wasn’t until they had left the city behind them, and were already in the green heart of the countryside, that Evadne asked Eustace how his inquiries had progressed. She seemed, despite Cora’s death, in remarkable spirits, even mildly elated. Her only just dormant cloak-and-daggerish instincts had been aroused with a vengeance and you could almost see her nostrils twitch like those of a hound on the scent of a fox.

  Trubshawe, too, could almost see them twitch, which is why he had elected, apart from the odd and deliberately banal aside, to remain silent.

  It was Evadne who finally spoke.

  ‘Once again, for some reason, you aren’t your usual prolix self.’

  ‘Me, prolix? In your company? That’s a laugh.’

  ‘But you must know,’ she went on, ‘how desperately keen I am to learn how you fared with your enquiries.’

  ‘Which enquiries?’

  ‘Please, Eustace, don’t play silly games with me. You told me yourself you were planning to check the whereabouts of all our suspects on the afternoon of the fire in Alastair Farjeon’s villa. And when I spoke to Tom Calvert on the blower yesterday, he confirmed that you and he had spent the day doing just that.’

  ‘Did he also tell you whether we’d had any luck?’

  ‘Yes, he did.’

  ‘Then why are you asking me?’

  She gave him an affectionate tap on the knee.

  ‘Poor Eustace, I know how disappointed you must be. And far be it from me to gloat, far be it from me to say I told you so, but … Well, if you’re honest, you have to agree that …’

  ‘You told me so.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘You know, Evie,’ said Trubshawe, ‘you may be right, and you certainly did tell me so, but I just can’t believe there isn’t something fishy somewhere.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, look, we spent the whole day yesterday asking them, all five of them, where they’d been at the time of the fire and with whom. And every single one of them had an alibi. It’s just not normal.’

  ‘Why ever not? You call it an alibi, but that’s the policeman in you talking. It’s the paradox of Scotland Yard. The more unbreakable somebody’s alibi, the more suspicious you coppers become. But all it means, when you say that every single one of them had an alibi, is that every single one of them was somewhere else that afternoon, just as you were somewhere else that afternoon – with me, as it happens – and I was somewhere else – with you, natch – and my late aunt Cornelia, God rest her soul, was definitely somewhere else, and millions, no, tens of millions of people up and down the country were somewhere else. Why should an alibi be inherently an object of suspicion?’

  ‘Evie,’ Trubshawe patiently replied, ‘I was forty years at the Yard and I carried out investigations into I don’t know and you don’t care how many criminal cases, a few of them just like this one, with five or six different suspects, and I can assure you that not once – not once, do you hear – did every single suspect have an alibi. It’s not the way these things happen. People don’t recall any longer where they were on a specific day or night. Or else they went shopping, except that they chose to go by themselves, and why shouldn’t they? Or else they took a stroll to clear their heads before turning in for the night. Or else they were doing a crossword puzzle or I don’t know what. It just isn’t normal for all five stories to click, for all five suspects to be able, more than a month after the event, to account for their movements not only with total exactitude but with witnesses to back them up.

  ‘I tell you, Evie, if I had your bottom, it would be itching now!’

  Silent and thoughtful, Evadne watched the road ahead as it gently swerved through the densely forested hills.

  ‘What were these alibis that have put you in such a state?’

  ‘Let me see. Philippe Françaix was in his hotel – in Bloomsbury, it was – writing up notes for the last chapter of his book.’

  ‘That hardly sounds like an unbreakable alibi to me.’

  ‘I’m afraid it is, though. He was in the hotel bar, not in his own room. It seems he’s got so accustomed to writing in cafés – these frogs, I’ll never understand them – he prefers to work with lots of hustle and bustle around him. The barman remembers him well. Swears he never left his table all afternoon. Served him three black coffees and a cheese-and-pickle sandwich.’

  ‘Hanway?’

  ‘He attended a garden-party at the Palace, no less. And who do you imagine he escorted there?’

  ‘Leolia Drake?’

  ‘Right first time,’ said Trubshawe. ‘And they weren’t just seen, they were photographed. They were even presented to Their Majesties. It’s true that the do lasted upward of three hours. Yet I still can’t see how either of them could have sneaked out of Buckingham Palace, motored down to Cookham, set Farjeon’s villa alight and returned in time for dinner at the Caprice, where they were also seen and photographed.’

  ‘What about Gareth Knight?’

  ‘At a club in Soho with his so-called secretary. He wore a mask and never once removed his hat – it was some kind of wide-brimmed affair that covered most of his face – but there would appear to be no question he was present.’

  ‘Wore a mask? Just what sort of a club was it?’

  ‘A club for single men – really ought to have been closed down years ago. It was hosting an Ivor Novello thé-dansant, if you can believe it. Fancy-dress affair. Guests were asked to come disguised as characters out of The Dancing Years and Glamorous Night. When the owner of the club cottoned on to who it was we were enquiring about, he was so relieved he himself wasn’t the chap Calvert hoped to throw in the jug that he shopped not only our own glamorous Knight but a couple of other picture actors as well.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ said Evadne, eyes aflame with prurient curiosity. ‘Who?’

  ‘Never you mind who. Let’s stick to our own business, shall we?’

  ‘Oh, very well. I’ll worm it out of you later, you silly old stick-in-the-mud. What about Lettice Morley?’

  ‘She was in hospital.’

  ‘What? Had she fallen ill?’

  ‘No. Her mother had just that day gone under the surgeon’s knife. Lettice was at her bedside all afternoon. Even though the nurses admit they were more or less permanently on the go, they’re all ready to vouch for her.’

  ‘So where does that leave you?’

  He shook his big heavy head.

  ‘Up the proverbial gum tree. We have five suspects in one crime for which they all had an opportunity but no motive. And we have the same five suspects in another crime – or so I truly believe – for which they all had a motive but no opportunity. It pains me to admit it, Evie, but the only person capable of breaking one, some or all of their alibis is Alexis Baddeley.’

  ‘Very sweet of you to say so. Don’t forget, though, there is at least one advantage to being faced with five separate alibis.’

  ‘And what might that be?’

  ‘It takes only one of them to crack for you to have your guilty party.’

  This logical notion, which had never occurred to Trubshawe, cheered him up no end as they continued the pleasant drive down to Elstree.

  *

  The cosily raked and padded screening-
room held, all in all, just three rows, counting four seats to a row. When Evadne and Eustace arrived, slightly late, both Tom Calvert and Lettice Morley were already present and making perfunctory attempts at conversation. Behind them was the projectionist’s box; and behind the projector itself stood the projectionist, primed to start the film as soon as he had been given the nod by Lettice. Seated alone at the very back was the inevitable, ubiquitous Sergeant Whistler.

  Once everyone else had settled in the front row, Calvert said to Lettice:

  ‘Perhaps, Miss Morley, you’d like to explain what you’re going to show us?’

  ‘Of course, Inspector.’

  Lettice stood up in front of the white screen.

  ‘What you’re about to see are what we in the trade call rushes – that’s to say, different takes, shots, sometimes even entire scenes, which are printed up the night after they’re filmed so that they can be viewed the very next day by the director. To give him at least a rough idea of how the film is progressing. Now you must realise that very little of If Ever They Find Me Dead was shot before the production was closed down. And I trust that none of you is expecting to see footage of Cora Rutherford drinking from the champagne glass, because nothing of that specific scene was ever printed.’

  ‘We do understand that, Miss Morley,’ said Calvert. ‘Actually, I’ve already requested from Mr Levey a print of the scene you just mentioned – it may well aid me in my inquiry – but we know that’s not why we’re here today.’

  ‘Very well. Now, just in case any of you are still unfamiliar with it, let me quickly summarise the plot of the film. It all begins inside a West End theatre, and the very first shot is of two young women in the audience, one of whom, indicating a man sitting three or four rows in front of them – and I should point out that no more than the back of his head is visible, either to her or to the audience of the film itself – whispers to her friend, “If ever they find me dead, that’s the man who did it.”

  ‘Then we immediately cut to the young woman’s Belgravia flat, where the police are indeed investigating her murder. Later in the plot, when the victim’s friend, the character played by Leolia Drake, decides to do a little detecting herself, she chances to meet, at a dinner party, a good-looking older man who seems to fit the bill. That’s Gareth Knight, of course. She starts flirting with him and, before she knows quite what has happened to her, she has genuinely fallen in love. And so it goes from there.

  ‘The thing is, for all kinds of practical and budgetary reasons, we in the cinema business seldom shoot pictures in chronological order. The opening scene I’ve just described, for example, was never filmed, since we intended to shoot it at Drury Lane and we would have had to wait for the current show to finish its run. And, in fact, the particular scene you’re about to see comes right at the end of the film. It’s what we call a flashback – which is to say, it flashes back to an earlier moment in the plot so that the audience can better understand the events leading up to the crime. It is, in fact, the murder scene, the one in which the young woman we already saw in the theatre is stabbed on her own doorstep by an unknown assailant. He or she then snatches the young woman’s key from her, quickly opens the door and drags her body inside – except that we never actually managed to get that far in the filming.

  ‘That is, I think, all you need to know. No, sorry, there’s one other thing. As I said before, these are rushes. By that I mean, they’re no more than fragments, very imperfect fragments. Extraneous noises-off, no background music, all the flaws that would be cleaned up once the shoot itself was over. The projectionist tells me that just two takes of the murder scene were printed. Rex actually shot six, but four were discarded, one because the actress began walking too fast, another because the boom shadow was visible in the shot, a third – well, I can’t any longer remember what the remaining problems were. I trust, though, that two will be enough for your purposes,’ she concluded, resisting the temptation to add, ‘whatever they could possibly be.’

  She glanced at Calvert, who nodded back at her. Then she looked up at the projectionist’s box and cried, ‘Okay, Fred. Ready when you are.’ Then she settled down in her chair at the end of the row.

  The lights dimmed.

  On the small white screen, after a few seconds of assorted squeaks, squawks and squiggles, there flashed up in front of them that universal emblem of the film-making process, the clapper-board. Holding it up to the camera’s eye was an only just visible crew-member, who called out, ‘If Ever They Find Me Dead, Scene 67, Take 3.’ Upon which, crisply snapping its two halves together, he vanished from the screen, carrying the clapper-board with him.

  What that clapper-board had been obscuring was a snowy, nocturnal, totally deserted residential street along which a young fur-coated woman started to walk. At first only her own footsteps were audible. Then, gradually, insidiously, these were juxtaposed with another, heavier set, producing an effect not unlike that of listening to two percussionists beating drums independently of one another. The young woman shot a first, furtive glance behind her, but, there being no lamp-post located in the vicinity, could see virtually nothing. As she picked up speed, though, the second set of footsteps grew louder and therefore, by implication, closer. The young woman now broke into a run. She fumbled in her handbag, presumably in search of her keys, but it was only when she had reached her own front door, lipstick and powder-puff spilling out onto the snow-blanketed pavement, that she succeeded in retrieving them. With a trembling left hand she clumsily struggled to pull off her right-hand glove, whose furry lining prevented her from getting a grip on the door-key. By then, however, it was too late. His features eclipsed by his overcoat’s turned-up collar, a tall, broad-shouldered man – or what certainly seemed to be a man – had silently stolen up behind her. Clapping his own left hand over her lips, he extracted with his right an ivory-handled dagger from his overcoat pocket and drove it deep into her throat. The screen went blank.

  More squeaks, more squiggles. Clapper-board. Scene 67, Take 5. The same scene, verbatim, unfolded all over again.

  Throughout the first screening – the first ‘rush’? – Trubshawe had been just as alert, out of the corner of his eye, to Evadne’s own facial expressions as to what was happening in the film itself. He had never seen her so caught up in anything as she was in the suspenseful little drama which had played out before them. And then, during the second one, he actually heard her murmur to herself – as usual with her, murmur loud enough for her neighbours to overhear – ‘I knew it!’ Then again, as the sequence drew to a close, ‘Of course! Of course that’s how it must have been done!’

  What in heaven’s name was she talking about? What was this it that she claimed to know? That’s how what must have been done? Cora’s murder? But the actress in the picture was stabbed on her own front doorstep in a empty street, whereas Cora was poisoned on a crowded film set! What conceivable connection could there be between the two? Where was the link? What on earth had Evie seen that he hadn’t? Curse the woman!

  The lights were raised again. Nobody spoke. Then Calvert, no less baffled as to the purpose of the exercise than Trubshawe, said:

  ‘Well, Miss Mount …’

  ‘Well, Mr Calvert …’

  ‘What I mean is, was that of any use to you?’

  ‘Let me put it to you this way, Inspector. I was certain before. Now I know.’

  ‘Now you know what?’

  ‘Now I know,’ she said calmly, ‘why Cora was murdered, how Cora was murdered and by whom Cora was murdered.’

  Calvert made no effort to conceal his scepticism.

  ‘Miss Mount, with all due respect, I have been extraordinarily tolerant of your unorthodox methods and manners, but even to my patience there’s a limit. If you truly believe you know the murderer’s identity, then let me have it at once.’

  ‘Ah well,’ said Evadne, ‘there’s a slight problem.’

  ‘Why did I think there might be?’ muttered Trubshawe to himself. />
  ‘The problem is that I cannot, here and now, prove what I know. I repeat, what I know.’

  ‘For the Law, I fear,’ said Calvert coldly, ‘that’s not a slight problem. An insuperable one more like.’

  ‘However,’ she carried on almost as though he hadn’t spoken, ‘if you, Inspector, are prepared to indulge me just once more, I shall, I promise, furnish you with all the proof you could possibly want.’

  ‘Just once more, eh?’ said Calvert warily. ‘Well, what is it you want of me now?’

  ‘I want you to summon all the suspects here at the same time tomorrow. Not in this screening-room, but on the film set itself. I want you to make it clear to them why they’re being summoned – that I, Evadne Mount, know who Cora’s murderer is and intend to reveal his or her identity to all to them at once. By all of them, I mean Rex Hanway, Gareth Knight, Leolia Drake, Philippe Françaix and, last but not least, Lettice here.’

  ‘Not Hattie Farjeon?’

  ‘No, not Hattie Farjeon. Not Levey either. Better not even mention the idea to Levey. Well, will you grant me this last favour?’

  Calvert turned helplessly to Trubshawe. Their eyes met. The older man’s eyebrows nodded.

  ‘Very well, Miss Mount,’ agreed Calvert. ‘I shall see to it that all the suspects are here again at three o’clock tomorrow. But you had better be right.’

  ‘Oh, I am, Inspector, I am.’

  Whereupon she turned to Lettice Morley.

  ‘Just for the record, Lettice dear, does the Gareth Knight character turn out to be the murderer?’

  ‘You have all the information you need,’ the young woman coolly replied. ‘You’re the sleuth. Figure it out for yourself.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘If there were such a thing as reincarnation, I’m convinced I should return to earth as a sheepdog.’

  Evadne Mount unfurled this mock-solemn introduction like a miniature red carpet, one that Trubshawe knew was likely sooner or later to be pulled out from beneath her audience of listeners.