The Twilight Hour (17 page)

‘Has Colin told you he met – or saw – or thought he saw Radu Enescu in Bucharest during the war? He seemed to feel he might be … a bit dubious. Politically.'

Abrahams looked at me sharply. ‘No. No, he hadn't told me that. But we don't want to get the case involved in anything political. That would more likely work against Colin than in his favour, can't you see that?'

We were interrupted by a knock on the door, and without waiting for an answer, a young woman launched herself into the room.

‘Naomi! I'm in a meeting! I apologise – my sister, Naomi Abrahams. Dinah Wentworth – a friend of Colin Harris.'

‘I didn't know you were in a meeting! I do apologise.' Her mischievous smile contradicted her words, as if she were mocking her older brother. She was tall and dark like Julius, with the same thin nose and Modigliani face. They were like two elegant birds – cranes, I thought.

Abrahams smiled. ‘Naomi's working on Harris's case with me. We're doing everything we can for him. In the meantime, do please make every effort to find the young man again, won't you.'

But Johnny had disappeared.

seventeen

OUR LIVELY SOCIAL GROUP HAD DISINTEGRATED THAT
spring. Hugh worked all hours with Radu on the film; Colin was in prison and Alan's energy was divided between these two claims on his attention. There was little time for raucous evenings in pubs and restaurants or at parties in someone's digs where everyone drank cheap wine. We found ourselves thrown back on each other and we began to quarrel. Alan still felt uneasy about the whole film project. He knew he'd let Colin down, and took his guilt out on me, shouting and losing his temper over the least little thing. Things weren't going smoothly with Hugh and Radu either. Hugh loved the film, he was full of enthusiasm, but they argued incessantly over the script as Alan tried to smuggle back the politics Hugh and Radu apparently wanted to exclude. Then there were endless phone calls – Alan almost took up residence in the station phone kiosks at Notting Hill Gate – and bad-tempered meetings at the weekend. Alan began to think he was going to hate
Be Still My Heart
when it came out. ‘Going to be ghastly, the kiss of death,' he said. ‘I'll never be offered another script after this.' ‘I'm sure that's not true,' I'd cry, but that only annoyed him. ‘You don't understand, you know nothing about it.' He started work on a novel.

Alan accused Hugh of not doing enough to help Colin, but, as Hugh pointed out, it was all very awkward. He visited Colin once or twice, but it went badly. Colin was still angry about
Be Still My Heart
. ‘Not sure what else I can do,' said Hugh. ‘You could give him an alibi,' was Alan's suggestion. To be fair, Hugh did consider it, but he'd been out of London all that day, talking to a prominent Jewish academic who'd survived the camps, and who was now ensconced at an Oxford college.

There were no more visits to Ormiston Court. That was a relief; I hadn't enjoyed those stifling
tête-à-têtes
with Gwendolen. She might have wanted to be friends, but she had no talent for it. She couldn't open up, didn't share confidences or perhaps had none to share. The word Alan used to describe her was ‘inhibited'. It was odd, he said, when she wasn't inhibited on screen. ‘Some actors and actresses are like that,' he said, ‘empty vessels being filled by the characters they play, they have no personalities of their own.'
I
didn't feel like that; it wasn't what acting meant to me, but perhaps it was true of Gwen. Perhaps it came from her striking looks. She was a Sleeping Beauty, as imprisoned in her strange beauty that was not quite beauty as if she'd been surrounded by a thicket of thorns. She lived in the airless vacuum of her appearance and it sucked all the vitality out of the atmosphere.

Fiona was my new friend. We had a world in common, after all: Charlotte Street, Old Compton Street, the parties, the pubs and above all the idea that art and love and self-expression were the most important things in the world. I thought of Fiona and myself as ‘sophisticates', by contrast with, say, my former school friends, now leading dull lives in the Midlands, the suburbs, or, in one case, the colonies.

Now we knew where Johnnie worked, at one of the studio buildings in Wardour Street, Fiona and I went there and asked for him, but the porter said he wasn't there. We left a message and returned the next day, but the porter still said he was out, or away, and wouldn't let us in. We were reduced to combing Soho in the hope we'd run across him. We sat in the Intrepid Fox at lunchtime – I'd rush down from the office to meet her there – hovered around Wardour Street at the end of the day in hopes of catching him as he left work and then moved on to the Fitzroy Tavern. We seemed to spend a lot of time having coffee too; soon we'd discussed the case in every café in Soho. Poor Fiona! She talked and talked about Titus Mavor. I couldn't understand it, but I realised she'd been devoted to the painter – and she was as desperate as we were to solve the mystery of his death.

Like us, she didn't believe Colin had murdered him: ‘It doesn't make sense,' she said, one early evening as we sat in Bertaux's patisserie eating austerity éclairs. ‘It was too late to stop Titus talking. Even if he thought Titus knew something, murdering him just drew attention to it all, just made it worse – well, it has done, hasn't it? And Titus told me afterwards, it was just a joke. He was just needling him because he doesn't like the Communists.'

‘Yes, but Colin did over-react, didn't he?' The more I thought about the way Colin had gone off the deep end, the odder I found it. I hadn't dared mention this to Alan, of course; but while I never for a moment suspected Colin of murdering Titus, I had begun to wonder what he had been up to at the end of the war. ‘You have to admit, Colin reacted as though it were true.'

‘Nonsense,' said Fiona. ‘
I
didn't mind Titus's jokes, but he did get under people's skin. He could be really annoying. Anyway, it doesn't matter what Colin did in the war. The point is, lots of other people had it in for Titus. We ought to draw up a list of suspects. What about Noel Valentine, for instance, he was after Titus's valuable paintings. If they exist. I never saw any, but then I wouldn't know a masterpiece if I saw one. I couldn't make head or tail of all that stuff. Or not Noel – he's such a harmless little man! But someone else might have wanted to get hold of them.' She lit a cigarette. ‘His painter friends – not that they were his friends any more. He fell out with them and they'd have known if he had any loot. They could be suspects, you know. And then – he owed so many people money. Marius Smith – he owed Marius a lot of money.'

So in the space of five minutes the whole of Fitzrovia was on the suspect list. That was almost as bad as having no suspects. ‘The police must have followed up all those sort of leads,' I said uncertainly.

‘There's his aunt,' said Fiona. ‘She was a vicious old thing.'

‘His
aunt
? Who lived next door?'

Fiona nodded. ‘She was always going in there, nagging and bullying. She didn't like me, I can tell you. And she was always telling him things that made him feel paranoid.'

‘What sort of things?'

Fiona shrugged. ‘Dunno … this and that. Stuff about his friends, people he knew … she'd been in that world, before the war, you know, artists and that. And then during the war I think she had some hush-hush job. She used to tell him things about his left-wing friends.'

‘She'd hardly murder her own nephew, though. What possible motive could she have had?'

‘She was fed up with him, wanted him out. She was persecuting him. She said as much. Maybe they had one row too many and she decided she'd had enough. And then,' she went on, ‘what about Enescu and Gwendolen Grey. You knew Titus had an affair with her. She actually had a
child
. Can you believe that? Abandoned the kid, it's been brought up by the Mavor family.'

Until now, I hadn't fully considered how truly extraordinary this was. ‘They behaved as if they hardly knew each other.'

Fiona nodded. ‘It was weird. Titus was very cagey about it. There was that talk about him working on the film – that was peculiar too. Didn't Enescu know his mistress had a past? Didn't he see how awkward it'd be? Or didn't he care? Anyway, Titus had no intention of having anything to do with it. He didn't like her. She sort of treated him as though he didn't exist. Just sat there like the Mona Lisa, always with a half smile on her face and never saying anything.'

‘She's very passive, isn't she. You never really know what she's thinking.'

Fiona opened her eyes wide. ‘You don't think
she
could have wanted him out of the way?'

That was a new thought. I considered it. ‘If she did, she'd have got some man to do it for her. She hasn't the will-power to do it herself.'

‘Enescu?' Fiona looked at me.

‘I had thought of that,' I said slowly, reluctantly – the man had me so fascinated and confused. ‘But he wanted Titus for the film.'

And then there was Stan – whom Titus was blackmailing, or so I suspected. But I said nothing about Stan. It was the same as with Colin; I just didn't believe it.

‘I wouldn't rule out Radu Enescu,' said Fiona, worldly-wise, ‘he's a dreamboat, isn't he. Why are foreigners so good looking! But nobody knows where he comes from and Titus thought he was pretty shady, you know.'

‘I think Radu might have been in Paris when Titus died, you know. They went once … but I think they might have gone again, for a weekend … but I'm not sure.'

‘Couldn't he have come back somehow, without anyone knowing?'

‘They'd have stamped his passport.'

‘If the police knew he was in France, he wouldn't be a suspect and they wouldn't check that up. I'll go and see Marius Smith,' said Fiona. ‘He might know something and then again – he's quite a likely suspect, you know. He's got a raging temper and if he thought Titus had some valuable paintings … or if Titus had just annoyed him somehow, he could easily have gone round – they had a row – it all went too far – I'll talk to him.'

‘Be careful. Don't let him think you're suspicious.'

Her theory had one very big flaw. Titus had been chloroformed and suffocated. It was premeditated murder.

.........

Radu was due to start shooting the film in two weeks' time, and Hugh arranged a social evening for us all as a sort of celebration. We met at Hugh's favourite Soho drinking club, the Harlequin, a dingy little place, I thought. Stan looked the place over with a tolerant smile, but Alan with his usual tact said: ‘My God, this is tawdry,' as we sat round a bottle of over-priced champagne.

Hugh looked displeased. ‘All right. We'll move on, then, when we've finished this. Where would you like to go?'

Alan said: ‘Let's go to the Caribbean.'

‘The Caribbean? What is this?' Radu looked very alert.

‘You'll love the Caribbean – much more energy.'

Afterwards I wondered if Alan had done it on purpose, just to annoy. The Caribbean was a magnet for negroes from all over the world, one of the few places in London where they were welcome and felt at home. I was sure Alan knew that Radu would find it disconcerting; after all, he came from a fascist country where no one ever saw a non-European anyway and where everyone hated gypsies.

The place was jammed. The bars were crowded with guardee types and debs mingling with spivs and good-time girls. A couple of black US army sergeants lolled against the counter, chewing cigars, near a negro in a pinstripe three-piece suit – surely a doctor or a lawyer. I noticed a well-known actor escorting an exquisite blonde, but really every conceivable type was represented, and every conceivable colour as well.

We moved into the dimly lit dance room, where check-clothed tables surrounded the tiny floor. Coloured men stood around watching the dancers, smiling mysteriously, perhaps waiting their turn, for they outnumbered the women. We were lucky to find somewhere to sit, a vantage point in the corner from which to watch the three-piece band. I loved the music – its syncopated rhythm was so uninhibited. The pianist rolled from side to side as his elegant long fingers slipped along the keys and the bass player swayed to and fro, eyes half closed, in thrall to his music. The guitarist was wearing a chestnut zoot suit, blue trilby pushed back and yellow shoes that stamped in time to the rhythm.

Radu stared at the dancers, an expression I couldn't decipher on his face. There were many mixed couples on the floor. And it was as if there was something in the music that loosened them up, it was so much more abandoned than anything I'd seen – the Chelsea Arts Ball possibly excepted – freer and more pulsating even than dancing the tango with Radu; completely different in fact, for the tension in that had been as of a tightly coiled spring. This was loose, spontaneous.

Radu turned and invited me onto the floor. But on this occasion he was very restrained; our bodies didn't even touch.

‘Dinah – I am so busy with the film, but I haven't forgotten my promise.' He had to speak rather loudly over the noise.

‘Your promise?'

‘I promise you a screen test, remember?'

I'd
forgotten! The tension of the weeks since Colin's arrest had driven everything else from my mind. ‘It's all been so difficult,' I said.

‘I know, this is terrible, with Colin.' His voice was warm, silky smooth. ‘But if you would still like to do it? I will make an arrangement. I have time now, just before we start shooting. After that – no time.' He laughed. His white teeth glittered. ‘Next week. I will call you at work,' he said.

No sooner had the dance ended than a lissom young man in a polo-neck sweater asked me to dance. It was a jitterbug! I hadn't thought I could dance like this; it was amazing. But when I went back to our table everyone except Alan had gone.

‘Radu seemed annoyed about something,' he said in a clipped voice. ‘He certainly didn't seem to appreciate you dancing with a man of colour. Let's go.'