Falling Star

by Patricia Moyes

  I stood up. “Now that that display is over,” I said, “perhaps you’ll all listen to me for a bit.” It was a new and, I must admit, pleasant sensation to be in control of the situation for once. I did not hurry. I took a sip of my drink and lit a cigarette. “For a start,” I said, Northburn Films is neither going to fold up nor go bankrupt.”

  “Pudge,” said Sam, “I’ve already told you. I’m not going to let you or your father…”

  I raised my hand. “Just a moment, if you please. Northburn Films will continue, and Street Scene will be completed, and I will not be paying for it. Nor will my father, nor, most certainly, will Edward Mountjoy.”

  There was no doubt about the sensation caused by that remark. I had never seen all three of them reduced to complete silence before, waiting for me to go on talking. I felt myself smiling, although it was a serious moment.

  “I am well aware,” I went on, “that some of you have never had a very high opinion of my capabilities as a businessman. Some of you have questioned my usefulness to Northburn Films.”

  Keith made a small, impatient movement and started to say something, but Biddy checked him.

  “Nevertheless,” I continued, “it is a fortunate thing for the company that at least one member of the Board had some experience of the ways of finance, however inadequate. You may remember that I once worked in an insurance office. My time there was not, I think, entirely wasted.”

  “But, Pudge,” Sam looked up, enormously interested, “I thought…”

  “I had the foresight,” I said quietly, “to insure Northburn Films against various contingencies…”

  “We had the routine insurance, of course.” Keith spoke almost angrily. “Injury to technicians and actors, life insurance for everyone.”

  “I wonder who’ll get Bob’s?” said Biddy, thoughtfully.

  “Fire and theft insurance,” Keith went on. “The usual things. Not…”

  “I would like to point out,” I said, “that copies of all our insurance policies were sent to each of you for approval before I signed them on your behalf. I can only presume that you did not take the trouble to read them.”

  “I can’t read and write,” objected Biddy. “There isn’t time.”

  Sam and Keith said nothing. Of course, they had never even glanced at the policies—just dismissed them as another piece of what Sam called Pudgery—initialed them and sent them back.

  “I did take a look at mine,” said Keith, at length. “I thought it was just the normal…”

  “Well, it wasn’t,” I said. “I have a copy of the relevant policy here, and I shall read it to you…”

  “Oh God, Pudge, don’t do that,” said Biddy. “Just tell us.”

  “Very well. The company is insured and fully indemnified against any production losses or extra expenses arising from the injury, illness, or accidental death of either Miss Fiametta Fettini or Mr. Robert Meakin, always provided that the injury, illness, or death is directly ascribable to the artist’s work on the film and is not caused by any negligent or deliberate act on the part of…”

  Sam said, “What exactly does ‘fully indemnified’ mean?” He sounded both excited and wary, like a man who dared not believe good news.

  “What it says. Our entire production costs for shooting Bob’s scenes—Fiametta’s overtime, unit expenses, and so forth—will be met by the insurance company. In fact, we can wipe the slate clean and start again.”

  “And if we get decent weather and no hold-ups…”

  “Exactly,” I said to Sam. “We’ll be doing extremely well.”

  There was a dazed silence, and then Keith began to laugh with an almost hysterical intensity. “How bloody funny,” he said. I was aware that I had never heard him swear before. “Bloody funny. Here we all were, thinking we were ruined, and in fact poor old Bob’s death has saved the situation. Better that one man should die for the good of all…”

  “Shut up, Keith,” said Biddy.

  “But don’t you see how funny it is? If we’d known, we could have pushed him under a train long ago.”

  “Keith!” Without warning, Biddy stood up and slapped her husband hard across the face.

  Keith was suddenly silent. He raised his hand and rubbed his cheek in a surprised way. There was an extended pause.

  Sam broke it by saying, bluntly, “Will they pay up?”

  “They’ll have to,” I said. “If all goes well at the inquest they haven’t a leg to stand on.”

  “What do you mean,” said Sam, “‘if all goes well’?”

  “We need a verdict of accidental death,” I said. “That’s a foregone conclusion, of course. Then we want it clearly established that the accident took place while Bob was in the course of his work for us. No dispute about that, either. The only danger is any suspicion that his death might have been caused by negligence on the part of a member of the unit. For instance, if it was suggested that a make-up man had left grease on the bottom step, or…”

  “That’s ridiculous,” said Biddy. “Of course nobody was negligent. I mean, we all saw what happened. He just ran onto the platform and stumbled and went over the edge onto the line. His knee must have given out. He’d obviously twisted it when Fiametta pushed him down the stairs.”

  “Biddy,” I said severely, “I beg you never to make a remark like that again, even in the privacy of this room. Bob’s quarrel with Fiametta, and her deliberate action in pushing him downstairs, are the only possible grounds which the insurance company could cite for refusing to pay our claim.”

  Sam looked at me with a certain amount of respect. “So that was why…”

  “Yes,” I said. “That was why I suggested that you talk to the unit before the doctors and the police arrived, and ask them not to talk about the squabble. Frankly, the avoidance of unpleasant publicity had very little to do with it. I suppose the story will leak out eventually, but if we can keep it quiet until after the inquest at least…”

  “They’re a good bunch,” said Sam. “I don’t think they’ll talk.”

  “Mind you,” I said, “I don’t want to give the impression that we’re suppressing facts in order to press a fraudulent claim. My own view is that the insurance company would have to pay anyhow. But they would be sure to raise the matter, and that would lead to dreary and unproductive wrangling. You do see what I mean?”

  “Perfectly, Pudge,” said Biddy. She looked straight at me as though she did not like me very much. I suppose she was annoyed at not being the center of the conversation for once in a way.

  “All four of us,” I said, “will probably have to give evidence at the inquest. I suggest we simply say that Bob stumbled on the steps—which is perfectly true—lost his balance, and overshot the platform. Are we agreed?”

  After that, the discussion took on a more practical and distinctly more cheerful tone. We weighed up the merits and possible availability of other actors who might take on Robert Meakin’s part. We replanned our schedule so as to waste the minimum amount of time. We drank coffee and ate sandwiches and became absorbed in the future, which is the best possible cure for depression. Even the incident of ejecting the nimble but bronchitic reporter from the balcony, which happened soon after midnight, became almost amusing. We parted at half-past one in a comparatively cheerful mood.

  The very next day, however, we were meeting again in a blacker atmosphere. London was seething with rumors, and it had taken very little time for them to find their way back to us. In bars, restaurants, dressing rooms, and film studios, wherever the theatrical profession congregates, the whispers were growing louder every minute.

  “My dear, haven’t you heard? Well, I got it from Madge who heard from Harry who’s a great friend of Keith Pardoe. I promised I’d say nothing, so don’t tell a soul, but there’s no doubt at all that Bob Meakin killed himself. Why? Fiametta Fettini, of course. Everyone knows he was madly in love with her, no matter how much he denied it.”

  “But of course it was suicide. Peter dined la
st night with Olive, who knows Fiametta Fettini’s stand-in, who was actually there. And she says that he simply flung himself under the train—yes, my dear, literally—of course, they’re trying to hush it up.”

  “Suicide? Oh, undoubtedly. But nothing to do with La Fettini. The truth—keep it to yourself, dear boy—is that he was dying. Yes, cancer, I’m afraid. I do know what I’m talking about, as a matter of fact, dear boy. His doctor happens to be a friend of Sidney’s mother’s doctor and…”

  “Yes, no doubt at all, I’m afraid. You’ll treat this as confidential, won’t you? You see, he was in danger of serious trouble. Yes, the police. No, no, I wouldn’t like to be specific— de mortuis, you know—but one can hazard a guess…”

  It was that afternoon that the press discovered Fiametta’s hide-out. I shall never be able to prove my suspicions about that, but the fact remains that several enterprising reporters got in, and the evening papers carried a headlined story of an alleged interview with Fiametta, in the course of which she pointed out at some length that she and Bob had been devoted to each other, but that their love was doomed owing to her religious scruples concerning divorce, coupled with Bob’s high moral principles. She did not, I was gratified to see, claim any high moral principles for herself; in view of her notorious past, she could hardly have done so. She added that she was smiling bravely through her tears, and that the show must go on. She afterward denied to me having said any such thing, and it is really irrelevant whether or not she did. The fact remains that the article appeared and fanned the flames of the suicide rumor. And suicide, I knew, was not covered by our insurance policy.

  So the Board of Northburn Films met again, and we decided that, in order to quash any suspicion of suicide, we would admit at the inquest that Bob had had a fall earlier in the day, which had undoubtedly affected his leg. We would not mention what caused him to fall. I also dispatched our resident dragon, Louise Cohen, to sit on La Fettini’s head in the country until the inquest was safely over. I announced to the press that Miss Fettini was suffering from exhaustion and a bad cold. The cold was fictitious, but with Louise around the house, I felt sure that the exhaustion would be genuine, and the thought pleased me.

  We were, I suppose, very lucky. The inquest went like clockwork. Various people were called to give evidence of Bob’s happy disposition and successful career. Sam and I described the accident, supported by Fred Harborough and Margery Phipps. The driver of the train told the story from his point of view.

  “He sort of stumbled, sir, and come right over the edge of the platform. I jammed on my emergency brakes, but it was too late.”

  Keith related, in a voice tense with emotion, how he had come out of Fiametta Fettini’s dressing room and onto the platform just in time to see the accident; how he had shouted at Bob, but to no avail. “He was running so fast,” he said, several times. “There was nothing he could do, you see, he was running so fast.”

  The surprise witness at the inquest was Bob’s widow, whom nobody had seen before. The press had, indeed, unearthed the fact that he had been married at Caxton Hall some fifteen years previously to a lady named Sonia Marchmont. This was about a year before his appearance in The Square Peg, the film which had rocketed him to sudden success. We were all puzzled because at the epoch of The Square Peg there had been no Mrs. Meakin in evidence—nor had there been since. Bob was frequently referred to as “the screen’s most eligible bachelor,” and he had never repudiated that title. His name was constantly being linked with those of various glittering young actresses and socialites, and there was much speculation, some of it vicious, as to why he had never married. Now we knew.

  Mrs. Meakin, having resisted all efforts of the press to discover her whereabouts during the past few days, appeared out of the blue at the inquest. She must have married very young, for she looked no more than thirty; she was blonde and demure and very appealing in a simple black dress; and, in an almost inaudible whisper, she told the coroner a strange story.

  She and Bob, she said, had been a devoted couple for the past fifteen years. When he had achieved meteoric success as the young “lone wolf” of The Square Peg, it had been mutually agreed by Bob, his then agent—who had since died—and herself that his appeal to his fans would be greatly lessened if it were known that he had a wife. So she had been installed in a small cottage in the country, where Bob spent all the time that he could. Sometimes, she said, she came to London. She had a key to his house in Mount Street. Recently, she added, they had sold the cottage and bought a country house near Haywards Heath, so as to be nearer to London, and Bob spent as much time as he could there. The village knew them as Mr. and Mrs. Marchmont. When the coroner expressed surprise that Bob had not been recognized by his neighbors, Mrs. Meakin looked embarrassed and whispered that he dressed so differently in the country and wore heavy spectacles as a disguise. I understood at once, of course, what she meant. Remove the toupee, the discreetly applied grease paint, the lifts in the heels of the shoes, the—let us be honest—the corsets, and few people would have recognized Robert Meakin. As I discovered afterward, it was, in fact, something of a routine joke in the village that twenty years ago Mr. Marchmont must have looked very like Robert Meakin. I hope that it never got to Bob’s ears when he was alive, because it would have upset him greatly.

  In any case, Mrs. Meakin’s appearance and her evidence suited us very well. Firstly, it confirmed that Bob had no possible reason to commit suicide; and secondly, it set the hounds of the press off after a new hare. The coroner, an elderly and impressionable man, was obviously much taken by Mrs. Meakin. He expressed the court’s deepest sympathy at her terrible loss; he exonerated Northburn Films from any hint of negligence; he even recalled the doctor to the witness stand to make him confirm that Bob had not been suffering from any illness or disability at the time of his death. I was watching with great care and interest the reactions of the lawyer retained on a watching brief by our insurance company, and I was delighted to see him grow steadily glummer. It took the jury only five minutes to come back with a verdict of accidental death.

  As soon as the proceedings were over, the pack of reporters converged as a man on to the focal point of Mrs. Meakin, and we were able to escape more-or-less unscathed. I was surprised, I must say, when in the course of the next few days I realized what a willing quarry Bob’s widow had been. I dare say you read “What Life with Bob Meant to Me,” by Sonia Meakin in the Sunday Siren, and the open letter which she wrote to Fiametta Fettini in the Daily Smudge under the title “I Have No Hard Feelings, My Dear…,” not to mention the ghosted autobiography which was serialized in the Evening Scoop. The strange thing was that Mrs. Meakin had no need to sell her soul for money. Bob died intestate—like so many actors he had never bothered to make a will—consequently, as his widow, she inherited everything. Everything included the life insurance policy which we had taken out for him, a little matter of forty thousand pounds. Even if Bob had left only debts otherwise, there would surely have been enough to see her through. I could only presume that, after so many years of deliberately shunning the limelight, Sonia Meakin found some sort of perverse pleasure in being the center of attraction. In any case, it was none of my business. My main feeling toward her was one of gratitude for diverting the attentions of Fleet Street away from Northburn Films for the time being.

  My next step was to press our claim against the insurance company and get it settled, and although I was not looking forward to the job, there was a certain compensation in the flattering way that Sam, Biddy, and Keith behaved toward me at that time. I was regarded as the savior of Northburn Films, and I could do no wrong. Nevertheless, not having such boundless faith in my own abilities as was evinced by my fellow Board members, I took the precaution of consulting a good lawyer before proceeding with the claim. He gave it as his opinion that we had a cast-iron case, and undertook to handle it on our behalf. I left everything in his hands. I was only worried about one thing.

  The following morni
ng, I drove down to Buckinghamshire. It was a perfect summer day—it would have to be, since we were not shooting. One of the occupational hazards of film-making is that one tends to regard the weather as good or bad solely in relation to whether or not it serves the film’s immediate purposes. I remember once spending a whole cloudless, sunny day in Richmond Park, paying two stars and a crowd of extras for doing absolutely nothing because Fred Harborough refused to shoot until there were some clouds in the sky. That is the sort of thing that drives Executive Producers into early graves.

  Anyhow, this was a perfect summer’s day, and I made good time to the village of Medham. It was midday as I drove up the narrow main street, and The Red Lion looked inviting. I dared not go in, however, for I knew it would be full of reporters, and I had no desire to be recognized. I kept straight on through the village, took the first left and first right, according to my instructions, and began to look for a driveway on the left marked “Meadow Croft.”

  I need not have bothered. Around the next bend in the lane, I had to jab at my brakes to avoid running down a crowd of people, both male and female, whom I had no difficulty identifying as reporters, and who were clustered in the middle of the road, oblivious to any traffic. I stopped the car, got out, and went to see what had caused the excitement.

  In the center of the group stood Fiametta Fettini. She was barefoot, and wearing a floating black negligée made of some diaphanous material, and in her arms she was clutching a small, obscene-looking monkey with a naked pink behind. She was cooing to it and feeding it with bananas, as the flash bulbs exploded and the cameras clicked.

  “Yais, I am ill, it is true,” she was saying as I came up. “But not from a cold, like they say. From a broken heart. Yes, print it—a broken heart! My doctor say I must not leave my bed, and if my darling Peppi had not escaped into the road, I would never…”