Falling Star

by Patricia Moyes

  Chelsea Mansions was a vast new concrete structure with no apparent raison d’être except to provide a minimum area of square footage in which to house a maximum number of people. It was, however, tricked out with the garnish of so-called luxury—a word frequently bandied about by those who, poor devils, have no conception of its real meaning. “Luxury” was here represented by a hall porter in over-elaborate uniform, a worn and dirty carpet in the foyer—where linoleum or tiles would have been infinitely more attractive and practical—and a couple of immense vases filled with plastic lilies and carnations. Henry approached the porter, produced his official card, and was given the key to No. 716. Then we went up to the seventh floor.

  Margery’s flat was small but beautifully furnished. It consisted of a single large room, which was approached through a minuscule hallway. The room had two windows, both overlooking Dredge Street. To the right, a door from the main living room led into a box-like kitchen; to the left, an identical door gave access to a dwarf-size bathroom. These necessary offices boasted a window apiece, giving the occupant of the flat two more opportunities of viewing the narrow and sordid pavements of Dredge Street, the garish posters of the small and arty cinema opposite, and the rear courtyards of a row of Regency houses whose frontages stood on the more fashionable length of Flaxman Avenue. The flat had the depressing, heavy atmosphere of disused premises. I walked over to the right-hand window.

  “So she jumped from here,” I said, for want of something to say.

  Henry replied seriously, “No, she didn’t.”

  Remembering his earlier hints, I amended, “I should say, it was from here that she was pushed.” I did not intend to be caught out in any inaccuracies, whether of fact or of grammar.

  To my surprise, however, Henry went on. “No. Not from here. From the kitchen.”

  “The kitchen? What an extraordinary thing.”

  “It’s not the only extraordinary thing about this case,” said Henry, with more than a touch of gloom.

  “But how do you know…?”

  “I haven’t been able to find any witness who actually saw her come through the window,” said Henry, “which isn’t surprising. Very few people walk about the streets with their eyes fixed on seventh-story windows. But once she had fallen, and the crowd had collected down below, everyone agrees that it was the kitchen window which was swinging open. And my men found some strands of wool from her cardigan caught on the window latch.”

  “But why…?” I began, and then realized that I was talking to myself. Henry, with that peculiar self-contained expression that I have often noticed when he is concentrating hard, had wandered off into the bathroom. I decided to take a look in the kitchen, since it appeared to have been the center of the affair.

  The first thing that struck me was that Margery had certainly been anxious to do things the hard way, if she had, in fact, thrown herself out of this window; I also reflected that, if Henry’s fantastic theories were true and she had been murdered, the murderer must have been a maniac to choose this room for his defenestration. The kitchen was, as I have indicated, extremely small. It possessed three features—a sink, a refrigerator, and an electric stove—and each of these occupied the whole of one wall, the fourth wall being taken up with the door from the living room. The window, set high and with a broad sill, could only be reached by clambering over the electric stove; but a small wooden stool, liberally scuffed with the marks of stiletto heels, was placed so as to indicate that this was the method Margery had used to reach the window when the kitchen needed ventilation. The window itself was of the casement type, divided vertically by a metal bar into two sections, each of which opened like a door onto the dusty Chelsea equivalent of fresh air. The more I looked, the more baffled I felt. In the living room, a window seat ran along the length of the Dredge Street wall, giving easy access to the large, low windows. Whether the thing had been suicide or murder, it was almost inconceivable that anybody should have chosen the kitchen window when the other was available.

  “This was a very expensive flat, you know. Still is, in fact.” I became aware of Henry’s voice behind me, and turned. He was standing in the doorway which separated the kitchen from the living room. “I’d be interested to know how she was able to afford it,”

  “She was a key member of a film unit,” I replied with a certain sense of pique—if we are to be forced by the unions into paying fantastic salaries to our technicians, we might as well be given credit for it. “Such people are not underpaid, you know.”

  “All the same,” Henry gestured vaguely. “Have you looked around? Brand new television set, pure silk interlined curtains, latest model of electric stove with all the gadgets, quilted satin bedhead, deep pile carpet in white of all ridiculous colors—isn’t it frightful?”

  I could not make him out. “It is a very luxurious and well-appointed flat,” I began.

  “Isn’t it?” said Henry. “That just about sums it up. Did she really have such appalling taste?”

  “Margery Phipps had very good taste, and I think that her apartment shows it,” I said rather coldly.

  I remembered Tibbett’s shabby Victorian abode, and decided that he must be suffering from understandable jealousy. After all, he was near the top of a difficult and competitive profession, and it must have been galling to reflect that he was almost certainly not earning as much as a Continuity Girl.

  “You may consider,” I said, “that people like Margery are overpaid, but I can assure you that in terms of value for money a good Continuity Girl is…”

  Henry seemed to have lost interest in the subject. He had walked into the kitchen, and was examining the gleaming electric stove.

  “I wish,” he said, “that I could afford something like this for Emmy. She has a terrible time with ours; it’s about fifteen years old. D’you know how these things work?”

  I went over to the kitchen doorway. Henry was looking admiringly at the battery of knobs, switches, clocks, and levers.

  “I can see that it has one of these new eye-level ovens with a fireproof glass door,” I said, “and a built-in clock that has stopped at a quarter to four. As to the dial that’s set at three-quarters of an hour, I suppose it’s some sort of timing device, but don’t ask me how it all works. It looks to me like the sort of monster that wakes you in the morning with a boiled egg, a cup of tea, and the weather forecast.”

  “Um,” said Henry. “Yes.” He began opening cupboards above and below the sink. As far as I could see, there was nothing remarkable in them, just neat glass jars of tea, coffee, sugar, and rice; packets of dried fruit, matches, and detergent; a half-burnt candle and several pieces of string; some plastic bags and a selection of dishcloths. Henry, too, seemed to find the exercise unrewarding.

  He straightened up, turned to me, and said, “Now you can tell me something. I’ve asked you before. Which member of your unit might have been blackmailed by Margery Phipps, and what about?”

  “Nobody,” I said. “It’s a preposterous idea.”

  “I can’t agree that it’s preposterous,” said Henry. “It seems to me to be obvious. Margery was the daughter of a professional blackmailer, and her letter to Mrs. Arbuthnot makes it plain that she was dabbling in her father’s old game. A lot of wealthy people work in films, and some of them must have secrets. I’m fairly sure that this wasn’t her first excursion into crime, though her note indicates that it was her most important one to date. Frankly, I don’t believe that this flat was bought and furnished out of her legitimate earnings.”

  I laughed. “My dear Tibbett,” I said, “I have no idea what Margery may or may not have done in the past, but I can assure you that there is nobody on the Street Scene unit who would be worth five minutes of a blackmailer’s time. You surely must know that we’re making the film on a shoestring. Why, at one time we were very nearly bankrupt. If what you say about Margery is true, then her victims must have been previous acquaintances.”

  Henry looked thoughtful. “What about Fia
metta Fettini?” he asked.

  “Fiametta must be pretty rich, certainly,” I said with some feeling. “At least, judging by the amount we’ve had to pay her. But I can’t imagine that there’s any sort of publicity, however distasteful, that she wouldn’t welcome with open arms. She’s married to that poor little Palladio man, and yet look how she openly pursued Bob Meakin when he was alive. And she makes no secret of the fact that she got her first chance in films by sleeping with some director or other. She’s nothing but a cheap little tart, and her publicity agent trades on it.”

  “There are other things besides a disreputable sex life,” Henry began.

  I cut him short. “I defy you,” I said, “to mention anything which could harm Fiametta. She’s written newspaper articles about how she was arrested for stealing in Naples when she was thirteen, and seduced by her uncle when she was fourteen, and set up in a love nest by this film director when she was sixteen. The only hold Margery might possibly have had over her would have been a threat to expose that in fact she was perfectly respectable and had been reared in a convent.”

  Henry sighed. “All right, you win,” he said. “What about the other people on the unit?”

  “Sam Potman,” I said, “has no assets in this world except his remarkable talent. The little bit of money he did manage to save has all gone toward making this film. He’s not married; he’s perfectly respectable; and he cares about nothing except his work. The only thing I can think of that would upset him would be to be deprived of the chance of doing his job, and no power on earth could do that. Even if Street Scene had gone bankrupt, Sam would’ve got a job straight away with one of the big companies. He’s good and they know it.”

  “Keith Pardoe,” said Henry, “struck me as being rather an unstable character.”

  “Well,” I said, “he’s artistic. One has to make allowances.”

  “Does one?” Henry said with a smile.

  “Yes, I think one does. You can’t expect a man of Keith’s brilliance to behave quite like other people.” Having said this, I felt I could let go a little bit. “I won’t pretend,” I went on, “that Keith doesn’t infuriate me sometimes. Especially since he took over Bob’s part, he seems to think of nothing except his personal ambition. He has become vain and self-opinionated and—however, all this is beside the point. Of all of us, Keith is the poorest. He has absolutely no money except what he is earning on Street Scene, and he appears to be spending most of that in ostentatious living.”

  “Would you say,” Henry asked carefully, “that his prospects were good?”

  “My dear Tibbett, far be it from me to start predicting the future. Anybody who could tell in advance whether a picture was going to be popular or not would be a millionaire long since. All I can say is that if things go as we hope, Keith Pardoe will be an international star. Even if the film doesn’t make the impact that we expect it to, his name is already well enough known to guarantee him good parts in the future. I believe he’s already had several tentative offers, but he’s wisely not accepting anything until Street Scene has been shown.”

  “I see,” said Henry. “What about his wife?”

  “Biddy is a splendid girl,” I said quickly. “I know some people are upset by the way she swears and so forth, but I assure you…”

  Henry smiled. “I liked her,” he said. “But that wasn’t what I meant. She’s a successful writer, isn’t she? I was just wondering whether she might have a lot of money or a guilty secret or both.”

  I shook my head. “She’s not wealthy,” I said, “and, like Sam, she put all she had—the proceeds from her first book—into the film. As for guilty secrets—can you imagine Biddy standing for blackmail? ‘Publish and be damned’ would certainly be her attitude, but she wouldn’t say anything as mild as ‘damned,’ not if I know her.”

  “Hm,” said Henry. “That leaves you.”

  “Me? What do you mean, me?”

  “You are wealthy, and you have a social position to keep up. I don’t imagine you’d say ‘publish and be damned,’ would you?”

  I admit that I was very angry at the insolent tone in Tibbett’s voice. “I won’t even bother,” I said coldly, “to defend myself against your insinuations. I hope it will be enough to satisfy you if I point out that I can account for every minute of my time throughout the day when Margery—died. And I have witnesses to prove it.”

  Henry had pulled out a small and shabby-looking notebook and a ballpoint pen. “I’d be very interested to hear what you did that day,” he said. “Forgive me if I jot it down. It’s not an official statement, you understand. This is just to help my memory, which isn’t very efficient.”

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll tell you. I got to my office at nine A.M. and dictated letters to my secretary for an hour. Then I took a cab to the Underground station, where the unit was shooting. I went immediately into Miss Fettini’s dressing room, where I discussed various matters with her, including her costume for the ball scene. She will certainly remember. It must have been soon after eleven that I was called out by Hilda, Miss Fettini’s dresser, to go and speak to Mrs. Robert Meakin.”

  Henry looked up sharply. “Sonia Meakin?” he said. “What was she doing there?”

  “She had come to collect some odds and ends that had been left behind in her husband’s dressing room,” I explained.

  “And so you gave them to her?”

  “Well, no, not exactly. I couldn’t lay hands on them for the moment. Sam was anxious for Mrs. Meakin to leave the location; he was afraid she might be distressed by the associations of the place. And then…”

  Henry grinned. “And then there was Fiametta Fettini,” he said.

  “Quite.”

  “Did they meet, in fact?”

  “No. I suggested to Mrs. Meakin that she might like some coffee, and I took her to the Olde Tudor Espresso Bar around the corner. We were there until nearly midday. I told her to come to my office during the afternoon to collect Bob’s things and then I saw her to a taxi. She can confirm all this.”

  “Good,” said Henry. “What did you do then?”

  “I went back to the station, and found that the unit had packed up for the day and that Sam had given everyone the afternoon off. Typically wasteful. Just because we were two days ahead of schedule… Anyhow, there was nothing I could do about it.”

  “And how did you spend your afternoon off?”

  I laughed, a trifle bitterly. “Afternoon off?” I repeated. “I certainly couldn’t afford any such luxury. I went straight back to my office and carried on with my work. Sylvia went out and got me some sandwiches and coffee at about half-past one. Miss Cohen, the Production Manager, was in my office from soon after two until about three. After that, I worked on my schedules until five minutes to four, when I went down to the private cinema in the basement for rushes. I think I told you that nobody else showed up except Sam, Fred Harborough, and Diana, the new Continuity Girl. By the time we’d seen the rushes and had some fairly lengthy discussion about them, it was getting on for five. I went back to my office to finish things up, and I was just on the point of leaving, at five past six, when Sonia Meakin arrived to fetch her husband’s things. It was she who told me about Margery’s death. It was already in the papers.”

  I paused to light a cigarette, and became aware that Henry was looking at me steadily.

  “Why?” he said.

  “Why? Well, you know how fast these things get reported…”

  “I didn’t mean that. I meant why did Sonia Meakin tell you?”

  “Because—I don’t know.” I reflected with irritation that Henry was pushing me into a position where I would have to go into the whole dreary and irrelevant story of how I had pretended that Margery had the cardboard box, when in fact it was in Fiametta’s dressing room.

  “What made Mrs. Meakin connect Margery Phipps with Street Scene?” Henry pursued. “She’d never been on the set before, had she?”

  “No. I don’t know how she knew
. I suppose Bob must have mentioned Margery’s name. It wasn’t a secret, after all.”

  “What exactly did Mrs. Meakin say to you?”

  “I can’t remember. Something like ‘Have you seen this?’ And then she showed me the paper.”

  “And what happened then?”

  “I was naturally rather upset. I gave Mrs. Meakin her box and got rid of her as quickly as I could, and then I went to Mr. Potman’s office and told him about Margery. Then, if you remember, I telephoned you.”

  “So you did,” said Henry. “Was that Mr. Potman’s idea, by any chance?”

  “It certainly was not. In fact, Sam behaved very callously about the whole thing, I considered. Merely remarked that it was a good thing Margery wasn’t working for us when it happened. But that’s Sam all over. The film is all that matters. I sometimes think he has liquid celluloid in his veins instead of blood.”

  Henry was reading over what he had written in his notebook. At length he said, “So, from about eleven in the morning, when you took Mrs. Meakin out for coffee, you didn’t see any of the senior members of the unit except Mr. Potman?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Have you any idea how the others spent the afternoon?”

  “None at all. Sam told me that he thought Keith and Biddy were both looking tired and that he’d sent them off to the country. Oh, and Keith had his hair cut. There was quite a row about it the next day. Thoroughly unprofessional. If Biddy had been there, she’d never have allowed him…”

  “So she wasn’t with him during the afternoon?”

  “She said she wasn’t, when this row blew up about his haircut,” I said.

  “Then where was she?”

  “I’ve really no idea,” I said, with some irritation. “I know she telephoned Sam here soon after four—rushes had just started.”

  “Did she, indeed? What about?”