The Belgian and The Beekeeper

by Peter Guttridge

  “Oh, no thank you,” she snuffled.

  His companion passed the woman a crisp white handkerchief from the top pocket of his well-cut jacket. The stout man offered the flask to the other man, who shook his head.

  “No thanks, old friend. The fair sex is your department but in this instance you have it wrong. Here stands an aggrieved woman but it is not because she is romantically involved with that fellow. Mrs Cunliffe, pray continue.”

  The woman dabbed at her eyes with the white handkerchief, her sobbing fit at an end. She turned to the stout man.

  “I meant no offence rejecting your offer. It’s just that I have absolutely no head for alcohol. A single sip befuddles me.”

  She turned to the man she had addressed as Sherlock Holmes.

  “You seem to know a lot about me. Pray tell me more.”

  “You are a woman who has run her husband’s business single-handed throughout the late war and has left it in good repair for his longed-for return from a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. During those dark days of deep privation you ensured there was food on the table for your two young children by working in addition at the Beacon, when it was a home for young Jewish refugees.

  “You are a beautiful woman so you have had your share of offers but as an Englishwoman you have remained loyal to your husband. Two years after the end of the European war he came home and you’re the happier for it. You are Mrs Marjorie Cunliffe.”

  “Astounding deduction,” his companion said with just a suggestion of weariness, “quite astounding. But how on earth do you know all this?”

  “Yes,” Mrs Cunliffe said. “You seem to know all about me yet to the best of my knowledge we have never met.”

  “It’s perfectly straightforward, madam, but I’m afraid does not show me in a very good light. I breakfasted alone this morning whilst waiting for my friend here to wake from his slumbers. I was seated near the kitchen and inadvertently took on the role of eavesdropper. Please believe me when I say I had little choice but to hear your conversation with your colleague since you speak so firmly and I was only a matter of yards away.”

  His companion harrumphed.

  “Hardly slept a wink. Indigestion if you must know. That wretched dinner we ate last night in Crowborough.”

  The tall man smiled.

  “Then it must have been someone else in the room next to mine whose snores were threatening more damage to the structure of that fine Edwardian building than Hitler’s bombs ever did.”

  He turned to Mrs Cunliffe.

  “I hope you can forgive me, madam.”

  “Of course,” she said. “For it is my good fortune that you happen to be staying here with us and witnessed that man’s importunities. But what am I to do? He hopes to ruin my marriage and my life with – that.” She pointed at the film canister that the tall man had tucked under his arm. “And he may yet do so unless I can call upon your professional competence.”

  The tall man sighed.

  “Madam, before you go further I must disabuse you of something. Though you recognise us as Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, we are not in reality those estimable men. The wonders of modern cinematography are such that even I am occasionally tricked into believing that what is fantasy is somehow real. But we are mere actors, Mrs Cunliffe –“

  Her sudden burst of laughter had a tinge of hysteria to it, although when she spoke she seemed calm enough.

  “You are Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce,” she said. “I know. Do I look so foolish as to believe you to be in actuality two characters from fiction, however persuasively you play the parts? In the turmoil of my emotions some moments ago I know I called out the names of the characters you play but I did not really believe you to be them.

  “In fact you are rather too big a man to incarnate the Sherlock Holmes Conan Doyle described, are you not Mr Rathbone? He was lean and his nose, if you’ll forgive me saying so, thinner, more hawk-like. Although I have seen from your other films that you handle a blade as well as Sherlock Holmes was said to do.”

  “He was a skilled boxer also,” Rathbone said. “I too have some experience in that line.”

  The woman seemed to forget her situation for a moment. Her eyes sparkled and she smiled as she turned to Bruce.

  “And as for you, Mr Bruce, purists think you make Watson too much of a buffoon, but Conan Doyle often wrote of Holmes’s impatience with the slower mental processes of Watson. Remarkably, you seem to share the good doctor’s limp. A Jazail bullet?”

  “Eleven German bullets, I regret to say, madam,” Bruce said solemnly, easing his chin free of his shirt collar. “A machine gun at Cambrai during the Great War. We called it that before we knew enough to number them.”

  “It put paid to a first class cricketing career and obliged you to turn to acting for your living, did it not, Willy?” Rathbone said.

  Bruce glanced at Rathbone.

  “A living that also now seems in jeopardy.”

  Rathbone cleared his throat. He addressed Mrs Cunliffe.

  “You are well-informed about the Sherlock Holmes canon.”

  “Before the war I spent some time in the service of Lady Jean Conan Doyle in her home at Windlesham, near Crowborough.”

  “Indeed? We lunched with her daughter, Jean Conan Doyle, in London yesterday and then visited the graves of Sir Arthur and Lady Jean at Windlesham in the afternoon.”

  “Fat lot of good it did,” Bruce said glumly.

  “Cheer up, Willy, there’s a good fellow,” Rathbone said amiably. He addressed Mrs Cunliffe. “Sir Arthur’s daughter is in the Royal Air Force, as I’m sure you know. I don’t doubt that she will be an Air Commandant one day. A remarkable woman.”

  “A remarkable house too,” Bruce said, “but in appalling condition. I understand the Canadian Air Force occupied it during the war. I’m afraid they left it in a deplorable state. In my view the graves have been desecrated.”

  “Indeed, Willy, indeed.”

  Rathbone turned to Mrs Cunliffe.

  “Everything is now explained, Mrs Cunliffe, except the manner in which we may be of assistance, given that we are actors not detectives.”

  She lowered her eyes.

  “It is for your acting – or more particularly your knowledge of film-making – that I require your help.” She glanced again at the film canister under Rathbone’s arm. “I ask that you explain something about that film. If not, then I fear I will be ruined.”

  She looked intently at Rathbone.

  “I appeal to you.”

  “I shall do whatever I can. May I suggest we return to the Beacon. Perhaps you might explain more as we walk?”

  From the cliff top the trio were able to take an easier path back to the Beacon than the one the two film stars had originally used. Mrs Cunliffe spoke to them as they walked.

  “That man is called Frank Harvey. He was a newsreel cameraman at the start of the war. He was injured in Egypt during the desert campaigns and was invalided out. At least, that is what he told me.

  “Mr Harvey has stayed at the Beacon on a number of occasions over the past year. He always brought a cine-camera. He told us that he was making a travelogue for one of the newsreel companies about Happy Valley through the seasons. It was to be shown at the cinema.”

  She lowered her head and tightened her jaw.

  “I caught him looking at me on several occasions in an inappropriate way, especially given my marital status. When I challenged him he said it was because he was on the look out for people he called ‘photogenic’.”

  “One expects to hear that on Sunset Boulevard but not generally in Tunbridge Wells,” Rathbone remarked.

  “And did he film you?” Bruce asked as they reached the small upper car park of the hotel.

  “He filmed all the staff at various times. He filmed Charlotte – the lady I was talking to at breakfast – and me on the same day. That was almost exactly two months ago when the spring blossoms were on the trees. Charlotte has a dog and he filmed us playin
g with her. He even let us film each other, suggesting that we each look straight into the camera, then laugh, smile and look sad.”

  “Forgive my asking but was he forward to you?” Rathbone asked.

  “Not at all. After that initial misunderstanding he treated both of us with the greatest deference. There was only odd incident…”

  “Go on, my dear,” Bruce prompted.

  “Well, it’s nothing really though it seemed peculiar at the time. I was stung by a wasp and I was conscious he was filming my response. I can’t have made a pretty picture – it’s a horrible pain for a moment.”

  They had reached the front entrance of the hotel, recently converted from an Edwardian folly. Rathbone touched Mrs Cunliffe’s arm.

  “This has been most interesting but I have no notion what it has to do with the scene we witnessed this morning. What was Mr Harvey about with you?”

  Mrs Cunliffe looked up at Rathbone. She blushed but held his gaze.

  “He demanded that I - that I be intimate with him. He said that unless I did he would show the film in that canister to my husband.”

  “The film? The film of Happy Valley?” Bruce said, perplexed. “Why should he want to do that?”

  She looked towards the door to the hotel and stepped back a pace.

  “He said that the film in that canister was a – a stag reel showing Charlotte and myself…”

  Her voice trailed away. Bruce’s eyes popped.

  “By Jove!” he said.

  Rathbone looked at the film canister.

  “Then the best thing we can do is destroy this canister and the film inside it, Mrs Cunliffe.”

  “But there may be copies and I must see what vileness is on this reel. I assure you that Charlotte and I did nothing that was not wholly innocent.”

  Rathbone and Bruce exchanged glances.

  “I believe the hotel has a cine-projector. I hope that you might look at the film with a professional eye – if the idea is not too distasteful.”

  “We’ll be happy to, my dear,” Bruce said. Then, perhaps realising how eager he had sounded: “That’s to say, if it will help you then we must.”

  “The existence of such films is not entirely unknown to us,” Rathbone said, tilting his head to show off his noble profile. “Although, I hasten to add, not from first hand experience. I may tell you in confidence that Miss Joan Crawford’s studio has paid many thousands of dollars over the years in a vain attempt to buy up every copy of Casting Couch, a stag reel in which she is purported to appear. We will see this film and we shall endeavour to explain it to you. Shall we say ten minutes in the rooms to the right of the hotel entrance here? Splendid.”

  “Casting Couch?” Bruce mumbled. “Casting Couch? Joan Crawford…”

  The two men waited in the lounge of the hotel whilst Mrs Cunliffe went to prepare the room. Rathbone was standing before the mock-Elizabethan fireplace, puffing absently on his pipe, one arm stretched across the mantelpiece.

  Bruce was sitting in a wing chair to his left. He gazed gloomily into the small fire that had been lit especially for them, their blood thinned by two decades of Los Angeles summers. He stirred himself.

  “So your mind is made up, Baz? You don’t intend to continue as Sherlock Holmes?”

  Rathbone looked down on him.

  “I’m afraid so, old fellow. But cheer up, it’s not the end of the world.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. Seems damned silly if you ask me. They offered a seven year contract! That will see us both through to retirement.”

  “But Willy,” Rathbone said. “We’re actors. We don’t know how to retire. I’m certainly not ready to keep bees in Sussex. I don’t feel I’ve achieved my best work yet. There’s so much else I want to do.”

  He looked down at his friend and companion.

  “Old fellow, with the best will in the world I cannot go on a moment longer. If someone else when he sees me calls, ‘Elementary’, or, ‘Hi, there, Sherlock, how’s Watson?’ I swear the Great Detective himself will stand trial for murder.”

  “But that’s the point. We’re typecast. We’ve established ourselves so clearly as Holmes and Watson, what other roles are we going to be offered? What other work can I hope to get at my age?”

  “Willy, you’re 53 – that’s three years younger than I! I’ve played fifty two roles in twenty three of Shakespeare’s plays. I’ve appeared on the stage in both the West End and on Broadway. I’ve made scores of motion pictures and been nominated twice for an Academy Award. Am I to be remembered only as the star of a series of B movies and a Monday evening radio series?”

  “The most profitable B movies ever made,” Bruce said dully. “And out radio series is heard all over the world.”

  “The films for Universal I believe served their purpose during the war years. By making them contemporary we were able to help the war effort in our humble way. But these last few – we are marooned, Willy, out of time. And with dear Mousie no longer directing, the fizz has gone, I fear.”

  Bruce leaned forward in his seat.

  “Remember when we did our first Holmes film, back in 1939?”

  Rathbone thought about it often. He had always wanted to be a romantic hero. Darryl Zanuck had proposed the role of Sherlock Holmes shortly after Rathbone had been passed over for the part of Rhett Butler in Gone With The Wind.

  The studio had wanted Errol Flynn as Rhett opposite Bette Davis as Scarlett but the actress loathed the Antipodean actor and Rathbone was proposed instead. Rathbone lost his part when Davis lost the part of Scarlett to Vivian Leigh.

  “Had I made only one Holmes picture, that first one, I should probably not be as well known as I am today,” Rathbone mused. “But within myself as an artist I would have been well content.”

  “I hoped Jean Conan Doyle would be able to change your mind,” Bruce said quietly.

  Rathbone smiled and sent out a plume of smoke from his pipe. It drifted lazily across a beam of sunlight.

  “I know you did, Willy, but she has more pressing matters to attend to in defence of the realm. And my mind is quite made up. On our brief summer jaunt to England it would have been unpardonably rude not to have called on her but I never intended to reverse my decision.

  “We’ve made, if my mathematics are correct, 213 radio episodes since 1938. I can’t get that damned organ introduction or the sales pitch for our sponsors, Petri wines, out of my head.”

  He adopted an overemphatic American accent.

  “And if you prefer your wine dry – you know, not sweet. As if our listeners don’t understand the concept of a dry-tasting liquid…”

  Bruce tamped his pipe and shook his head wearily.

  “Can’t understand why Ouida is supporting you in this.”

  “Because she’s my wife, Willy.”

  “But she likes to live well. You both do. I still remember those parties at your house before the war – the swimming pool filled with jonquils. Does she not know you’ll be earning far less?”

  “Ouida’s writing again. A play for Broadway with a central part just for me. And why should we earn less, Willy – why can we both not use our fame as a stepping stone to greater things? Are there no great roles you burn to play?”

  Bruce gave him a look that was almost contemptuous.

  “You know when we used to do the warm-up before the radio shows? I would sometimes say: ‘People often ask me if I’m really English. I reply to them, if I were any more English I shouldn’t be able to speak.’”

  “It’s very amusing, old fellow –“

  “But it demonstrates how absurd I’ve made myself to make a go of it. I’m a parody of an Englishman, just like C Aubrey and all the other English character actors who have managed to make a very nice living in Hollywood over the past three decades. I’m a character actor but with only one character.”

  Rathbone took a step away from the fireplace.

  “Willy, you can carry on as Watson on the radio. They’re lining up Tom Conway t
o take my place. He’s been making quite a success of the Falcon film series, you know.”

  “And you know Petri and the network will drop the series without you or the films.”

  “Willy, in that event someone else will take over sponsorship and the series will simply move to a different network. I doubt you even know what network we’ve been with for the past eight years.”

  Bruce looked guilty and made a series of odd noises. Then, anger and hurt in his voice, he burst out:

  “But what of our friendship?”

  “Willy, I’ve known you for almost twenty years. You’re my dearest friend. All that has made Sherlock Holmes bearable all these years has been your presence. It has been a delight working with you, even with your continuous attempts to make me corpse with your quite extraordinary background noises as I delivered my lines on live radio – “

  “What’s left for me?” Bruce interrupted. “Poverty row horror films?”

  “Neither you nor I will end up there,” Rathbone said.

  “You know, things may well not go so easily for Bunny and me,” Bruce said slowly. “We’ve never been very good at saving – we’ve always spent what I’ve earned as soon as I’ve earned it. This could mean quite a change for us.”

  He looked across at Rathbone.

  “I’m not sure we’ll want to see you for a while.”

  “Willy, please.”

  “There you are, Mr Rathbone, Mr Bruce.”

  Mrs Cunliffe entered the room. Bruce got to his feet and stood, slightly bent at the waist, his head thrust forward, expectant. Rathbone hooked his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets. Mrs Cunliffe blushed.

  “Shall we go in?”

  When the twelve minute film was over, Rathbone crossed the small parlour, opened the curtains and thrust open the window. He glanced at Mrs Cunliffe. She was standing beside the projector, her cheeks burning, her head cast down. She sensed Rathbone was looking at her.

  “He told the truth, Mr Rathbone. I do not know how but he has a film of Charlotte and I doing things I never dreamed women would think to do with each other. You must be disgusted with me. I have no memory of this, yet still I feel degraded.”