London Rain

by Nicola Upson

  ‘Fancy Millie being involved with him, though,’ Effie said. ‘You hear him all the time, don’t you, but I’d never have matched the face to the voice. I always thought Anthony Beresford was tall and dark.’

  ‘And younger. Much younger. My mum wouldn’t have it when I told her. As good as called me a liar, she did. I can’t believe we’ll never hear his voice again.’

  There was a long silence as they all stared down at the headlines, and Josephine could imagine similar conversations taking place across family tables all around the country. She glanced through another of the papers, stopping when she saw the picture of Millicent Gray that Gerard Leaman had taken at the read-through, melodramatically captioned ‘the last photograph of the dead woman’. The paper had no idea of the photograph’s true significance, she thought – the moment when Vivienne Beresford was humiliated beyond all endurance. She scanned the columns around the picture and noticed that Leaman had a lot to say on Millicent, whom he had known personally, as well as plenty of gossip on Vivienne, whom he obviously didn’t – although he claimed to have been a confidante of her sister’s. It was an excellent advertisement for his business, which stopped short only at putting a contact number for bookings, and she both admired and despised his opportunistic flair. If he was so keen to talk, perhaps it was time she booked a portrait session; any glimpse into the past might be helpful, even if it was heavily based on gossip. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve thought of anything else that Millie said about Anthony, have you?’ she asked, remembering suddenly why she was there.

  ‘No, sorry. Only what I told you the other day.’

  Josephine finished her coffee and refused the offer of another, disappointed that there was nothing more to learn. ‘Have you still got the key to Millie’s flat?’ she asked.

  Effie nodded. ‘Yes. The police gave it back to the landlord when they’d finished, but Millie’s stuff’s got to be cleared out so he asked us to hang onto it and let them in.’

  ‘Could I borrow it for a moment? I think I left my glasses there the other day, and it seemed such a trivial thing to bother about after what happened, but it would be so convenient to pop down and get them now.’

  ‘Of course you can have it.’ Effie fetched the key, still on its ribbon, and handed it to Josephine. ‘Do you want me to come with you? It’s not nice to be on your own down there. The police gave it a right good going over, but it still gives me the creeps. All I can see is her lying there.’

  ‘No, don’t worry. I’ll be all right, and there’s no need for you to put yourself through it. I’ll bring the key straight back.’

  She left them to their breakfast and their scandal and went down to the basement, feeling every bit as much the intruder now as she had the first time she had used the key dishonestly. She wasn’t quite sure what she hoped to find, and she tried not to imagine Archie’s face if he ever found out that she was poking round in a dead woman’s flat like Miss Marple; they had only spoken briefly over the weekend, but his fury at being so comprehensively removed from the case was still raw, and the last thing he needed was for her to cause him more trouble by interfering. She opened the door and was greeted instantly by a row of boxes lined up in the hallway, presumably awaiting collection by Millicent’s family. Their randomness was unbearably moving – ornaments held safe by clothes or old newspapers, pictures mixed with letters – and Josephine stared down at them, thinking how sad it was that everyone’s life, no matter how full and how vibrant, was inevitably reduced to this jumble sale of grief. She hesitated, unsure of whether she could actually bring herself to rifle uninvited through a dead woman’s belongings, then lifted the top layer of clothes from the nearest box, feeling like a thief at the church bazaar. She looked quickly through each carton in turn, but found nothing of interest except a file of contracts from the BBC, which confirmed what Julian had said about Millicent’s extensive engagements for the next few months. After her performance in Queen of Scots on Thursday, Lydia could look forward to a busy time; if Josephine didn’t know her better, she might find herself wondering if the actress had an alibi for Wednesday morning.

  As Effie had observed, the police had left their mark on the flat in the aftermath of Josephine’s horrific discovery. Much of the furniture had been moved, and a thin layer of dust covered all the surfaces, left over from the search for fingerprints. She forced herself to go through to the bedroom, but a quick glance round told her that there was no need to linger: the drawers were open and empty, and if there had ever been anything of interest in them, it was long gone. The sitting room, too, had been packed away except for the larger items of furniture and the gramophone. Only the kitchen seemed largely unchanged from the last time Josephine had been there, probably because it was the least personalised room to begin with.

  She paused in the hallway, struck again by how desolate it seemed, then turned to go, but one of the boxes suddenly caught her eye. In her distaste at the task, she had looked quickly through the contents of each without paying any attention to the newspaper that everything was wrapped in, but she realised now that she had missed something important. One of the pages was annotated in blue ink, and she thought at first that it was the newspaper that she had used to make a note of Millicent’s address, the one that she had brought with her, but the handwriting was not hers and the paper was dated two weeks earlier. The page was in the classified section of The Times, and someone – presumably Millicent – had circled one of the houses for sale and written a date and a time in the margin: ‘Friday, 3 p.m.’ There was no name and no photograph in the listing, but the house was in Harrow and described as an extensive seventeenth-century farmhouse; was she jumping to conclusions to guess that it was Paradise House? As quickly and as carefully as she could, Josephine lifted some of the other items onto the floor and looked more closely at the paper which lined the boxes. Some of it, she noticed, was much older than the rest and she was drawn to those faded, yellowed pages. In two minutes, she had pulled out enough to know that Millicent Gray had what amounted to an archive of press cuttings on Olivia Hanlon’s death. What had she discovered, Josephine wondered, and was that the real reason she had asked to see Vivienne?

  Conscious that no one took this long to find a pair of glasses, even with the handicap implied by the search, Josephine collected the pages that interested her, stuffed them into her handbag and repacked the boxes. She had left the main front door on the latch and went back upstairs to the girls’ flat, too excited almost to be civil. ‘Any luck?’ Effie asked.

  ‘Yes, thank you.’ She smiled and held up the reading glasses which had never left her side. ‘I must go now, but why did you want to see me? You said you needed to get in touch.’

  ‘Oh, it was about Millie’s funeral. Her parents are going to let us know the arrangements, and they’ve asked us to tell all her closest friends. I wanted to send you the details.’

  ‘That would be very kind,’ Josephine said, feeling more fraudulent than ever. Before anyone could ask exactly how well she did know Millicent Gray, she jotted the Cowdray Club’s address down on a piece of paper and said goodbye.

  4

  73a Belgrave Road was above a dentist’s surgery and sandwiched between a butcher’s and an ironmonger’s shop. Despite being only a short distance as the crow flies from the grandeur of Eaton Square and Belgravia, its immediate surroundings were shabby and tired, and Josephine wondered how many of Gerard Leaman’s potential clients were put off altogether by their first impressions of his premises. The flat was hardly Bond Street, but a plaque at the door brazened it out well, boasting a florid script and a simple statement of intent which cried out to be read in a dubious French accent: ‘Photography by Gerard’. She rang the bell, feeling like Mary Stuart on the last morning at Fotheringay, and resigned herself to the ordeal ahead, hoping to get away with a few straightforward poses and a good deal of chat.

  The door was answered by a pleasant-faced elderly woman who introduced herself as Miss Tuff, Mr Gerard’s ass
istant. Josephine followed her upstairs to the first floor and sat, as instructed, in a spacious waiting area, although the ease with which her appointment had been made suggested that the number of chairs available was a little optimistic. The room hovered uneasily between fashionable and clinical, with white walls, white carpets and a white sofa, and on the table in front of her – prominently positioned and lit by an art-deco lamp – was a trio of identical photograph albums. Josephine picked up the one closest to her, opening it at a photograph of Edith Evans looking unusually wistful, and flicked through the pages; some were head-shots, others full-length portraits, and many were pictures that had appeared in the Sketch or Tatler, but they all had in common a preference for subdued lighting, soft-focus and skilful retouching, and Josephine could see why Gerard had become a favourite with actresses of a certain age. The tonal values and finish were superb, and there was no doubting the technical skill of the photographer, but the pictures lacked the warmth that characterised images by Angus McBean or Hugh Cecil. The women looked bored and the men seemed uncomfortable, and Josephine suspected that none of his sitters really liked Gerard Leaman.

  Miss Tuff brought her a cup of surprisingly good coffee and a plate of petit beurre, and Josephine amused herself with the second album, which concentrated on theatrical shots. After what she guessed was a carefully judged period of anticipation, Gerard made his entrance, dressed in flannels and a collarless shirt, all given the faintest hint of formality by a waistcoat. ‘Miss Tey – Josephine, if I may? The camera is much more forgiving if we start as friends.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Josephine said, tempted to ask what he had already seen in her face that required allowances. ‘It was good of you to see me so quickly. My publisher always asks me for publicity material at the last minute, so I’m very grateful.’

  ‘Not at all. Come through to the studio, and we’ll see what we can do.’

  To her relief, his manner was completely different from the first time they had met. On his own territory – with nothing to prove and Miss Tuff to pander to his ego – there was obviously no need for the arrogant swagger that she had found so loathsome at Broadcasting House. The studio was a large room, cleverly divided into different areas to fulfil a number of functions. Miss Tuff sat in one corner, slightly screened from the rest of the space, and the area behind her functioned as a store room for rolled-up backdrops, props for set pieces – all contained in a gilded birdcage – and a trunk overflowing with wigs, clothes and theatrical masks. The working space itself was small but functional: in the far corner, a fireplace had been ripped out and boarded over, and Gerard had painted the walls a bluish white and fixed an arc light to shine onto them, compensating for the inadequate electric globes in the middle of the room. His photographic equipment was straightforward and obviously well-used – a quarter-plate camera that seemed too heavy for its stand, an old Liberty umbrella recovered in white cloth to function as a reflector – and Josephine wondered if that was a matter of choice or economic necessity. The carpet was dark, complementing the only other piece of furniture in the room – a vast black-glass table that carried just a single photograph: Millicent Gray, beautifully framed in silver.

  Gerard placed Josephine in position on the sitter’s upright chair and checked to make sure that she was comfortable. ‘Now – tell me what you’re looking for,’ he said, unsettling her by giving her face a long, deep scrutiny. ‘Other than to look beautiful, of course – we all want that.’

  Josephine smiled, although there was no obvious hint of irony in the phrase. Like dentists with bad teeth and doctors prone to head colds, fate had played a cruel trick on Gerard Leaman when it came to his choice of profession; he was quite possibly the least photogenic person she had ever seen. ‘Oh, just a nice, straight picture to go in a new book,’ she said. ‘It’s for the American edition. The English don’t give a damn about that sort of thing, thank God, but the American method is to tell the world how the author likes his bacon, how many gold fillings he has and what his grandfather said to Gladstone in eighty-two. It’s a biography, so the picture should probably be quite serious – I don’t want people dismissing the book out of hand before they’ve read a word.’ Gerard’s face fell as the commission was outlined to him, and Josephine realised that she was falling rapidly into the category of ‘ordinary sitter’. ‘I have got a film coming out later in the year, though, so perhaps something a little more glamorous for the publicity around that?’ The photographer looked more interested but stared doubtfully at her smart suit, as if to say that he could not be expected to perform miracles. ‘I’ve brought a change of clothes,’ she added hurriedly, as his eyes began to stray to the costume chest.

  There was a heavy sigh. ‘Oh well, let’s start with the dull one and see where we get to.’

  Josephine didn’t remember conflating serious with dull, but as Leaman’s lack of tact was what had brought her here in the first place, she didn’t argue. He began the usual round of ploys to get his sitter to relax, launching into a flow of what he obviously considered to be amusing and interesting chatter, and Josephine smiled and played along, waiting for a natural moment to introduce the subject that had brought her here. Once the session was underway, Gerard worked quickly and methodically, issuing instructions that were as clipped and as crisp as the sound of the shutter. After a few minutes, during which time he seemed to have taken enough photographs to cover this book and any number she was likely to write in the future, he paused and smiled at her. ‘I could go on posing you all day.’ At first, Josephine put the comment down to the photographer’s usual desire to say something that he thinks will flatter, and privately thought it a pity that he hadn’t saved his efforts for someone with a prettier face and less scepticism, but then she noticed that he genuinely seemed to be enjoying himself. ‘You know, there is something of the Sitwells about you,’ he observed, quite without warning.

  ‘Not Edith!’ Josephine said hastily before she could stop herself. ‘I don’t mind being Sasha, or even Osbert at a pinch, but I draw the line at Edith!’

  Gerard said nothing, but continued to observe her in a sort of rapture. ‘Epstein would love to do you!’ he said eventually.

  That was the last straw. Before she could offend him by laughing out loud, Josephine gestured to the picture of Millicent Gray. ‘Such a tragedy,’ she said, hoping that her voice struck the right balance between sympathy and curiosity. ‘I read your tribute in the papers, and that’s a very truthful photograph. You’ve really captured that sense of . . . well, that sense of fragility, I suppose. It’s almost as if you had a glimpse of the future. You must have known her well to gain her trust like that.’

  She could see instantly that the approach was a winning one. Whether it was a strength or a weakness, Gerard was clearly as susceptible to flattery as any of the models who posed for him. He bristled with pleasure at the compliment, like a cat stroked in sunshine, and gazed fondly at the picture. ‘Millie was such a joy to work with,’ he said, and Josephine could tell that he was as keen to talk as she was to listen. He paused for dramatic effect, then shook his head. ‘I really can’t believe that she’ll never walk through those doors again, you know.’

  ‘She came here often?’

  ‘Oh yes, many times. We hit it off straightaway, you see. She often used to come to me for advice or to get things off her chest.’

  If Gerard felt any remorse for his careless words at Broadcasting House – words which had had such a dramatic effect on three people’s lives – he didn’t show it. ‘What sort of advice?’ Josephine asked, finding it hard to believe that Millicent Gray had asked for anything of the sort from the photographer. ‘Her performances were always so confident – it’s hard to believe that she had doubts about anything.’

  ‘Oh, you’d be surprised,’ he said vaguely. ‘Such an innocent child, really. She had no idea what she was caught up in.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Josephine asked, trying not to sound too antagonistic. ‘Surely she mu
st have known that involving herself with a married man was dangerous?’

  ‘It wasn’t just any married man, though, was it? You don’t cross a Hanlon. Lots of people learned that the hard way with Olivia.’

  ‘So I gather. I went to the Golden Hat a few times, but I don’t think I ever met her.’

  He squinted at her with half-closed eyes, trying to predict what the photographic plate would do to the visual image. ‘You wouldn’t have done. Olivia kept herself to herself, very much in the backroom. Hers wasn’t the sort of business that could be run in the limelight. Now – one more shot like that, then turn the chair round the other way and look back at me.’

  Josephine did as she was told, and Gerard resumed his work, making little flattering noises and more ludicrous comparisons under his breath. ‘What sort of business was it?’ she asked innocently.

  ‘Pleasure, and like any woman, pleasure has a thousand and one faces.’

  He smiled, and Josephine wondered how many times he had used the phrase. ‘So how did you get to know her?’

  ‘She hired me to photograph her girls – to show them off at their best, if you know what I mean. She knew they’d be perfectly safe with me. I had no interest in touching the goods, and she paid me well. I was just starting out at the time, and the money more or less set me up.’

  He looked at Josephine, as if gauging how much more to trust her with, and she wracked her brains for something that would get him on side once and for all. ‘I feel such a fool,’ she said confidingly. ‘That day when we were both at the BBC for the read-through – I was so sorry for Vivienne. I honestly thought she was a good woman. First impressions can be so deceptive, can’t they?’

  He grinned, and left his camera for a moment to go over to a filing cabinet by Miss Tuff’s desk. ‘Here,’ he said, taking out a photograph and passing it to Josephine. ‘I wasn’t particularly proud of the work at the time, but it’ll make me a very rich man now if I can find someone brave enough to print it.’