A Mysterious Affair of Style

Chapter Twelve

‘Sit down. Please.’

Without offering a word of thanks, grasping a bizarre carpet-bag decorated with ornate, cod-Oriental motifs, out of which protruded a formidable pair of knitting-needles, Hattie Farjeon sat herself down in the chair towards which she had been motioned by the Sergeant. Since she accorded only the briefest of glances to Evadne and Trubshawe before turning wordlessly away again, Calvert didn’t this time feel any obligation to make the usual excuses for their unorthodox presence or even to introduce them to her by name.

Fiftyish and frizzy-haired, dumpy, frumpy and also, or so it already appeared, permanently grumpy, Hattie Farjeon, it has to be said, was not an attractive woman. Yet there was something perversely frustrating about her physical and sartorial drabness. It was almost as though she had laboured hard to present the least prepossessing image of herself to the world. True, she was never going to win first prize in a beauty contest. Yet, one couldn’t help wondering, did her hair have to be as unkempt as it was? Did her complexion have to be so speckled and blotchy? Did she really have to wear a blotter-green two-piece suit fraying at every hem at once? Above all, did she have to confront her fellow human beings – human beings who, given encouragement, might well have been prepared to meet her halfway – with such an insulting absence of curiosity?

But that, it seems, was Hattie. Take me or leave me as you will, her ungiving corporeal language seemed to be saying, but don’t expect me to care either way.

‘I’d like to thank you, Mrs Farjeon,’ said Calvert, politely neutral, ‘for agreeing to be interviewed. We have met before, you may remember, when your late husband’s villa burnt down in that terrible fire.’

There was no response from Hattie.

‘And – and, eh, I do assure you, I won’t take up more of your time than I absolutely have to.’

Still no response.

Calvert started to feel that, if he didn’t ask a direct question soon – the sort of question a refusal to answer which could no longer simply be ascribed to natural taciturnity but would constitute an outright provocation – he’d become too unnerved to be capable of posing any question at all.

‘You are Hattie Farjeon, are you not?’ he asked.

‘I am.’

‘The widow of Alastair Farjeon, the film producer?’

‘Director.’

‘Ah, yes. Ha ha, sorry about that. Yes indeed, I always do seem to get it wrong. For a layman like me, uncoached in these matters, the difference between the two isn’t as clear-cut as it might be, but I suppose, for you people in the picture business …’

His voice trailed off. Silence.

It was time to come to the point.

‘Tell me, Mrs Farjeon, why have you been turning up at the studio every day?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I asked why you still regularly make an appearance on the set. I mean to say, I realise that this picture was originally your husband’s project, but after his tragic accident there would seem to be no practical reason for your presence. Or is it that you see yourself as – well, as they say, the Keeper of the Flame?’

Immediately recalling the literally incendiary circumstances of Alastair Farjeon’s death, however, he realised how ill-chosen that last phrase of his had been.

‘I do apologise. I’m afraid I expressed myself rather badly. No pun intended, I promise you.’

‘And none taken, I’m sure,’ she replied sniffily. Then she fell silent again.

‘But you haven’t answered my question.’

‘What question is that?’

‘I have been led to understand, Mrs Farjeon,’ Calvert said in a voice now so pitched as to call attention not only to his put-upon patience but also to the fact that it was fast running out, ‘that when your husband made his films here at Elstree you yourself would always be present in the studio. But your husband is no longer with us. So why have you continued to journey down here when this film, If Ever They Find Me Dead, is being made by someone else?’

‘Alastair would have wanted me to.’

‘Alastair would have wanted you to? But why would he have wanted you to? Precisely what purpose do you serve?’

‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand what I’m about to say, Inspector, but Alastair always liked to have me near him on the set as a sort of good-luck charm – he was an extremely superstitious man – and, if I’ve kept coming, it’s because I feel I represent a silent guarantee of fidelity to his vision. After all, it worked in the past. Why shouldn’t it work now, even if it’s no longer Alastair himself who’s directing the film?’

A real answer. Even a rather intriguing one.

‘And why are you here today? The picture, after all, has been closed down.’

‘Till further notice, yes.’

‘Do I take that to mean you don’t believe the project has been abandoned?’

‘Of course I don’t.’

‘But Miss Rutherford’s murder …?’

‘The fact that Cora Rutherford is dead alters very little.Her part was relatively unimportant. There are dozens of actresses in this country who could play it just as well. If you must know, the main reason for my coming to Elstree today was to discuss with Rex Hanway just who we might consider offering it to.’

‘Oh, I see, I see!’ Evadne erupted with her habitual precipitation. ‘Poor Cora not yet in her grave and already you’re thinking of who will replace her!’

‘Naturally, we are. This is a business. Our obligation is to the living, not the dead. Upward of sixty people were employed on If Ever They Find Me Dead. Surely it would be more humane to try and save their jobs than to spend valuable days, even weeks, mourning Miss Rutherford’s death, unfortunate as it is.’

‘If I may change the subject, Mrs Farjeon,’ said Calvert, nipping back in before the novelist had time to remount her hobby-horse, ‘I understand that, if Mr Hanway was commissioned to take over the direction of the film, it was because you found a particular document among your husband’s papers?’

‘That’s right.’

‘You wouldn’t have that document on you, I suppose?’

‘Of course not. Why should I? When I came here this afternoon, I had no idea I was going to be questioned by the police. Even if I had, I doubt it would have occurred to me to bring it along.’

‘I trust, though, it’s still in your possession.’

‘Naturally.’

‘And there’s no doubt at all that it was written by your husband?’

‘None whatever. I ought to know Alastair’s handwriting.’

‘When you were going through his papers, was it that specific document you were looking for or did you come across it by chance?’

‘I could scarcely have been looking for it. I didn’t even know of its existence.’

‘What were you looking for?’ Evadne Mount asked.

Hattie Farjeon’s withering tone, when she answered, conveyed the impression that she was so utterly undaunted by the novelist’s discourtesy she couldn’t even be bothered to take offence.

‘If it really is any business of yours, I was looking for Alastair’s will.’

‘Ah … his will,’ said Calvert. ‘Did you find it?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘No unpleasant surprises?’

This time the implication was visibly upsetting to her.

‘Certianly not. Alastair and I drew it up together. And may I say I find that an impertinent question to be asked, Inspector.’

‘I’m sorry, it wasn’t intended to be. But to come back to this strange document – from what I’ve been informed, it stated that, if anything were to happen to your husband which might prevent him from shooting the film, the direction was to be handed over to Rex Hanway. Was that the gist of it?’

‘It was not only the gist, it was all there was to it. Just that one statement. And Alastair’s signature, of course.’

‘H’m. Did your husband go in fear of anything, Mrs Farjeon? His life, maybe?’

‘What a preposterous idea.’

‘Why, then, would he entertain such a queer hypothesis?’

‘To be honest with you, Inspector, it wouldn’t at all surprise me to discover that Alastair had drawn up a similar document before each and every one of his earlier films. Naturally, I cannot say for sure since, if he had, he’d doubtless have torn it up it once the film was completed. My husband was a brilliant man but, like many brilliant men, he simply couldn’t cope with the real world. He was, as I already told you, childishly superstitious. And my own belief is that, by committing such a statement to paper, he was actually hoping to outwit Fate. You know, by what they call reverse psychology? Or perhaps what I mean in Alastair’s case is reverse superstition. By pretending to Fate that he feared something dreadful might happen to him, he hoped that Fate, being as contrary as we all know it to be, would then make sure it didn’t. I realise how infantile that must sound – but then so, in many respects, was Alastair himself.’

‘That’s interesting, really most interesting,’ said Calvert, who couldn’t mask his surprise at having received such a detailed response to one of his questions.

‘None the less,’ said Trubshawe, taking advantage of the momentary silence, ‘it would be useful for us to know if your husband actually did have any enemies. Or, should I say, given his power and prominence, if he had many enemies.’

‘Childish as Alastair could often be,’ his widow replied after a moment of reflection, ‘he was at least shrewd enough to make friends of those with power and enemies of those without.’

There was suddenly a faint, thin-lipped trace of menace in her voice.

‘I was the sole exception to that rule.’

And on that chilling note the interview was brought to its end.

After Hattie Farjeon’s departure the three friends glanced at one another.

‘That woman,’ Trubshawe eventually remarked, ‘knows more than she’s prepared to let on.’

‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Calvert.

*

Calvert began his questioning of Françaix, as he already had with his previous interviewees, in a blandly conversational mode. He assured the Frenchman that the interrogation to which he was about to submit himself was no more than a formality, that all he sought of him was that he relate whatever knowledge he had, no matter how trivial it might initially have struck him, of the circumstances surrounding Cora Rutherford’s death.

‘Mais naturellement. I will tell you everything I know.’

‘Then just let me first run over a few of the chief points. Your name is …?’

‘Françaix, Philippe Françaix.’

‘And you are, I believe, a film critic?’

Françaix made a moue of squirming deprecation.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Calvert, ‘have I got that wrong? I was certainly advised you were a film critic.’

‘Oh, it is not, as you say, the large deal. It is just that I prefer the term théoricien. How you say in English? Theorist?’

‘Ah. Well, I don’t have a problem with that. But what exactly is the distinction you’re making?’

‘The distinction …’

The Frenchman leaned back in his chair in a manner ominously suggestive to anyone who’d already heard him expatiate on the topic.

‘I would say that the distinction between a film theorist – one who writes in the obscure journal, no? – and a film critic – one who writes in the daily newspaper – it is the same as between an astronomer and an astrologer. You comprehend? The first one creates a theory in order to describe the cinematic cosmos. The second concerns himself only with the stars. Avec les vedettes, quoi. I think that you in particular will appreciate, Inspector –’

‘Actually,’ said Calvert hastily, ‘What I’d really like to –’

‘No, no, you please must let me finish. You and I, we are like a pair of peas. And why? Because we both have theories, n’est-ce pas? For what are detectives but the “critics” of crime? And what are critics – true critics, theoretical critics – but the “detectives” of cinema?’

While Trubshawe could be glimpsed mouthing ‘Potty! Absolutely potty!’, Calvert made a new attempt to stem the flow.

‘Interesting … So shall we agree that you’re a purist and be done with it?’

‘A purist, yes, yes, that is the truth, we French theorists are all of us purists. Par exemple. I have a colleague who claims that the cinema, it died – it died, you understand – when it started to talk. Pouf! As simple as that! I have another colleague who is such a purist he will watch only films that were made in the nineteenth-century. For him mil neuf cent, 1900, it is the end of everything. Moi, I specialise in the oeuvre of a single cinéaste, the great, great Alastair Farjeon.’

Relieved that Françaix had done him the favour of at long last coming to the point, Calvert pounced on the name.

‘Alastair Farjeon, yes, precisely. You’re writing a book on his work, I believe?’

‘I am, yes. I study his films for many years. He made many chef-d’oeuvres.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t quite hear that,’ said Trubshawe. ‘He made many what-did-you-say?’

‘Chef-d’oeuvres. Masterpieces. He was a very great director, the greatest of all British directors. You know, we French sometimes say that there is an incompatibilité – what is the expression in your barbaric language? – an incompatibility? – between the word “Britain” and the word “cinema”. But Farjeon, he was the exception. He made films that are the equal – qu’est-ce que je dis? – that are more than the equal, much more than the equal, of any in the world. Beside Farjeon, the others are so much vin ordinaire.’

‘Monsieur Françaix,’ said Calvert, ‘if I may now come to the business at hand.’

‘Ah yes, the death – the murder – of poor Miss Ruzzerford. It is very sad.’

‘It is indeed. You, I believe, were actually on the set when it happened.’

‘That is correct.’

‘Then you must have seen her drink from the poisoned glass?’

‘Yes, I see her.’

‘And collapse on the ground?’

‘That too. It is horrible, horrible!’

‘Now, before it happened, was there anything at all, anything you observed, that struck you as, well, queer – unusual – out-of-the-ordinary? Think hard, please.’

‘Inspector, I have not the need to think. I observe nothing of the kind you say. I am here to watch the shoot. I place myself in a corner and I take the notes.’

‘For your book on Farjeon, no?’ (The French style, Calvert ruefully realised, risked becoming contagious.)

‘Yes. The last chapter is going to be about If Ever They Find Me Dead. It will be a very curious chapter – not at all in the style of the rest of my book …’

As his answer died away rather inconclusively, Evadne seized the opportunity to put one of her own questions.

‘Monsieur Françaix,’ she began, ‘you will remember, I’m sure, that yesterday we lunched together in the commissary.’

‘Mais naturellement. I remember it very well.’

‘It was during lunch, was it not, that you told us about the interviews you’d been conducting with Farjeon for your book?’

‘Yes.’

‘And, above all, about your admiration for his work, an admiration which you’ve just reiterated?’

‘That is so.’

‘But you also told us, practically as an afterthought, that you considered him to be a despicable human being. If I may quote you, “a pig of a man”. Am I right?’

‘Yes, you – you are right,’ he replied, his eyes indecipherable behind his thick dark glasses.

‘Well, my question to you is this. Why? Why was he a pig of a man?’

‘But everybody knows why. It is dans le domaine public. It is public knowledge – his reputation – I repeat, it is a known thing about him.’

‘That’s quite true,’ Evadne continued. ‘Yet I had a feeling, a very distinct feeling, that when you spoke about him, the violence of your condemnation was based not just on public knowledge but on private experience, personal experience.’

Françaix pondered this for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders.

‘Qu’est-ce que ça peut me faire enfin?’ His dark glasses looked the novelist directly in the eyes. ‘Yes, Miss Mount, it was based on personal experience. A very unpleasant experience.’

‘Will you share it with us?’

‘Why not? You see, I devote my life to Alastair Farjeon. I study his films, I watch them many, many times, and each time brings new discoveries, new and fascinating details I never notice before, the films are all so rich and strange. Then, at last, I take the courage in my two hands to write to the man himself, here at Elstree, and I propose something completely inédit – how you say? – untried? A book about him, but not a monograph, no, no, a book of interviews. To my surprise, he agrees. I at once catch the boat-train to Victoria and we sit down together, not here but at his splendid villa in Cookham, now alas no more – and he talks and I listen. He talks and he talks while I listen and I take notes. It is extraordinaire, what he says, it is tout-à-fait époustouflant! I am so very happy. I begin to think I will publish the greatest book about the cinema that there has ever been.’

His baldness was glistening with minute beads of sweat.

‘But there is something else. Inside every film critic is a film-maker who cries to get out, you comprehend? And I am no different. I am so impregné with Farjeon’s work I myself start to write a scenario – with his style in my mind. I work on it for many months till I feel it is ready for him to read. Then I send it to him with a nice, timid letter in accompaniment. And I wait. I wait and I wait and I wait. But I hear nothing, nothing at all. I cannot understand. I think maybe I must telephone to ask if he receives it. Then I read in the newspaper that he prepares a new film. Its title is If Ever They Find Me Dead. And I do understand – enfin.’

‘What do you understand?’ asked Evadne Mount quietly.

There was a brief pause. Then:

‘My scenario, it is called The Man in Row D. It tells about two women who go to the theatre and one of them points out a man who is seated in front of them and she says to her companion –’

At which point of his narrative he and Evadne chimed in together:

‘“If ever they find me dead, that’s the man who did it …”’

‘“If ever they find me dead, that’s the man who did it …”’

‘Snap,’ said Evadne gravely. Then she added, perhaps unnecessarily, ‘He stole your script.’

‘He stole my script, yes. That is why I say he is a genius but he is also a peeg.’

‘Curious …’

‘What is curious?’

‘The way Cora described the plot to us, the man was sitting in row C.’

Françaix allowed himself a mirthless laugh.

‘So there is at least one thing he changed.’

‘That, and the title.’

‘And the title, yes.’

‘Was there nothing you could do about it?’ asked Calvert.

‘Nothing. I had no proof. No copyright. Nothing. I was so avid that Farjeon is the first to read it, this scenario I write for him, that I do not show it to my friends or my colleagues or speak about it to anybody. And all that, see you, I write in the nice, timid little letter I insert inside the manuscript. I was – how you say? – the perfect sap.’

‘You can’t blame yourself,’ Evadne Mount maintained. ‘After all, how were you to know he would be so unscrupulous?’

‘But yes, I was to know!’ Françaix exclaimed, slamming his fist down hard on the desk.

‘But how?’

‘It is all there – in his films! I see it again and again, but I do not comprehend what I see!’

‘You know,’ said Evadne pensively, ‘I really must try to catch up with a few of those pictures myself.’

‘Ah yes? You are curious to discover Alastair Farjeon’s work?’

‘Well, of course I am.’

‘Then you must permit me to escort you. Tonight, if you are free. It will be a great honour.’

‘Escort me? Tonight? Heavens, where?’

‘To your Academy cinema. At midnight there is an all-night show of his films. An hommage. You did not know?’

‘No, I didn’t. Well, I hardly dare recall how long ago it was I stayed up all night, but this hommage is too important for me to miss. Monsieur Françaix, you have a date.’

*

The last of the sessions, that with Lettice Morley, was equally the briefest, in part because she had so impressively presented the case against herself in the commissary the day before and in part because she struck them all as far the least likely of the five suspects. Calvert’s questions, then, were mostly routine, her answers no less so. She had seen what everybody else had seen and had reacted much as everybody else had reacted. It was, in fact, only when the proceedings were drawing to a slightly anti-climactic close that she added anything of value to her questioners’ store of knowledge.

Just prior to that, however, there had taken place an odd little diversion. So monotonously repetitive had Evadne Mount begun to find the alternating sequence of questions and answers, she’d actually nodded off. “Nod” was indeed the word as, to Trubshawe’s amusement, when doziness eventually shaded into unequivocal slumber, the novelist’s head would tip over to left or right before at once jerkily righting itself. Then, a few minutes later, even as she was attempting almost manually to prop up her eyelids, it would happen all over again. And then again.

The fourth time it happened, she did somehow contrive to prise her eyes open before actually sitting upright. And what she saw at that instant, what proved to be directly in her line of vision, was a small wastepaper basket tucked away out of sight under Rex Hanway’s desk. It was stuffed to the brim with assorted papers – presumably old letters, obsolete contracts, pages from rejected scripts and suchlike. On top of them all, though, poking out of the basket, was an oblong strip of paper, badly singed on both sides, which had clearly been ripped from a much wider sheet. Her sleuthial instincts stimulated by the sight of one of those trifling but, as invariably turned out to be the case, vital scraps of paper, discarded if not quite destroyed, which had so often figured in her own whodunits, she shot out an arm as deftly as an ant-eater its tongue, clasped the paper between her fingers and took a few moments to peruse it before sticking it unobserved (so she imagined) inside her handbag. Then she drew herself up erect on her chair and endeavoured to give her full attention to Calvert’s interrogation.

‘Come now, Miss,’ she heard him saying, ‘you must have been sickened, to put it mildly. A famous film director invites you down to his villa to discuss plans for his latest picture and then, without warning, attempts to – well, to ravish you. What respectable woman would not be sickened by such reprehensible behaviour?’

‘At least in the film business, Inspector,’ Lettice answered, ‘only a very foolish woman would be sickened by it. A real namby-pamby. Oh, I see how shocked you are and, I assure you, it’s not because I treat rape lightly. Yes, I repeat, rape. What Farjeon tried to do was rape – not, as you coyly put it, “ravish” – me. He tried to rape me, just as I’m certain he tried to rape Patsy Sloots. Unlike poor Patsy, though, I know how to handle men, especially when, considering Farje’s reputation, I suppose I’d half-expected it to happen in the first place.’

‘How did you handle him?’

‘I tore myself away from his clutches – and, incidentally, tore a new and rather pricey Hartnell frock in the process – I ran from the villa, found a half-decent B & B in Cookham, where I spent the night licking my wounds, and caught the first train back to Town next morning. More or less in one piece.

‘Naturally, after my rejection of him, I was convinced I was off the film – I had been Rex Hanway’s assistant – and that I’d better start looking around for another position. Then I read, first, about the fire at Farjeon’s villa and, three or four weeks after that, about Rex himself being assigned to direct If Ever They Find Me Dead. I rang him up and – not surprisingly, considering how long and how well we’d worked together – he offered me his own old job.

‘So no, Inspector, to answer your original question, I was not at all devastated, as you put it, by Alastair Farjeon’s death, for the reasons I’ve just given you.’

Sitting back in his chair, Calvert almost fondly contemplated her.

‘Well, I think that’s all I wanted to know. I’d like to thank you once more for coming in, Miss Morley. If I may say so, you’ve made a remarkable impression on us all. Almost unnerving. I only wish all the witnesses I’m obliged to question were as lucid and level-headed as you.’

‘Well, thank you too, Inspector.’

She stood up and unaffectedly smoothed out her skirt.

‘Goodbye, Miss Mount. Mr Trubshawe. It’s been an interesting experience meeting you both. I do mean that.’

As soon as she had closed the door behind her, Trubshawe said:

‘There’s one young woman who’s got her head screwed on tight.’

‘She certainly has,’ agreed Calvert. ‘I’ve come rather to admire her. What say you, Miss Mount?’

‘What say I? I say I need a drink. Especially if I’m going to spend the whole night watching pictures at the Academy Cinema.’

‘Then, my dear Evie,’ said Trubshawe, ‘let me offer you, in the first instance, a lift back to Town, mais naturellement, and, in the second, a brace of double pink gins in the Ritz Bar.’

‘Both offers, my dear Eustace, gratefully accepted.’

‘Good, good. How are you fixed, Tom? You won’t be needing a lift, I suppose?’

‘No thanks, I’ve got my own car. But just let me say how grateful I am to you and Miss Mount for agreeing to participate in this little experiment of mine. Also for putting some very germane and’ – he couldn’t resist stealing a mischievous glance at Evadne – ‘trenchant questions. What I would ask you to do now is let your minds dwell on everything we’ve heard this afternoon and, if and when you have any new ideas you feel you ought to communicate to me, please don’t hesitate to ring me up. I meanwhile will let you know how things go at the inquest.’

‘As a matter of fact,’ said Trubshawe with an enigmatic half-smile, ‘I fancy I already have an intriguing new slant on the whole case. If you’ve no objection, though, I’d like to let it simmer awhile before running it past you …’