Curtain Call

by Anthony Quinn

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Anthony Quinn

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  I. The Second Arrangement

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  II. A Face to Meet the Faces

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  III. The Distinguished Thing

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Book

  On a sultry afternoon in the summer of 1936 a woman accidentally interrupts an attempted murder in a London hotel room. Nina Land, a West End actress, faces a dilemma: she’s not supposed to be at the hotel in the first place, and certainly not with a married man. But once it becomes apparent that she may have seen the face of the man the newspapers have dubbed ‘the Tie-Pin Killer’ she realises that another woman's life could be at stake.

  Jimmy Erskine is the raffish doyen of theatre critics who fears that his star is fading: age and drink are catching up with him, and in his late-night escapades with young men he walks a tightrope that may snap at any moment. He has depended for years on his loyal and longsuffering secretary Tom, who has a secret of his own to protect. Tom’s chance encounter with Madeleine Farewell, a lost young woman haunted by premonitions of catastrophe, closes the circle: it was Madeleine who narrowly escaped the killer’s stranglehold that afternoon, and now walks the streets in terror of his finding her again.

  Curtain Call is a comedy of manners, and a tragedy of mistaken intentions. From the glittering murk of Soho’s demi-monde to the grease paint and ghost-lights of theatreland, the story plunges on through smoky clubrooms, tawdry hotels and drag balls towards a denouement in which two women are stalked by the same killer. As bracing as a cold Martini and as bright as a new tie-pin, it is at once a deeply poignant love story, a murder mystery and an irresistible portrait of a society dancing towards the abyss.

  About the Author

  Anthony Quinn was born in Liverpool in 1964. Since 1998 he has been the film critic of the Independent. He is the author of The Rescue Man, which won the 2009 Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award, Half of the Human Race and The Streets, which was shortlisted for the 2013 Walter Scott Prize.

  ALSO BY ANTHONY QUINN

  The Rescue Man

  Half of the Human Race

  The Streets

  For Mike

  and

  for Pete

  Curtain Call

  or

  The Distinguished Thing

  A novel

  Anthony Quinn

  ‘So here it is at last, the distinguished thing!’

  Henry James (attrib.)

  I

  The Second Arrangement

  1

  STEPHEN SQUINTED TOWARDS the cloudy sash windows. He knew he ought to have them cleaned, but he liked the way they lent the day outside a soft and mysterious murk. It didn’t seem to matter that you couldn’t really see out of them. He picked up another charcoal stick and turned back to the sketch, while Lady Trevelyan talked on.

  ‘. . . though I really don’t know how Tom puts up with the beastly things the newspapers say about him. It isn’t as though any of the others have a better plan for running the country – Tom’s only fault is that he sees what’s wrong and jolly well says it! Of course at the root of it is jealousy. To have that sort of breeding and education and accomplishment, well, it’s bound to raise the hackles of little men. And such a handsome fellow too! – I don’t believe I’m the first to notice his resemblance to Douglas Fairbanks . . .’

  Stephen wasn’t sure how much more of this he could stand. He possessed an intensity of concentration that only a rare breed of irritant could disturb. Alas, it seemed that Lady Trevelyan, with her high, hectoring voice, belonged to that unhappy genus. His attention had wandered again from his drawing. He dipped his head behind the easel and yawned extravagantly.

  ‘Hmm?’ he said, hearing a sudden interrogative note from the other side.

  ‘I said, do you not admire him?’

  ‘Er, Douglas Fairbanks?’

  ‘No, you silly man – I mean Tom – Sir Oswald Mosley!’

  So that’s who she was talking about. Why did he call himself Tom if his name was Oswald? ‘To be honest, Lady Trevelyan, I’ve no opinion about him one way or the other.’ He gave a little shrug. ‘Though I don’t greatly care for that moustache of his.’

  ‘No opinion? But, Mr Wyley, you must read the papers . . .’

  He sneaked a glance at the wristwatch he had been careful to fasten on the frame of his easel. ‘Ah, yes, the papers – I always start to read them, and little by little I . . . fall behind. By the time I’ve caught up the news has changed, and then I think, why bother?’

  Lady Trevelyan gave one of her dismissive laughs and pressed on with her encomium of ‘dear Tom’. Stephen, eager to conclude the session, spent two minutes vigorously cross-hatching with a pencil before snatching the paper from its mount and presenting it for inspection.

  ‘It’s just a study, of course,’ he explained. ‘A little throat-clearing before we start on the canvas.’

  He watched her expression twitch with delight as she contemplated his handiwork. The sketch, with its artful editing of the sitter’s double chin and the softening of her snouty nose, was designed to please. He could have given a masterclass in portraiture as flattery. It was why so many of them came to him. Lady Trevelyan, like all the others, made no mention of Stephen’s cosmetic dexterity: that was an unspoken part of the contract, as was his fee. Their brief acquaintance, however, had inclined him to wonder about the money. The ratio of guineas earned to hours confined in her company was already looking to be a poor deal.

  ‘Lady Trevelyan, I do beg your pardon,’ he said, interrupting her absorption in the sketch. ‘I’m rather late for an appointment across town. But we shall meet soon’ – he gave the bell-rope a tug – ‘to begin the serious work.’

  Mrs Ronson, the housekeeper, was prompt in bringing his guest’s coat, though neither she nor Stephen were able to do much about Lady Trevelyan’s parting monologue, a disordered flurry of society gossip begun as she was almost, agonisingly, out of the door, and extended for several minutes on the landing. In the end Mrs Ronson practically had to strong-arm her down the staircase before Stephen could safely close the door. Consulting his watch again, he found that he actually was running late, with no time to change. Exasperating, really, after he had gone to the trouble of booking the hotel. Not very debonair to show up late and ungroomed.

  Five minutes later he was taking the stairs two at a time, having squirted on a bit of cologne and straightened his tie’s hurried knot in the hall mirror. He’d fix it on the way. Something else was bothering him as he descended to the pavement and broke into an awkward half-run: the shoes. They were pinching with a vehemence he could almost have taken personally. He had bought them the previous day in a new shop on the Brompton Road, failing to notice the tightness across the uppers. Damn. He should have gone to Lobb. The August day, the last of the month, was sultry but overcast, with that granular quality of light that seemed to anticipate rain. Turning into Royal Hospital Road, he flagged down a cab and, once inside, tried to compose himself. His reflection played hi
de-and-seek in the window. He was vain (he knew) of his toffee-coloured hair, brushed back from his forehead. His handsome, symmetrical face lacked only (which he didn’t know) a small quirk of individuality that might have rendered it truly interesting. He fiddled with the knot against his collar and, having moulded it to his liking, speared a tiepin through the yielding silk.

  Stephen Wyley had been lucky in most things, and had learned not to mind being resented for it. Born just late enough to have escaped the Great War – he turned eighteen the week before the Armistice – he was able to take a place at Oxford left unclaimed by one of those young men ahead of him in academic distinction, now stretched cold beneath a field in France or Belgium. He proved to be no scholar, preferring to refine his talent for drawing, and after graduating went to study at the Royal Academy. Around the same time he found himself the beneficiary of a small inheritance – or, as some called it, a small fortune. A friend on hearing the news remarked that Stephen could not supply his future biographer with a title: The Life of Wyley.

  It enabled him to buy a flat in Chelsea which he furnished from the proceeds of the small oils he had begun to sell. His natural affinity was for landscapes, but that changed when a Scottish grandee of his acquaintance commissioned a large portrait of his three children. The Daughters of Fitzroy Traquair, shown at the RA in the summer of 1931, was the making of his name. The Burlington Magazine hailed him as ‘the British Sargent’, and the Telegraph sent a man to take his photograph. Before long Stephen was a sought-after guest at the houses of collectors, artistic patrons, titled worthies. The invitations began to pile up. Gratified at first by his social elevation, he soon came to distrust. He was clear-sighted about his technical skills, considering himself to be a distinctive painter of nature but merely an adequate portraitist. That estimate proved at odds with his rising acclaim. In his cups he would say that he only took commissions from people he despised, because they were too stupid to see what an inferior talent he was. His reluctance to turn them away hid a deeper insecurity: he hadn’t enough money to stop pleasing others, and had far too much to feel pleased with himself. In retrospect he realised that being discovered was not entirely a blessing; he had never quite possessed himself since.

  The cab had crawled to a halt amid shoaling, honking traffic at the top of Sloane Street. This was getting him nowhere. He paid the driver and stepped out, making a beeline for Knightsbridge Tube. His shoes felt ever tighter as he skittered down the escalator towards the platform, almost deserted in the mid-afternoon lull. He was thinking about her again as the train burst out of the tunnel, its updraught warm and frowsy against his face.

  They had met nearly four weeks ago at a friend’s private view in Bury Street. Stephen was stooging around when he spotted her gazing in rapt concentration at one of the still lifes. She was slim, on the short side, with brown, shoulder-length hair framing a strong, full-lipped face. Her dark eyebrows were plucked and shaped. He thought he had seen her somewhere before.

  ‘If you stand there much longer your eyes are going to burn a hole through it.’

  She looked round, unstartled, and gave him the once-over. ‘I’m sure Henry will forgive me,’ she said coolly. Her voice was low, with a pleasing hoarseness at the back of it.

  ‘You like his work?’

  She nodded. ‘I bought one of his a few years ago – square, about so big, of a ceramic jug with primulas. And I’m pleased to see he’s now on the way to being quite unaffordable.’

  Stephen smiled. ‘I remember that ceramic jug. Well . . . if I’d known Henry had such discerning clients I’d have brought along a few pictures of my own to hang here.’

  ‘You paint?’ she said, a thin note of scepticism in her voice.

  ‘Stephen Wyley,’ he said, extending his hand, which she took.

  ‘Nina Land. Your name is . . . familiar to me.’

  ‘That’s odd, because your face is familiar to me. Have we met before?’

  She shook her head decisively. ‘I would have remembered. Perhaps . . . you’ve been to the theatre recently?’

  He frowned, rummaging in his memory. ‘Hmm. I saw a thing the other week called The Second Arrangement, at the Strand. Rather good.’

  ‘Ah, glad you thought so – I was in it. Hester Bonteen . . .?’

  He narrowed his eyes appraisingly, and then the clouds parted. ‘Yes – the lover!’

  Nina held up her palms in a gesture of c’est moi. Stephen continued to stare at her. ‘Well – may I say – I was impressed. Really. The scene where you read the letter from him . . . the lady sitting next to me was in tears.’

  ‘But not yourself . . .’

  ‘I thought I should be a man about it,’ he replied. She gave a slow smile, and he read in her expression a quickening interest. Stephen held her gaze, before saying, ‘I always wonder about acting – I mean, how you do it night after night, the same thing. Doesn’t it become –’

  ‘A bore?’

  ‘Yes. Just so.’

  ‘No – because it’s a different crowd every night.’ She paused. ‘They don’t know what you’re going to give them. Before I go on, I think of someone out there in the dark, looking at me for the first time, not knowing what to expect. That’s the challenge – the excitement. It doesn’t matter that you’ve given the performance before – it’s new to him. Or her. You’re creating this very intimate connection with complete strangers. So you see’ – she gave a little laugh – ‘you can do certain things over and over without it ever becoming a bore.’

  Stephen nodded. ‘Like – having a cocktail, for instance.’

  ‘Among other things,’ she said, her eyes still on him. He sensed the moment there to be seized.

  ‘Well, speaking as a complete stranger, what d’you say we sneak out of here?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘A cocktail,’ he said casually.

  She screwed her mouth into a pout that implied he’d misread her: much too forward of him. He was about to back away in apology when she said, ‘Why not?’

  The cocktail led to dinner, which led to a nightcap at his club, and thence to a taxi to her lodgings off Baker Street. She didn’t invite him in, but there was sufficient meaning in their kiss goodnight for them to know that this would not be the end of it. Two lunches together followed. The next week they had a late supper at the Ivy, right after she came offstage. The kiss afterwards lasted rather longer than the first one. That was when they decided upon this afternoon’s assignation.

  At the kiosk outside Russell Square Tube he bought a Times, his favoured shield of respectability. The Imperial’s monstrous Gothic facade of egg-and-bacon terracotta peered down on him. As he went through the hotel’s revolving doors he made a quick reflexive scan of the foyer, not feeling quite imperturbable. The desk manager asked for his name, and Stephen almost blundered into giving his own.

  ‘Ah yes, Mr Melmotte,’ the man said in echo. ‘Your wife is already in residence. Do you have any luggage?’

  Stephen shook his head, smiled, and went off to the lift. The busy anonymity of the clientele – travelling salesmen and pie-faced couples from the provinces – put him at ease. Ordinarily he would have preferred the Cadogan, or Claridge’s, but there was a greater likelihood of running into someone he knew there.

  He got out at the fourth floor and followed the rising numbers along the corridor. The door to the room – their room – was hung with a notice, DO NOT DISTURB. He hesitated, reading an ulterior meaning in the words. It wasn’t too late to turn back. And yet the gravitational pull of desire mixed with curiosity was strong: he had to risk it, or else wonder till the end what might have been. He tapped so quietly on the door he felt sure she wouldn’t have heard, but then from within came the soft pad of footsteps on carpet, and the door swung open.

  ‘Hullo,’ said Nina with a wry grin. ‘That knock sounded like a small boy come to the headmaster’s office for a thrashing.’

  ‘Mm, it was a bit feeble,’ he admitted. They kissed rather
awkwardly on the threshold, and he walked in. He was pleased to see they had given them a suite and put flowers on the table, as he had requested. She had opened the windows, through which the faint drone of traffic from the street drifted up. He sauntered over and peered down at Russell Square, at the plane trees and the beetling pedestrians, all heedless. Behind him she rattled the ice in her glass.

  ‘Thirsty?’ she said brightly.

  ‘Parched.’

  She began tipping ice cubes into a tall glass like her own, then dousing them in Scotch. She brought it over to where he stood, still gazing out of the window. He handled it absently, then took a deep swallow. A dry little chuckle escaped her.

  ‘Having second thoughts?’

  He turned round, jolted by her intuitive stab. ‘Why d’you say that?’

  ‘You look rather distracted.’

  ‘Actually, what’s bothering me,’ he said with a wince, ‘are these bloody shoes. I think I’d better –’ He went over the bed and plumped down on the edge.

  ‘Here, let me,’ she said, kneeling down and tugging at his shoelaces. With brisk authority she plucked one foot then the other out of their leather vices. They came off with a sucking gasp.

  ‘Phew! That’s a relief.’ He began to rub his tortured feet. ‘I think this one’s given me a blister . . .’

  ‘They did seem rather tight,’ she said, raising herself next to him on the edge of the bed. Then, turning her back, she pointed to the zip on her dress. ‘Now. Perhaps you could help me get out of this.’

  Afterwards, as they lay there, the sweat cooling on their skin, Nina propped herself up on an elbow. He sensed her watching him, so he kept his eyes on the ceiling. Presently, she picked up his wrist between her fingers, and after a few moments said, ‘Well, pulse is normal. Respiration seems fine, too.’ Then she gave his forehead a soft tap with her knuckle. ‘Anything to worry about up here?’