Angel's Flight (A Mercy Allcutt Mystery) (16 page)

      “Miss Allcutt,” she murmured, taking my hand. “So pleased.”

      I sank into a chair in front of Miss Dunstable’s desk. “It’s been a pretty awful couple of days, hasn’t it?” I asked, hoping to convey my empathy and none of my perhaps-unseemly curiosity.

      Jacqueline Lloyd shuddered delicately. “It’s been perfectly horrid. My nerves are shattered.”

      Miss Dunstable clucked her tongue in sympathy. “Mr. Carstairs has been upset too.”

      “I’m sure he has. It was . . . ghastly.” Another delicate shudder trembled through Miss Lloyd’s slender form. “To think that I was actually holding the hand of a . . . of a
dead
person.” She put a white-gloved hand to her alabaster forehead. “It doesn’t bear thinking of.”

      “I’m so sorry,” said I, although I’d been there too and didn’t feel particularly shuddery. On the other hand, it truly was fairly appalling to think about holding the hand of a corpse for several minutes before you realized she was dead. “Had you met Mrs. Hartland before the night of the séance?”

      “Yes.”

      “Did you know her well?”

      “No. Only slightly,” said Miss Lloyd. “She was the reason Mr. Carstairs asked me to attend the wretched thing.”

      “Oh, really? Why is that?” I hoped she wouldn’t mind my asking.

      “Well, she is—that is, she was—” Another delicate shudder made the white veil on her hat tremble. “—the most important columnist in the industry. Mr. Carstairs thought it would be good publicity for me to be seen to be interested in spiritual matters, and since she was there she’d surely write about my attendance.”

      I considered this information for a second before blurting out, “Couldn’t you just go to church or something?”

      Miss Lloyd peered at me as if I’d spoken to her in one of the lesser-known Germanic dialects, if there are such things.

      Sylvia Dunstable laughed softly. “Oh, my goodness, Miss Allcutt, that wouldn’t do at all.”

      “It wouldn’t?” I didn’t understand.

      Fortunately for me, Miss Dunstable was happy to enlighten me. “You see, it’s like this:
everybody
goes to church. Only a very few of us can afford to hire spiritualists and delve into the realm of communication with the departed. To participate in a séance lifts one out of the commonplace. If you’re an aspiring motion-picture star, you can’t allow yourself to be lumped among the masses. You must do everything in your power to transcend the ordinary. Mr. Carstairs leaked a story to the press about Miss Lloyd seeking to communicate with her late, beloved mother.”

      “Ah,” I said, comprehending at last. Maybe. “I think I see what you mean.”

      “A true star must be perceived as apart from the horde.”

      “Ah,” I said again, in lieu of anything more cogent.

      “It’s the difference between . . . oh, say, Gloria Swanson or Pola Negri or Lillian Gish and a swarm of other girls who come to Los Angeles in pursuit of a career in the pictures,” Miss Dunstable continued. “A thousand other girls might well be pretty, but a star has a certain exceptional excitement about her. A girl has to have it to begin with, but then it must be nurtured assiduously. Mr. Carstairs knows how to create a star, and he’s leading Miss Lloyd in the right direction. She must always be seen to possess a certain quality that others lack.”

      “Yes. I see what you mean,” I said. And I did. The quality of ambition and luminosity Miss Dunstable was describing was the difference between Jacqueline Lloyd and . . . well . . . Lulu LaBelle, although I hate to say it. Lulu was pretty and she very well might possess talent. She might even look good on the screen. But she clearly didn’t have that single-minded passion to be famous that led people like Jacqueline Lloyd to do
nothing
that didn’t further their careers. If she did, she wouldn’t be sitting in the lobby of the Figueroa Building day after day filing her nails, but would be out pursuing stardom.

      It sounded like too much work to me. I’d rather be the assistant to a private investigator and take my observations home and write books about them without always worrying over who was watching me do it. I’m not much for the limelight, I guess.

      Then again, Miss Lloyd’s travels on the road to fame and fortune bore some slight resemblance to my mother’s societal aspirations for her daughters back home in Boston. Mother was always showing Chloe and me off at big society gatherings, hoping, I’m sure, to snabble so-called “suitable husbands” (men with money and power) for her chicks. She made us attend all the “best” parties. She was particularly pleased when she garnered an invitation to a function sponsored by Mrs. Lowell. Although the Lowells were reputed to speak only to God, Mrs. Lowell occasionally spoke to my mother, who was almost as exalted as a Lowell, at least in her own mind.

      Oh, dear, I shouldn’t have said that. I’m
such
an undutiful daughter.

      “Um . . .” I said after a moment spent digesting the interesting differences between movie stars and the rest of us mere mortals. “. . . so you had met Mrs. Hartland before that get-together at Mr. Easthope’s house?”

      “Once or twice,” said Miss Lloyd.

      “It was very important to stay on Hedda Heartwood’s good side,” put in Miss Dunstable. “Mr. Carstairs has often told me that he tries always to make sure his clients are seen only under favorable conditions by her. Or he did, that is.”

      “Really? Why is that?”

      “That woman could make a person’s career,” said Miss Lloyd, her voice going a bit stiffish. “She could also ruin a career. She could be vicious.”

      “My goodness.” Perhaps that ferret-like quality I’d noticed in Mrs. Hartland’s features revealed more about her character than I’d first thought. “I didn’t know that.”

      Miss Lloyd sniffed.

      Miss Dunstable said, “There are lots of pitfalls on the road to cinematic fame, Miss Allcutt.”

      “I guess so. Had you ever run afoul of Mrs. Hartland?” I asked, perhaps not very diplomatically. “I mean, had she ever written anything ugly about you?”

      “Certainly not,” said Miss Lloyd with hauteur. “There is nothing about me that cannot stand the light of publicity.”

      “That’s good.” I felt a little ratty about having asked that question, but I really wanted to know about the business. “It must be awful to have to keep secrets.”

      “I wouldn’t know.” Miss Lloyd rose from her chair. “I really must be going,” she said. “I have a perfectly hideous headache from all those questions. My nerves have been unstrung since that awful woman was murdered.”

      
That awful woman
? Hmm. I wondered what Jacqueline Lloyd knew about Mrs. Hartland that I didn’t. I was on the verge of asking when she forestalled me.

      “If you
must
know about Hedda Heartwood, Miss Allcutt, perhaps you should speak with Mr. Carstairs. He knows ever so much more about her than I do. I must leave now.”

      “Of course.” Sylvia Dunstable rose to her feet, too, and skirted her desk in order to see Miss Lloyd to the door.

      This points out yet another difference between people like Jacqueline Lloyd and me. Secretaries escort picture stars to doors. They let people like me find our own way.

      “Well,” I said to Miss Dunstable when she returned to her desk, “I truly didn’t mean to interrupt you.”

      “Think nothing of it, please. Miss Lloyd and I were just chatting.”

      My goodness. To think of “just chatting” with a big name in the motion-picture business boggled my mind. Although, come to think of it, I
just chatted
with lots of people like Harvey and Mr. Easthope all the time. That wasn’t the same, though. The people I knew might be of major importance in the industry, but for the most part they were behind the scenes and nobody but those who worked in the business knew who they were. The people whom everyone idolized were the stars, the actors and actresses whose faces were known worldwide.

      The whole motion-picture mystique was beginning to sound silly to me, so I left Miss Dunstable’s office and went to my own. There I slapped on my hat, grabbed my handbag and headed to the library.

Chapter Ten
 

I spent almost the entire hour I was allowed for lunch in the library, reading all about poisons made from plants. For instance, I learned that an alkaloid is an amine produced by a plant. That didn’t mean a lot to me, but I gathered that there were a whole lot of them, and they were all toxic to a greater or lesser degree. I also learned that alkaloids tasted bitter, contained nitrogen, and occurred generally in seed plants.

      After reading for nearly an hour, however, what puzzled me most about alkaloids was how someone could come by one. I mean, it’s one thing if you’re an explorer traveling down the Amazon River or up the Nile, but most household cupboards weren’t stocked with stuff like codeine, morphine, strychnine, datura or curare. I guess some folks had supplies of codeine and morphine, but I couldn’t figure out how a fatal dose of either of those substances could have been delivered by a prick to Mrs. Hartland’s back. Datura and curare killed extremely fast according to the books I looked at, and many Indian tribes used arrows dipped in those two poisons. Oddly enough, when the substances were eaten, they produced no ill effects on the person doing the eating.

      But where would a person living in Los Angeles, California, get his or her hands on a supply of poison-tipped arrows? I hadn’t a clue, and none of the library books helped me find one.

      At any rate, after almost an hour, I had a notebook full of information about alkaloids and possessed not a single notion as to what to do with it when I left the library. I grabbed a tamale and a paper cupful of lemonade from a street vendor (in Boston, you’d probably get a Coney Island and a Nehi, but the principle’s the same) and headed back to the Figueroa Building. Ernie hadn’t returned from lunch yet, so I ate my own lunch at my desk and perused my notes. I didn’t feel as if I’d made any appreciable progress in the solution of Mrs. Hartland’s murder by the time one o’clock rolled around and the telephone started ringing again.

      Since I really wanted to talk to Rupert Mullins, during a lull in the telephone nonsense I dialed Mr. Easthope’s home. Rupert answered the phone!

      “Mr. Easthope’s residence,” he said in a voice stiff with the importance of his job, but I recognized it anyway.

      “Is this Rupert Mullins?” I asked to be sure.

      Silence greeted my question, and it occurred to me that Rupert might be nervous about talking to people since he’d been quizzed by the police and had a record and all. Besides, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the vultures of the press had been bothering the residents of Mr. Easthope’s house all day.

      “It’s Mercy Allcutt, Rupert. I don’t want to bother you. I just wanted to ask a few questions.”

      “Oh.” Rupert’s sigh of relief carried all the way from Mr. Easthope’s house to my ear. “I’m glad it’s you, Miss Allcutt. The police and the press have been hounding me.”

      “I’m sorry about that. I’m sure they’re just doing their job.”

      “Hmm.”

      So much for that. “Say, Rupert, did you see anything odd the night of the séance?”

      “Odd?” He hesitated. “To tell the truth, Miss Allcutt, the whole thing was odd to me. We don’t have much truck with motion-picture people and séances and such-like nonsense in Enid, Oklahoma.”

      I could appreciate that. “What I mean is, did you see anyone hanging around the house who didn’t seem to belong to the household or be one of the guests or anything?” That was a stupid question—after all, everyone there would have been new to Rupert—and I was about to withdraw it when Rupert surprised me.

      “Well, there was this guy.”

      I perked up instantly. “What guy?”

      “I’m not sure. Updegraff—he’s the cook’s husband—went outside for a smoke and saw this guy smoking and slouching. That’s what Updegraff said. Slouching—in the shrubbery. He—Updegraff—asked the guy what he was doing there, and he—the guy—said he was supposed to be at the séance, but didn’t feel well. I thought that was kind of funny.”

      I did, too, and my mind instantly fixed upon George Hartland. Had he been at Mr. Easthope’s house all along? Could it be George Hartland who’d perpetrated the dastardly deed? “Did Mr. Updegraff ask the . . . the guy for his name?”

      “Yeah. I think he was a George something or other.”

      Aha! I knew it! “Thank you very much, Rupert. This information is most helpful.”

      Very well, so now I knew that George Hartland hadn’t been ill at his home that night. He’d been at Mr. Easthope’s house. Furthermore, he hadn’t come inside, but had skulked in the shrubbery. Fishy. Very fishy. I knew I ought to tell Phil Bigelow immediately, but I wanted to talk to Mr. George Hartland first. Phil would be upset with me if he ever found out, but that was just too bad. Let him do his own detective work.

      During the very first case on which I’d worked—good heavens, had it been only a month ago?—I’d had good luck with the telephone book. Hoping luck would again prove to be my friend, I reached for said book and thumbed through it until I got to the H section.

      Drat. No listing for George Hartland. What did that mean?

      He lived with his mother! That’s probably what it meant. With thundering heart, I peered at the pages again, and
voila
! There she was, bold as brass: Vivian Hartland. I guess since she used another name for her column, she didn’t worry about getting too many idle telephone calls.

      With trembling fingers, I lifted the receiver from the hook and dialed the number listed in the phone book. Some male person on the other end picked up his own receiver on my third ring. My heart soared into my throat.

      “This is the Hartland residence,” said the voice. I thought it sounded rather tired and wan, but perhaps I was projecting.

      “May I please speak to Mr. George Hartland? This is Miss Mercedes Allcutt calling.” My tone was very formal and unemotional, although my insides were leaping about like ballet dancers, and my nerves were jumping like several children on pogo sticks.