Frequent Hearses (9 page)

“Well, I grant you all that, sir.” Capstick’s weak spasm of annoyance was subsiding as the issues became more comprehensible to him. “But the question is, Does your hypothesis justify me in treating this business”—he nodded towards the body on the floor—“as murder, and all these folk we’ve got shut up in the next room as suspects?”

“There are some things,” said Humbleby, “which you can do without treading on anybody’s toes. For example, you can impound these coffee-cups and have their contents analysed, and you can take a sample of what was—um—egested. Also, you can try to find out which of the cups was Maurice Crane’s, though this room’s in such a muddle that I’m afraid it’ll be difficult.”

“And what about searching people?” Fen asked.

Capstick was shocked. “Search
them,
sir?”

“Why not? just because they’re in the film industry that doesn’t mean they’re vested with—with Benefit of Clergy or any such privilege.”

“I doubt if it’d be wise.” Capstick spoke glumly. “They’re influential people with a lot of money, and you have to watch yourself when you’re dealing with that type. As it is, we’ve kept them shut up a sight longer than we ought.” He sighed nostalgically, remembering the comfortable impersonality of parking regulations and one-way streets. “I don’t want to
neglect
anything, of course, but…”

He paused and looked appealingly at Humbleby, who to his relief said:

“Anyway, I can’t imagine that searching them would do much good. If there
is
a poisoner among them, he’ll obviously be prepared for that. But we must interview them, of course, even if it means keeping them here another half-hour or so. I hope it won’t disrupt half the business of the studios.”

“This is a Saturday,” said Fen, “and work here stops at mid-day on Saturdays. You may upset their week-ends, but I can’t say the thought of that distresses me very much.”

Capstick looked again at Humbleby. “Well, would you be prepared to do the talking, Inspector? I know you’ve got questions of your own to ask about the girl, and one way and another,” said Capstick with some pathos, “I should say that for the moment you’re rather more in the picture than I am.”

“If you want me to, of course I will,” said Humbleby. “You’d better keep quiet, Fen,” he added as an afterthought. “They’ll definitely resent it if you start putting on a Torquemada act, and that might make trouble for the Superintendent.”

“You seem to have no faith at all in my discretion,” Fen grumbled as he got to his feet, “and I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve it, I’m sure. If I’m to be gagged, you must ask my question for me.”

“And that is?”

“Ask Madge and Nicholas Crane if they know of any reason, other than Maurice’s salacity, why Gloria Scott should have killed herself. They’ll say they don’t, but go on asking just the same.”

“Have you got information that you’re keeping from me?” said Humbleby suspiciously.

“No, it’s another premonition.” And Fen nodded affably. “I’m very fertile in premonitions today. Give me time and I’ll dream up the winner of the three-thirty for you… Shall we go?”

In the adjacent room some restiveness was apparent. Had Leiper been present, the
Unfortunate Lady
conference would have gone on till one o’clock or later, but this reflection in no way palliated the prevailing sense of injury at being still confined to the studios. In one corner Madge Crane was displaying quiet grief, and but for the fact that her immediate reactions to her brother’s death had not been of quite that order, might have been supposed to have been actually experiencing the emotion. Stuart North, impelled by some obscure sense of duty, was sneezing fitful consolation at her, while Caroline Cecil, as the only other woman present, gravely abetted his efforts. Medesco sat alone, defiantly sketching grottoes, while the young man from the Music Department stared out of the window and whistled the
Berenice
Minuet through his teeth. Evan George, resolutely though discreetly cheerful, was talking to Nicholas Crane; Jocelyn Stafford prowled up and down, scowling; and Gresson, in an undertone, was regaling the blonde stenographers with what he conceived to be light badinage. They all looked up as Fen, Capstick and Humbleby entered, and Fen at least they eyed with distinct mistrust; it was disconcerting, no doubt, and obscurely suggestive of betrayal, to find an erstwhile collaborator suddenly transferred to the opposite side of the fence.

Humbleby got down to business without delay.

“We’re extremely sorry to have kept you so long,” he said ingratiatingly, “and particularly in such distressing circumstances.” He bowed to Madge Crane, who summoned up, in response, an effectively lachrymose little smile. “Our trouble has been that Mr. Crane’s death was so very sudden and unexpected.”

Medesco grunted. “Who are you?” he demanded.

Humbleby contemplated him with disfavour. “I am a Detective-Inspector from Scotland Yard,” he said. “And I’m here on business which may in some way be linked up with Mr. Crane’s death… Sudden and unexpected, I was saying; and unfortunately the doctor hasn’t been able to give us any information as to what caused it.”

“So you’re thinking he may have poisoned himself,” said Medesco brusquely, “or that someone did him in.”

At this, Madge Crane gave vent to a little cry of dismay. Such things need careful practice if they are to come off, and the effect of this essay suggested not so much spiritual anguish as the callous insertion of a pin. Nicholas Crane, sensible, perhaps, that she was a little over-playing the part, frowned slightly and said:

“Really, Aubrey, I don’t think that’s in the best of taste.”

“It is not,” said Humbleby—and he uttered the reproof with a gravity so overwhelming that Jocelyn Stafford stopped pacing in order to regard him with a startled and speculative eye; film people are always on the look-out for fresh acting talent, or anyway delude themselves that they are. “We are not,” Humbleby continued mendaciously, “entertaining any such suspicions as those which you—um—adumbrate. But naturally there’s bound to be an inquest, and we’re obliged, therefore, to investigate all possible contingencies, however remote and unlikely they may seem. Now, if I may have your cooperation for a few minutes…”

They gave it—in a few cases with truculence, but for the most part readily enough. It revealed nothing whatever that was to the purpose. No one could remember where Maurice Crane had put his cup when he had finished with it, and no one, up to the moment of his leaving the room, had observed anything unusual in his behaviour or in anyone else’s.

“Thank you,” said Humbleby when this parade of nescience was at last over. “And now we come to the matter with which I’m more directly concerned. The matter of Gloria Scott.”

There was a sudden pregnant hush, in which Madge Crane’s face hardened and she glanced swiftly at her brother. Of all the people there, only Gresson and the young man from the Music Department seemed unaffected by the name. The two stenographers, their poise momentarily in abeyance, looked at one another meaningly. And Stuart North was so surprised that he simply gaped.

“Gloria Scott?” he said. “What the hell…?”

“I take it you haven’t seen this morning’s papers, Mr. North.”

“No, I have not. My eyes are so rheumy I shouldn’t be able to read them.”

“In the majority of them,” said Humbleby, “there’s a picture of Miss Scott. Some of you others may have seen it.” Madge, Nicholas, Medesco and Jocelyn Stafford all nodded. “The picture has been published thanks to the fact that during the night before last Miss Scott committed suicide.”

Something like horror appeared in Stuart North’s brown, creased face.

“M-my God,” he stammered. “You—you can’t
m-mean
that.”

“It’s true, I’m afraid.”

North stared dazedly at the damp handkerchief crumpled in his hand. “That sweet, silly child,” he said vehemently. “It’s incredible… Why, she—”

And then, recollecting something, he checked himself and looked down at Madge Crane where she sat beside him in grey and olive-green. Everyone there was displaying some degree of astonishment—everyone, that is, except Nicholas Crane, who remained impassive, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his over-elegant sports jacket. To Fen it seemed probable that he was deliberately avoiding his sister’s eye. There was little that Humbleby missed, and he, too, must have observed this, but he made no comment, and his voice was non-committal as he said:

“We have reason to believe that ‘Gloria Scott’ was merely a stage name. Does anyone know what this girl’s real name was?”

Silence.

“Was anyone here acquainted with her before she came to the studios a year ago?”

Again silence.

“Can any of you suggest a reason why she should have killed herself?”

And now there was restless, uneasy movement. Heads were turned, feet shuffled, eye met eye in dumb interrogation. But still no one spoke.

“It may be,” said Humbleby, “that one of you has an answer to that question, but doesn’t want to blurt it out in public. If that’s so, either the Superintendent”—he indicated Capstick, who was hovering self-consciously at his elbow—“or myself will be available in private after we disperse or at any time.”

Evan George, small, harassed and untidy, opened his mouth as if to speak and then hurriedly shut it again. There was no other response.

“Very well,” said Humbleby. “Now, there’s just one other matter… Mr. Crane, I believe you gave a party the evening before last—Thursday evening, that is.”

Almost imperceptibly Nicholas Crane stiffened. Then, relaxing again, he produced a gold case from an inside pocket, took a flat cigarette from it, and put it with deliberation into the corner of his mouth. His grey eyes were intent beneath heavy lids; his corn-coloured hair, with its displeasing suggestion of an artificial wave at the front, gleamed where the sun caught it; his body, the body of an athlete run to seed, seemed to droop from his shoulders like a coat on a hanger. His left cheek twitched with what could be the beginnings of a
tic douleureux
, and when, lighting the cigarette, he curled back his full lips, you could glimpse strong, yellow, irregular teeth.

He inhaled and blew out smoke before replying.

“Yes,” he said indifferently. “I gave a party all right. What about it?”

“And Miss Scott was one of the guests?”

“Certainly.”

“May I ask, please, why you invited her?”

Nicholas’s eyes widened. “I liked her,” he said mildly—and there was something about the statement which compelled belief. “She was a nice kid. Unaffected.”

It occurred to Fen that with persons as important as Nicholas she would, of course, necessarily be that: only professional inferiors such as Valerie Bryant would see the less prepossessing side of her character. Fen stirred where he stood, and Humbleby, noting the movement and apparently fearing that he was on the point of breaking his vows of silence, hastened to say:

“And was anyone else here at your party?”

Nicholas glanced round the room. He took his time about it, though he was not so leisurely as to be uncivil.

“Madge was,” he said. “And Aubrey—Mr. Medesco. And Mr. Evan George. And Mr. Stuart North. And Miss Caroline Cecil.” He seemed to take an ironic relish in this formal mode of speech. “There were others, too—my brother David, for instance. I can give you a complete list if you need it.”

“And Mr. Maurice Crane?”

“He wasn’t able to come.”

“I see.” Humbleby devoted a moment to ingesting this information. “That seems clear enough… I should like the people who were at that party to remain for just a few minutes longer. The rest, I think, can go, unless—” He turned interrogatively to Capstick, who, caught off-balance, made a hurried, evasive noise in his nose. “Right you are, then. Remember, please, that the Superintendent and myself are at your disposal if you should feel you have anything important to tell us about Miss Scott or Mr. Maurice Crane… Thank you all very much.”

In an unnatural silence, with downcast gaze and stepping warily, like mourners at a funeral, Gresson, Stafford, the two stenographers and the young man from the Music Department took their departure. As soon as their rearguard had closed the door, a babble of pent-up talk penetrated through it, and presently diminished along the corridor outside.

Nicholas Crane, who had settled himself on the edge of a table and was swinging an impeccably trousered leg, raised his eyebrows quizzically.

“Gossip and scandal-mongering,” he said. “We’re going to get a lot of that for the next week or two… Would it be in order, Inspector, for me to ask what my party has to do with this wretched girl’s death?”

Madge lifted to Stuart North a face whose tear-stains she did not seem in any hurry to remove.

“Poor darling Maurice,” she murmured. “And now—and now poor sweet little Gloria…” She turned to Humbleby. “I know it’s awful about Gloria,” she pleaded, with a catch in her voice, “but Maurice was
nearer
to me, and somehow—oh, I don’t want to be brutal, but somehow it seems so awful to be talking calmly about
her
when darling Maurice is next door, l-lying—”

“Lying dead.” It was Medesco, cold, massive and immovable, who contributed this unfeeling gloss—and as he spoke, Madge’s pretty face grew suddenly mean and spiteful.

“You mind what you’re saying,” she told him, her voice sharp and purposive, “or I’ll see to it that you never get another—”

She stopped abruptly, belatedly aware that this would not do. In another moment, and with an aplomb which Fen could not but admire, she was quietly sobbing, the heel of one slim and delicate hand pressed shamefastly against her brow.

“Oh God, I’m getting hysterical,” she whispered. “I’m getting overwrought. Stuart… darling…”

Stuart North somewhat ineptly patted her shoulder, uttering condolences which would have been more effective if they had not coincided with a prolonged fit of coughing. And Nicholas, who had been contemplating his sister without any very evident sympathy, took the opportunity of repeating his question to Humbleby.

“Oh, that.” Humbleby had abandoned his official manner and seemed friendly and confiding. “That’s easy. We don’t understand why Miss Scott killed herself, and as we’re professional busybodies we want to find out. We know she was cheerful and normal at lunch-time that day; we also know that at two a.m. that night she committed suicide. So you see, it’s a question of trying to discover what upset her, and your party is a possible line of approach.” Humbleby raised his voice to address the company at large. “Listen, please, everybody. I want to know all you can tell me about what Gloria Scott said and did at Thursday evening’s party, what sort of mood she was in, and so forth… Was there any special reason for the party, by the way?”