Falling Star

by Patricia Moyes

  “Yes,” said Keith. It was little more than a whisper.

  “In fact, when your wife told you about the possibility of Meakin walking out on the picture, I think you studied that insurance policy pretty carefully, although later you denied doing so for obvious reasons.”

  “What is this insurance policies?” demanded Fiametta. “Keith never say…”

  “You knew very well,” Henry went on, still addressing Keith, “that Northburn Films would be finished if Meakin walked out. No clause in any policy covered that contingency, and there wasn’t enough in the kitty for an expensive lawsuit. On the other hand, if he should be forced to give up his part through injury—injury incurred during his work for you, but not due to negligence on the part of the unit—then the insurance company would have to pay up in full. The sum involved runs into hundreds of thousands, doesn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  “So, in Miss Fettini’s spiteful idea of revenge, Keith Pardoe saw a hope, a slender one, of saving the company. He could count on the fact that negligence would not be mentioned, for Robert Meakin was much too intent on preserving his youthful public image to bring up the matter of the spectacles. He would be sure to agree that he had stumbled accidentally. So, the spectacles were switched; but so, unfortunately, was the shot. And Meakin died—accidentally.”

  In a quiet, calm voice, Sonia Meakin said, “Thank you for explaining, Inspector.”

  Henry smiled at her, and then went on. “When the directors of Northburn Films met that evening, Mr. Potman and Miss Brennan really believed that the company would have to fold up. Mr. Pardoe knew that it wouldn’t, but apparently he had the grace to be conscience-stricken, if not a little hysterical, about the part he had played in Meakin’s death. Mr. Croombe-Peters knew about the insurance cover, but was convinced that Meakin’s death was accidental. Everything went smoothly. The inquest verdict was accidental death, the insurance claim was paid, and the film went on. It was an ironic chance that Pardoe himself took over Meakin’s part. It must have been quite a nervous strain for him. Of course, the fact of a guilty secret shared brought him closer to Miss Fettini. She was not unduly sensitive to pangs of conscience, and undoubtedly did her best to—to take his mind off it. All the same, when Mrs. Meakin appeared on the scene, Miss Fettini prudently removed herself to Italy until she was quite sure that there would be no unpleasantness. There was none. The film went on, and it seemed as though Meakin was forgotten. And then the bombshell exploded.”

  Henry paused. “Margery Phipps,” he said, “was the daughter of a notorious blackmailer. She had been sent to foster parents at an early age, when her father was in prison and her mother could not support her; but she was never adopted, and never lost touch with her real parents. She thus grew up in two entirely different worlds—the respectable Kensington atmosphere of the Phipps household, and the seedy, cunning, and criminal one of Lily Arbuthnot and James Boswell. Mrs. Phipps saw to it that Margery took secretarial training and got a good job; her real parents determined to take advantage of Margery’s social polish and her place in the film world to launch her in her father’s profession. Whether or not she had started her nefarious activities earlier, I don’t know. There’s no proof. But what is certain is that when Boswell died in prison this year, Mrs. Arbuthnot appealed to Margery for financial help, and the two of them naturally decided on blackmail as the best way of raising funds.

  “Mixing with film people, Margery was well placed for the job. The only trouble is that you can’t blackmail people until you have some sort of damning evidence against them. So Margery was keeping her eyes skinned for just that. It must have seemed a godsend to her when she went into Meakin’s dressing room that morning and took a thorough look at what was there. She’d probably been considering the insurance angle as a possible source of blackmail, and there, in the wastepaper basket, was a crumpled draft of a letter which seemed to indicate that Meakin had, in fact, resigned his part just before he died. That, she realized, could be used both against the company and against Mrs. Meakin, for both had collected large sums in insurance.

  “It had also, presumably, occurred to her that Meakin’s death was most opportune. Like all Continuity Girls, she was acutely observant, and had almost certainly noticed that Meakin sometimes wore plain spectacles and sometimes an identical pair with magnifying lenses. In his dressing room, she found the box which had contained his contact lenses…”

  “It was empty,” I put in. “I thought it was for cuff links…”

  “Yes,” said Henry. “I doubt if even Margery, in fact, realized what it was. The lenses themselves, of course, had been removed by Murray. However, in Miss Fettini’s dressing room, probably hidden in a drawer, Margery found the magnifying spectacles. At once, she realized that the spectacles had been switched and that Meakin had been virtually blind when he died. She pocketed the spectacles and the draft letter. She must have felt extremely pleased with herself.”

  “I told you she was a thief,” said Fiametta triumphantly. “I told you then, before…”

  “All this happened on a Friday, if you remember,” said Henry. “Margery went straight home and wrote to Mr. Croombe-Peters, resigning her job. Then, over the weekend, she contacted her selected victims, by telephone I imagine. Mrs. Meakin has already admitted that she went to Margery’s apartment and paid her a considerable sum of money. I’d be interested to hear details from Miss Fettini and from Mr. Pardoe.”

  Henry looked around hopefully. Nobody said anything. Then Fiametta shouted, “All right. She telephone me, and I send Giulio to her with money. She was a mean little thief.”

  Henry said politely to Palladio, “When did you go to Miss Phipps’s apartment with the money, Signor Palladio?”

  Giulio looked mutely at Fiametta, begging for instructions.

  “Tell ’im,” she said. “What does it matter?”

  “It was Monday,” said Giulio wretchedly. “I go and I give five ’undred pound, cash. I say what Fiametta tell me. ’Ere is money. But next time…” He made a sudden vivid gesture, cutting his own throat with a pointed finger.

  Fiametta turned on him and swore at him in rapid Italian.

  Henry said, “So you threatened Miss Phipps with violence?”

  “I say what Fiametta tell me,” said Giulio sulkily.

  “Well, that seems fairly clear,” said Henry. “Now, Mr. Pardoe.”

  “I don’t know why you pick on me.” Keith was growing hysterical again.

  “You were the obvious choice. You were in Miss Fettini’s room at the time of Meakin’s death, and must have known about the spectacles. If you won’t tell me, I’ll tell you. Margery telephoned you, and you made an appointment to go and see her on Tuesday afternoon, taking the money with you…”

  “But…” I could not keep silent any longer. “I thought that it was Sam, and now you’re accusing Keith…”

  “Mr. Pardoe made the appointment,” said Henry. “He didn’t necessarily keep it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “As soon as he had spoken to Margery, I think that Mr. Pardoe decided to tell the whole story to his fellow directors and ask for their help and advice.”

  “He didn’t tell me,” I protested.

  “No,” said Henry, “he didn’t. But he told his wife and Sam Potman, and it was arranged that one of them should go to Chelsea Mansions to keep that appointment. In deciding which one it was, I naturally had to reckon with the alibis, or otherwise, of the three people concerned. They all seemed pretty good. Mr. Potman was watching rushes in Duck Street with Mr. Croombe-Peters. Mr. Pardoe was having his hair cut at the Belgrave Towers Hotel. Miss Brennan’s case was more interesting. She told me that she had been to see the film Duck Soup at the New Forum.”

  “And so I had,” said Biddy. “You can check…”

  “I have checked. You undoubtedly did go to that cinema.”

  “Well, then…”

  “The cinema.” said Henry, “is immediately opposite the pave
ment where Margery fell to her death. The film started at four o’clock. You missed the first ten minutes. Therefore, you were in Dredge Street when Margery fell, and yet you denied knowing anything about it until the next day. In fact, you saw what happened, and immediately and very naturally you telephoned Mr. Potman from the cinema and told him.”

  Biddy said nothing. Fiametta suddenly came to life. “She telephone me, too,” she said spitefully. “She telephone my suite and ask for speak to Keith, and Keith run off to ’ave his hair cut, and tell me to say he has not been with me.”

  “Yes,” said Henry, “I know. It’s all perfectly simple. I realized some time ago that it was Potman who had agreed to take Keith’s place at the interview with Margery. He urged the others not to worry, to leave everything to him. They had no idea that he intended to kill the girl. He laid his plans very carefully. Everyone was to have a complete alibi. The Pardoes nearly wrecked matters by coming back from the country—he thought he had them safely out of the way. He told Biddy to contact Keith and impress upon him the urgent need to establish an alibi, which Keith did by rushing down to the barber’s shop.”

  “But if he was with Fiametta,” I began.

  “Sam Potman,” said Henry, “wanted Fiametta kept strictly out of this. Because, you see, it was from Fiametta and her doctor husband that he had obtained the drug he needed to knock Margery out—I presume it was the same barbiturate as was used in Miss Fettini’s unsuccessful suicide earlier this year.”

  “You know too much, my little policeman,” said Fiametta.

  “I know enough,” said Henry. “Right. To proceed…”

  “You can’t proceed,” I said. “It all sounds very plausible, I agree, but you haven’t explained how Sam Potman could be seeing rushes in Soho at the same moment that he was…”

  “Yes,” said Henry, “yes, that puzzled me for some time. Potman gave himself away, you see, when he talked to you, Pudge, about Margery Phipps alleging she had enjoyed her work on Street Scene. That was a straight quotation from her letter to you, which he swore he had never seen. That, plus his personality, and what my—my instinct told me…”

  “Don’t tell me you used your famous nose,” I said, “to break his alibi.”

  “Yes, actually, I did.” Henry sounded almost apologetic. “There was a very faint smell in Margery’s kitchen. I investigated it and found a half-burnt candle. If you remember, Pudge, I came out with some white powder on my coat.”

  “Yes,” I said, “fingerprinting powder.”

  “No,” said Henry, “candle wax.”

  “But…”

  “You noticed, being observant, that the clock on the electric cooker was set at a quarter to four. The next-door dial was set for three-quarters of an hour. That meant that things had been so arranged that the electric oven would come on at a quarter to four, and would remain at full heat until half-past, when it would switch itself off. You’ll remember that it was an eye-level oven, right beside the window. Potman, of course, visited the flat soon after lunch, ostensibly to pay Margery the money she was demanding. He slipped her the drug, and then propped her, unconscious, on the kitchen window sill, leaving the window unlatched, but sealed up with candle wax. The kitchen window was certainly inconvenient, but it was the only one which opened outward. He had previously taken Margery’s letter from the office files and traced a suicide note from it. As soon as she was unconscious, he typed the envelope in her apartment, and left the letter on the table. Then he went back to Duck Street. By four o’clock, the oven was fully heated, and gave out enough warmth to melt the wax which was holding the window shut. The window swung open, and Margery fell out. By then, Sam Potman was back in Soho, watching rushes. It was a very good alibi, on the face of it, especially as there was no suggestion of foul play. If Mrs. Arbuthnot hadn’t stirred up trouble and made me curious about the whole thing, Potman would have got clean away with it. I should mention, I suppose, that before he left Chelsea Mansions, he found and removed the second pair of spectacles, the draft letter of resignation, and anything else which might have connected Margery with Northburn Films. He also removed the money which Margery had been paid in cash, for which Mrs. Arbuthnot was searching so avidly when—you remember when, Pudge.”

  “Indeed I do,” I said grimly.

  “Well,” said Henry, “so far, so good. Margery is dead, the evidence is out of the way, and the film proceeds once again. Potman is worried about one person only.”

  “Who?” I asked. “Murray?

  “No, no,” said Henry. “You, Pudge. You are innocent. You have no idea of what has really happened. You are also a friend of mine, and my interest has been aroused. Keith, Biddy, and Fiametta—not to mention Signor Palladio—all know enough to keep their mouths shut. Potman has made sure of that. You, on the other hand, may blurt out anything to the police. And so may Mrs. Meakin. Perhaps we should talk about Mrs. Meakin for a moment.”

  Sonia went very red. Henry went on, “Her interest in coming to collect her husband’s things from the Underground station was, of course, to try to find the original of that draft letter, just as Miss Fettini’s professed interest in her worthless lipstick case was to try to locate spectacles which she had hidden and could not find again. Fortunately, Mrs. Meakin told me the whole truth at an early stage, and I am afraid I misled her a little in order to enlist her help. It was at my suggestion that she laid a trap to induce Mr. Croombe-Peters to break into Margery Phipps’s apartment—and he fell for it. His behavior confirmed my suspicions that the Northburn Films insurance policies were at the root of the whole matter. It also left Mrs. Meakin with the impression that Mr. Croombe-Peters was the culprit, and vice versa. Of course, at that point, nobody had reckoned on poor old Alf Murray.”

  “Yes,” I said. “What about Murray? Where does he come into it?”

  “That’s the sad thing,” said Henry. “I don’t believe that Murray was a blackmailer. He had Robert Meakin’s contact lenses in his possession, but I don’t think there was anything very sinister about that. He’d picked them up in the dressing room after the accident, but that was all. However, after Meakin’s death he found himself out of a job and short of money, and it was only natural that he should approach Mrs. Meakin and Mr. Potman to ask for help.

  “He rang Mrs. Meakin and she made an appointment to go and meet him on the evening he died. Very sensibly, she came around to see me first, to ask my advice; but unfortunately I was entertaining other people…” Henry’s glance only just grazed my eyes. “Not only did Mrs. Meakin have no opportunity to speak to me about Murray, but she was kept late for her appointment with him. He got tired of waiting, and went to see Mr. Potman.”

  Henry sighed. “I wish to God I could have stopped him. Of course, it was only natural that Potman should interpret the old man’s quite innocent requests for help and money as an attempt at blackmail, when Murray produced the contact lenses at the same time. By then, Potman had one object only in life—to finish his film. He was becoming more and more unbalanced. Murray seemed to threaten him, so Murray was killed in a fit of blind panic. Then, common sense took over. The fact of a corpse in his house, which would normally be an embarrassment, could be turned to good account.

  “Once again, the plans were well laid. The Pardoes, who were necessary to the completion of the film, must have alibis. So must Miss Fettini. I think I am right in saying that Potman telephoned the Pardoes, and, without giving any reason, told them to go to the Belgrave Towers at once and stay for several hours with Miss Fettini and her husband. It that so?”

  Henry addressed himself to Biddy, who nodded. “I couldn’t think why,” she said, “but we dared not refuse. We knew—or guessed—too much already…”

  “Exactly,” said Henry. “So the four of you were provided with a let out, and Potman proceeded to drag Mr. Croombe-Peters into the affair to the point where he was hopelessly incriminated.”

  “How do you know all this?” I demanded.

  “When you left my
house that evening,” said Henry, “you tried to telephone Mr. Potman and found his number engaged. He explained that by saying that he was trying to contact you. This was patently untrue, because your manservant, who let him in later on, was in your apartment and received no phone call. Shortly afterward, the Pardoes turned up at the Belgrave Towers to call on Miss Fettini. They were unannounced and very unexpected, because film people with early morning calls don’t as a rule go out at night. It didn’t need a great deal of intelligence to reconstruct what actually happened.”

  “Then why didn’t you arrest Potman?” I began.

  “My dear Pudge,” said Henry, “all this was simply my—what I thought. I had no proof. I deliberately came down to the studios and spoke to Potman about the roll of film showing Meakin’s death. I put a guard on the incinerator, hoping to catch Potman in the act of destroying evidence. But he was too clever for me. All I caught was poor old Pudge.

  “As I have explained to him, I was probably the only man in London who didn’t think Croombe-Peters was guilty; and after the episode of trying to burn the film, my case in Pudge’s defense looked very meager indeed. The only good thing about his sojourn at headquarters was that it made Potman feel quite safe and secure, and that helped me. Having previously tried to poison Pudge’s mind against Mr. Pardoe, Potman now denounced Pudge to the rest of the unit, I understand.”

  Keith had gone whiter than ever. “Yes, he did, the devil,” Keith said. “Tried to pretend he’d been covering up for you as long as he could. And I believed him. I’m sorry, Pudge.”

  “Never mind,” I said. I tried not to sound smug.

  “Today,” Henry went on, “I decided that I must try to smoke him out. It was now or never. I asked Mrs. Meakin to come down here, with Croombe-Peters and myself, and I asked her to bring along a pair of glasses made up to her late husband’s prescription. Through the kind offices of Mr. Mountjoy, I arranged for these to fall into Miss Fettini’s hands. As I thought, she had been feeling somewhat unkindly toward Mr. Pardoe of late. Unfortunately for her, Mr. Pardoe is very much in love with his wife. So Miss Fettini decided to play the same trick on him—in reverse—as she played on Mr. Meakin. She substituted the spectacles, and Mr. Pardoe had a nasty fall. I’m extremely sorry about it,” he added, to Keith, “but I could think of no other way of demonstrating beyond all doubt what had happened to Meakin, and who was responsible. None of you would have admitted it, without this rather dramatic incident. So I was at least able to clear Pudge of the first charge—that he had engineered Meakin’s death.