A Mysterious Affair of Style (7 page)

Then it was the turn of the film’s two leads to walk onto the set. If Gareth Knight was no longer quite the
jeune premier,
yet with his raven-black moustache, his suave throw-away manner and above all his smile, that fabled smile of his that had broken many a shopgirl’s heart, he still managed to cut an enviably dashing and devil-may-care figure. As for Leolia Drake, the actress who had been chosen to replace the late Patsy Sloots, she certainly had what is known in the trade as a photogenic physique, being luscious, gorgeous,
curvaceous, voluptuous and all those other quintessentially feminine adjectives that end in ‘ous’.

‘By the Lord Harry!’ exclaimed Trubshawe, smacking his lips. ‘Now that’s what I call a real corker.’

Without for an instant compromising his stencilled-on smile, Knight bowed curtly to Cora and shook Hanway’s hand. The director stepped over to offer a few words of encouragement to the two children. The scene was ready to be rehearsed.

And it was a scene, as Trubshawe remarked at once, that bore a striking resemblance to the premise of Evadne’s
Eeny-Meeny-Murder-Mo
. The setting was a chic cocktail party and, even if he was still almost totally ignorant of the ramifications of the film’s plot, he had soon worked out, from the dry runs which the actors were put through by Hanway, not only that the party was being given by Knight and his wife (Cora’s role) but also that the latter, while playing the perfect hostess, was keeping a watchful eye on the rather too attentive court her husband had started to pay to the very youngest and sexiest of their guests, the film’s heroine (Leolia Drake’s role).

It was when Knight actually went so far as to whisper sweet nothings in Drake’s ear, sweet nothings which may not have been audible but were certainly visible, that the crisis erupted. A glass of champagne in her hand, Cora was seen to become so enraged by her philandering better half that she ended by snapping its stem in two. At which point, even
though the camera hadn’t been turning, the director bawled out, ‘Cut!’

In all there were four run-throughs. None of them, however, appeared to satisfy Rex Hanway. Each of his ‘Cuts!’ sounded more fretful than the last. And, after the fourth and final rehearsal, nearly sliding off his canvas chair in frustration, he cried out:

‘No! No, no, no, no, no! This won’t do at all!’

Everyone, cast, crew and extras alike, fell silent. No matter how insecure his authority had been in the first few days, Hanway now commanded a silent respect from his underlings.

Lettice got to her knees in front of him.

‘But, Rex, it’s exactly what we have in the script.’

‘What do I care?’ said Hanway intemperately. ‘The script is wrong.’

‘Wrong? But –’

‘It isn’t
The Brothers Karamazov
, for God’s sake. It’s just a blue-print.’

‘Of course, Rex, of course.’

‘No, no, there’s something missing, there’s definitely something missing. It’s boring. It’s a big nothing of a scene. It’s not even a big nothing, it’s a small nothing, it’s a nothing nothing.’

He held up a clenched fist hard against his brow in a possibly conscious imitation of Rodin’s
Thinker
.

‘Perhaps, darling,’ ventured Cora, ‘if we –’

‘Be quiet, please!’ he snapped. ‘Can’t you see I’m thinking?’

‘I was only going to suggest –’

Again, though, she was prevented from completing her sentence. As suddenly and dramatically as he had planted it, Hanway removed the fist from his brow.

‘I’ve got it!’

He stood up and marched purposefully onto the set, led his trio of principals off to one side and began whispering to them. When they had understood his new instructions – Cora fervently nodding in agreement, Leolia Drake beaming up at him, Gareth Knight shaking his head in mute admiration – Hanway snapped his fingers for the little girl to be brought over. More whispering – on this occasion, it took her somewhat longer to comprehend his intentions. Yet she too, once light had dawned on her, started to giggle. Then he had a few quiet words with his cameraman, who at once proceeded to make the necessary adjustments.

The scene was now ready to be filmed. Silence was repeatedly called for – one hapless member of the crew being collectively cursed by his mates for sneezing three times in a row – and Hanway, poised expectantly on the edge of his chair, finally shouted, ‘Action!’

At first nothing had changed. Holding the same glass of champagne, Cora made the same desultory chit-chat with the same dinner-suited male extra, all the while spying on Knight, who, exchanging the same monosyllabic pleasantries
as he zigzagged across the crowded room, nevertheless made the same circuitous beeline for Leolia Drake. She, meanwhile, as though fearful of the intensity of her feelings towards him, attempted to avoid catching his eye as she slowly sidled away towards the door.

Then, on cue, she walked backwards straight into the little girl, causing her to topple over onto the floor.

The actress at once got to her knees to help her back up.

‘Oh, sweetheart, I’m terribly sorry. Gosh, aren’t I the clumsy one. Are you all right? No bruises?’

When the little girl solemnly shook her head, Leolia on a sudden impulse kissed her on the right cheek.

And it was at that instant that Knight swiftly stepped forward. He too knelt down beside the little girl and, neatly timing his gesture to coincide with Leolia’s, kissed her on the left cheek. To anyone who happened to be watching them – and if none of the extras were, everybody behind the camera was – the effect was exactly as though they were kissing each other
through the child.

Then, just like someone speaking into a telephone, Knight whispered into the child’s dainty little ear:

‘I love you, Margot.’

‘Oh, Julian …’ a tremulous Leolia Drake answered into the other ear. ‘Please don’t. Not here. Someone may hear us.’

‘How can anyone hear us,’ he countered smoothly, ‘when we have our own private ’phone? There’s no danger of a crossed line.’

The child’s uncomprehending eyes darted from left to right and back again.

‘Say it, darling,’ said Knight, ‘please let me hear you say it.’

‘Say what?’

‘That you love me too.’

‘Oh, I do. I do so love you.’

To and fro went the little girl’s eyes, like those of a spectator at the centre-court at Wimbledon.

The novelist and the detective watched in fascination as the camera now began to glide backward along its little section of railway track while at the same time, in a perfectly coordinated movement, it rose up into the dank and powdery studio air on an extensible ladder, a ladder that itself gradually stretched out over the entire set until there wasn’t a single one of the dozen revellers who hadn’t swum into, then again out of, its ken.

It eventually came to a halt directly in front of Cora herself. She was glaring implacably at the flirtatious couple. Her face contorted by spasms of jealousy, she mumbled a curse under her breath. Then, with perfect timing, her fingers snapped into two equal halves the slender, fine-spun stem of her champagne glass.

‘Cut!’ cried Rex Hanway.

Evadne Mount, Eustace Trubshawe and Cora Rutherford were seated at a corner table in the studio cafeteria – what in the picture-making business is known as the commissary. In the real world, the word would have been ‘canteen’. Notwithstanding the autographed snapshots, aligned along all four of its walls, of several of Elstree’s best-loved players – David Farrar and Jeanne De Casalis, Guy Rolfe and Beatrice Varley, Joseph Tomelty and Joyce Grenfell – a canteen is what it resembled and a canteen is what it was.

Since the room itself was nearly as draughty and cavernous as the sound stage from which they’d repaired for lunch, none of them had felt inclined to remove their heavy outdoor coats. Cora had even kept her gloves on, except that, with her innate stylishness, she contrived to convince everybody else that a gloved canteen lunch was the very latest thing,
le dernier cri,
as she herself would have put it, and this in spite of the fact that, to protect her elaborately mounted pompadour, she was also forced to sport a set of unsightly rose-pink curlers.

The other tables were monopolised by the same gaudily outfitted extras whom Evadne and Trubshawe had already admired when they first entered the studio. At one table a Ruritanian Hussar was lunching in the company of two ladies-in-waiting from Louis XIV’s Versailles. At another an elderly bobby with a nicotiny walrus moustache, his helmet posed upright on the table-top like an outsized salt cellar, chatted amiably to the very last individual with whom his real-life equivalent would ever be caught lunching, a wiry cat-burglar clad in a black body stocking. And, sitting alone at a third, a queer, hatchet-faced woman was furiously knitting away at some monstrosity in purple wool. Paying as little attention to her fellow-lunchers in the commissary as they were paying to her, she laid aside her work-in-progress only to swallow the odd mouthful of semolina pudding.

‘Psst, Cora,’ Evadne finally whispered.

‘H’m?’

‘Tell me. Madame Lafarge over there? Do you know her?’

Cora turned her head, unconcerned as to whether she might be observed doing so by the target of the novelist’s curiosity.

‘Why, that’s Hattie, of course,’ she said dismissively.

‘Hattie?’

‘Hattie Farjeon. Farje’s wife. Widow, I mean.’

‘Farjeon’s widow? What on earth is
she
doing here?’

‘Oh, Hattie’s always been present on the set during the making of Farje’s films. You would see her, in a corner, sitting
and knitting all by herself, never addressing a word to a soul, as mousy and uncommunicative as she is now. Officially, she was Farje’s script consultant, but the true reason for her presence, as we all knew, was to guarantee there was no hanky-panky between him and his leading ladies. Hanky-panky or, so I’ve heard, “wanky-spanky”. I wouldn’t know myself,’ she concluded virtuously.

‘But why is she here today? With Farjeon dead and all?’

Cora toyed with her corned beef.

‘Who knows? Maybe Levey – Benjamin Levey, the producer of the picture – regards her as a good-luck fetish. It was Farje’s series of hits, you know, that made him a millionaire. Or maybe she still has a financial involvement in the project and is keeping a watch over her own interests. Or maybe she just wants to be sure that Hanway is faithful to her husband’s script.’

‘But that’s just it,’ said Evadne.

‘What’s just it?’

‘Hanway hasn’t been faithful to the script. Just this morning he introduced the idea of using a child’s ears as pair of telephone receivers. I must say, I thought it rather wonderful of him to come up with such a clever new piece of business right there on the set.’

‘Oh, I do so agree!’ the actress replied. ‘You don’t suppose Farje’s genius could somehow be flowing through him? Emanations, you know,’ she said vaguely. ‘Or do I mean ectoplasm?’

In disgust she shoved away the aforementioned viands.

‘God, this is foul muck. Even the bread-and-marge is stale.’

Lighting up a cigarette, she returned to the subject at hand.

‘Yes, if he keeps it up, Hanway may well become the new Farjeon. Farje also used to have these brilliant last-minute intuitions. I remember when I popped in to visit dear Ty – Tyrone Power to you yokels – when he was filming
An American in Plaster-of-Paris
– Oh, crumbs!’

Without completing the reminiscence, she picked up her knife and fork again, bent low over her plate and addressed her undivided attention to the meal that she had only just rejected.

‘For God’s sake, whatever you do,’ she whispered, ‘please,
please
don’t look round! Don’t make eye contact!’

‘Who is it we shouldn’t make eye contact with?’ asked Evadne, as, to the actress’s dismay, she did proceed to look round, at once finding herself face to face, indeed eye to eye, with an earnest, sallow-complexioned young man who, with his shaven head, rimless dark glasses, neatly trimmed goatee and black high-necked polo jersey, would have seemed more at home in some smoke-infested jazz cellar in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Bearing a tray of food, he was clearly on his way to join them.

‘Now you’ve done it,’ hissed Cora.

The young man coolly returned the novelist’s gaze,
stepped up to the table and nodded to Cora. Conjuring an impromptu smile as adroitly as though inserting a set of new false teeth between her lips, she extended her right hand towards him. He held it for a moment, raised it to his own lips and lightly kissed the button of her suede glove.

(‘How very Continental!’ Evadne Mount mouthed to the Chief-Inspector.)

‘Ah, Mademoiselle Ruzzerford,’ he said in a near-impenetrable French accent, ‘you are looking as
charmante
as evair.’

‘Why, thank you so much, Philippe,’ Cora replied. ‘Perhaps you’d care to join us for lunch? As you see, we have a free fourth place.’

‘Oh, but that would be most kind,’ said the Frenchman, who had in fact already begun circling the table towards the unoccupied seat.

‘I don’t believe you’ve met my friends,’ said Cora. ‘This is Evadne Mount, the mystery novelist. And Chief-Inspector Trubshawe, formerly of Scotland Yard. And this,’ she explained to both of them, indicating their new lunch companion, ‘is Philippe Françaix. He’s a critic,’ she added grimly.

Once hands had been shaken and how-d’ye-does exchanged, Evadne turned to Françaix.

‘So you’re a critic? A film critic?’

‘
Mais
oui
– how you say in English? – but yes. I am a film critic.’

‘How interesting. Tell me, though, isn’t it rather unusual
for a critic actually to watch a film being made? I don’t think I ever heard of such a thing before.’

Françaix shook his head.

‘See you, it is quite usual in France, where many unusual things are usual. In your country, no, you have reason, it does not ’appen much. But this is a special case – a long story.’

Cora was quick to intercede.

‘That’s right, darling. Philippe has been writing a book on Farjeon. A book of interviews, isn’t it? The French admire Farje enormously. They don’t just regard him as an entertainer, a confectioner of stylish thrillers, but as a – a –
do
tell me yet again, Philippe, what the French regard him as.’

‘Where to begin?’ he sighed. Then, having always known where, he duly expatiated:

‘For us, the French, Alastair Farjeon is not just the Master of Tension, as you call him here. He is above all a profoundly religious artist, a moralist but also a metaphysician, the illegitimate offspring, if you like, of Pascal and Descartes. He is – how you say? – a chess master who plays blindfold against himself. A poet who decodes the messages which he himself has sent. A detective who solves the crimes which he himself has committed. In brief, he is –
mille pardons
, he was – a supremely great
cineáste
, one who has been cruelly – how do you say? –
sous-estimé
?’

‘Underrated?’ ventured Evadne Mount.

‘Underrated,
mais oui.
He has been supremely underrated by you English.’

‘But, darling, I keep telling you, we English actually like –’ Cora began to say, before being interrupted.

‘Like! Like! It is not a question of “like”.’ He held the verb up as distastefully as though he were handling somebody else’s stained underwear. ‘The man was a genius. You do not “like” geniuses. Do you “like” Einstein? Do you “like” Picasso? Do you “like” Poe? No, no, no! You worship them. You idolise them. Just as we French idolise Farjeon.

‘Of course,’ he ended with startling abruptness, ‘he was a
crapule
– a
cochon
– a peeg – of a man. Ah, but there you are. Bad manners, the infallible sign of genius.’

‘If you say so,’ the novelist politely demurred. ‘But still, Monsieur Françaix, considering that Farjeon is dead and the picture is being directed by Rex Hanway, there’s surely no longer any point in your hanging on?’

Was it a trick of the light or did an almost imperceptible shadow cast itself across Françaix’s face?

‘I ’ave my reasons,’ was all he replied.

Perhaps afraid of saying something he might regret, he continued in a more equable tone:

‘D’ailleurs,
this picture, it was Farjeon’s project. It will ’ave his fingerprints on it, no? It is Hanway who directs, but the result will be
totalement Farjeonien
. And because I nearly finish my book, I will add the shooting of this last – alas,
posthume
– work of his as an appendix.’

‘It certainly does seem,’ said Evadne, ‘that young Hanway has learned from his mentor. The scene we watched this morning, with the two leads exchanging kisses through the little girl? I’m told it wasn’t planned at all, yet everybody felt that it was as brilliant as anything in the original script. Worthy of Farjeon himself.’

‘That is true. It was
definitely
not in the original script,’ said Françaix, laying an audible stress on the adverb.

An awkward moment followed. Then the novelist, whose hatred of a vacuum was possibly even greater than nature’s, remarked for want of anything more pertinent to say:

‘So you’re a French film critic, are you? How amusing. We don’t see too many French pictures in this country. Not too many foreign pictures altogether.’

‘Ah no, Mademoiselle, there you are wrong, very wrong. In my experience, you English, you like to watch nothing but foreign films.’

‘Why, Monsieur Françaix,’ she protested, ‘only a very few foreign films open in London, mostly at a cinema called the Academy. And what a godsend it is for us devotees of the Seventh Art.’

‘Mademoiselle, I was making allusion to the films of ’Ollywood.’

‘Hollywood films? But those are American.’

‘
Précisément
. They are not British. So they are foreign films, no?’

‘We-ll, yes,’ she said uncertainly. ‘It’s a funny thing, though. We somehow don’t really think of them as foreign.’

‘Perhaps you should, as we do,’ replied the Frenchman with a brusqueness which succeeded in remaining just this side of insolence.

There followed another awkward pause, before Trubshawe, who hadn’t said anything up to that point, finally spoke.

‘I saw a French film once.’

Françaix stared at him, nakedly, offensively disbelieving.

‘You? You saw a French film? I confess you surprise me.’

‘I happened to go with a few of my former colleagues from the Yard. After our reunion dinner last November.’

‘Really? And which film was it?’

‘Bit of a letdown, I’m afraid. It was called
The Dames of the Bois de Boulogne.’

‘Ah yes. That one, it is a classic. A pure
chef-d’oeuvre.’

‘A classic? Is that a fact?’ said Trubshawe ruminatively. And he repeated, ‘A classic? Well, well, well.’

‘You are not in accord?’

‘Well, for me and my chums – and, I must confess, the dinner had been a little too bibulous, a little over-lubricated, if you know what I mean – it did seem awfully tame.’

‘Tame? What is “tame”?’

‘We were expecting something a bit ruder, a bit naughtier – you know, ladies of the night and all that. Of course, it’s ironic, if that’s what it actually had been like, we might have been obliged to have the cinema closed down, all of us being
ex-coppers. But no, under the circumstances, we did feel like asking for our money back.’

After a few seconds spent wondering whether to take umbrage, Françaix threw his head back and convulsed with laughter.

‘You English! Your wonderful hypocrisy! I think I like it even more than your famous sense of humour.’

Not quite knowing what to make of this, Evadne turned to Cora.

‘Well, dear, it’s your big scene this afternoon. Do tell us something about it.’

Cora stubbed her cigarette out in a cheap tin ashtray.

‘As I already did tell you, darling, the scene as it’s going to be played is quite a lot juicier than it was to start with. I managed to persuade Hanway that it ought to be developed so that the neglected wife – that’s me – becomes a more rounded character, psychologically speaking. But there’s no need to go into that. All you have to know is that, because of my husband’s blatant dallying with Margot – that’s the part played by Leolia Drake – I’m about to blow a gasket.’

‘That Leolia Drake …’ murmured Trubshawe appreciatively. ‘She can put her high heels under my bed any time she likes. Pardon my French, ladies,’ he said to Cora and Evadne with an apologetic twinkle in his eye, while Françaix treated him to a look of bewilderment.

‘Men!’ sneered Cora. ‘It doesn’t matter what age you are, you just can’t help slobbering over a pair of bee-sting lips
and eyelashes out to here. Be warned, Trubbers, don’t let little Leolia fool you. She’s about as sweet as a swastika. And you should hear the way she talks about herself – as though she were the next Vivien Leigh. The silly cow has only just made it to the first rung of the ladder and already she’s dizzy.’

‘What a spiteful cat you are,’ Evadne grunted at her. ‘You were young once, I can just about recall.’

‘As I was saying,’ Cora went on, declining to rise to the bait, ‘I confront my husband after a cocktail party, a horrific row ensues and I end by hurling a champagne glass at his head.’