And So To Murder (3 page)

‘I do mean it, though,’ said Mr Hackett affably.

‘I am to work on a detective-story instead of my own book?’

‘That’s it exactly.’

‘And Mr Cartwright’ – she managed to pronounce the name, though with incredible loathing – ‘is to work on the script of my book;
my
book?’

‘You’ve guessed it,’ beamed the producer.

‘But why?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

Monica was so much in awe of him that, ordinarily, she would not have had the courage to protest. She would have suffered in silence, thinking that it must somehow be her own fault. But this was too much. There rose to her lips, spontaneously, the words: ‘It’s the silliest thing I ever heard of!’ Though she did not speak these words, something of their spirit must have got into her tone.

‘I said “why?”’ she insisted. ‘I mean why should we have to do each other’s books instead of doing our own?’

‘You don’t understand these things, Miss Stanton.’

‘I know that, Mr Hackett; but –’

‘Miss Stanton, are you a producer of ten years’ experience, or am I?’

‘You are, of course; but –’

‘Then that’s all right,’ said Mr Hackett more cheerfully. ‘You mustn’t try to change us all at once, Miss Stanton. Ha, ha, ha. We have our own little ways, you know. You must take my word for it that we know a little something about this business, after ten years’ experience. Eh? And you’ll learn. Yes, indeed. Why, with Bill Cartwright to teach you, you’ll pick up the business in no time.’

The full enormity of the proposition was gradually seeping into Monica’s mind. She jumped to her feet.

‘You mean,’ she said, ‘that I’m to stay here and be taught –
taught
– how to write screen-plays by that – that repulsive – that
foul
–’

Her companion was interested.

‘Ah? Do you know Bill Cartwright?’

‘No, I don’t know him. But my family have met him. And they say,’ cried Monica, departing from the strict letter of the truth, ‘they say he’s the most repulsive, disgusting, funny-looking object that ever walked the face of the earth!’

‘Oh, here! No, no, no.’

‘Indeed?’

‘You’ve got it all wrong, Miss Stanton,’ the producer assured her. ‘I’ve known Bill for years. He’d never take any beauty-prizes, Lord knows. But he’s not as bad as all that.’ Mr Hackett reflected. ‘In fact, I’d say he was rather distinguished-looking.’

Monica choked.

To Mr Hackett it seemed, dimly, that the little lady was annoyed about something.

For Monica had long ago built up a mental picture of Mr William Cartwright, which she refused to alter by one line. Mr Cartwright was everywhere praised, at least in the book-reviews, for the ‘flawless soundness and pains-taking accuracy’ of his plots. This made the man even more insufferable. Monica felt that she could have despised him less if only he had been a little more slipshod. She pictured him as studious-looking, withered, dry, and donnish, with enormous spectacles. And she dwelt with loving hatred on the image.

‘I can’t do it,’ she said abruptly. ‘I’m terribly sorry. You know how grateful I am. But I can’t.’

‘Oh, of course,’ said the producer, with cold indifference, ‘if you want to break your contract –’

‘It isn’t that,’ said Monica desperately. ‘Please understand me, Mr Hackett. I’m not trying to dictate to you. I’m sure you know best.’ (She believed this: it was all Cartwright’s fault.) ‘I could do anything you asked me, if only you’d tell me:
why
? Why do I have to work on a detective-story, which I don’t know anything about, instead of my own book, that I know every line of? Can’t you please just tell me the reason?’

Mr Hackett showed a face radiant with relief.

‘Oh, the reason?’ He accented the last word. ‘Is that all? Why didn’t you say so in the first place? The reason?’

‘Yes!’

‘Why, my dear young lady,’ explained her companion, in a pitying tone, ‘there’s nothing simpler. The reason –’

The telephone on his desk rang.

Mr Hackett, shivering like a dynamo, seized the telephone. Everything else was instantly dismissed from his mind.

‘Yes … yes, Kurt? … Yes? … Well, ask Howard! … No, no, not for a minute. The new writer has just arrived.’ He flashed his dental smile, a conspiratorial smile, at Monica, over the top of the telephone. ‘Yes, very pleasant girl … Yes … All right, all right, I’ll be there.’ He whipped up a pencil and made a note. ‘Stage three in five minutes … Yes … All right … ’Bye.’

He replaced the receiver.

‘And now, Miss Stanton! What were we talking about?’

‘I don’t want to detain you –’

‘It’s all right,’ said Mr Hackett, waving his hand in a way which implied that it wasn’t all right, but that he would have to put up with it. ‘Five minutes, five minutes! No hurry! What were you going to tell me?’

‘I wasn’t, Mr Hackett. You were going to tell me the reason why you want me to work on a detective story instead of my own book.’

‘Ah, yes! Yes. My dear Miss Stanton, there’s nothing simpler. The reason –’

The door of Mr Hackett’s office was flung violently open, and a man walked in.

He did not merely walk in: he stalked in. With him there came such a current of quiet, cold, contained rage that he might have been opening the door of a refrigerator. The atmosphere of it spread round the walls and struck against the sunshine. It was evident in every aspect of his behaviour. Though he hurled the door open, he did not allow it to bang against the wall; he caught it with quiet, quivering fingers and placed it gently there. Then he walked across the room with cat-footed steps, as though anxious not to explode a mine. He was a tall, youngish man who carried a book under his arm. It was only when he stood by the producer’s desk, looking Mr Hackett in the eye, that the mine did explode in one blast of anguish.

He said:

‘Hell’s – sweet –
bells
!’ And he whacked the book down on the desk with a crash which jarred the hat off a china ink-pot shaped like a mandarin.

The book was a copy of that best-selling novel,
Desire
.

Mr Hackett reached out and replaced the hat on the mandarin.

‘Hello, Bill,’ he said.

‘Look here,’ said the newcomer. ‘This is too much. I can’t do it, Tom. By God, I won’t do it.’

‘Sit down, Bill.’

The newcomer began to edge round Mr Hackett’s desk. An outsider might have thought that his intention was to strangle Mr Hackett; as perhaps, for a moment, it was. The newcomer’s voice, normally suave, was now even more suave, though with a note of hoarseness. We have heard that same note in the voices of men who go down on their knees, carefully, to talk to golf-balls.

‘Listen to me,’ said the newcomer. ‘I do not, in general, object to preparing screen-plays for bad books. I may point out, in extenuation, that these are the only kind of books for which anybody is ever asked to prepare screen-plays. Very well!’

He lifted his hand.

‘But there are limits beyond which no pander of the English language, however conscienceless, can go. I have reached my limit. This book is not only eye-wash. It is the most complete, unmitigated, and appalling drivel ever foisted upon an unsuspecting public by illiterate maniacs masquerading as publishers. In a word, Tom, it is
LOUSY
. Do I make myself clear?’

He reached down and tapped the copy of
Desire
. His fingers were twitching.

‘Tut, tut,’ said Mr Hackett blandly. ‘Let me introduce you to Miss Stanton. Mr Cartwright – Miss Stanton.’

‘How-do-you-do?’ said Cartwright, giving Monica a quick glance over his shoulder and turning back again. ‘To continue, Tom. This book –’

‘How do you do?’ said Monica sweetly. For she was happy.

It may sound odd to say this, but, in her first look at William Cartwright, she had seen something which almost compensated her for the situation. Through her hatred struck a thrill of unholy joy like the note of a diabolical tuning-fork. Monica glowed to it. She felt her resolution tighten, her courage swell back, in the conviction that the enemy had been delivered into her hands.

True, her original portrait was wrong. William Cartwright was not withered, dry, and donnish, though he had an offensive habit of striking a pose and lecturing. Ill-advised persons might have said that he was not bad-looking: he had good shoulders, good eyes, a lean face, and close-cut brown hair. Ill-advised persons (not seeing below the surface into his guilty soul) might even have said that it was a good-natured face. Monica admitted all this, for she wished to be fair. In compensation, she saw about him something so awful that it was even better; something which put him completely beyond the human pale; something which must lay him open to the mercy of her derision for ever. Mentally, she jumped up and down in her chair with the joy of it.

For William Cartwright had a beard.

2

Again justice must be done. It was not a W. G. Grace beard. Nor was it one of those scraggly beards abominated by everybody. On the contrary, any male would have said that it was a pretty good hirsute effort, as beards go: trim, close-clipped like the moustache, giving its owner something of the look of a naval commander.

But most women do not see it like this. Monica, temporarily colour-blind, saw its tinge as red.

‘I say nothing,’ continued the unspeakable Cartwright, sticking out his chin with the offending beard, ‘of bad grammar and worse syntax. I say nothing of a prose style which would sink a battleship. I say nothing of the priggish ass of a hero, Captain What’s-his-name. I say nothing, even, of the pornographic mind of the woman who wrote it –’

‘Oh!’ said Monica, jumping involuntarily.

‘Now, Bill,’ urged Mr Hackett, ‘you shouldn’t talk like that in front of Miss Stanton. Where’s your manners? (
Ss-t! Oi
!)’

‘I say nothing … What’s the matter with you? Why the hula-hula gestures?’

(‘That’s the girl who wrote it!’)

‘Eh? Who is?’

(‘There. Behind you.’)

There was a terrible silence. For a second Mr Cartwright did not turn round. Monica had a back view of an ancient sports coat, and grey flannels which looked as though they had not been pressed since Christmas. The shoulders of the sports coat slowly hunched up until they were almost on a level with his ears.

‘Good God!’ he whispered in an awed voice.

Then he risked one eye, and finally turned round and faced it.

‘Look here,’ he blurted out, ‘I’m sorry!’

‘Sorry? Oh, no,’ said Monica, pale with fury but carefully keeping her voice light, airy, and la-di-da. ‘Please don’t apologize. It’s quite all right. I don’t mind in the least.’

‘You don’t mind?’

‘Oh, dear me, no,’ said Monica, with a shivering little laugh. ‘I do so like to hear unbiased outside opinions about my character.’

‘Look: I honestly am sorry! I hope you didn’t put the wrong construction on anything I said?’

‘Oh, dear me, no!’ said Monica, laughing with great heartiness. ‘“In a word, Tom, it is lousy.” There’s not much room for a wrong construction in that, surely? The wrong construction, it appears, was in my grammar.’

‘I tell you, I’m sorry! How was I to know it was you sitting there? I couldn’t have known it! If I had known –’

Monica smiled wickedly.

‘You wouldn’t have spoken so?’

‘No, so help me!’

‘Dear, dear, dear!’ said Monica. ‘Do you know, Mr Cartwright, I always rather imagined you would prefer to be a hypocrite? It is so nice to hear you admit it.’

Cartwright moved back a step. His (red) beard looked dazed. A thoughtless observer, not seeing through his real vileness as Monica saw through it, might have thought he was honestly contrite.

He drew himself up to his full height, and tried again.

‘Madam,’ he said, his voice regaining its earlier richness and suavity, ‘madam, in case the fact has escaped your notice, I have been attempting to apologize. I was tactless. I was ill-mannered. I mean to apologize to you if it kills me.’

‘For you, Mr Cartwright, surely the most painful form of suicide?’

‘Now, now, you two, no quarrelling,’ interrupted Mr Hackett sternly. He got to his feet, brushing at the lapels of his coat. ‘Sorry I’ve got to leave you. Got to run along now. But I’m glad you two have met. I want you to work well together.’

Cartwright stiffened. He turned round very slowly to look at the producer.

‘You want – ?’ he repeated.

‘Yes. By the way: Miss Stanton is going to do the script of your detective story. Didn’t I tell you?’

‘No,’ said Cartwright in a slow, strange voice. ‘No, you didn’t tell me.’

‘Well, you know it now. And another thing! I want you to be’ – he smiled – ‘a sort of guide, counsellor, and father-confessor to Miss Stanton. She’s never had any experience with writing scripts.’

‘She has never had any experience,’ murmured Cartwright, ‘with writing scripts?’

‘That’s right. So I want you to teach her; give her a hand; show her what’s what. I want you both here under my eye in the Old Building. I’m giving her Les Watson’s old office, next to yours. We’ll clean the place up and bung in a new typewriter, and it’ll be as good as new. So you can give her the hang of it, teach her the rudiments – you know! – while you’re working on the script of
Desire
.’

Cartwright took a little run up and down the room.

‘One, two, three, four,’ he counted, half closing his eyes. ‘Five, six, seven, eight … No, you don’t!’

He took a long bound in front of Mr Hackett as the producer started for the door. Reaching the door ahead of him, Cartwright closed it, turned the key in the lock, and stood with his back to it.

‘I came here,’ he said, ‘to have this out with you. And you don’t leave this office until I do.’

Mr Hackett stared at him.

‘What the devil’s the matter with you? Are you crazy? Open that door!’

‘No. You are first going to listen to a few home truths. Tom, it’s no business of mine how you waste your money. But, as an old friend of yours, I want to reason with you before you go completely off your chump and start making gibbering noises at windows. Do you know what you have been doing for the past three weeks?’