A Mysterious Affair of Style (11 page)

‘Did you like her? Dislike her? Understand me, I’d prefer you to be completely honest.’

‘On a personal level, I had nothing against Cora. Nothing for her either. You’ve got to realise, Inspector, before I was put in charge of
If Ever They Find Me Dead
, I’d never once met Cora Rutherford. I’d seen her on stage two or three times, of course, but that was it.’

‘And professionally?’

‘Professionally? Well, from a strictly professional point of view, I can’t deny that Cora Rutherford was not, and would
never have been, my first choice for the role. I inherited her as I inherited every single other aspect of the film.’

‘Except Leolia Drake,’ said Trubshawe unexpectedly.

Hanway, for the first time, appeared disconcerted.

‘Yes …’ he answered at last, having taken some time to gather his thoughts. ‘It’s perfectly true. But, you must understand, that specific decision was forced upon me. The actress who had initially been cast in the role was Patsy Sloots, who died along with Farjeon in his Cookham villa. So, yes, of necessity Miss Drake was my own personal choice of actress.

‘You were asking me, though,’ he quickly changed the subject, ‘about my attitude towards Cora Rutherford. The fact is, she isn’t somebody I would ever have cast in the part had I myself been empowered to make such a decision.’

‘Oh,’ asked Evadne Mount, ‘and why not, may I ask?’

The reply came sharply.

‘Miss Mount, I know how close you were to Cora. In this interview, however, you’ve been very candid with me, aggressively so at times, and I can’t see why I shouldn’t be equally candid with you. Cora was desperate for the role, as I already learned from Farje. She would have done practically anything to land it. Why? Because, quite frankly, she was on her way out. Farje knew it, I knew it, Cora herself knew it and I think you know it too.’

‘Whether I know it or not, it surely wouldn’t have detracted from her skill as an actress.’

‘Excuse me, but I beg to differ. In my experience – which is hardly as great as Farje’s was, of course, but it’s the only experience I can credibly speak from – in my experience, an actress as desperate to land a part as Cora was is precisely the last actress who ever ought to be offered it.’

‘Why so?’

‘Because such an actress would have so hungered after the part she simply wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation of squeezing out of it more, in fact, than it actually contained. I had several pre-production conversations with Cora and I swear that, for her, the film itself only mattered because, without it, her own part in it wouldn’t exist. As far as she was concerned,
If Ever They Find Me Dead
represented above all a comeback for her – to which my film was conveniently attached.

‘Well no, Miss Mount, that’s not what I look for in an actress. I don’t want somebody hogging and ultimately clogging up the screen. Cora’s part, after all, was a fairly secondary one.’

‘Yet, as I understand it, it was one that you yourself were happy – or at least willing – to enlarge. You “bumped it up”, to use Cora’s own expression.’

‘Only,’ he cut in glibly, ‘only because I could anticipate the kind of overheated, overblown – in a word, a cruel word but a justified one,
hammy
– performance she was likely to give me and I wanted her character to have a more extended presence on the screen in order to accommodate all the hysterics
and histrionics that I dreaded.
That
, I assure you, is the one and only reason I “bumped up” her part.’

‘And when you watched her play the scene, just minutes before her death,’ the novelist quietly asked, ‘did you still think she gave a hammy performance?’

Hanway looked at her for the longest time before shaking his head.

‘No, I didn’t. I was wrong, hopelessly wrong. She was magnificent. I make total amends. To you – and to Cora too, if she can hear me now.’

There was a moment of silence before Calvert spoke again.

‘I have one last question for you, Mr Hanway, and then I’ll let you go.’

‘Yes, Inspector?’

‘As I’ve been informed, it was immediately
after
the lunch break that Cora Rutherford drank out of the poisoned glass. And that was because, immediately
before
the lunch break, you yourself had told her she’d be expected to do so because you’d just had the idea of improving the scene. Now you do see, don’t you, how bad that sequence of events looks for you?’

There was no change in Hanway’s expression. It was a question he knew he was going to be asked.

‘Inspector, apart from the fact that I had no conceivable motive for killing Cora – indeed, I had not one but two extremely strong motives for keeping her alive, if I may put
it that way. One, as I’ve just told you, I thought the performance she had given me so far was quite magnificent and, two, her death risks seriously endangering the future of this film and my own future with it. Apart from all that, however, let me answer you in this way. Do you really suppose that, if I had wished to kill Cora, I would have requested her – in public – to drink out of a glass into which I myself had just sprinkled poison?’

‘I’m sorry, sir, but –’ Calvert began, except that Hanway hadn’t finished.

‘Let me continue, Inspector, since I believe I can predict what you’re about to say. You’re about to say that such an argument simply doesn’t count since, whether I did or did not kill her, I would offer exactly the same response? Am I right?’

‘Ye-es, something along those lines,’ replied Calvert, who couldn’t help smiling at how slyly he had been pre-empted.

‘Then I submit, with all due respect, that the question should never have been posed in the first place. I repeat, with all due respect.’

‘
Touché
, Mr Hanway,’ said Calvert. ‘But please consider this. Cora Rutherford was neither stabbed nor shot nor strangled. She was poisoned. Now I’ve been involved in quite a few criminal investigations and I’ve never yet had a case in which someone carried poison about him on the off-chance that he was going to feel like committing a murder. The only person who could have poisoned Cora Rutherford
was someone who had premeditated the crime, someone who brought the poison into the studio yesterday morning because he knew – he
knew
, Mr Hanway – that she would be expected to drink out of the champagne glass yesterday afternoon. I’m sorry, but I can’t think of anyone else who fits that description but you.’

‘Aren’t you forgetting one thing, Inspector?’

‘Am I?’

‘Yes. You’re forgetting that this is a film studio. It has a laboratory. And in that laboratory, if I’m not mistaken, you will find many samples of the so-called industrial poisons – hydrocyanic compounds, I believe they’re called – that are widely employed in the photographic and cinematographic industries. Everyone who works at Elstree will confirm what I’ve just said. And everyone would have had just as easy access to these poisons as I had. The lab is only a five-minute stroll from here.’

Calvert gazed at him as though at an insect under a magnifying-glass. Then:

‘
Re-touché.’

With a rakish nod of his head, Hanway acknowledged in his turn Calvert’s own rueful acknowledgement of defeat.

‘Oh, and I don’t suppose, Mr Hanway, that you mentioned the idea of half-filling the champagne glass to anyone else before you spoke to Miss Rutherford about it?’

‘Do you mean, did I tell someone about my idea before I had it myself? Come come, Inspector.’

‘Yes, sir, point taken. Well, thank you for giving me so much of your time. If I need to contact you further, I know where I can find you.’

‘Thank you, Inspector, for making it all so painless, so
relatively
painless.’

Bowing crisply to both the novelist and the detective, the director stood up and strode out of the room.

For a moment no one spoke. Then, plugging his pipe with tobacco, Trubshawe said:

‘Now that’s one cool customer.’

In deference to Benjamin Levey’s concern that the film’s leading man and lady not be imposed upon more than was absolutely necessary, Calvert decided that the very next person to be grilled would be Gareth Knight, followed immediately by Leolia Drake. As before, it was Sergeant Whistler who escorted Knight into Hanway’s office and silently steered him to the interviewees’ chair. With a first vague nod at both Evadne Mount and Trubshawe, the actor turned to face Tom Calvert. Then, removing his cigarette-case from the inside breast-pocket of his impeccably cut sports jacket, he was about to ask whether he might be permitted to smoke when, the two men taking stock of one another, an unexpected thing occurred.

Though probably nothing untoward would have struck the untrained eye, for Trubshawe there was no doubt at all. It wasn’t that he merely fancied he saw – no, he definitely did see – the actor momentarily flush with apprehension. Clearly, Knight recognised Calvert, and it was that recognition which had caused him to – in Cora’s word – start.

Did Calvert, though, recognise Knight? That was less obvious, as the young officer opened the session with a politely neutral, almost sycophantic approach.

‘I want very much to thank you, Mr Knight, for agreeing to appear before us and also to assure you that I mean to take up as little of your valuable time as I humanly can. I’d just like to ask you, if I may, some questions about the terrible thing that happened here yesterday afternoon. You don’t mind, do you?’

Shifting uneasily in his chair, the suddenly rather waxy-complexioned Knight seemed to have more of a problem lighting his cigarette than one might have expected of so urbane an idol of the silver screen.

‘Not at all, not at all. I – I’m entirely at your disposal.’

‘Good. Now then, I really don’t have to ask who you are and all that. Somebody as well-known as you needs, as they say, no introduction. So we’ll proceed directly to –’

He didn’t complete the sentence.

‘I say, sir, haven’t we met, you and I? I know I ought to remember, but …’

Knight bit into his lower lip, but so furtively that the gesture was noticed, again, only by Trubshawe, whom years of experience had taught to be eternally on the watch for all such, to others, imperceptible symptoms of disquiet.

The actor decided at once, however, that it would be both pointless and counterproductive to conceal the truth, and replied in a clipped tone:

‘Yes, Inspector, you’re quite right. We have met before.’

‘It was when I was on duty, was it not?’

‘Yes, it was.’

‘It’s coming back to me now. The reason I didn’t at first remember where and when we met is that, at the time, you weren’t using the same name. Am I right?’

‘You are.’

‘Would you mind telling me what name you were arrested under?’

As Hanway had before him, Knight edgily glanced back at the novelist and the Chief-Inspector.

‘No need for alarm, sir,’ said Calvert. ‘Everything we hear will remain between these four walls. Mum’s the word – unless, of course, it should turn out to have a bearing on the case we’re investigating.’

‘Very well,’ said Knight, struggling to control his nerves. ‘It happened about eighteen months ago. On V.E. Day. Or V.D. Day, as I believe some wag jocularly called it. I was arrested by two constables in Leicester Square for …’ – he hesitated again – ‘for soliciting in a Public Convenience. The – the young gentleman with whom I imagined I was having a pleasant and, uh, promising conversation turned out to be – as
you
know, Inspector – a plain-clothes policeman. I must say that did seem to me to take policing a little bit too far, especially on such a joyous and festive occasion.’

‘Well, of course, I’m sorry you feel that way, sir, but for me it was an assignment like any other. Our job, after all, is
to protect the public from the likes of –’ said Calvert. ‘Anyway, do go on.’

‘As I say, I was arrested in Leicester Square and taken to Bow Street Police Station. Fortunately the sergeant there failed to recognise me and I was able to give another name –’

Calvert interrupted him.

‘I’m amazed to hear you brazenly admit that, Mr Knight. That was a most serious offence you committed.’

‘You don’t understand, Inspector. Gareth Knight is my professional name. For an obvious reason – which is to say, my career would have been killed stone dead if the press had got wind of the arrest – I gave my real one.’

‘Which is?’

His cheeks tensing, Knight seemed even more reluctant to confess to his real name than to the offence he had committed.

‘Colleano. Luigi Colleano.’

‘I see,’ said Calvert. ‘Luigi Colleano? Doesn’t quite have the same ring as Gareth Knight, does it? So you’re Italian?’

‘As a matter of fact, I was born in Bournemouth. My father, who emigrated just before the First War, earned his living by selling ice-cream cones and wafers on the pier.’

‘Uh huh. All very respectable, I dare say. But, well, didn’t you also look different?’

‘I had shaved off my moustache for the occasion. And wore spectacles.’

Observing Calvert’s expression of mild reproof, he added:

‘No crime in that, I believe?’

‘Never said there was, sir, never said there was. If I’m not mistaken, you were sent to Wormwood Scrubs, right?’

‘Three months penal servitude. My war record was taken into account. I’d been an R.A.F. pilot in the Battle of Britain. Shot down four Messerschmitts and one Dornier. Awarded the D.S.O.’

‘Only three months, eh?’ said Calvert. ‘Well, Mr Knight, I really don’t think you have too much to complain of. Could have been two years, you know.’

‘There is that, I suppose,’ agreed Knight drily. ‘The essential is that there was no write-up in the papers and my reputation was saved.’

‘You yourself might want to put it that way. For us in the police, of course, the essential is that you were made to pay your debt to society. And, since you did, we’ll say no more about it.

‘Now to the matter at hand. As I understand, you were actually performing alongside Cora Rutherford just before she died?’

‘That’s right. We were playing our one big scene together.’

‘What was your reaction, your initial reaction, when she collapsed in front of you?’

‘My initial reaction? To be absolutely honest with you – it’s awful to have to say such a thing – but my initial reaction was that she was grandstanding.’

‘Grandstanding?’ said a puzzled Calvert. ‘I don’t think I know that word.’

‘It’s what the French call “pulling the covers over to your own side of the bed”,’ explained Evadne. ‘Isn’t that so, Mr Knight?’

Knight turned to face her.

‘Yes it is, Mrs …?’

‘Miss. Miss Evadne Mount.’

‘Miss Mount. Yes, I’d say that was rather a neat definition.’

Then, to Calvert again:

‘It means trying to upstage your co-performers. And, well, I blush to think of it now but, before I realised that something deadly serious had happened, that’s exactly what I thought Cora was up to.’

‘So you disliked her, did you?’ the novelist put to him.

‘Cora? Why, not at all,’ he replied, expressing surprise. ‘Oh, I won’t pretend she didn’t sometimes set my teeth on edge with all her tantrums and taradiddle, and especially her chronic lateness – I cannot abide unpunctuality – but, no, deep down I was really rather fond of Cora.’

This revelation arrested Evadne’s head.

‘
Were
you?’ she said, even more surprised by Knight’s answer than he had been by her question.

‘Yes, I was. I can’t say I knew her all that well, but over the years, you know, we’d run into one another at the Ivy and the Caprice.’

‘You had no previous professional connection with her, I assume,’ Calvert asked.

‘Yes, I did. Just the once. It must have been in 1930. Possibly ’31. She and I were in a stage production together.’

‘Really?’ remarked Evadne. ‘Cora never mentioned it to me.’

‘I can’t say I blame her. It wasn’t something either of us felt like boasting about. A play by Eugene O’Neill, but decidedly one of his feebler efforts.
Orpheus Schmorpheus.
Adapted from the French – Jean Cocteau, you know. It closed after five performances. Precisely five too many, in my opinion. O’Neill never had the light touch.’

‘But as to Cora,’ the novelist persisted, ‘you say you really liked her?’

‘Well, yes, I rather did. Certainly, when I first met her, about fifteen years ago, she was very special. Unforgettably gorgeous and possessed of an extraordinary presence. Not just on stage but in life. She was one of those actresses who didn’t need spot-lights or arc-lights. She didn’t absorb light, she herself seemed to emit it.’

‘Nicely put, young man.’

‘Well, thank you, Miss Mount. And, incidentally, thank you, too, for the “young man”. We were two of a kind, Cora and I. She was somewhat older than I, of course, but we both had what she’d have called a “past”. We both launched our careers in the theatre before eventually gravitating to the films. And we both knew we were getting on when we stopped lying about what we were going to do and started lying about what we’d already done.

‘The trouble with Cora, though, is that she never learned to adapt. Even when she was acting in front of a film camera, she continued to deliver her lines as though she had to pitch them to the very last row of the Upper Circle. And she continued to behave – to misbehave – as though she were a major star, which, these last few years, she was most definitely not. All the same, she had class, real class. She wasn’t like one of these fluffy little chits one finds oneself acting with nowadays who not only couldn’t play O’Neill but have never even heard of him. And for all her bitchiness – of which, I have to tell you, I was more than once the target – she could be a generous soul.’

‘I wholeheartedly agree with you,’ said Evadne Mount. ‘It’s what I was saying to my friend Eustace here. Cora was a good egg.’

‘Let’s say, rather, a curate’s egg,’ murmured the actor, adding chivalrously, ‘but by Fabergé.’

‘So,’ said Trubshawe, none too pleased to hear his deplorable Christian name afforded another reckless public airing, ‘you didn’t object to her being cast in the picture?’

‘Object? Certainly not. As a matter of fact, it was I who persuaded Farje that she’d be ideal for the role.’

‘Oh, you did, did you?’ Trubshawe said pensively. ‘Now that
is
interesting …’

‘Why so?’

‘Well, don’t you see, sir. Somebody obviously had his reasons for wanting Miss Rutherford put out of commission.
And one way of disposing of her would be to have her poisoned in the middle of a crowded film set. Now we learn that it was you who recommended that she be cast in the picture. Don’t you see what I’m getting at?’

Gareth Knight thought this over, then said:

‘Well, no, I can’t say I do. You seem to have forgotten that there was nothing in the original script about Cora drinking out of the champagne glass. It was an idea the director had on the set, at the very last minute, just as used to happen heaps of times with Farje. Can you actually be suggesting that I knew in advance, by some kind of intimate conviction, that Hanway was going to have that idea?’

‘That’s one in the eye for you, Eustace!’ Evadne Mount almost crowed.

‘Besides,’ Knight smoothly continued, ‘I repeat, I liked Cora. It’s absurd to imply that I might have had a reason to kill her. Not only did I not, I simply cannot imagine why anyone else would. There were times I would happily have throttled her – but not killed her, if you know what I mean.’

‘Just so,’ said Calvert. ‘But tell me, Mr Knight, during the ninety minutes or so between the moment when everybody broke for lunch and your own reappearance on the set, what exactly were your movements? Where did you go? And what did you do?’

‘I spent the entire hour-and-a-half in my dressing-room.’

‘You didn’t have lunch in the canteen?’

‘The commissary? No, never. My secretary prepares my
lunch every day and brings it down to Elstree from my London flat.’

‘And this secretary? Was she with you any of the time in your dressing-room?’

‘He, Inspector.’

‘He?’

‘My secretary is male.’

‘Aha … I see. Well, was
he
with you any of the time?’

‘He was with me all of the time. In fact, he and I lunched together. Then he helped me run through the new scene. He played Cora. I mean, he read Cora’s lines. He will absolutely vouch for that.’

‘I’m sure he will, sir, I’m sure he will.’

Changing tack, Calvert now said, ‘This picture –
If Ever They Find Me Dead
– it does appear to be jinxed, doesn’t it? Miss Rutherford dying as she did, right there on the set, and of course Mr Farjeon also dying only a few weeks ago. His death must have come as a great shock to you.’

‘It
was
a shock, yes,’ said Knight. ‘A huge professional blow. I’ve acted in several of Farje’s films, you know. I was one of his repertory company, as it were.’

‘A professional blow, you say. Not a personal one?’

Knight fell silent. It was patent that he was debating with himself whether to speak out or not. Finally, he said:

‘Inspector, I yield to no one in my admiration for Alastair Farjeon as an artist. He was, I need hardly say, a true genius, one of the very few reasons it was still possible for us to take
pride in this mostly lamentable British film industry of ours. As a man …’

He shrugged his shoulders.

‘You weren’t close friends, I gather?’

‘But that’s just it, we were close friends,’ Hanway replied with a grimace. ‘That’s what I found so unforgivably cruel. You understand, I –’

‘Yes, Mr Knight?’

‘Oh well, in view of what I’ve already been obliged to confess, I don’t see why you shouldn’t be acquainted with the whole story. Now that he’s dead, it no longer matters. When I was arrested, it was Farje whom I asked to pay my bail and contact my lawyer and so forth. Naturally, that meant he had to be in on the whole sordid business. And, just as naturally, given his twisted personality, he at once realised the implications it held for my future career.’