Falling Star

by Patricia Moyes

  At all events she greeted me that morning with quite unnecessary effusion and bore me off to her dressing room. Fred Harborough was busy with a complicated lighting set-up that might take an hour or more to complete, leaving everyone else to the familiar occupation of waiting. I noticed that Sam, Keith, and Biddy were in a huddle at the far end of the platform, talking earnestly. Gervase, who should have been keeping Fiametta amused, was playing poker with George Temple and Fiametta’s stand-in. Fiametta’s hairdresser was flirting with the Property man; and Diana, the new Continuity Girl, was discussing plastic values in modern Italian films with the camera operator. It was no wonder that La Fettini felt neglected.

  As soon as she got me inside her dressing room, Fiametta launched herself into a tirade against Margery Phipps, proclaiming the greatest possible horror at Margery’s behavior and the greatest possible sympathy for me. What a dreadful girl! What disloyalty and ingratitude! Fiametta’s heart bled for me and for the troubles I had to contend with. The fact that she herself was responsible for the greater part of these troubles had apparently not occurred to her. I made noncommittal noises. It was true that I had been angry and upset at Margery’s behavior, but I could still sympathize with the girl over the humiliation she had suffered at Fiametta’s hands. Fiametta appeared to sense a certain coldness in my manner and shifted her line of approach.

  Her second gambit was to try to enlist my sympathy for Peppi, the monkey, who had apparently caught a bad chill and was languishing on the danger list in Fiametta’s suite at the Belgrave Towers Hotel, ministered to by Giulio and the maids. The fact that the creature was being visited twice a day by London’s most eminent veterinary surgeon was no consolation, I gathered, since two great Harley Street specialists, whom Fiametta had endeavored to consult, had politely but firmly declined to spend their time and talents treating a monkey. Growing tearful, she pointed out that she had offered them more money than most human beings could afford to pay for their services. It was, she maintained, monstrous and cruel of them to refuse.

  If Fiametta was hoping to touch a responsive chord in me, she could hardly have chosen a more unfortunate subject. The memory of the visit to Medham was still green, and my own view was that a world which no longer contained the repellent Peppi would be a cleaner and sweeter place. However, I did my best to be polite.

  “I hope he’ll be better soon,” I said with an effort. After all, Fiametta was our star, our only remaining one, as Keith had so pertinently pointed out at Medham. Incidentally, I had noticed, not without amusement, that this point of view no longer preoccupied Keith. Now that he himself had taken over the role of co-star, he was as vociferous as any of us in condemning Fiametta’s less dignified attempts to attract publicity. Quite simply, Keith was hogging every scrap of notoriety for himself, and did not welcome competition. However, all this is beside the point. As I have said, I was doing my best to be polite.

  “If Peppi dies,” announced Fiametta, in a fine flush of melodrama, “it will be entirely Giulio’s fault!”

  “Giulio?”

  “I told him this morning—‘Murderer!’ I said. ‘That poor little creature’s blood will be on your conscience for the rest of your life!’ ”

  “But what had Giulio to do with it?” I said although frankly I couldn’t have cared less.

  “What? Well may you ask, what! Taking the poor baby onto the balcony after midnight with that cold wind blowing! Giulio, of all people—Giulio, the great expert!”

  “Expert? You mean Giulio is a vet?”

  “Vet—what is this, please?”

  “A doctor for animals,” I explained.

  Fiametta laughed shortly. “Not for animals,” she said, “oh, no. Evidently he is not clever enough for that. Not animals, only people.”

  This was news to me. It had never occurred to me that Giulio had any function in life except to travel around the world at his wife’s heels, providing employment for barmen wherever he went and drawing a salary from her employers.

  “I had no idea that Giulio was a doctor,” I said. It was not an enthralling subject of conversation, but anything was better than discussing Peppi’s temperature.

  “No longer. You don’t imagine that Giulio would work when he can live from my earnings, do you?” said Fiametta spitefully. “Oh, yes, he has a fine life. Is it Giulio who has to be up at six o’clock for make-up? Is it Giulio who slaves at the studios all day? Is it Giulio who makes himself ill with emotion to give a great performance?”

  I considered several replies to these rhetorical questions, and rejected them all. The last thing I wanted was to find myself in the middle if there were going to be a domestic upheaval in the Fettini household. As a matter of fact, it had occurred to me more than once to wonder why Fiametta bothered to drag poor little Palladio around the world on her apron strings, but I certainly had no intention of asking her. I said nothing, and Fiametta seemed to lose interest in the subject.

  “Pah, Giulio!” she said. “He is not worth talking about. Tell me, Poodge—what of my costume for the ball scene? You don’t make me wear that terrible blue thing, no? It should be white tulle or chiffon with sables. I have explain to Sam.”

  It seemed to me that Fiametta was going out of her way to pick awkward topics. The battle of the ball dress had been going on ever since Fiametta’s return. Sam and Keith, on the one hand, were immovable objects. Fiametta, on the other, was doing her best to be an irresistible force. As usual, I was caught in the middle. I did my best.

  “What you call the ‘ball scene’ is a Saturday night hop in a Palais de Danse in Bermondsey, Fiametta,” I said, patiently. We’d been into it all a hundred times before. “We’ve got to have a little realism. The girls who go to that sort of affair just don’t wear white chiffon and sables.”

  Fiametta snorted. “Realism! Realism! That’s all you can say. Me, I am sick and tired to realism. You know what it mean? It mean that I must look ugly all the time!”

  “My dear Fiametta, you could never look ugly,” I began, in an attempt at gallantry, but she swept on regardless.

  “Never do I complain! Never once! With all these hideous dresses, I never complain. But one scene there is when I may look pretty. What is a ball scene but for the star to look pretty? You think my fans will like to see me in that bit of blue sacking? You will see. I can sell a picture in two minutes in white chiffon and sables!”

  I was aware of mixed emotions. The idea of white chiffon and sables was clearly ridiculous, but nevertheless I could not but concede that Fiametta had a point. All through the film, Sam and Keith had insisted that Fiametta’s clothes should be ruthlessly shabby—no glamorous rags or artfully cut sackcloth, but genuinely cheap, tawdry, and ill-fitting garments. The dance scene was the one moment in the film when it might have been legitimate to allow her to wear something attractive, and to cheat a little—as most film-makers do—in providing her with a dress which would be, strictly speaking, out of the financial reach of the character she was portraying. But Sam was adamant, and he and Keith between them had evolved a really repellent little number in blue taffeta, of which they were inordinately proud—“Isn’t it marvelous, Pudge? It’s so ghastly.” I could understand Fiametta’s point of view in wishing for at least one costume which would show off the famous Fettini curves to advantage; and I had a shrewd suspicion that she was right about her ability to sell a film to the public on the strength of her looks alone.

  “I agree that the blue is unnecessarily ugly,” I said. “I’ll speak to Sam about it.”

  “You will speak to Sam! I have spoke to Sam! Everybody speak to Sam! What’s the use? Sam, he is a monster. Sam do not care what happen to my reputation…”

  We were off again. By this time, I had grown fairly accustomed to these tirades of Fiametta’s, and I had even developed a technique of composing my features into an expression of kindly sympathy, and then allowing my mind to wander to quite different topics, while the tide of indignant oratory rolled harmlessly over my
head. But that was a technique which I used when there were several of us present—Fiametta did not usually waste her breath unless there was enough of an audience to make it worth while. As the sole recipient of a blast of Fettini temperament, it was harder to close one’s ears.

  Consequently, I was heartily thankful when, just as Fiametta paused to take breath for the first time, her dresser came in and said, “Excuse me, Mr. Croombe-Peters. You’re wanted.”

  “Go away, Hilda,” said Fiametta. “Mr. Croombe-Peters is busy. He is talking to me.”

  “Excuse me, Miss Fettini,” said Hilda firmly. She was a stout, gray-haired woman who had had thirty years’ experience of spoilt young actresses; she sometimes reminded me of a wardress in a women’s prison. “Mr. Croombe-Peters is wanted. Important.”

  “What is it, Hilda?” I asked.

  Hilda did not reply, and I was surprised to see that she looked embarrassed. I had not thought it possible. “If you’d just step outside, Mr. Croombe-Peters,” she said.

  “Sorry, Fiametta,” I said. “I’ll see you later.”

  Fiametta shot me one of her famous looks—the sort that can blister paint at a hundred yards—and turned her back ostentatiously. As I followed Hilda out into the passage, I was uneasily aware that we would have trouble with La Fettini for the rest of the day. Once outside, Hilda said to me in an urgent whisper, “I’m sorry, Mr. Peters. I couldn’t say it in there. They’ve got her down at the other end of the platform. Mr. Potman said to tell you to get her out of here at all costs.”

  “Hilda!” Fiametta’s voice came in a pettish shout from her dressing room.

  Hilda hesitated. “I’d better go,” she said, and went back into the canvas booth.

  I made my way onto the platform. There was an anxious little knot of people gathered at the far end of the station. I could see Gervase and Sam and Keith, and they were clustered around somebody, talking earnestly. As I approached, Sam looked up and saw me, and an expression of intense relief crossed his face.

  “Ah, Pudge,” he said. “Just the person we want. Mr. Croombe-Peters will be able to help you,” he added to someone in the center of the group. “Just leave everything to him.”

  He stepped aside and I found myself looking straight into the limpid blue eyes of Sonia Meakin.

  I was considerably taken aback, but I hoped that I did not show it. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Meakin?” I asked.

  Before she could answer, Sam said, “Mrs. Meakin has come to collect Bob’s things—the odd bits and pieces that were in his dressing room. You’ve got them, haven’t you, Pudge?”

  To tell the truth, I had forgotten all about the wretched things. Ever since the painful scene in Fiametta’s dressing room the previous Friday, I hadn’t given a thought to the cardboard box. Now, sickeningly, I remembered exactly where it was. It was still standing on a corner of Fiametta’s table in her canvas booth. I suspected that Sam knew this as well as I did.

  I was certainly in a fix. I could not possibly go back to Fiametta’s room and collect the box without arousing her curiosity and bringing her out onto the platform; and if she were to meet Sonia Meakin face to face, and here, of all places, the fat would be in the fire all right. As it was, Fiametta might come out at any moment. Obviously, the important thing was to get Bob’s widow out of the place as fast as possible.

  I said the first thing that came into my head. “Oh, I’m most awfully sorry, Mrs. Meakin. I’m afraid your husband’s things are not here.”

  Sonia Meakin looked at me steadily. “Where are they?” she asked. “I would like them.”

  “Well, as a matter of fact,…” I groped in my mind for a suitable lie. “As a matter of fact, Margery Phipps has them, our Continuity Girl. That is…”

  “Then perhaps she would give them to me.”

  “Well, it’s a little difficult—you see, she’s no longer with us. It’s rather a long story. I say,” I added, with what I hoped was the enthusiastic note of someone who has just had a good idea, “I’ll tell you what. Come with me to the coffee bar around the corner and I’ll telephone her. We can have a cup of coffee at the same time. I’m terribly thirsty. How would that be?”

  I could feel my cheeks burning, and the trickle of sweat from my brow. I have never been a very good liar, and I was acutely aware of the cool, steady gaze of those enormous blue eyes. The others, of course, had melted discreetly away, leaving me to cope alone, as usual.

  For a moment Sonia Meakin looked at me in silence. Then she said, “This is where—it happened, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I wouldn’t stay down here if I were you. You’ll only distress yourself. Come with me and…”

  “That was the staircase, was it?” she asked. Her voice was deep and clear, like a dark river. “He ran down that staircase, and fell onto the track.”

  “Please, Mrs. Meakin,” I said, “there’s no sense in going over all this. Let’s go up to the coffee bar and…”

  “Was anybody near him when he fell?”

  Sonia Meakin’s question was so unexpected and apparently senseless that for a moment I just looked at her with what I am afraid must have been an idiotically vague expression. Then I said, “I don’t know what you mean. Lots of people were near him—all around him. We were shooting a scene.”

  “I know that.” She sounded impatient. “I mean, did anyone actually touch him, could anyone have pushed…?”

  This was dangerous stuff, and I began to get angry. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that Gervase Mountjoy was leaning up against the wall nearby, ostensibly reading a paper, but actually listening intently to our conversation. I said brusquely, “Mrs. Meakin, I have no idea what you are driving at. Your husband stumbled on the stairway and fell onto the line. He did it in front of a crowd of witnesses, any one of whom will confirm that nobody could possibly have touched him. The coroner’s inquest made it perfectly clear what happened. I think you are only causing yourself distress by staying down here. Come and have some coffee.” And with that, I took her arm and fairly hustled her up the staircase and out into the sunshine.

  Sonia Meakin did not say another word until we were installed in a mock-Tudor inglenook in the coffee bar around the corner. I had the impression that she was watching me carefully, sizing me up. It was not a pleasant sensation. She seemed altogether too cool and calculating, and I was uneasy in my mind about the real purpose of her visit.

  When I had ordered coffee and biscuits, I settled down to make some sort of small talk until I could decently get rid of the woman altogether. The all-important thing, to my mind, was to prevent her from trying to go down to the location again. I was halfway through an admittedly feeble anecdote about an Englishman, an Irishman, and a Scotsman when Sonia Meakin suddenly said, “Hadn’t you better go and telephone her?”

  “Telephone? Who?”

  “The girl who has my husband’s things. Margery Phipps, I believe you said her name was.”

  I had completely forgotten my previous remarks, and this flustered me somewhat. “It’s a slightly awkward situation, Mrs. Meakin,” I said. “You see, the day after—I mean, when Miss Phipps had packed up all the things that your husband left behind—that is, the things from his dressing room, you understand—the day after—on Monday, I should say…”

  “The day after what?” she asked. I had the feeling that she was laughing at me.

  I pulled myself together. “Last Friday,” I said with dignity, “Miss Phipps packed up all your late husband’s belongings and took them home with her, intending to bring them to the office on Monday morning, whence they would have been returned to you. Yesterday, however, she was compelled for personal reasons to resign her position with the unit. It all happened rather suddenly, and I am afraid that I have not yet made any arrangements…”

  “That is why I asked you to telephone her,” said Sonia Meakin gently.

  Well, there was nothing for it but downright deception. I knew exactly where Bob’s things really were, and I
had promised Sam that I would not try to contact Margery. To put a good face on things, however, I went into the phone box, dialed TIM and listened for some time to the golden-voiced operator informing me that on the third stroke it would be eleven twenty-one precisely, and then went back to the table.

  “You spoke to her?” Sonia Meakin asked, with, I thought, a note of anxiety in her voice.

  “Yes, indeed,” I said easily. “It’s all arranged.” I found that lying was not as difficult as I had anticipated. In fact, it was almost enjoyable in a curious way. “She is sending the box around to the office this afternoon; it will be there by six o’clock. Would you like to collect it then, or shall I have the things sent to you?”

  Sonia Meakin gave me another of her long, cool looks. “I’ll collect it, if I may,” she said. “That’s your office in Duck Street off Shaftesbury Avenue.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “Number 38, fourth floor. Just ask for me. Any time after six.”

  By the time we had finished our coffee, and I had seen her safely into a taxi, it was getting on for midday. I hurried back to the location, and was surprised to find nobody there except Harry, Props, and a couple of electricians—all busily engaged in packing up.

  “Good Lord,” I said, “finished already?”

  “We only had the one scene to shoot,” said Harry. “Seems all yesterday’s stuff went like a dream, and we got Fiametta into the can in three takes. Sam broke early for lunch, and he’s given the boys the afternoon off.”

  “What’s that?” I asked sharply.

  “Well,” said Harry, “it stands to reason, doesn’t it? We’re finished here and we can’t start on Hampstead Heath until tomorrow, when we’ve got the pearlies called. That’s what the boys appreciate so much about Sam, getting the odd few hours off like this.”