Falling Star

by Patricia Moyes

  As the atmosphere relaxed, Keith came down the stairs, and Biddy slipped off and spoke to him quietly. The next I saw of him, he was making his way down the platform toward Fiametta’s dressing room, and I gathered that he had been deputed to apply a dose of calming flattery in that quarter. A few minutes later Sam, too, excused himself.

  “Wish me luck,” he said, laughing. “If I’m not back within the hour, send a search party.”

  “Poor Sam,” said Biddy to Meakin. “He hates having to tick people off.”

  I knew very well, of course, that there was not the faintest possibility of Sam giving a ticking off to La Fettini. The same sort of softsoaping would go on in her dressing room that we had just heard applied to Bob on the platform. Bob must surely have known this, but apparently it soothed him to think that the fiction of La Fettini being treated like a naughty child was being maintained. He smiled warmly at Biddy, and the two of them walked off down the platform to his dressing room, apparently in high good humor. As I have often remarked, show me an actor and I will show you a child.

  Sam emerged from Fiametta’s booth a few minutes later, wiping a smear of lipstick off his cheek. The reconciliation had evidently been effected, although Sam had prudently left Keith in situ, to make sure that, once calmed, Fiametta stayed that way.

  Gervase, who had been called away to the telephone, hurried up to Sam and said something quietly. I heard Sam say, “Goddamn it”; and then the two of them began to pace the platform, deep in talk. After a minute they were joined by Fred Harborough, the cameraman, and then by Biddy, who had just come out of Bob’s dressing room. It was obvious that there had been a hitch of some sort, and a worrying one, and the exclusion of myself from the executive group was most marked. I went up to the others.

  “What’s the matter?” I said.

  Sam was obviously not pleased to see me, but he made no attempt to get rid of me. He said, “The labs have just telephoned. Yesterday’s train shot has been spoilt. We’ll have to retake it.”

  “What happened?” I demanded.

  Sam looked inquiringly at Gervase. “Light got into the film,” said Gervase.

  “Where? At our end or at the labs?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, you ought to know. If it happened our end, find who is responsible and take disciplinary action. Who seals the film in the cans?”

  “Steve, the clapper boy.”

  “Well then, get hold of him and…”

  “It may have been the labs’ fault,” said Gervase. “It happens sometimes. They can’t be infallible.”

  “Then they bloody well should be, over things as important as this. What do they think we…?”

  For the second time, Sam said, “Pudge. Shut up.” Then I think he must have realized he had pushed me too far, because he put his hand on my arm in a friendly way, and said, “We’ll have all the post mortems you want afterward, but at the moment the important thing is to get the retake in the can. You do see that, don’t you?”

  “Of course,” I said. I am perfectly prepared to be reasonable if people will be reasonable with me.

  “So,” said Sam, “how long will it take you to set up, Fred?”

  “Only a few minutes,” said Fred cheerfully. He is an incurably optimistic character, for which, I suppose, we should be thankful. Although, mind you, he has plenty to be cheerful about: a big fat salary every week and no responsibility.

  “A good thing you insisted on the train and driver standing by,” said Sam to Gervase. “That was nice work. I appreciate it.”

  “Thanks, Sam,” said Gervase. He forbore to mention that I had issued a specific instruction that the train should be kept at readiness during the afternoon. This was the sort of thing I found so irritating.

  “You’d better tell Bob,” said Sam to Gervase, and the latter sloped off to the canvas booth to break the bad news to our star. He was back a few moments later, and I decided that it might be prudent for me to go and have a word with Meakin, to complete Biddy’s good work. I didn’t like the thought of him alone in his dressing room, brooding. However, I wasn’t halfway along the platform before Bob appeared from the corridor, just as George Temple came ambling past.

  “Hello, General. How are you?” cried George warmly. He always called Bob “General”—a reference to some film in which they had both appeared years ago. I think George felt that the use of a nickname gave him an unanswerable right to speak to the star on equal terms.

  “How are you?” echoed Bob, turning slightly away. I had noticed that this particular question was one which no actor ever answered.

  “Care for a dekko at Stage Whispers, General?” asked George, undaunted, waving his magazine in Bob’s face.

  “No, thanks, dear boy,” said Bob. And then, with slightly elaborate casualness, “Anything in it this week?”

  “Just a feature article and a six-inch double gossip column about you, General,” replied George, with ill-concealed jealousy. He did not mention Fiametta Fettini. Nobody ever did, in Bob’s hearing. “You’ve certainly got a touch with the publicity boys. Sure you wouldn’t like to read it?”

  “I never read trash of that sort,” said Bob sharply. “I can’t imagine who buys it.”

  George’s embarrassment in the face of this snub was mercifully covered by the arrival of Murray with Bob’s various costume accessories, which he checked off with Margery Phipps as he presented them to Bob. There was the old raincoat, the shabby porkpie hat (which sold in thousands after the film had come out—“The Masterman Hat,” as they called it), the heavy horn-rimmed spectacles, the gnarled pipe. Sam, for all his pose of art for art’s sake, was certainly working to create a “Masterman image.”

  The big arc lamps had been swiveled around to face the platform, and electricians were working fast and smoothly under Fred’s direction, moving other lights into position, so that the area of light—where Bob’s stand-in was once more established—was now on the platform. The camera crew checked and adjusted and focused. Margery Phipps scribbled in her shorthand notebook. The make-up and hairdressing teams clustered around Bob like flies. The whole place had that air of approaching climax which always hovers over a set just before shooting starts.

  “D’you want a run-through before we turn?” Sam asked Bob.

  “No, no.” Bob sounded impatient. “It’s just what we did yesterday, isn’t it? Run down steps, ramming spectacles onto nose. Arrive full tilt on platform, pull up, pause, look round.”

  “That’s it,” said Sam. “How about you, Fred?”

  “Naw,” said Fred. He had spent some years in Hollywood, and lapsed into an American intonation when he was concentrating. “We can roll ’em straight away.”

  “Is the train standing by?” Sam asked.

  He should not have had to. Gervase should have seen to it.

  “Train and driver,” shouted Gervase, hastily putting down a paper he had been reading.

  “Train and driver,” echoed his assistant.

  “Train and driver ready,” came a third voice from the recesses of the tunnel.

  “I was carrying a newspaper yesterday,” said Bob Meakin. “I don’t seem to have one today.”

  “Mr. Meakin’s newspaper. Quick, somebody. Margery, why didn’t you point it out?” Gervase was obviously trying to put on a show of efficiency. I hoped that my earlier thrusts might have gone home. The property man appeared with the newspaper. Bob put it under his arm, straightened his shoulders, and stretched his neck forward in a characteristic gesture which he always used before a shot, and walked halfway up the staircase. I know it is easy to be wise after the event, but it is true that it did strike me at the time that his steps were not quite steady, and it flashed through my mind that his fall on the platform might have done more damage than he cared to admit. After all, he was not a young man. I noticed, too, that he held firmly onto the handrail as he mounted the steps. However, I said nothing. Bob moved to the center of the stairway, spectacles in one hand, ne
wspaper in the other.

  “Right,” said Sam.

  Gervase blew his whistle. “Quiet, everybody!”

  Silence descended, like magic.

  “O.K., Bob,” said Sam. “Take it good and fast. Plenty of uncontrolled arms and legs.”

  “Ay, ay, sir,” said Bob.

  Again the whistle shrilled.

  “Quiet, now! We’re turning this time!”

  In the dead silence, little Steve, the clapper boy, stepped in front of the camera, holding his blackboard. “Street Scene, Retake One-Nine-Four, Take One,” he announced cheerfully. The clapper fell with a sharp click, and the light went on to signal the train. Steve removed the clapper board, and the camera concentrated on Bob as he began to run down the steps, hastily jamming on his spectacles with his right hand as he came.

  What happened next will always remain a confused nightmare blur in my mind. There was the shriek of the train as it came roaring in from the tunnel. There was Bob, flying helter-skelter down the stairs, shouting, reaching the platform, stumbling. There was Keith’s voice behind me, shouting, “Bob! Stop him, for God’s sake!”—and a screech of brakes. There was Fiametta Fettini screaming hysterically, “I didn’t mean it! I swear I didn’t mean it!” And Keith Pardoe vomiting in the corner and Biddy Brennan in tears, and Gervase Mountjoy, as might have been expected, out to the world in a dead faint. I am pleased to say that it was Sam and I who restored some sort of order and telephoned for doctors and ambulances—not that it was any use. Robert Meakin had fallen onto the line under the wheels of the approaching train, and he was quite dead.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I AM SURE I do not have to remind you of the sensation which Robert Meakin’s death caused, coming as it did on the heels of the Fettini scandal. I will therefore leave you to imagine what I went through during the next few days. There seemed to be reporters everywhere, and the harder I slammed the door in their faces, the faster they came climbing in through the window. My artistic colleagues proved of very little help. I had not been counting on Biddy or Keith for much support, but I was surprised at Sam. After handling the situation at the Underground station with remarkable sense, and giving, at my request, a short speech to the technicians and actors, he had contrived to disappear into the streets of London like a needle into a haystack, and neither I nor the press were able to discover his whereabouts until the evening. I was left to cope alone.

  Naturally, the police had to be notified, even though Bob’s death was so patently an accident. This aspect of the affair worried me. Apart from the question of bad publicity, I was afraid that La Fettini might contrive to make some scandalous sort of scene if interrupted in the middle of her hysterics by a flat-footed London bobby; and I was acutely conscious of the fact that Sam Potman had simply disappeared, in spite of the fact that I had given instructions that nobody was to leave the Underground station. It was then that I had the idea of telephoning direct to Henry Tibbett.

  This Tibbett character is quite a remarkable man. He’s a Chief Inspector of the C.I.D., but you’d never think it to meet him. He’s a mild, sandy-haired little chap in his forties, the sort of bird you’d pass in the street without a second glance. In fact, the first time I met him—at Lord Clandon’s house, it was—I put him down as a junior partner in the family’s firm of solicitors or accountants, or at the very best a poor and obscure relation. I was most surprised when I realized, later, that he was not only a great friend but an honored guest of the Clandons, which only goes to show that you never can tell by appearances. From then on I made something of an effort to cultivate him; I didn’t want him to think I had been deliberately rude at our first meeting.

  Between ourselves, I always found Henry slightly hard going. He seemed constantly preoccupied, if you know what I mean; always polite, but, I felt, not really interested in what I was saying to him. His wife was a far more attractive proposition—a splendid, plump, black-haired woman with a great sense of humor. I took to Emmy Tibbett straight away; I think everyone did. But I am straying from the point, which was that I suddenly had the bright notion of getting on to Henry personally instead of merely calling a policeman after Robert Meakin’s death.

  I was lucky. Henry was in his office and listened sympathetically while I told him what had happened. And then, believe it or not, he simply said quite coolly that he was afraid it was not a matter for the Criminal Investigation Department, and advised me to ring the nearest police station or go out and bring in a constable from the street.

  “My dear Henry,” I said, “don’t you understand? This isn’t any Tom, Dick, or Harry who’s been killed; it’s Robert Meakin, the film star.”

  “You say he stumbled on the platform and fell under the train.”

  “That’s right.”

  “No question that it was anything but an accident?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then,” said Henry, “it’s not in my province at all, Mr. Croombe-Peters, I’m only interested in the poor devils who get murdered.”

  “You mean to say you’re going to allow a lot of flat-footed bluebottles to come in here and question Fiametta Fettini…?”

  “I’m not trying to be difficult, Mr. Croombe-Peters,” said Tibbett, in his most maddening way, “but I am extremely busy and it’s not my department. What I will do is to ring Superintendent Wilcox for you, and get him to go along himself, but I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with a certain number of bluebottles. We haven’t all got flat feet, you know.”

  Well, it was unsatisfactory, but better than nothing. Wilcox turned out to be quite a reasonable fellow, and it was not long before he had taken all the details he needed. To my great relief he said he saw no reason for questioning Miss Fettini, and he accepted without comment my statement that Mr. Potman had been called away on urgent business. There were plenty of other witnesses to describe exactly what had happened to Bob. As soon as I had got rid of Wilcox, and deputed the various members of the unit to clearing up the equipment, I was able to get down to some constructive work.

  The first thing I did was to bundle Fiametta off to the country to join poor little Palladio and the pet monkey. I rented a house for them, under an assumed name, in the wilds of Buckinghamshire, and transferred the whole ménage that afternoon. At first I thought that I had fooled the newspapermen, but no. Somehow—and I have my own ideas on the subject—the story leaked out, and the village was virtually besieged. But I am going too fast.

  I called a Board Meeting of Northburn Films in my flat on the evening of Bob’s death, having finally succeeded in contacting Sam at his Islington house soon after six. As soon as I had spoken to Sam, I disconnected the telephone and locked all the doors, and thanks to the fact that several sturdy policemen were on duty in the street outside, we were left in comparative peace. Later that night one enterprising journalist did manage to climb a water pipe from the gardens at the back, and got as far as my balcony, but fortunately he gave himself away by coughing and we called a bobby to eject him. Otherwise we were undisturbed.

  Keith, Biddy, and Sam all arrived together, having run the gauntlet of crowds and photographers to get to the front door. Biddy was curiously subdued for her, and she was dressed all in white. I knew that this was considered by some people as a color of mourning, so I carefully did not comment on it. If her mourning was genuine, it was more tactful not to mention it. If, on the other hand, she was merely making a flamboyant gesture to invite comment, I decided to leave that to the newspapers.

  Of the three of them, Keith appeared to have taken Bob’s death the hardest. In fact—one does not like to have to say such things about a man, but the truth is the truth—he had broken down completely in the Underground station and wept quite openly. It was most embarrassing for everybody, and I was relieved to see that by the evening he had his emotions more or less under control, although once or twice his voice trembled suspiciously. He was wearing a dark gray suit of surprising neatness, and a black woolen tie. It was the first sign of s
artorial respect that I had ever known him display.

  I confess that I had had some misgivings about the kind of mood that Sam might arrive in. He had been curiously abrupt on the telephone, and I knew that he was perfectly capable of turning up either so drunk as to be useless, or in a maddening frame of mind in which he stubbornly refused to speak or think about the matter in hand. However, he seemed, mercifully, to be just as usual. He ignored my question about where he had spent the afternoon, accepted a drink, looked around him, and said, “Well, I suppose this is as good a place as any to bury the body. Let’s get on with it.”

  Keith said, “Sam…must you?” in a choked sort of voice; and Biddy said, “What in hell do you mean?”

  “Northburn Films, of course,” said Sam. “It was fun while it lasted, but this is obviously the end of the line. Speaking personally, I’m not even going to suggest to Pudge that he put up any more cash. It would be throwing good money after bad. In any case, the sum would be astronomic. Reshooting all Bob’s scenes so far, plus the extra time we’d have to keep Fiametta; it’s just not on. Let alone the fact that we’d never find a new leading man right away, and the unit has to be either paid or disbanded. I’m sorry about it, but there it is. I suggest we draw a veil over Northburn Films and kiss it good-bye.”

  From the flippant way he spoke, you would never have guessed that he was pronouncing sentence of death on all his most cherished hopes, and resigning himself to financial ruin. In a strange way, he sounded almost relieved.

  “But Sam…” said Keith, and then checked himself.

  There was a silence.

  Biddy said, “I suppose Gervase Mountjoy’s father wouldn’t…”

  Sam shook his head. “Not this much,” he said. “A few thousand, perhaps. But not this.”

  “Then there’s nothing to be done?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “Bloody hell,” said Biddy quietly. From there she went on, right through her repertoire, until she had run out of swear words both in English and in French. I did not interrupt; frankly, I was fascinated and repelled at the same time. At last she stopped and said, “I’m sorry. It’s just that after all we’ve…”