[Celebrity Murder Case 04] - The Talking Pictures Murder Case

by George Baxt

  'The whole industry already knows, and you know they know. I'm going back to work because I'm tired of doing nothing. We have no children and we never will from what my doctor tells me, so I need to do something, and charitable works have never been my long suit. I'm telling you now because I wanted you to hear it from me and not from Hedda Hopper or one of those other contemptible leeches who suck up gossip like vampires.”

  “Are you sure he's not stringing you along? He’ll do anything to please Gloria now that she’s big again and bringing in profits.”

  “He wants me to play Lucrezia Borgia “

  'Typecasting.“

  “Don’t be unkind, Alex. Not now. Not ever. Whatever you've done, you've never been unkind to me.”

  “Why didn't you tell me you wanted to go back to work? I would have found you something.”

  “You mean tossed me something, if anything at all. I wouldn't accept the crumbs you feed Laura Gates and Tessa Main, two fine actresses wasted on secondary roles. What's the matter with you and the rest of those gangsters? You used to know how to build stars and market them profitably. Pictures begin to talk and suddenly the whole sad lot of you don't know how to make pictures anymore “

  “I don’t need any lectures.”

  “No, you need adrenaline. What's become of the spark, Alex? The dynamo that used to turn out forty to fifty pictures a year and more than half of them big box office winners. Look what you're doing now because you don't know how to handle the talkers Talkers! Talk talk talk until one begins to ache for the charitable affliction of deafness. If they're not talking, they're singing. And they're paralyzed. They don't move. Movies are called movies because they moved. Talkers don't move, they talk My God, how I’ve come to loathe perfect diction “

  “Don't cross me off, Helen. I've got seven pictures in production now and I know at least four of them are winners. They've got to be!”

  Helen pitied him. She said warmly, “They will be, Alex. I'm sure they will be.”

  “Would you like to have lunch with me?”

  “I wish I could, dear I really would like to. But I'm lunching with Frances Marion. She’s doing my screenplay.” My screenplay. How wonderful those words sounded to her. My screenplay.

  Alexander Roland smiled for the first time in weeks. “Helen, all of a sudden you look ten years younger and more beautiful than ever. Why don't I take you out tonight? Someplace quiet, like we used to do back in the old days. What do you say? Would you like that?”

  She recognized the cry for help “Of course, Alex. I’ll have cocktails waiting when you get home .” She crossed to him and kissed his cheek Charitable works have never been my long suit. And here she was, dealing from strength.

  Bertha Graze glared at Erskine Simpson-Thwaite as her teeth mashed a caramel to a pulp “Haven’t you seen the morning paper? It's the headline, you silly simp ‘Dolly Lovelace Was a Bigamist.'“

  “Well, what about it? I gave you that information yesterday in good faith. You owe me!”

  “I don't pay for useless crap. Now get out of here “

  “You've got to pay me. I need the money Mrs Darling refused to give me my severance. I'm hard up I need the money!”

  “If you'd stayed away from the track and the sniffing, you'd be a wealthy man.”

  “If if if—I don't need any of your ifs. You owe me and you're going to pay me!”

  She stared and chewed and then crossed to a sideboard. She opened a drawer, found a roll of bills, peeled one off, rolled it into a ball, and flung it at him “Here's a fiver, sucker Go buy yourself some jelly beans.“

  “One of these days, Bertha, somebody's going to kill you!”

  “Oh yeah? Says who? You know where the door is. Use it.” Erskine’s eyes spoke volumes of hatred. He picked up the crumpled note, his eyes never leaving her face. Almost obsequiously, he backed out of the room. Then he turned and hurried out the front door Bertha Graze sank back onto the divan. Damn it, she thought, this means Marie Darling won't be around to make her contribution. Who the hell could have leaked the story to Hazel Dickson? She snapped her fingers. That bitch Hedda Hopper, that’s who. Hmmm Now what can be done to stop Hedda Hopper?

  In soundstage 6 at the Diamond Studios, the cast and the crew sat around reading, noshing, and gossiping while Henry Turk, the director of The Bride Wore Sneakers, was trying to get Alicia Leddy, his leading lady, to cry After an hour of coaxing, pleading, and swearing by Turk, Alicia Leddy stamped her foot and said, “I'm sorry. I just don't cry easily!”

  Turk pleaded, “Make believe your mother died!”

  “I’m an orphan.”

  “Make believe your dog died?”

  “I don't own one “

  “How about your pussy?”

  “Don't be vulgar.”

  Two middle-aged women extras sat to one side quietly conversing. One knitted as she chatted, the other did some crocheting. The knitter, Carrie O'Day, said, “Have you been getting many calls lately?”

  The crocheter said, “I get a lot but I don't take them all. When I need a little extra spending money and don't want to bother my son for it. Mind you, he's very generous with me, bless his heart, and he loves it that I do extra work because he's so starstruck himself, Believe it or not, only yesterday he was a guest at Annawill.”

  “You don’t say!”

  “It's the truth. He met the whole gang of them. Annamary and Jack and Willis and the mother and he says he put the fear of God into the lot of them “

  “Och, then he's a man of the cloth, is he?”

  “Oh no, nothing so awful. He’s with the city government,” said Maggie Villon “He's the chief inspector of police.”

  “No!”

  “Indeed “

  'Well, aren't you blessed.” Then she said with pride, “My son's an architect.”

  “No!”

  “Indeed! He designed three buildings in downtown L.A. Two are under construction now.”

  “Isn't that wonderful You must be very proud of your son's erections.”

  They heard Alicia Leddy scream. “How dare you slap me!”

  “Cry, damn you, cry!” Turk was as usual tearing at his hair.

  “You go to belli” Alicia Leddy, with incredibly dry eyes, walked off the set.

  The film's producer, Isaac Sherry, pleaded with Turk, “Go after her. Get her back. Apologize! Alex Roland will have a fit, he’ll can all of us! We're behind schedule! We're over budget!1' To the ceiling he sobbed, 'This talker needs a miracle!”

  Turk said, while lighting a cigarette, “So open it in Lourdes.” Then, as he exhaled some smoke, he said, “You know this script was written for Annamary Darling. It was supposed to be her first talker. But then Roland met this Leddy chippy in New York, fell for her, and here we are. No Annamary, no tears, no picture. I think I’ll commit suicide tonight.”

  While the future of Annamary and Jack in talking pictures looked decidedly bleak that morning, Willis Loring was not in fact golfing, playing tennis, swimming, or screwing. He was with his agent in Joseph Schcnck’s office at United Artists signing a three-picture deal. Schcnck offered them cigars and a drink while the agent, Myron Clapp, rubbed his hands together—less for warmth than out of greed—and said to the actor, “Willie boy, this is one smart move we made “

  As he poured the drinks, Schenck said to them, “I've got a great adventure script, boys. Willis, it'll put you over big in talkers. You play a white hunter in Africa who is searching for a treasure believed to be hidden somewhere in a cave in Kilimanjaro. “

  “Where's that?” asked Willis.

  “It's not a where, it's a what It’s a mountain “

  “Oh, wonderful! Do we go on location?”

  “What for?” He gave them their drinks “We'll use the Selig Zoo animals right here in LA, and they got a mountain over at Metro we can borrow.”

  “When do we start shooting?” asked Willis eagerly. Schenck looked at a wall where presumably a date was written in invisible ink.
“We'll start preproduction immediately and we should be ready to roll in eight to ten weeks. I'd like to get Henry Turk to direct because he's fast and he's on the nose “ Clapp advised him, “He’s weeks behind schedule on that turkey he's doing for Alex Roland.“

  ‘That's not his fault. It's that dumb kid Alex put in the lead. She can't cut it. He should have fired her after seeing the first day’s rushes. But not Alex.” He shook his head sadly. “Alex Roland should admit he's made a mistake? Never.” He said to Willis, “Annamary should be playing that part. It was written for her, you know “

  Willis was surprised “Are you sure?”

  “I'm always sure That’s why I'm a millionaire.”

  “Wait till Mama hears this.”

  “You know what? You two are the first to know I'm bringing Roland's wife back to pictures.”

  Myron Clapp’s eyes widened. “Helen Roland's making a comeback?”

  “Helen Orling,” corrected Schenck. “Helen Roland is a producer's wife. Helen Orling is a star. I'm going to give her a lavish spectacle, the life of Lucrezia Borgia, and this is one time I predict poison will be a box-office bonanza “

  Greed once again clouded the agent's eyes. “Does she have an agent?”

  “As a matter of fact, she hasn't,” advised the mogul 'Would you like me to put in a good word for you?”

  “Joe, I'd be in your debt eternally “

  'That's what I had in mind.”

  * * *

  A few hours after her collapse, Marie made a remarkable recovery and ate an enormous lunch. She dined alone in her bedroom because her children had other engagements, or so they said. After lunch, Marie welcomed Marcus Tender, the family lawyer, a man who had served them for over a decade and who, for a lawyer, was surprisingly trustworthy. Together they laid out a strategy to legally storm the walls of Diamond Films and bring Alexander Roland to his knees. With a clenched fist, Marie said to Mr. Tender, “I won't rest until that man is destroyed.”

  “If he's as financially strapped as I hear he is, your lawsuit could be the final nail in his coffin.”

  “Coffin, hell! I won't rest until I see him burned at the stake! I want to smash him, grind him under my heel. I want to cut off his privates and serve them raw to a savage dog.” The lawyer shuddered. He hadn't witnessed such ferocity since he tried to buy off his mistress the previous Thanksgiving.

  Willis Loring had no idea they'd be in the library when he came home and sought a stiff glass of bourbon before confessing his defection to Joseph Schenck.

  “Come on in,” boomed Marie ‘This is a historic occasion. We're suing Alexander Roland for fifteen million dollars plus expenses.” Willis went pale. Marie told him about the awful events that transpired during his absence in the morning, and he found the courage to tell her he'd done his deal with Joseph Schenck.

  “You fool! You idiot! You moron!” She continued with an amazing display of vocabulary that more than impressed Marcus Tender. “How dare you go behind my back and shove the knife in to the hilt. Oh my God, how it hurts! I can feel it burning!”

  “Control yourself, Mama. Joe Schenck phoned me early this morning to tell me Alex confided last night at a bridge game that he wasn't honoring our contracts. He urged me to come sign a deal and I got hold of Myron Clapp and that's that, we signed the deal “

  “Myron Clapp is aptly named, the diseased little vermin.”

  “He got me excellent terms.”

  “Now just a moment, you two,” the lawyer interrupted. “One thing has nothing to do with another. Willis can sign a dozen deals, but legally, Diamond Films is still liable to live up to the terms of our ironclad agreements. In fact, this deal with Schenck is a blessing in disguise It will help our case immeasurably.”

  Marie viewed the lawyer with suspicion. She had had an affair with one once, but she still didn't know the difference between a habeas corpus and a corpus delicti. “How?”

  “It proves that Willis is still a very valuable and desirable commodity. He has been signed by a prestigious organization. And I assume it's a fairly lucrative deal.”

  “Very,” said Willis. “Not as much as Diamond guaranteed me, but in these troubled times, with so many old stars walking the plank, I'm still rolling in clover “

  Marie chewed it over for a few moments and then decided to buy it. “Okay. I’ll go for it. Did Schenck say anything about Annamary?”

  “Marie, this is going to really shock you.”

  “He doesn’t want her.”

  “No no no, nothing like that. This picture Roland is shooting with his sweetie pie in the lead—”

  “It's in terrible trouble. Everybody knows that.”

  “It was written for Annamary.”

  “What?” The windows rattled and the doors shook and the lawyer asked Willis for a glass of whiskey to steady his nerves. “The slimy lowlife lied to me. He said he had nothing for Annamary. Why why … I’ll bet he had a script for you, Willis, and for my Jackie baby and … and … Marcus! We're suing him for fifty million!”

  Henry Turk stood outside the door to the cozy bungalow that Alexander Roland had built for Alicia Leddy to use as a dressing room. He tapped the door gently “Alicia? Alicia dear? It's me It's Henry Turk, your director. I've come to apologize, Alicia I'm sorry I slapped you I didn't do it out of anger or frustration or a dread feeling of impotence that frequently comes over me when I'm working with raw newcomers, I did it to try to help you cry.” Stone-hearted bitch, he felt like shouting, I’ll bet you never cried in your life, I bet you're an orphan because you ate your parents. He rapped a bit harder on the door. “Come on now, Alicia. Let's get to work and finish this god … this movie. It's costing a fortune. Every second the camera doesn't roll costs a dollar, and dollars have a tendency to add up.” He rested his head against the door, weary, fed up, despairing, wondering if he'd have a better time baking bread in a monastery. This was how Alexander Roland found him.

  “What's the matter with Alicia?” demanded Roland.

  Henry Turk explained the situation. Roland showed neither sympathy nor understanding. He banged on the door with his fist and shouted, “Alicia, come out and go back to work or you'll never work in talkers again!” His anger mounting, he rattled the doorknob and the door swung open.

  Alicia Leddy sat at her dressing table, her face bloated, her tongue purple and bulging out of her mouth. It was after the initial shock of realizing she was dead that Alexander Roland saw the scarf twisted and knotted tightly around her neck He had given her the scarf as a little surprise the previous Sunday during a brief cruise on his yacht. She had said nothing when he gave it to her. Now, he suspected, she didn't really like it.

  NINE

  Hazel Dickson, from the moment she'd first met and become infatuated with Herbert Villon, had respected his sleuthing methods But now her admiration for him had intensified. He had predicted another murder, and here was the corpse Alicia Leddy wasn't a pleasant sight, although a mortician would soon sort her out and to some extent restore her beauty, but she was proof positive of Villon's prescience. Gabriel Twist, the coroner, was humming softly, “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody,” as he delicately examined the corpse

  “She didn't put up a struggle,” said Twist. “No skin under her fingernails “

  “In this town, few girls put up much of a struggle “

  “Shut up. Hazel,” said Villon, and two of the other newsmen in the room snickered. They didn't annoy Hazel. Neither one of them was sleeping with Villon.

  “The carotid veins in her throat are crushed. Offhand I'd say those did her in. I’ll know better when I cut her open “

  'Time of death?” asked Villon

  “Roughly I’d say about an hour or so, maybe a smidgen more.”

  Villon asked Henry Turk, who was sitting on the couch with Alexander Roland, “How much time elapsed before she left the set and you came to apologize?”

  Turk, distraught over Leddy's murder, stammered, “Maybe fifteen, maybe twenty mi
nutes “

  Villon continued, “And how long after you found the body did you phone us?”

  Roland spoke up. “Maybe a minute or two. Once I realized she was murdered, I phoned you people immediately.”

  Villon asked the director, “Were you and Miss Leddy on good terms?”

  Turk exploded. “I could have killed her.” Then, embarrassed, “Whoops—that isn’t the way I meant that!”

  “I'm sure,” said Villon. His tone of voice wasn't very comforting.

  “Expensive scarf, “ contributed Hazel. “I priced one like it at Bullock's “

  “I gave it to her,” said Roland He added quickly, “The scarf, I mean. I gave her the scarf.” He told Villon about the trip on the yacht the previous Sunday.

  Villon said sharply, “I want you reporters and photographers out of here.” There were rebellious murmurs. “You got your story, you got your pictures, now wait outside “ He emphasized Hazel. “You too, Hazel.”

  She stared daggers and said under her breath, “Just wait until the next time you ask for seconds.” She led the exodus from the room.

  As Henry Turk lit a cigarette, Villon directed his attention to Alexander Roland, who seemed mesmerized by the corpse's obscene face. Only last night, it was only last night I made love to her … “Mr Roland?”

  “What? What?”

  “I asked you a question.”

  “I'm sorry. I didn’t hear it.”

  “I asked is it true you were having an affair with the actress?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was your wife aware of this?”

  Roland's voice went up an octave. “I'm sure my wife had nothing to do with this.”

  “I didn't say she did. I asked if she was aware of—”

  “She might have been She probably knew She has enough good friends who could have told her. Mr … Villon? Yes, Villon … my wife is a very remarkable woman.” He didn't tell Villon he had only this morning come to realize that. “Although she's quite a wonderful actress, she doesn't make scenes She's Helen Orling, you know “

  “I know.”