Falling Star

by Patricia Moyes

  Henry looked absolutely exhausted, but he seemed to perk up a bit as he dug into the inevitable sandwiches and coffee which the sergeant had provided. He motioned me to sit down, and then, between mouthfuls, he said, “Now, Pudge. I want you to tell me the truth.”

  “I have told you the truth.”

  “Not all of it. I want to know why you lied about Meakin’s glasses. I want to know exactly what you found in those dressing rooms. I want to know the real truth of your conversation with Mrs. Meakin before you broke into Margery Phipps’s flat. I want to know what you and Potman really talked about in your apartment the night Murray was killed. I want to know the truth about Fiametta Fettini and Robert Meakin, and I want to know what in hell you thought you were doing, trying to destroy that reel of film. I want to know more about Miss Biddy Brennan and a couple of phone calls, and about Mr. Keith Pardoe and his haircut. I want you to remember verbatim conversations as far as you can. I also want to know what it is you’re so frightened of, but I think I can guess.”

  “I see no reason for telling you anything,” I said. “I dare say you’ve never been chief suspect in a murder case, but I can assure you…”

  To my surprise, a tired grin lit up Henry’s face. “You’re wrong there,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I have—once. In Switzerland. I agree, it wasn’t pleasant. But then, you see, my case was rather different. The officer in charge of the case really suspected me.”1

  “You mean—you don’t…?”

  “I told you before,” said Henry, “that I thought you were stupid rather than criminal, and I still do. And I am the officer in charge of this case. If it weren’t for that fact, you’d have been arrested long ago.”

  I felt acutely embarrassed. “Thank you,” I said awkwardly.

  Henry went on. “I’m on your side, Pudge. I have a certain sort of—of instinct, I suppose; some people call it my ‘nose.’ ”

  “If it tells you I’m innocent,” I said, “it is perfectly correct.”

  Henry rubbed the back of his neck with his left hand.

  “That’s what I think,” he said. “But although I’m in charge of the case, I’m not the only person at Scotland Yard, you know, and I have my superiors. Frankly, Pudge, I’m under a considerable amount of pressure to arrest you at once. And, of course, the fact that I know you socially doesn’t help matters. Time is getting horribly short. I’ve got a theory, but it’s only a theory, and it’ll never be more if you don’t co-operate. Meanwhile, the opposition have a perfectly lovely case against you, all worked out and tied up in blue ribbon. You can take your choice.”

  There was a horrible silence that seemed to go on and on. If I told Henry all he wanted to know, and if something I said confirmed his theory, it might mean the arrest of a friend or a colleague. It seemed a pretty mean way of saving my own skin. On the other hand, I am not a hero and have never set out to be.

  Henry seemed to read my thoughts. He said, “Murray was an old man, Pudge, and he had his head bashed in and was left to die. Margery Phipps, according to our latest pathologist’s report, was first drugged and then thrown out of a seventh-floor window. There’s no reason on earth to cover up for the person who did those things.”

  “Northburn Films involves more than one person,” I said.

  “Tomorrow is the last day of shooting,” said Henry. “Even if the insurance company does decide to fight the claim, the film is in the can and the worst that can happen is that they’ll have to be repaid out of the profits. If it’s as good as I think it is, it should be box-office magic.”

  I opened my eyes wide. “How do you know how good it is?” I asked. “And where did you pick up that Wardour Street jargon?”

  “I’ve spent a lot of time at the studios these last few days,” said Henry. “I’ve seen the rough cut. Potman is a genius. He’s got sensational performances out of both Keith and Fiametta. The camera work is brilliant. The script is as good as anything the French have done.” He sounded curiously regretful. “There’s one more day’s shooting. I won’t interfere with it, if I can help it. Well?”

  I took a deep breath. “All right,” I said. “I’ll tell you everything I know. You can use it how you like.”

  “Thank you, Pudge,” said Henry. He smiled at me. “Fire away.”

  It was very late that night when I finally went to bed in my cozy cell. I was exhausted. At the same time I felt a wonderful sense of relief at having unburdened my soul. I had no idea—for Henry had given me no clue—as to whether my evidence had, in fact, served to support or clinch his theory. I had left him still hard at work as the dawn began to streak the sky. My last waking thought was that I was now, indeed, “helping the police in their inquiries,” but not in the sense that the newspapers understood the phrase. It gave me great satisfaction.

  The sergeant called me at eight, with breakfast and the morning paper. The headlines screamed “Croombe-Peters”—they had dropped the respectful “Hon.” by then—“Still at Police Headquarters. Arrest Imminent.” The sergeant put down the breakfast tray and settled down for a chat.

  “If you want ’em to talk,” he said, “you ’ave to ’ave just one alone. Two birds, and you’ve ’ad it. I ’ad one called Charlie—proper little character, he was. Of course, it’s unkind, wot some people teach ’em. Friend of mine ’ad Charlie for a week or two while I was on holiday, and the poor little blighter came back saying ‘Charlie is a proper twirp,’ pleased as punch with ’imself, too. Crool I call it. Everyone laughed, of course. Well, your budgie’s a sensitive bird. Takes it to ’eart, bein’ laughed at. In the end, I got ’im to change it to ‘Charlie is a proper treat,’ but it took time, poor little feller.”

  The sergeant sighed, and poured himself a cup from my coffee pot. It was just then that Henry arrived, spruced up and shaven, but still looking deadly tired. I don’t imagine he had been to bed at all. The sergeant departed with his cup of coffee, and Henry sat down on my bed and said, “Will there be a full day’s shooting today at Ash Grove?”

  I cast my mind back to the schedule. I had not even considered it for the last couple of days, and it required an effort to conjure up the mental picture of those graphs and charts which had so recently been my whole life.

  “If they’ve kept up to schedule,” I said at last, “they should be through by lunchtime.”

  “What are you shooting today?” Henry asked. I was grateful for the word “you.” It made me feel that I was not entirely cut off from Northburn Films; at that moment, I realized fully how desperately important Street Scene had become to me personally. Nothing to do with money, I mean, nor even kudos. It was something I had worked for, and I wanted it to be good. I wanted Keith’s performance to be great, and I even wanted La Fettini to be acclaimed as an actress at last. I wanted Sam to crown his already shining reputation, and I wanted Biddy’s script to be seriously compared to the work of Cocteau or Marguerite Duras. Curiously enough, at that moment I wanted nothing for myself except the satisfaction of knowing that no film can be made without reasonably efficient administration, and that I had achieved it.

  I shook myself back to reality. The schedule charts were clear before my eyes now. “Today,” I said, “if they’ve kept to schedule, there are just two shots left. Both of them are in the interior set of Rosa’s lodgings in Limehouse, a tatty sort of boarding house. It’s the scene on the landing. Rosa and Masterman have quarreled and she comes running out of her room, down the stairs, and out through the front door. He follows her. That’s all. It sounds a tame sort of thing to end up with, but film-making is like that. You end wherever is convenient for the schedule, not with a bang but a whimper.”

  “This,” said Henry, “just may be a bang, after all. I think it would be interesting to be there, don’t you?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I mean,” said Henry, “that you and I are going to visit Ash Grove Studios—together.”

  When we came out into the yard behind the police station, I was
surprised to see a small dark green van standing there, looking as unofficial as possible. Henry led the way to it.

  “Not very comfortable, I’m afraid,” he said, “but anonymous. I’m anxious that nobody should see us leave. Between ourselves, I’m not very popular in some quarters for insisting on this—this experiment.”

  He smiled, but his face was full of strain. I suppose I had been too preoccupied with my own problems up to then to realize just what I owed to Tibbett, and how he was virtually staking his reputation in order to save my neck. Or was it to see justice done? Or both? I was about to try and thank him, when he said abruptly, “Well, we’d better not hang about. Get in.”

  He held the back door open. As I climbed in, he said, “By the way, can you drive one of these things?”

  “Of course I can. I may take a little while to get used to the gear box, but…”

  “It’ll only be a question of a few hundred yards,” said Henry. “In you get.” He closed the door.

  It was dark inside the van, and so it was a couple of seconds before I registered the fact that I was not alone. I had a fellow traveler. Another second and I had identified her as Sonia Meakin. My heart leapt, unpleasantly. It was true enough that in my talks to Henry I had hinted as openly as I dared that I was convinced of her guilt. How much store Henry set by my opinions, I had no idea; but her presence here was sinister, to say the least. It was not a comfortable sensation, having to share the back of a small van with a person who, I was fairly sure, had killed two human beings; nor, from a different point of view, was it pleasant being confronted at such close quarters with someone whom I had virtually denounced to the police.

  Before I could say anything, Henry had climbed into the front of the car, behind the wheel, saying cheerfully, “Sorry to keep you waiting, Mrs. Meakin. Have you brought what I asked for?”

  “Yes,” said Sonia Meakin in a voice like dry ice. “I have.”

  “So we meet again, Mrs. Meakin,” I said, trying to emulate Henry’s cheerful tone. It seemed the only thing to do. I sat down beside her on the hard wooden bench.

  Sonia Meakin did not answer me. More eloquently, she stood up and crossed to the other side of the van, practically drawing her skirts aside as she passed me. Evidently, the prospect of our shared ride was as distasteful to her as it was to me. A moment later we were speeding through the streets of London.

  A few hundred yards from the studio gates, we stopped. Henry got out, came around to the back, and opened the doors.

  “Well, Pudge,” he said, “this is where you take the wheel.”

  “But what…?”

  “I shall keep out of sight in the back of the van,” said Henry. “I’m relying on you to get me into the studios unnoticed. Mrs. Meakin will sit in front with you—if you have no objection, Mrs. Meakin?”

  “If you say I must, Inspector,” said Sonia.

  You’d have thought Henry had asked her to sit next to a dead rat.

  “Just forget all about me, Pudge,” Henry went on, as he helped me out of the back of the van. “As far as you’re concerned, the police have questioned you pretty thoroughly but have now let you go, much to your relief. Mrs. Meakin wanted to see over the studios, so you have brought her on a visit. That’s all. Is that clear?”

  “I suppose so,” I said unhappily.

  “Good,” said Henry briskly. “Now, Mrs. Meakin, may I have it?”

  I saw Sonia Meakin open her handbag and give Henry a small parcel wrapped in brown paper. She looked extremely reluctant about the whole thing, but Henry just said, “Right. Thanks. Now, in you get!” And she climbed silently into the front seat beside me. After a little experimentation with the unfamiliar gears, I drove the van around the corner to the studio gates.

  The guard on the gate seemed both surprised and gratified to see me, and didn’t even glance into the back of the van. He was obviously bursting with curiosity, and tried to keep me talking, but I waved him aside and drove on down the main drive toward the administrative buildings. I became aware of Henry’s voice in my left ear.

  “Drive around to the back of Stage 2 and drop me there,” he said. “Then park the car, wait ten minutes, and take Mrs. Meakin onto the set.”

  “Really, Henry,” I said, “I do think you might explain…”

  “Please do as I say.”

  “Oh, very well.” I pulled up at the back entrance to Stage 2. “But where will you be if I…?”

  “I’ll be around,” said Henry. Then I heard the back door of the van open and slam shut, and I realized that he had gone.

  Dutifully, I drove to the car park, parked the van, and offered Sonia Meakin a cigarette, which she declined. We sat in frozen silence for a few minutes, and then I said, “Well, orders is orders. We’d better go down to the set.”

  Suddenly she turned to me. For the first time she sounded natural, human, and really scared. “Mr. Croombe-Peters,” she said, “do you know why we have been brought here?”

  “If I know anything about Henry Tibbett,” I said, “it’s to catch a killer.”

  “Oh, my God.” Her voice was all at once quite flat, as if all emotion had been drained out of it. Then, with another complete switch of mood, she said almost gaily, “All right. What are we waiting for?”

  “We’re not,” I said. I leant over and opened the car door for her to get out, and together we walked down to Stage 2.

  They were setting up for the very last shot of the film when we arrived. We slipped quietly onto the stage, and stood for a moment in the shadows. As I have explained, there is not a lot of light on a film set outside the actual area of shooting, and the very contrast between the brilliance of the set and the dimness of its surroundings makes it easy for a visitor to remain unobserved.

  It seemed extraordinary to me to be back on the floor again. My ghastly days at the police station seemed to have cut me off completely from the world I knew, and I gazed around the set with the fresh, wondering eyes of a convalescent returning to well-known haunts after a long spell in hospital. After what I had been through, it seemed somehow callous that things should be going on absolutely as usual; but, of course, they were. At least, when I say “absolutely as usual,” that is not quite true. This was the last shot of the film, and there was a gay, party atmosphere on the set. Not just atmosphere. Bottles of champagne had already been opened, which surprised me, because such celebrations are usually delayed until the film is finally in the can.

  Fiametta, who had completed her last shot, was drinking what looked to me like a slightly ironic toast to Keith, who was submitting to the ministrations of the make-up man; Sam was standing with his arm around Biddy’s shoulders, talking to Anton, the chief hairdresser; Gervase was raising his glass to, of all people, the shop steward. Everybody looked excited and happy, as one does on the last day of shooting. Suddenly it swept over me, in a mixture of anger and hurt, that apparently nobody was giving a thought to my situation. As far as they knew, I was languishing in jail, with a murder charge hanging over my head; and they couldn’t care less. I remembered how Robert Meakin and Margery Phipps had been forgotten, and I felt cold. Would it be the same with me? Henry had told me that he did not suspect me—or had he? He had implied it, but he was as wily as a fox and I didn’t trust him an inch. Perhaps he was luring me into a sense of false security. Perhaps he really was about to arrest me. And if he did, I imagined that Northburn Films, Ltd., would heave a sigh of relief, go about its business, and forget me entirely.

  The spurt of anger which this thought occasioned was, in fact, helpful. It obliterated my moment of embarrassment, and I stepped forward into the light of the set, like a demon king entering a pantomime stage in a flash of green cordite.

  “Good morning, everybody,” I said.

  I couldn’t make out whether the first, silent, stunned reaction to my appearance was caused by surprise or by dismay. At any rate, it was Sam who recovered first, and he stepped up to me with a warm, welcoming smile and an affectionate handsh
ake.

  “Pudge!” he said. “It’s good to see you! They’ve let you out at last, have they? Back to the fold without a stain on your character?”

  Taking their cue from Sam, Keith and Biddy now clustered around me, assuring me that they’d all been terribly worried about me. Fiametta flung her arms around my neck and kissed me warmly, and Gervase brought me a glass of champagne.

  Typically, Sam wasted little time on congratulations, but started straight away talking shop. “This’ll please you, Pudge,” he said. “Joost when we thought we were all through, and the champagne opened, we heard from the labs that this morning’s first shot was spoilt in processing. So we’ve got a retake for the very last shot. How d’you like that?”

  “I don’t like it at all,” I said. I was rapidly returning to normal and a very pleasant sensation it was, too.

  “But don’t forget,” Sam added impishly, “we’re still two days ahead.”

  “If you really want to know,” I said, “I don’t care a hang about anything. The picture’s finished; I’m out of that terrible prison cell; the insurance has paid up; and we’re two days ahead. It’ll take more than one spoilt shot to depress me,”

  It was at that moment that Gervase came up to tell Sam that Fred Harborough was satisfied with his lighting and that we could start the camera rolling for the last time. The set consisted of a section of shabby hallway and a flight of stairs which led up to what looked like a first-floor landing, but was actually no more than a platform on scaffolding. Anybody foolish enough to open one of the solid-looking doors which led off it would find himself confronted with a fifteen-foot drop to the studio floor below. Keith’s stand-in was at the top of the stairs, in the circle of light.

  Gervase blew his whistle, and the usual tense atmosphere which immediately precedes shooting made itself felt. Keith had not engaged a personal dresser, and I noticed that it was Gervase who handed him his props, in this case, pipe and spectacles. The Continuity Girl checked him over for details of costume. As the stand-in came down the stairs and Keith took his place, Fred Harborough peered up into the dimness of the stage ceiling and shouted a last-minute instruction to an electrician working on the high gallery among the arc lamps. Then the whistle shrilled again, and for the last time on Street Scene the familiar cry rang out, “Quiet everyone! Red light on! We’re rolling!”