Josephine left her room twenty minutes early, hoping that punctuality would give her the advantage of choosing where the meeting with Alma took place. She was surprised by how quickly she had warmed to the director’s wife, but realised, too, that her friendliness held its own agenda: Hitchcock might control things in front of the camera, but it was already obvious to Josephine that Alma’s role in the couple’s success was just as important, if far more subtle, and she was determined not to let herself be charmed into an agreement that she would later regret.
The wide, elegant staircase led down to a series of elaborate interiors which suggested that the old house had enjoyed an eclectic architectural history even before its present owner arrived. The terraces and Cockpit bar were busy, and Josephine noticed Lydia and Marta outside with Daniel Lascelles and an attractive young girl who looked vaguely familiar, but there was no sign of Alma Reville. Of all the downstairs reception areas, the library was the quietest‚ and she settled herself there, relieved not to be distracted by anyone she knew. It was an odd sort of room, finished with intricately carved doorways and a fireplace which was supposed to have come straight from the Great Exhibition, and it was by no means her favourite part of the hotel – but she felt comfortable in a place devoted to the written word and looked on the library as a silent ally in the conversation that lay ahead. She scanned the shelves while she was waiting and took down a copy of
England and the Octopus
, Clough’s book on architecture.
The French windows opened onto the lawn‚ and she walked over to a table, but stopped awkwardly when she realised that Bella Hutton was already seated there, her figure hidden by the armchair’s high back. As familiar as Josephine was with actors and actresses, she could not help but be struck by how strange it felt to be face to face with a real movie star. Bella was staring across to the other side of the estuary, deep in thought, and although she must have heard Josephine approach, she did nothing to acknowledge her presence. The table in front of her showed no sign of drinks or afternoon tea, and Josephine guessed that she was here simply for the peace. She hesitated, reluctant to intrude but loath, too, to make a hasty, embarrassing exit. In the end, the problem was solved for her. ‘It’s all right,’ Bella said. ‘Come and sit down. The room’s big enough for both of us.’
She spoke without looking round, a weary note in her voice, and Josephine knew that she must be sick to death of seeing rabbits in headlights wherever she went. Her own fame was tiresome enough, but Bella Hutton’s was a level of celebrity that must make any attempt at a normal life impossible. ‘Thank you, but I’ll go somewhere else,’ she said. ‘You’ve managed to find some peace and quiet, and I don’t want to be the one who disturbs it. Mine might not be a very restful conversation.’
‘Is there such a thing?’
‘Probably not if it involves talking terms with Alma Reville.’
The name brought a reaction, but not the one she was expecting. Bella looked at her for the first time. ‘Are you Josephine Tey?’
‘Yes. How did you know?’
‘Oh, there’s always gossip about Hitch’s next project, and they’ve let it be known that it involves the author of
Richard of Bordeaux
. You’re a versatile lady. Not many people mix historical plays with crime fiction and do both of them well.’ She smiled. ‘I shouldn’t prejudice your negotiations, but they seem to think they’ve bought you already. Discreet enquiries have been made with my agent.’
‘I don’t know whether to be flattered by their enthusiasm or offended by their cheek.’
‘I’m impressed you’ve noticed there’s a choice. Most people gravitate towards them like moths to a flame at the slightest encouragement. Haven’t you heard it?’ She paused and pretended to listen. ‘The walls here echo to the sound of people panting, and it has nothing to do with the heat.’ Josephine laughed. The wisecrack was typical of the series of smart, resilient women Bella Hutton had played on screen – always a step ahead and in touch with the modern age, and actually far better suited to the harsher Depression era than they had been to the sweetness of the 1920s. Unlike most of her contemporaries, Bella’s professional reputation had improved as she aged.
‘What did they offer you?’ Josephine asked, trying to think of a role in the book that would suit her.
‘The heroine’s aunt.’
‘But she hasn’t got an aunt.’
‘Not in your version, no. I noticed that when I read it.’ Bella saw the expression on Josephine’s face. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to put you off before Alma even gets here.’
‘You haven’t. I’m just cross I didn’t think of it first. If I’d known you were a possibility, I’d have given Erica an aunt myself.’
Bella smiled. ‘Sadly, I’ve had to decline. The timing doesn’t work for me. It’s a shame, because I like what you do very much.’ She gestured to the chair opposite. ‘Please, Josephine – join me while you wait for Alma. She’ll be ten minutes late. She always is.’
Josephine sat down, surprised by the sudden familiarity and feeling a little like Pip on his first visit to Miss Havisham. There could only be ten years or so between them, but Bella’s long career, sophisticated image and formidable reputation made her feel like an awkward child in comparison. ‘If being late is a ploy to soften me up, I’d like to think it would take longer than ten minutes, but I couldn’t guarantee it.’
‘Ten minutes is good by Hollywood standards. You obviously haven’t spent much time in America.’
‘I’ve never been.’
‘So you didn’t see
Richard of Bordeaux
on Broadway?’ Josephine shook her head. ‘Probably just as well. It wasn’t a patch on the West End production. But the play of yours that I really loved was
The Laughing Woman
.’
Josephine was surprised and pleased. The play she had written about the sculptor, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, had been the least successful of her West End productions, but it was the one she was fondest of, if only because it had had very little interference from a producer and still felt like hers when the curtain went up. There was a lesson about pride in there somewhere, but not one she cared to think about so close to her meeting with Alma. ‘I’m glad you liked it,’ she said. ‘It was important to me.’
‘Did you know him?’
The vision of herself as a sophisticated teenager swanning around the sort of artistic circles that Bella Hutton must have moved in amused Josephine, but she didn’t disillusion her by making that obvious. ‘No. I based it entirely on other people’s memoirs, and picked the brains of a sculptor friend of mine in Primrose Hill. Actually, I made the mistake of taking her to see it one night and she spent the whole performance laughing at the clay head they had on stage. I was quite relieved when he smashed it.’
‘He smashed a lot of things, I gather,’ Bella said. ‘Perhaps he might have been more careful if he’d known how little time he had left to create a body of work. If I think my life’s gone by in a flash, how must he have felt?’ The question had a melancholy note to it which seemed personal, but it was rhetorical‚ and Bella moved on before Josephine had time to consider what it might imply. ‘I met him once, you know – at a dinner party very much like the one you describe in the play. As far as I can tell, you and your actors did him a great service. That’s the film Hitch should make.’
‘I don’t think tormented artists have quite the same box-office appeal as murdered actresses.’
‘No, you’re right, and there’s a perverse comfort in that, I suppose. Good news for someone that I’ll still be making money when I’m dead. Perhaps I should take a leaf out of your murdered actress’s book and leave it all to charity.’ As a stranger, Josephine found it difficult to read the expression on Bella’s face but the bitterness in her voice was unmistakable. Too shy to probe further, she changed the subject. ‘You started out on the stage, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, but only briefly. My training, if you can call it that, consisted of understudying at the Vaudeville for a few months.’ Josephine listened, captivated, as the movie star talked about her early days in London before moving to America. It was easy to see why Bella Hutton was one of very few actresses who had successfully made the transition from silent films to modern movies. Most stars – Leyton Turnbull, for example – had lost work because their own voice was so unlike the one the audience had imagined for them over years of devoted viewing; there was nothing worse than hearing the epitome of virility speak in a high-pitched voice or with a speech defect. Women faded from view and leading men became villains overnight, but Bella’s distinctive voice – strong and low-registered, Americanised to a carefully judged degree – suited her essential toughness and had enabled her to transform herself over and over again. ‘Then I was spotted by Maxwell Hutton on one of his trips to London‚ and he whisked me off to New York and got me in as a player at Vitagraph. The rest, as the lawyers say, is alimony.’ She smiled sadly. ‘The theatre was a happy time for me, though – the first taste of freedom. Sometimes I wish I’d never left it, but he was a very difficult man to turn down.’
‘He certainly knew how to shape your career.’ Bella’s marriage to the maverick producer had been one of the legendary show-business partnerships, generously giving the movie magazines all they could ask for, from unlikely love story to acrimonious divorce. ‘Apart from nearly killing you on the
Titanic
, it seems to me he didn’t put a foot wrong.’
Bella threw back her head and laughed. ‘No, I don’t suppose he did. That trip was his engagement present to me. It was supposed to be my grand farewell to England before we married. I always used to tease him about knowing it was going to sink, because in spite of all the hard work it really
was
that story that made my career. Up to then, I’d done a good crowd scene in
A Tale of Two Cities
and that was about it.’
It would have taken a better woman than Josephine to champion discretion over curiosity in this case, and her one concession to decency was to keep the sensationalism out of her voice. ‘What was that night really like?’ she asked.
The sun, lower now in the sky, had crept in under the top of the French windows‚ and Bella leant forward to feel it on her face, closing her eyes as she talked. ‘We were in my cabin when it hit. We’d been for a walk on deck, but we didn’t stay out for long because it was so cold. All the nights had been like that – crisp, clear skies full of stars, the air fresh and exhilarating. The sort of weather that goes well with a new life, I remember thinking. It was a jolt, that’s all. Neither of us really thought much about it until we noticed the silence. The hum of those engines had become so familiar, and suddenly they weren’t there. Max went out to see what was happening‚ and one of the crew told him we’d grazed an iceberg. We were to go up on deck with our lifebelts on, but it was just a precaution. No one was the slightest bit concerned, even when they unroped the lifeboats.’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘They dropped the boats down until they were level with our deck. I had to leave Max then because the men stayed behind, but it still didn’t seem like a big deal – the ship was fine and everyone was calm. The first time I felt any fear at all was when we were being lowered into the sea. It was the size of the thing, I suppose. It would have been so easy to be sucked under. Anyway, we got away to a safe distance and looked back, and this is going to sound strange but it was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.’
Josephine could believe it. As a fifteen-year-old, she had watched enthralled as the newsreels showed the
Titanic
pulling out of Southampton, and it had never entirely lost that sense of grandeur in her own mind, even as she had pored over the artists’ impressions of the ship going down. ‘Then the lights went out, and we realised that the decks had been gradually filling with water all the time,’ Bella continued. ‘No one spoke. We just watched in silence as that huge silhouette tilted straight on end. She stayed like that for about five minutes, and all you could hear was the roar of machinery sliding down through the hull. It was like watching a silent film, now I think about it – one where the music’s not quite right. There were women all around me with their mouths open in a scream, and all I could hear was the tearing and crashing of metal. The soundtrack from Hell, you might say. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, the ship disappeared; one quiet, slanting movement into the sea, and she was gone. And then you could hear the screams – not us on the boats this time, but the poor devils in the water. It was so cold, Josephine, and we couldn’t do anything but watch them die. And you know what? We had empty seats in that lifeboat. It was all so random, like some kind of judgement being played out in front of you.’
It was an extraordinary account, and the storyteller in Josephine admired the quiet, evocative way in which Bella told it. ‘When did you find out that your husband was safe?’ she asked.
‘Not until much later. The
Carpathia
picked the survivors up and took us to New York, and we found each other on board. He’d managed to get a place on one of the last rafts off.’
She expected Bella to add something about her relief at the reunion, but the actress was quiet. ‘I’m surprised you ever crossed the Atlantic again. I’m not sure I’d have been able to set foot on another ship if I’d been through that.’
‘I didn’t for a long time. But things happen, life moves on‚ and people force you into facing things you’d rather avoid.’ Josephine remembered what Ronnie had said about Bella’s sudden return to Britain and considered asking her about it, but she hesitated and the moment was lost. ‘It’s probably just as well that they do, and it’s second nature to me now.’ A knowing smile transformed her face. ‘Anyway, a star’s fee begins on the day she leaves home, so it pays to take your time. The bigger the cheque, the faster I forget.’ She paused, then spoke more seriously. ‘But Max knew so much more than how to shape my career, Josephine. I’ve never loved anyone the way I love him.’ The present tense jumped out at Josephine, although Bella seemed oblivious to having used it. ‘That trip was the most romantic thing you could ever imagine, and it was so typical of him. It should have told me something when the damned thing hit an iceberg, though, shouldn’t it? It’s not what you see that matters; it’s what lurks below the surface. A sharper girl would have learnt from that.’