Curtain Call (10 page)

‘Stephen said you're having a great success at the Strand.
The Second Arrangement
?'

‘Yes, we've been lucky, it's enjoying quite a run,' she replied, still trying to place him.

‘Nina's wonderful in it,' said Stephen, gazing at her.

‘I'm sure she is,' said Talman with an appraising gleam in his eye. ‘I hardly get to the theatre these days.'

‘You know that Ludo's running things at Marlborough Studios now?'

Nina experienced a tiny frisson of excitement, though she didn't bat an eyelid.
Of course
. Talman was a film producer who turned out comedies and melodramas on a shoestring and then invested a fierce energy in promoting them. Nina, who took a lofty view of screen acting, was nevertheless alert to the vista of opportunities an introduction might throw open. She resolved right there to put on a sparkle for him.

Talman noticed her gazing about the high-ceilinged room. ‘Your first time here, Miss Land?'

‘It's Nina, please . . . Yes, it is. I've a feeling this place hasn't changed much since Victoria's day.'

‘Quite right,' said Talman, with a sidelong glance at two elderly gents murmuring over their drinks at the next table. He dropped his voice. ‘One might say the same of our members. I've just been talking on that very matter with Stephen. I'm trying to secure his help.'

Nina looked quizzically at Stephen, who gave a characteristic shrug to indicate that Talman should explain.

‘I'm on the club committee,' he continued, ‘and we've recently come to an agreement that the Nines needs a bit of a spring clean – a dab of colour here and there.'

Nina thought of the saturnine portraits she had passed on the stairs. ‘I can see why, but . . .' Her eyes darted to the adjacent pair of old boys.

Talman understood her look. ‘Oh, it wouldn't be anything to frighten the fogeys, of course. My main idea is for a mural – along that wall – a group portrait of the club's great and good.'

‘That might be rather spiffy.'

‘I know! We're aiming for a British version of that Fantin-Latour painting,
Un Coin de Table
, d'you know it? Unfortunately we've had quite a job persuading our designated portraitist.' He nodded across the table at Stephen, who was at last obliged to speak.

‘I'm honoured to be asked, of course, but – I fear the amount of work it'll involve. I've a fair few things to be getting on with.'

Nina modulated her tone to a husky appeal. ‘Oh but you must!' she said to Stephen. ‘Only imagine your work displayed in this setting. And, let's be honest, nobody else will do it so well as you.'

Stephen gave her a shrewd look, conscious of being soft-soaped. ‘I'll have to think about it . . .'

Talman seemed to twig a weakening in his reluctance. ‘D'you know, that's most remarkable. Miss Land – Nina – may I congratulate you? I've been pleading with him this last hour and got nowhere. But the minute you show up he begins to yield –'

‘I've not yielded to anything,' said Stephen quickly, but it was clear Talman had scented victory, for he resorted to a line few artists had ever been able to resist.

‘The fee would make it worth your while, of course.'

Stephen offered a distracted smile, and said that his agent would need to be consulted – which he knew was tantamount to a surrender. Talman gave Nina a surreptitious wink, as though acknowledging a successful alliance. She sensed that this might be her moment.

‘I suppose you're preparing a new film,' she said airily.

‘Oh, I've always got something in the works,' Talman said with a pleasant grin. ‘I'd read an outline for a murder mystery, but recent events seem to be outrunning whatever our scriptwriters could invent.'

Nina, with a tingle of foreboding, said, ‘What events would they be?'

‘Why, the “Tiepin Murders” of course. A crazed killer on the loose – his signature a grisly violation – a city in terror! Now hasn't that all the elements of a box-office smash?'

‘It needs an ending,' said Stephen quietly, catching Nina's eye. She couldn't tell if he was warning or encouraging her.

‘True. But quite a stroke of luck about the witness, and the sketch. Of course the man could be anyone – the police made three arrests on the strength of it and had to let them all go. I joked with one of our people at a production meeting that it looked a bit like him, and he came back, quick as a flash, that I was the only man at the table wearing a tiepin! Just like Wyley here . . .'

Stephen had already heard it. Tiepins had quickly become a subject of macabre drollery in club rooms and saloon bars – to wear one at the moment was practically to invite chaffing. He had an inkling that Nina was about to let the cat out of the bag, and attempted a diversion.

‘Shall we order some lunch?'

Talman, who had not been a scheduled guest, began to make his excuses when Nina stopped him with a conspiratorial touch on his sleeve. ‘I might be able to help with you with that story.'

Talman looked bemused. ‘Really?'

She saw Stephen shake his head in admonition but plunged on with an account of the afternoon at the hotel, her unwitting interruption of the woman's ordeal in room 408, and her fleeting glimpse of the man who was now, beyond question, the chief suspect in the police's investigation. She was careful in this to omit any reference to Stephen's involvement. When she had told the same story to the man at Marylebone police station she had twice come close to letting his name slip. Her inquisitor, Detective Inspector Cullis, had conducted the occasion with an air of scrupulous courtesy, notwithstanding the suspicion on his thin face that Nina was not playing straight. Convinced that her evidence would be welcomed as a gesture of responsible citizenship, she had not bothered to rehearse her story and, under questioning, had come up short. Why had she left it five days before coming forward? What was she doing on the fourth floor of the hotel anyway? Did she not think of reporting the incident immediately to the hotel manager? Sounding like a liar to her own ears, she was stumbling through the interrogation when Cullis examined the sketch – ‘her' sketch – of the man she had seen.

‘It's an accomplished piece of work,' he mused. ‘Did you study art?'

‘No, I didn't. I studied drama.'

‘Ah, of course. Very professional, anyway.'

‘Thank you,' she replied warily.

Cullis then opened his desk drawer and took out a pencil. ‘I noticed you haven't signed it,' he said, pushing the pencil across to her.

‘Well, it's not that sort of – I don't intend to
exhibit
it.' Her laugh sounded uneasy.

‘But if you wouldn't mind, anyway, just so's we know it's yours.'

For a moment she thought he was pulling her leg, but his expression was blank. She picked up the pencil and, with a little shrug, signed her name beneath the drawing. The detective took back the sketch, and fixed a curious, narrow-eyed look on her.

‘“Nina Land”,' he read. ‘That's interesting . . .'

‘That's my name,' Nina said, wondering where this was going.

‘No, I mean, it's interesting because – well, if you examine the angle at which the charcoal is stroked over the paper, it looks as though the artist is left-handed. But you signed it, I see, with your right hand.'

Nina felt prickles of sweat beneath her arms, but she strove to keep her voice light. ‘I didn't realise you were an art critic as well, Inspector.'

Cullis gave a sardonic chuckle. ‘Not as such, miss. I was just speculating . . . but if you say it's your work, why should I doubt it?'

‘Why indeed?' she said, unsettled by his ambiguous tone. ‘Will there be anything else?'

There was nothing else, for the moment. Nina sensed, however, that her act of public-spirited decency had backfired, and that Cullis had smelt a rat. He had already seen how nervous she was; that last exchange, about the sketch, had nearly undone her altogether. Something in his pale eyes, or in his voice, suggested he was on to her imposture. As soon as she was allowed to leave the station she hurried across Marylebone Road and into a public house, where she bolted down a large brandy.

Nina also omitted this interview in her account to Talman, who blew out his cheeks. ‘Well! Face to face with the Tiepin Killer! You showed a rare pluck confronting him like that. The police must be grateful to you.'

‘I suppose so,' she said, blinking out a sudden image of Cullis's face.

‘What do you think of this one?' he said to Stephen admiringly.

Stephen gave a tight smile and looked at Nina. ‘She's got some nerve.'

‘And what of the girl he almost – did she go to the police too?'

Nina shook her head. ‘They think she was just someone he picked up. But she'll know better than anyone what he looks like.'

Stephen, who had twigged Nina's bid for Talman's interest, decided to take a direct approach. ‘Are you still casting, Ludo? Nina has talents other than crime-fighting.'

Talman, apparently unaware he had been played, now became flustered. ‘Oh, but of course – your agent must – please, send my office a publicity photograph, and we can – there's another casting arranged . . .'

Nina, pretending surprise at this offer, said, ‘I'd be very pleased to.'

‘The pleasure is mine, dear lady,' said Talman, who had risen and was offering them both his hand. ‘And thank you for that marvellous story.'

Stephen, suddenly alarmed, said, ‘Ludo, please don't spread it about. Nina's a witness in a murder case – it's strictly hush-hush.'

Talman marked his solemn nod of agreement with a finger to his lips, which did nothing to reassure him: he knew the producer to be a waggle-tongue. The moment he had gone Nina gave Stephen a wide-eyed look of girlish excitement.

‘Darling, you're so clever to introduce me! D'you think he was serious about an audition?'

‘He certainly took a shine to you,' he replied. ‘Though I'm not sure that was the best way to secure his patronage.'

‘What d'you mean?'

Stephen paused, lit a cigarette and blew a pensive jet of smoke. ‘I mean, it's not safe to go blabbing about your involvement in this thing to Ludo – to
anyone
. The police won't like it, either. They're obliged to protect your identity.'

Nina shook her head. ‘Don't be silly. I'm perfectly safe, and I don't intend to go
blabbing
in any case. I'm just thrilled at the idea – a film for Marlborough! I didn't realise you even knew him.'

‘You'd be surprised at the people I know,' said Stephen wryly. ‘I half wonder if Talman has asked me to do that mural just for the sort I can bring in.'

‘Oh – such as?'

He suppressed a weary sigh. ‘Clients of mine – members of the nobility, society types. I can think of someone straight away that Ludo will beg me to approach.'

‘Who?'

‘Well . . . try the most famous man in England.'

Nina gave a little giggle. ‘Um, the King?'

By way of reply Stephen held her gaze. Nina's mouth fell open. ‘
No
. . .'

He nodded faintly. ‘Few years ago, at a weekend shoot. We weren't even properly introduced. David – as he was then – started chatting to me, I think, because we were the only men there not wearing hats.'

‘Heavens,' breathed Nina, more impressed than she wished to be. ‘What was he like?'

‘Friendly, in a distant sort of way. He had no idea who I was, because the next time we encountered one another he asked me how the work was going on my
symphony
.'

Nina laughed. ‘A royal connection, all the same – and he's a member of this place?'

‘No, but he's been in a few times, and I think his grandfather was an honorary president back in the long ago.'

‘So you may end up painting the King?'

‘Very unlikely. He's got other things occupying him at present – affairs of the heart, you know.'

‘You mean, the American woman?'

Stephen nodded. ‘According to those in the know, he's quite besotted with her – won't give her up for anything.'

‘How romantic. Makes me think rather better of him . . .' She turned a narrow look on Stephen. ‘What would you do in his place?'

He heard her meaning in the question. ‘I hope I'd – do the right thing. Now,' he said, hailing a waiter, ‘how about that lunch?'

On his way to the Ivy Jimmy saw two young men being dragged into a scuffle with a group of drinkers outside a pub. The latter were tough working men, older, who cupped their cigarettes inside brawny hands and stared hard into their pints. They had stopped them with an abrupt call, and were now using their weight and number to push them around. Jimmy would have felt sorry for the victims but for the fact they were both dressed in a uniform of black shirts and trousers. He despised this idiotic business of playing at Mussolini, though you didn't see so many of them on the streets nowadays, and the
Mail
had gone very quiet since its rallying ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts' a couple of years back. One of the youths, having taken a punch to the head, had collapsed on the pavement. Passers-by were dodging their way around the brawl. Jimmy would have done too, had he not been watching the scene through the window of his idling cab.

In the lobby the Ivy doorman, Abel, helped him out of his coat.

‘How are ye keepin', Mr Erskine?'

‘Oh, tolerably well, thanks. Anyone in last night?'

Abel gave a brisk shake of his head. ‘No, sair. Only riff-raff.'

In the restaurant the hubbub of the lunch crowd was warming to a fine crescendo, just before the second bottle turned them rowdy. The decorous waltz of the white-jacketed waiters around the tables and the stained glass of the mullioned windows always conjured for him the image of a first-class dining room on a luxury liner – only nicer, because you weren't trapped at sea. Lunch was Jimmy's favourite time, and today's was a proper occasion, the launch of his new book. He always celebrated at the Ivy, though when his publishers had baulked at the expense he had whittled down the invitees from twenty-five to twelve, not without some whingeing on his part. As he approached the long corner banquette it pleased him to see that he had been seated at the head, between László and his agent Claude, his bald head almost glossy in the light. ‘O vision entrancing!' cried László, his sweet gargoyle features crinkling into a baby-toothed smile. ‘James, you've some catching up to do,' at which he grabbed for the bottle of champagne and began filling a coupe.