“Enough,” Heimrich said.
“And you think I’m basing a lot on a few meetings. With other people, mostly. Once, as I told you, at lunch. Probably I am.”
“My dear,” Heimrich said, “you’re an intelligent woman. Observant. Meeting a person a few times you’d get an over-all impression. Call it an outline of the person. Unless there was a deliberate effort to mislead—”
“No,” she said. “He wouldn’t go to the trouble. Wait—that’s what I’m trying to say. He wouldn’t have gone to this trouble. He’d say, ‘Take it or leave it. Take me or leave me.’ ”
She had grown more eager as she sought words for the intangible. And now, suddenly, what she had herself said seemed to deflate her.
“Except,” she said, “that he obviously did go to the trouble. So I’m wrong. So I’ll go put the curry on to heat.”
She went, and he watched her with pleasure. He finished his drink and picked up the glasses and followed her. They would, of course, have to find other people who had known Brian Collins—known him longer. But whatever they learned would be nothing to take to a jury, if anybody was ever brought before a jury, which seemed arrestingly improbable. (What was Brian Collins’s reputation in the community in which he lived? That of a man who would not kill himself. So? Was all physical evidence consonant with the theory that Brian Collins shot and killed Peggy Belford, once his wife, and then himself? Yes. So?)
“Let it lie, captain,” the district attorney would say. “Let it lie, for God’s sake. Your girl friend says he wasn’t the type. Let it lie, captain.”
And what have I got against its being the way it looks? Heimrich asked himself, carrying glasses into the small kitchen off the enormous living room. “In a minute,” Susan said, stirring. ‘Take Colonel with you.”
Colonel was morosely occupying most of the kitchen, looking fixedly at what Susan stirred. Heimrich told him to come on, and he looked at Heimrich, and Heimrich said, sternly, “Come on,” and went back into the living room. To the surprise of everybody, Colonel went with him.
Except, Heimrich thought, continuing his self-investigation, that it’s somehow too damned elaborate. Too made up. He went back to the kitchen door. “Was Collins’s composition good?” he asked Susan, who said, “Very,” without looking around.
The curry was excellent; coffee after it was admirable. Heimrich sighed slightly, and said he was sorry about the evening and that he would have to get on with it. She walked with him to the door. It was dusk, now. They stood close. “Well,” Merton Heimrich said, slowly. “I’ll have—”
He stopped. Car lights advanced up the steep drive. (Damn, Susan Faye thought.) A tall young man who wore glasses got out of a light panel truck. He came up onto the terrace and said, “Captain Heimrich?” and, when Heimrich nodded, “Fine. They said I might find you here.” He looked at Susan. “With Mrs. Faye,” he said. “Name’s Alder.”
Heimrich said, “Good evening, Mr. Alder.”
“Burt Alder,” the tall young man—the quite young man—said. “Press representative with the unit.”
“Oh,” Heimrich said. “Sergeant Forniss will give you what we’ve got.”
“Nope,” Alder said. “Not a reporter. Was once but there’s no money in it. O.K., make it press agent. Allied Pictures. Came along with the unit. Never tell when there might be an item. But this—God. They’re sending Framingham east on this. Company plane.”
Heimrich raised his eyebrows.
“Head of the publicity department,” Alder said. “Me, the boy who holds his thumb in the dike. Or was it a finger?”
“Dike?”
“Manner of speaking, captain. They’re going to make a thing out of this, if we aren’t careful. What I’m after is co-operation. Bad enough without making it any worse, don’t you see?”
“I’m afraid,” Heimrich said, “that I don’t get what you’re talking about, Mr. Alder. Who’s going to make a thing out of— I suppose you mean out of Miss Belford’s death? Mr. Collins’s?”
“I tell you,” Alder said, “the Inn’s swarming with reporters. And it’s going to get worse. M. G.’s not going to like it, captain.”
“I’m sorry,” Heimrich said. “It’s nothing anybody likes particularly. Who, or what, is M. G.?”
Burt Alder looked at Heimrich with utter astonishment.
“M. G. Drisken,” he said, making it most distinct. And Heimrich shook his head.
“My God,” Alder said. “That’s all I can say.”
“Suppose,” Heimrich said, “we sit down over here, Mr. Alder, and you tell me whatever it is you’ve come up here to tell. Starting, at the moment, with the man you call ‘M. G.’ ”
“The M. G. Drisken,” Alder said, in a final effort. He spoke as a man underneath whose feet the ground had shaken. He looked anxiously at Susan Faye.
“Wait,” Susan said. “I think he’s something in the movies.”
“Something,” Alder said. “Oh my—” He did not finish. He regained control. “Mr. Drisken,” he said, formally—rather as if Mr. Drisken were present, listening—“is head of Allied Pictures. You’ve heard of Goldwyn? Of—Zanuck?” He looked at Heimrich. Heimrich nodded. “Drisken,” Alder said. “He won’t like this, as I said. We’ve got to handle it. Minimize the damage.” He walked over to a chair and sat in it. Heimrich went to another, but Susan hesitated. Heimrich made a summoning motion with his head. “I may,” he said, “need an interpreter.”
“I’m sorry,” Alder said. ‘The point is, we’re—well, we’re—well, say we’re all shook up. Marley particularly. It was he said, ‘Boy, you’d better get right out there. Arrange for co-operation.’ ” He paused, having learned his lesson. “Paul Marley,” he said. “He’s the producer. The man who—”
“I know what a producer is,” Heimrich said. “Cooperation as to what, Mr. Alder?”
“Captain,” Alder said, “they’ve got two in the cans. Starring—anyway, featuring—Belford. One’s going to be released next month and— All right. Listen. In it she’s this pure librarian type. Wears glasses, for God’s sake. Got no idea she’s beautiful, see? Demure. That’s the word. All the guys see her in it think, first, what a damned sweet little thing she is but, at the same time, that she’s a dish. Like maybe the girl next door. Only a dish. And so she gets killed in an artist’s studio—an artist’s, for the love of God. Without a stitch on,”
“No,” Heimrich said, “she was wearing a bathing suit, Mr. Alder. If that helps.”
“It’s something,” Alder said. “Not a lot.”
“No,” Heimrich said, “it wasn’t a lot.”
“Some of the babes,” Alder said, “it wouldn’t matter. Some of them—hell, you build them up that way. They get married a lot, or they go around a lot with somebody, but they’re stacked—that’s what you want. They get killed in a lover’s quarrel, so what? I mean, that is, that it won’t hurt box office. For what’s already canned, of course.”
“Of course,” Heimrich said.
“Babes like Belford,” Alder said, “you have their pictures taken wearing aprons. With a kid or two, if possible.”
“Did Miss Belford have any children?” Susan asked, and was looked at in honest astonishment.
“That babe?” Alder said. “And risk that shape? It’s the idea I’m talking about.”
“Mr. Alder,” Heimrich said, “I’ve got quite a lot of things to do. What is it you want? To have us report that Miss Belford was wearing a tweed suit? And—spectacles?”
“It’s nothing to joke about,” Alder said. “There’s a hell of a lot of money involved. And, listen—in this one they’re shooting now. She’s a milkmaid. Give you my word. An honest to God milkmaid. And this Dutch patroon, who owns half the Hudson River, meets her and she doesn’t realize how beautiful she is or what he’s up to, really, and she’s as innocent as—” He stopped for a simile, waited, gave it up. “You’re sure she was wearing a bathing suit?” he asked, clinging to that. “Down in the village the
story is—”
“She was,” Heimrich told him. “What’ll they do now about the picture? The one they’re making?”
There, Burt Alder said, they had a break. They’d shot all the scenes Peggy Belford was important in. Finished with them the day before. There were still a couple of long shots, but for them they could use a stand-in.
“One of them is with cows,” Alder said. “She’ll have had to have a stand-in for that one anyway. Scared to death of cows, La Belford was. Men, no. Cows, yes. What you’d call irony, come to think of it.”
They allowed a brief pause to commemorate the irony of it all.
“You’ve probably got out biographical material about her,” Heimrich said. ‘Tour office has, anyway. Mentioning she had once been married to Collins?”
“In passing,” Alder said. “You want a fill-in? We co-operate. You co-operate.”
“Start with you,” Heimrich said. “A brief fill-in, yes.”
“The way it was? Or the way we prettied it?”
Heimrich sighed. He said, “Just an oudine, Mr. Alder.”
In oudine: Peggy Belford—“her real name, far’s I know”—had been in a chorus line at a night club eight years ago. In New York. And Collins, who lived in New York then, met her and used her as a model and married her. “The way we had it,” Alder said, “they met because she was interested in art. Sort of a suggestion, without pinning it down, that she was studying art. Aspiring young artist. See what I mean?”
“She wasn’t?”
“Hell. How do I know? Aspiring, sure as hell. I mean—” They waited. “Never mind. So, she gets a screen test in a couple of years and a contract, and goes to Hollywood and he doesn’t. So it’s Las Vegas, or maybe Reno, and then Ricky Monterray. The band leader.”
“Ricky?” Susan Faye repeated, in a distant voice.
“Why not?” Alder said. “He marries damn near everybody, sooner or later. So she gets a part as a pure little salesgirl in a dress shop, demure as hell.”
“Wearing glasses?” Susan asked, with interest.
Alder looked at her, with some uncertainty. She did not amplify.
“Probably,” he said. “Anyhow, there was something about an evening dress to be modeled and the model broke her leg or something and our Peggy steps into the dress, which is the kind of dress a dame sticks out of and—O.K. There you are. The start of a career.”
“The perpetual Cinderella,” Susan said.
“All right,” Alder said. “Show me a better story. House dress to sables, and all on the up and up. The men drool over Belford and the girls drool over what she wears.”
“And take their own glasses off,” Susan said. “And go around bumping into things.”
Alder laughed at that, and said she had it.
“After this Ricky,” Heimrich said, and paused and did not look at Susan. “After this Mr. Monterray? I gather she didn’t stop there. Stay there?”
“You don’t keep up with things,” Alder said.
“No,” Heimrich said. “Probably not. After Monterray?”
“For the record,” Alder said. “For our record, he left her and she was brokenhearted and what have you. Poor trusting little thing, abandoned by a wolf. You keep the image.”
“Now Mr. Alder,” Heimrich said. “Keep it, by all means. But, in fact?”
“Hell,” Alder said. “They both played around. Who doesn’t?” He was not answered, since an answer might have taken time. “So—phfft, as somebody used to say. Then—the big league. Francis Dale, no less.”
Heimrich closed his eyes briefly. He opened them and repeated the name.
“Why not?” Alder said. “She was a dish. Frank likes dishes. In a quiet, marrying way, you understand.”
Heimrich said he understood. He said he would gather that this marriage had been—what? A step up?
He could call it that.
“And,” Susan said, “she slipped off it? Or, stepped off it?”
“Well,” Alder said, “Dale’s a good deal older. Anyway, it lasted a couple of years and they rifted.”
“Which must,” Susan said, “have presented a problem.” Alder looked at her enquiringly in the dim light.
“Not too much of a problem. Incompatibility. Everybody can have one incompatibility,” he said. “So then a man named Fielding. Roland Fielding. Not in the profession, so it didn’t matter. Nobody’s ever heard of him. Automobile dealer, or something like that.”
“Until?”
“About a year ago. Extreme cruelty. But no publicity to speak of. Nobody gave a damn. Which brings us back to this.”
“Which is a problem?” Heimrich said.
“Two pictures on the shelf,” Alder said. “Not counting The Last Patroon. What do you think of that as a title, by the way? We’re sort of making a survey.”
“I think,” Susan said gravely, “that it lacks something.”
“What I keep telling them,” Alder said. “What’s a patroon? they’ll want to know, and figure it’s a misprint. Anyway. Our demure milkmaid and what have you gets herself killed in an artist’s studio and so she’s obviously no better than she should be and so what do we get? Pressure groups. So—”
He looked at Heimrich intendy.
“I don’t,” Heimrich said, “see what can be done about it. Actually, of course, Miss Belford was merely having a swim in a pool owned by a former husband, and was wearing as much as attractive girls normally do under such circumstances.”
“You don’t get it,” Alder said. “Listen—the man was an artist. He did paintings.”
Heimrich said he was sorry. He stood up.
“Listen,” Alder said. “You got me off the track. Why couldn’t it have been an accident? Say he was cleaning his gun, maybe. She’d dropped in for tea, because she and her former husband were on the friendliest of terms and she was in the neighborhood anyway. And he was cleaning his gun and—” Alder stopped.
“You see the difficulties,” Heimrich said. “He’s cleaning his gun, while he’s serving tea. It goes off by accident and kills Miss Belford. And then—what? He cleans it again and it goes off by accident and kills him?”
“Well—”
“Mr. Alder, did you really expect what you call ‘co-operation?’ A hush-up of some sort?”
“If you mean me,” Alder said, and stood up too. “No, I guess not. Not that that sort of thing hasn’t happened.”
“Not here,” Heimrich said. “Not that I ever heard of.”
“All right,” Alder said. “Marley said make a pitch and I made a pitch. I’ll pass the word.”
“This Mr. Framingham,” Heimrich said. “He may as well stay in Hollywood. Hold M. G.’s hand.”
“Don’t,” Alder said, “expect me to tell him that, captain.” He started off. He stopped. “Somebody said,” Alder said, “that there was a portrait of La Belford in the studio. A nude?”
“Yes,” Heimrich said.
“God,” Alder said, hopelessly, and went on toward the panel truck. Susan Faye said, “Oh Mr. Alder,” and he stopped.
“Could Miss Belford act?” Susan asked.
He looked at her for a moment. Some light from the house was reflected on his face.
“My dear girl,” Alder said, “what possible difference could that make?” and went into the truck and drove it off. They watched him go down the drive.
“From another planet,” Susan Faye said and Heimrich said, “Yes,” and then, “Well—”
“Goodnight, Merton,” Susan Faye said.
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