Frequent Hearses (15 page)

“There is absolutely no limit,” said Medesco, “to the things that surprise the police. Their capacity for amazement makes Candide look like the most degenerate of urban sophisticates.”

“Mr. Medesco,” said Eleanor pleasantly, “is an old friend of the family, Inspector.”

“W-well, n-not an
old
friend, m-mother.” David seemed anxious to be helpful. “B-because when I c-came back from the U.S.A. t-two years ago we didn’t know him, and I remember w-when you said you w-were going to m-marry him I s-said to m-myself…”

“David!” said Eleanor in good-humoured exasperation. “I thought I told you that my engagement to Mr. Medesco was to remain a secret for the present.”

“Oh; s-sorry, m-mother. I only thought…”

“No, dear. You only failed to think.” There was a hint of real annoyance underlying Eleanor Crane’s tolerant smile. “Well, that’s one cat out of the bag, Inspector.”

“My congratulations, sir,” said Humbleby gravely. “And to you, ma’am, every happiness.” He was not surprised that they had wanted to keep the engagement a secret, for a
mariage de convenance
is always apt to arouse the world’s scorn, and particularly if it is between elderly people; but he was also not surprised that in this instance it had been arranged, since he had sensed from the first—little though they had spoken to one another—a very definite sympathy between Medesco and Mrs. Crane. Whether this posture of affairs would prove to have any importance in the case he did not know; there was the point, of course, that—

And Mrs. Crane caught up his train of thought at precisely the stage where she interrupted it.

“So there is the point,” she said, “that Aubrey, too, had a motive for killing Maurice—since presumably he would prefer to marry a wife who was not impecunious.”

Medesco looked up at her, and it was the first time Humbleby had seen him smile.

“My dear girl,” he said, “I’d marry you if you were a barmaid.”

Eleanor Crane had crossed to the table on which the sherry decanter stood, and was refilling her glass. “Apposite,” she commented. “Perfect timing. Are you sure you won’t have a drink, Inspector? If you don’t like sherry our insufferable butler could be made to produce something else. Or is it a regulation that you mustn’t drink when you’re on duty?”

Having assured her that no such regulation existed, Humbleby accepted sherry and pledged her very courteously in it.

“And now,” she said, “we’ve been holding you up for too long with chatter about our personal affairs. Tell us why you came.”

“To investigate in detail, I’m afraid, this whole affair of Miss Scott’s contract.” Humbleby turned to Nicholas. “If you’d prefer to talk about it in private, sir…”

“No, no,” said Nicholas wearily. “We may as well drag the whole squalid business out into the open, and be done with it.”

At this, Mr. Cloud became vastly agitated.

“I have to advise you, Mr. Crane,” he said perturbedly, “that you are not under any obligation to answer the Inspector’s questions. And indeed, in your own interests—”

“Hush, Cloud.” Nicholas wagged a finger at him. “I appreciate your efforts, but they’re misplaced. Your job is to protect me from the Press… And by the way, where is the Press? They’re being remarkably discreet. I expected hordes of reporters, and not a single one has turned up so far—though they have rung me up to ask for a statement.”

“They are obliged to go carefully,” said Mr. Cloud. “The situation is delicate, and they are obliged to go very,
very
carefully indeed. We might take a hint from them, eh, Mr. Crane?”

Nicholas groaned. “Sit down, Cloud,” he said. “Stop fidgeting about. Drink your sherry.”

“Very well, sir.” Mr. Cloud was clearly offended. “But if you will not be ruled by me I can take no responsibility, none whatever.” He sat down heavily and mopped his brow. “Please understand that this statement is not made with my approval.”

“Mea maxima culpa,”
said Nicholas. “You shall have a signed exoneration, Cloud, signed and witnessed… And now, Inspector, let’s get on with it.”

An expectant silence fell upon the group. Eleanor Crane had her shoulder against the mantelpiece, and was staring absently at the Veronese in the corner. Medesco remained immobile, his small eyes almost closed. Mr. Cloud, deflated, sipped his sherry as though it were unspeakably distasteful to him. And only David Crane seemed unaffected by the atmosphere: he had picked up an illustrated magazine and was turning its pages attentively, as if, cat-like, he had for the time being completely forgotten what was going forward.

“I’m sorry to have to probe this matter, sir,” said Humbleby. “But for one thing, it’s obviously bound up with Miss Scott’s suicide, and for another, there’s Mr. Maurice Crane’s death to consider. You see—”

“Yes, yes, Inspector,” Nicholas interrupted. “There’s no need to apologise. I don’t suspect you of having come down here out of mere idle curiosity.” He paused to light a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and went on:

“This is what happened.

“Madge was at the bottom of it all—I don’t say that to excuse myself, but the fact remains that she was the prime mover. She hated poor Gloria; and the reason for that, of course, was Stuart North.

“Stuart and Gloria were both in
Visa for Heaven,
which I directed. Gloria only had a tiny part, but her scene in the film involved Stuart as well, and that was how they met. Stuart fell for her, in a mild way. I don’t know whether she was genuinely interested in him, but anyway, it flattered her to be touted about by a star.”

“Yes, and that raises a point I don’t quite understand,” said Eleanor Crane. “What on earth made her go after Maurice as well? Did she seriously imagine she could run both of them simultaneously?”

“Well, I don’t
know,
but I’ve an idea she left Stuart for Maurice as soon as she found out how much Stuart detested films. Specifically a film career was what she was after, and from that point of view Maurice was a more promising ally than Stuart, who wanted to get away from films as soon as he possibly could. But where all that’s concerned your guess is as good as mine.

“We finished
Visa for Heaven
at the end of November, and it was about then that Stuart met Madge for the first time. I don’t pretend to be able to interpret my precious sister’s motives, but anyway, she made a dead set at Stuart. And unluckily for her, Gloria had got in first.

“That, no doubt, made her keener than ever. She’s got a nice technique of persuasion, has Madge. You see, apart from Leiper himself, she’s easily the most important person at the studios, and no one who doesn’t want to risk losing his job dares offend her. Even Leiper has to handle her carefully, because she’s a fabulous money-maker, and if he lost her to Rank or Korda his profits’d drop like an express lift.

“But the trouble about Stuart, from her point of view, was that she couldn’t put this technique into action against him, for the simple reason that he’d much rather be on the stage than in films. So if Madge wanted him for an
inamorato
, she’d have to rely on her unaided charms. And with Gloria about, they didn’t seem to work very well.”

Outside the two high windows that flanked the fireplace it was almost completely dark, and the rising wind blew a spatter of raindrops against the panes. The huge room—surely, in origin, a ballroom—was dimly lighted; only round the fire was there a circle of greater radiance, and this waxed and waned perceptibly with the pulse of the engine that supplied it. The fire was burning low, and Nicholas got up to throw another log on to it before going on.

“Well, that was the situation,” he said. “Until
The Unfortunate Lady
, my sweet sister couldn’t do anything nasty to Gloria, for the simple reason that Gloria didn’t have a job. Then the question of casting Martha Blount came up, and I recommended Gloria for the part. Jocelyn—Jocelyn Stafford, that is—is a bit other-worldly where studio scandal is concerned; he had no idea there was any antagonism between Madge and Gloria, and I didn’t go out of my way to tell him. So he interviewed the girl and signed her up. I thought that when Madge heard about it she’d just resign herself to making the best of a bad job. I was wrong. I honestly hadn’t a notion how much she loathed Gloria. If I had had, I certainly wouldn’t have suggested Gloria for that part. She deserved to get it, mind you—but my encouragement of young actresses normally stops short if it seems likely to create a first-class, flaming row.

“And that’s just what it did create. When Madge heard what had happened, she cornered me and issued an ultimatum. If Gloria’s contract wasn’t revoked, she said, she’d go to Leiper and tell him that if I didn’t leave his organisation she would. And we, were both well aware which of us he’d choose to keep. I wasn’t signed up for anything after
The Unfortunate Lady,
and if I’d ignored Madge’s orders I should have been out on my neck.”

“My dear boy,” said his mother, “surely with your reputation, rank—”

But Nicholas shook his head.

“Unlikely,” he interrupted. “The industry’s at a low ebb at the moment, and the other companies have got many more directors on tap than they can use. I’d quite definitely have been out of a job—and that possibility didn’t please me a bit.”

He looked at them wryly.

“Cowardice, you think? Yes, I admit it was. But I couldn’t possibly have foreseen that Gloria would
kill
herself, could I? And I swear to you”—he leaned forward and spoke very earnestly—“I swear to you that I meant to make it up to Gloria afterwards in some way Madge
couldn’t
interfere with.

“The plan was Madge’s. Even for her sake Leiper probably wouldn’t have gone back on that contract once it was signed—and in any case, she wasn’t at all anxious to have it known that she was doing Gloria down. The basic idea, of course, was to leave the dirty work to me. And the circumstances were all in favour. Marcia Bloom was playing the lead in
Lover’s Luck.
Her father had died, and she wanted to go to Ireland for the funeral, and that meant a stand-in for last Tuesday evening’s performance, and just as it happened, her understudy had been taken off to hospital with appendicitis or something. And Jedd—
Lover’s Luck
is his show—is a man I know fairly well. It all fitted very nicely.

“You know what the idea was. People who have contracts with a film company have to have permission from the company to appear on the stage or the radio. It’s nearly always given, so really the thing’s little more than a formality. Still, if you don’t observe that formality you’ve broken your contract, and you’re capable of being sued.

“In their own interests theatrical managers generally see to it that that permission has been given.” Here Nicholas grew perceptibly uneasy. “But as Jedd knew me, he was prepared to take my word for it and didn’t ask for any other evidence.”

“In your letter,” Humbleby interposed mildly, “there is a sentence which suggests that—”

“Mr. Crane!” Cloud, who had been following the narrative with an air of hypnotised gloom, now sat upright so abruptly that he upset his sherry on to his knee. “It would be undesirable for us to enter into detail at this point. Very,
very
undesirable. We don’t want to give the Inspector the idea that we’re an accessory after a fact, do we now? We don’t want—”

“Calm yourself, Cloud,” said Nicholas. “And wipe your trousers. There’s no question of my being an accessory after a fact. Where Jedd’s concerned, there isn’t a fact. To my knowledge, he’s never done anything in the least criminal.”

“Then,” Humbleby prompted, “the reason why you assured Miss Crane that he would not give the—um—conspiracy away was—”

“Was to do with his private life. A matter of marital infidelity.”

Cloud gave vent to a loud moan. “Mr. Crane, Mr. Crane! We must not lay ourselves open to any imputation of blackmail. We must not—”

“Once and for all, Cloud,” said Nicholas in exasperation, “will you be
quiet…
I merely told Jedd that I should like Gloria to have the opportunity of standing in for Marcia Bloom, and after he’d talked to her he agreed to give her the chance.”

Eleanor Crane raised her eyebrows.

“Theatrical managers,” she observed dryly, “are obviously more trusting nowadays than they used to be.”

Her son brushed this sarcasm peremptorily aside. “None the less, that is what happened. And you’ll understand that Gloria herself wasn’t at all averse to the idea when I put it up to her… I was contemptible enough,” said Nicholas steadily, “to tell her she’d be doing me a favour by standing in for Marcia; and God help me, she was very anxious to do me any favour she could…

“Well, it was all arranged. I told Gloria—not in front of witnesses—that I’d see to getting the company’s permission for her to appear, that she could leave all that side of it to me. Of course she trusted me.” Nicholas gave a short, toneless laugh. “Why shouldn’t she? I liked her and I’d always done what I could for her.”

Eleanor Crane made a movement of impatience.

“These self-tormentings may be all very well, Nicholas,” she said, “but a public exhibition of them strikes me as being in poorish taste. You’ve assured us several times how badly you feel about it all, and we quite believe you. So for the moment just confine yourself to the facts.”

Nicholas looked at her queerly.

“Very well, mother,” he answered in a dull, uninflected voice. “I’ll confine myself to the facts…

“The next fact is that Gloria slaved for four days to get the part up. I’m told she was very good in it, though I didn’t see her myself.

“And then, of course, I had to tell her what she’d let herself in for.

“That was really why I asked her to my party. When everyone else had gone, I kept her behind to talk to her.

“There’s no need to tell you in detail what I said. I should have liked to have put the blame on Madge, but I didn’t dare. And anyway, by that time I was quite as culpable as she was.

“But the really horrible thing is that what I said to Gloria was almost pure bluff. It wasn’t that she’d been tricked into an impossible position; it was that I deceived her into
imagining
she had. In other words, I was trading on her relative ignorance of film business. My line, you see, was that she’d broken her contract by appearing in
Lover’s Luck
; and that if she didn’t want to be sued for breach she’d better let me arrange for the contract to be cancelled—a thing I could quite easily do. But the point is that if she’d just dug her heels in and said ‘Let them sue’, I was foxed, because I knew damn well how unlikely it was that they would.”