Silent Murders

by Mary Miley

  “Weren’t you close enough to hear their spat? Lorna had had too much to drink—so had Faye, naturally—and Lorna made one too many catty remarks about Faye being too old for leading-lady parts. In the past couple years, Faye has lost roles to younger actresses like Clara Bow and Mary Astor, who’s only seventeen, for God’s sake, and then two parts she wanted went to Lorna, and Lorna was queening it over her when Faye pulled back and slapped her.”

  “That part I saw. Or the aftermath.” No wonder Faye was in such good spirits tonight—she’d lost a rival.

  “Maybe Faye will get that role now that Lorna’s dead,” remarked Helene Lubitsch from across the table.

  “Not a chance,” said Paul. “She’s too old.” He glanced down at Faye to make sure she wasn’t listening, and confided sotto voce, “Says she’s twenty-nine but she’s thirty-five if she’s a day. She won’t get another decent role at her age. She’s washed up.”

  I winced but it was too late. Mary Pickford, age thirty-two, had heard. She wasn’t an actress for nothing—her face betrayed not a flicker of emotion—but I could feel the dismay radiating from behind the mask. “I think the entire profession would benefit if less attention were paid to one’s age and more to one’s abilities,” she said sweetly.

  Douglas, equally stung, chimed in. “Nothing replaces maturity and experience,” he said, punctuating each word with his fork.

  Incredibly, Paul didn’t take the hint. He blundered on. “Nonsense. Faye’s not going to attract anything but older women’s parts and those are all minor roles. But did you see Lorna later that evening? She lost a bet with Heilmann and had to sit in the fountain out front. That really was her last performance, poor girl. Who’d have thought she’d end up like she did? It’s enough to give a fella the creeps.”

  At the other end of the table, Lottie’s need to be the center of attention trumped her earlier plea. Dabbing her eyes with a monogrammed handkerchief, she was prattling on about Bruno Heilmann, the party, and the police investigation. She was clearly drunk—she must have had a stash in one of the upstairs bedrooms—and I hoped she would not blurt out anything about me retrieving her things from Heilmann’s house. Then it dawned on me that she probably didn’t know what I’d done. Douglas would have too much sense to tell her.

  Now that the gloves were off, the rest of the group entered the fray.

  “It’s amazing that Zukor has kept the whole thing out of the newspapers,” said Marilyn Miller. “Secrets in this town are impossible to keep.” Several people nodded ruefully, suggesting that some indiscretion had turned the spotlight their way in the past.

  Lottie knocked over her water goblet. Douglas frowned.

  “It won’t be a secret for long,” he said, as a maid scurried over to mop up the mess. “The news will be in tomorrow’s papers.”

  Robert Fairbanks spoke up. “I heard the valet called Zukor and Zukor called you, right, Doug? That’s how they kept it quiet—only two men knew and they didn’t tell any women.”

  But that was wrong, I thought as smug laughter rippled down the male half of the table. Lots of people knew. Lots of women. I knew on Sunday. Myrna knew. Had she told the other girls? And Lottie Pickford had to have known on Sunday, or she wouldn’t have panicked about her monogrammed belongings. Miss Pickford knew. Had Zukor told anyone? Obviously the police chief, several policemen, and the detectives knew, and Heilmann’s valet who found his body. Had any of these people told anyone?

  To my left, the tactless Paul Corrigan started to speak again, then caught himself. I turned just in time to see him looking at Lottie, then at Faye, then back and forth between them. He closed his mouth tightly and found something interesting about his beef Wellington. I didn’t hear a peep out of him for the rest of the meal.

  “Well, it seems likely that the waitress—what was her name?—was killed because she could have identified the man who shot Heilmann,” said Charlie Chaplin. “Lorna McCall’s death might have been an accident, but it seems far too pat for that. She must have seen or known something, and someone did her in for it. Now my question is this: Is the murderer finished? Or are there others who saw something? God, Doug, you and Mary didn’t see anything, did you?”

  Douglas waved his hand dismissively. “You will not be surprised to hear that Mary and I left early in the evening. We had other obligations—a good night’s sleep being one of them! Nonetheless, I’ve persuaded Mary to put up with a bodyguard for the next few days, just until the police capture this madman.”

  “I want a bodyguard, too.” Lottie’s petulant voice rose above the rest. “I was at Bruno’s right up until he made me—well, never mind—but what if the murderer wants to kill me like he did Lorna!”

  “Of course you shall have one,” said her sister. “I was planning to ask you that question tonight. And you can count your lucky stars Bruno did make you leave, or you might have been there when he was murdered.” And been killed with him. The unspoken words hung in the air.

  Lottie struggled up from her seat, knocking her fork to the floor, and wobbled out of the room. Douglas’s eyes narrowed. Miss Pickford didn’t seem to notice anything amiss. I glanced at the other end of the table and saw Lita laughing at something David had said. She was a fetching little thing when she dropped the pout.

  A few minutes later, Lottie tottered back into the room carrying something in her hand. “Look what I bought today,” she said. “I’ve got to protect myself, too!”

  She held up a small pearl-handled pistol no more than five inches long and waved it gaily about, pointing the barrel carelessly around the table.

  Everyone froze.

  Everyone except David, who had been seated next to Lottie. David knew his way around guns. In one sinuous motion, he slid out of his chair and over to her elbow. “Let me see that,” he said, taking it gently from her. The entire room exhaled in one giant breath. “It’s lovely, Lottie. Belgian make, isn’t it? Wherever did you get it?”

  “From that store downtown. Allan has guns at home but they’re so heavy I can’t shoot them. The man at the store said this was a lady’s gun. Just my size.”

  As she spoke, David took the magazine from the handle and opened and closed the slide. A cartridge was ejected, answering everyone’s question. The gun had been loaded. “Look here, Doug. Isn’t it nice?” he said, passing the gun to our host who quietly set it on the mantel. Thinking quickly, Chaplin launched an impromptu pantomime of a rubber-legged waiter holding a chair for a lady, getting laughs from all of us as he clumsily fell to the floor and bounced back up in his efforts to reseat the giggling Lottie. Distracted by the antics, Lottie was drawn further under the Chaplin spell as he told a long, naughty joke about a man and an alligator, and soon the tension melted away. Conversation turned to sex and Communists, and sex with Communists, and the pearl-handled pistol was forgotten.

  15

  The Pickfair evening concluded with everyone gathering in the living room to watch an unreleased picture. Jack Pickford and Marilyn Miller scooted out the door—“another dope party,” muttered Lubitsch under his breath—while the butler passed cigars and chocolate-covered cherries, Douglas’s favorite. Douglas and Mary held hands on the sofa. The Chaplins, who hadn’t exchanged a word the entire evening, sat in opposite corners of the room and walked home as soon as the film ended, missing the lively analysis of the acting, directing, lighting, and editing that followed. As the ten o’clock curfew loomed, Douglas came over to my chair.

  “I’ll call the Rolls whenever you’re ready.”

  David stood. “Let me save your driver the trip. I’m going back to town and would be honored to escort Miss Beckett home.”

  Perversely, the offer both thrilled and dismayed me. There was no way to refuse gracefully, and anyway, half of me couldn’t wait to be alone with David. The other half needed time to think. But David’s gesture brought the group to its feet, everyone remarking on the lateness of the hour and their early obligations the next day.

  I thanked
Douglas profusely for the invitation. “You have no idea how much this evening meant to me,” I told him before turning to my hostess. Our eyes met and held, and I saw that words were unnecessary; Mary Pickford understood exactly how much this evening had meant to me. She had come up the way I had through the harsh, vagabond life of itinerant performers, passing straight from infancy to adulthood in her role as family breadwinner, forever terrified that this would be the day the applause died. Ironic, really, that both our careers hinged on portraying children when neither of us had any experience being a normal child. Those moments on stage and screen were as close as either of us would ever come to childhood.

  We understood each other, Mary Pickford and I. We had taken the same road, and while she was miles ahead of me today, she knew the ruts and potholes all too well. Look how far I’ve come, she seemed to say in wonderment. But it was never far enough. The specter of poverty always hovered near, ready to snatch everything away the moment she relaxed, so she had to get to the studio at daybreak and drive herself hard and harder, acting, directing, and personally managing every aspect of her business, demanding perfection from herself and her crew because only the sound of applause could keep the specter at bay.

  “Good night, Jessie, dear,” was all she said, but the way she said it made my heart soar.

  David and I drove out of the Pickfair driveway in his brand-new Packard, past the Chaplins’ house, and down into the valley. A full moon hung in the night sky, raising a coyote chorus of mournful howls. Now that we were alone together, I felt self-conscious, and I silently vowed to keep the conversation as impersonal as I could.

  “That was quick thinking at dinner,” I said. “You probably saved at least one of us from getting shot.”

  “There was never much real danger,” he said modestly. “Those small pistols are wildly inaccurate. With a short barrel like that, even Annie Oakley would have trouble hitting her target. And Lottie’s a rank amateur.”

  “I wasn’t worried about her aim. I was worried about a wild shot. She was pretty zozzled.”

  “So was Jack Pickford. He just holds it better. And every time they get into trouble, they wave Mary like a flag. It’s a wonder Doug can stand those two.”

  “He loves Mary too much to banish them.”

  An awkward silence descended as David navigated the canyon road curves toward town. Finally he cleared his throat. “I’m glad to meet the real Jessie at last. I am meeting the real Jessie, aren’t I? I mean, this isn’t another role you’re playing in another swindle?”

  “No, this is the real me. That stint in Oregon made me realize I didn’t want to go back to the vaudeville life of bad food, cheap hotels, and a different city every week. Some friends got me a job training to be a script girl at Son of Zorro, then understudy’s luck got me a couple weeks as Douglas’s assistant. You can say I’m no better than the hundreds of other silly girls coming to Hollywood every year trying to get into show business, and you’d be right, but I’ve got a steady job, and I’m feeling like I fit in here. Yeah, this is the real me. I know who I am now.”

  “I hear you’re a detective in your spare time. You’ve only been here a couple months and already you’re mixed up in murder. Must be your perfume.”

  “Well, I couldn’t help that I was at the party where the first murder happened. Or that I knew the woman who was killed later that night. I didn’t set out to find the killer. Douglas just asked for my help, and I came into it through the back door.”

  “You’re smart. You notice things others miss. And you have a way of sensing things, almost like a mind reader.”

  I thought about that. After a lifetime on stage watching for subtle cues, making decisions based on someone’s tone of voice, picking up on a raised eyebrow or the lift of a chin, and absorbing the audience’s mood through my skin, it was probably inevitable that I would become sensitive to details, especially the human kind. “I think maybe I read people, not minds.”

  “You need to be careful. People who kill people don’t mind killing people, if you get my point.”

  “I’m careful.”

  “I cared a lot about the old Jessie back there in Oregon, even when I didn’t know who she really was, but I think—I’m sure I’m going to care even more for the real McCoy here in Hollywood. I look forward to getting to know you better.”

  Truth was, I was afraid to get to know David better. He came from my former life, the deceitful life I’d left behind, and I didn’t want to get sucked back into the old ways. Besides, I was through with broken hearts, especially when it was my own.

  “And what role are you playing in Hollywood, Mr. Carr? Just what is a collaborator, anyway?”

  “In this case, it’s a fancy word for investor. United Artists hasn’t enough ready cash to finance all its films, so backers put up dough and come in for a cut of the profits, if there are any. Legal gambling, I call it, although with names like Pickford, Fairbanks, and Chaplin, the dice always come up seven or eleven. Even their worst clunker should break even. Douglas wants to make color pictures, and he’s very interested in sound, and all that new technology costs a lot of bucks.”

  “Pictures with sound? You mean talkies? I heard about making a color feature next year but didn’t know he was thinking about sound, too.”

  “Sure he is. So are Warner Brothers and Fox. So are a lot of people. But Douglas is real smart about it. He knows the motion picture business upside down and inside out, and he’s crazy about tinkering with the mechanics. Although he keeps it pretty quiet.”

  “Why?”

  “Before I got involved with Pickford-Fairbanks, I used to think everyone was on the edge of their seats waiting for talkies, that as soon as the right inventions came along, talkies would flood theaters all over the world. Now I know better. There’s serious resistance from every layer of the industry. Talkies will bring a revolution in filmmaking, and like any revolution, blood will run in the gutters.”

  “Just adding sound wouldn’t cause—”

  “Yes, ma’am, it would. You ask any actor what he thinks about sound. Most hate the very idea. For one thing, a lot of them are foreigners—you know that because you’re in the business, but the public doesn’t—and their accents won’t be accepted. Others have working-class accents or unappealing voices. Most don’t have theater training, and they don’t know how to project. Most think sound would ruin them. And they’re right.”

  I couldn’t argue with him there. I had been surprised to see what a large percentage of the film industry, and not just actors, was foreign born. Sometimes it seemed like the world had come to Hollywood to make pictures. And off the top of my head, I could think of several famous actors whose voices were harsh or high-pitched or nasal sounding or too breathless to carry.

  “Directors are against the change, too,” he continued. “You’ve been on sets when they’re filming. You’ve seen how noisy it is. Most scenes are shot outdoors where the sun is strong, but listen to the wind and other background sounds and think how they would be picked up on microphones. And those Mitchell cameras! They sound like machine guns.”

  “I see what you mean. Directors couldn’t continue to direct by talking actors through each scene as it’s being shot. They’d have to do endless rehearsals and shoot in silence, like they do for the stage.”

  “That would double or triple the production time for every picture. And the cost.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Douglas is afraid the fluid, natural quality of films will be lost when actors have to hover around a microphone to be heard. Studio producers are wary about the high cost of recording equipment and the loss of their best stars. And as far as theater owners are concerned, installing sound equipment will cost thousands of dollars for each theater, forcing up ticket prices when they’re already running more than twenty-five cents apiece in big cities. Those who couldn’t afford to upgrade would go belly-up.”

  I was thinking about all the musicians who made their living playing in
theaters who would lose their jobs. Then I wondered how talkies would be received internationally. Now it was easy to subtitle the original titles. How would foreign audiences understand dialogue spoken in another language?

  “To put it bluntly,” said David, “most people are scared to death of talkies.”

  But he wasn’t. I could see fire in his eyes as we talked. “So you’re going to collaborate with Douglas on making talkies and color?”

  “Doug wants to be the first to star in a feature-length color film. He’s already chosen the story—something about pirates. There’s no holding back progress, Jessie. Color is here. Talkies are coming. They’ll ruin a lot of people, but those who can weather the storm stand to make a fortune. Both Doug and Mary have had years of experience on the stage—they’ll make the transition.”

  “You’re not bootlegging anymore?”

  “Hell, no, kid. I don’t have a death wish. There’s a nice, tight operation here in Los Angeles bringing Mexican liquor across the border, like the one I had in Portland with the Canadians, and no one muscles in on an established business unless he’s looking for a bullet. No siree, Bob. I’m in the picture business now. I put up half the money for Little Annie Rooney.”

  It was a statement, not a boast, and it dropped my jaw. Making a major motion picture like that could cost two or three hundred thousand dollars.

  “I guess you got out of town before the police caught up with you.”

  “You’re looking at me, aren’t you? I got away with my cash and my toothbrush.”

  He didn’t volunteer further details, but I knew enough to doubt his story. Everyone knows bootleggers do more than smuggle hooch. The business leaches naturally into speakeasies, protection rackets, and police bribery, and often into drugs, prostitution, numbers, and other gambling rings. I’d fallen for David’s aw-shucks honesty and boyish enthusiasm last fall before I knew he was mixed up in the underworld. Only once had I seen a glimpse of what lay beneath the guileless mask, and that was the night he had calmly promised to kill a man with his bare hands.