And So To Murder Read online

  Now Monica Stanton, to begin with, had no real grievance against that inoffensive form of entertainment known as the detective-story. She neither liked nor disliked it. She had read a few, which struck her as being rather far-fetched and slightly silly, though doubtless tolerable enough if you liked that sort of thing.

  But, by the time her aunt had finished, Monica was in such a state that she had come to curse the day Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born. It was a wordless, mindless passion of hatred. As for Mr William Cartwright – whose name Miss Flossie Stanton, with fiendish ingenuity, managed to drag into the conversation on every subject from tapioca pudding to Adolf Hitler – Monica felt that she would like to poison Mr Cartwright with curare, and dance on his grave.

  As usual, a trifle did it.

  Throughout the turmoil over Desire, Monica had kept up a stern outer front, though she was quaking with fear inside. She had had qualms long before the storm broke. The first qualm occurred when the original hot flush of literary inspiration had passed, and she realized what she had written. The second qualm occurred when she read the proof-sheets, and writhed. Afterwards it was mostly qualms.

  But she was not so much apprehensive as bewildered and furious. It wasn’t fair, she cried out to the mirror. It wasn’t just. It wasn’t reasonable.

  She had always wanted to write, and now she had proved she could write. And what happened? What happened? She had done an admirable thing, for which she could have expected a word of praise; and instead she was treated like a convicted felon. There returned to her some of the irrational, baffled feeling of childhood, when you do something from the very best of motives, and yet instantly every adult rises against you in wrath.

  ‘And I said to her father,’ declared Miss Stanton, in a heart-broken undertone: ‘“If only Monica had written a nice detective-story!”’

  After all, what on earth was all the fuss about? That was what Monica passionately demanded to know. Re-reading Desire in the grisliness of cold print, she could see that there were certain passages which might be called outspoken. But what of it? What was there to be shocked about? It was all perfectly normal and natural and human, wasn’t it?

  ‘And as I said to her father,’ confided Miss Stanton, bending closer, ‘“If only Monica had written a nice detective-story!”’

  Oh, God!

  And all the worse because the book boomed into success. Tipped off by the neighbours, a newspaperman came to interview Monica. She was photographed in the vicarage garden, and her real name appeared in print. The reporter also asked her some questions about Woman’s Right to Love. Monica, confused, gave some answers which sounded worse in print than they actually were. Canon Stanton had to write to his Bishop about this; Miss Stanton was furnished with spiritual ammunition for the next three weeks; and more reporters hurried to get their share of a good thing.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe it,’ said the Planet, who was himself of a somewhat flighty literary turn. ‘Face like a Burne-Jones angel and probably a heart like Messalina.’

  ‘I dunno the dames,’ said the News-Record keenly, ‘but it sounds hot. Did you try to date her up?’

  ‘Of course,’ observed Miss Flossie Stanton – and for the first time a hideous note of complacency began to creep into her voice – ‘of course, the book is making money; oh, yes, quite a lot, I believe; but, as I said to my brother: “What is that?” What is it, indeed? After all, I believe Mr Cartwright made quite a lot of money. And, as I said to my brother: “If only Monica had written a nice detective –”’

  For Monica, that finished things.

  Towards the middle of August, before there had come any glimmer of events that were to shatter Europe by the end of the month, Monica packed her bag and went to London.

  4

  Sitting now in the office of Mr Thomas Hackett, Monica was in almost a fever of impatience to begin work. And she would do something good, she swore to herself; she would make the script of Desire a screen masterpiece. For she was being treated with consideration, with courtesy, even with deference, by the man who had been described as the Young Napoleon of the British film industry. In pure gratitude for this, her loyalty went out to Mr Hackett’s curt practicality, his smooth, sure good sense.

  ‘Then that’s settled,’ said Mr Hackett, leaning across the desk to shake hands with her. ‘And now that you’re one of us, Miss Stanton, what do you think of it?’

  ‘I think it’s wonderful,’ answered Monica, with sincerity. But –’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, I mean – how do I work? That is, do I stay in town and write the script and send it to you? Or do I work here?’

  ‘Oh, you’ll work here,’ said Mr Hackett; and Monica’s joy bubbled clear to the top. It had been her one remaining anxiety. The mere sight of Pineham Studios had put the film-germ into her blood.

  ‘It’d hardly do to have you in town,’ the producer went on dryly. ‘I’ve got to have you under my eye. And I’ve got a fellow here who can teach you the hang of the game in no time. We’ll put you in the room next to him.’ He made a note. ‘But it means work, you know! Good, hard, solid work. And quick work, too, Miss Stanton. I’m keen about this. I want to go into production’ – his hand hovered over the desk, and descended on it with a flat, business-like smack – ‘just as soon as possible. Four weeks, if we can. Three weeks, maybe. What do you say?’

  Monica was not yet used to film tactics. She took him at his word, and was staggered.

  ‘Three weeks! But –’

  Mr Hackett considered, and made a grudging concession.

  ‘Well, perhaps a bit longer. Not much longer, though, mind! That’s the way we work here, Miss Stanton. I want this production to follow Spies at Sea, our present anti-Nazi espionage film.’

  ‘I know, Mr Hackett, but –’

  ‘Spies at Sea should be finished by that time. I hope.’ A shade of hideous gloom went across his face. But he cheered up a moment later. ‘Say four to five weeks,’ he urged persuasively, ‘and give ourselves plenty of time. That’s it. That’s settled, then.’ He made another note. ‘What do you say?’

  Monica smiled.

  ‘I’ll try, Mr Hackett. All the same, please! Whether I can learn all I’ve got to learn, and still do you anything like a decent script for Desire, all in four weeks –’

  Mr Hackett regarded her rather blankly.

  ‘For Desire?’ he repeated.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘But, my dear young lady,’ said Mr Hackett, bustling out at her with a bland, paternal air, ‘you’re not going to work on the script of Desire.’

  Monica stared at him.

  ‘Oh, no, no, no, no!’ continued Mr Hackett, as though wondering what could have put such an idea into her head. He was almost reproachful about it. His dental smile flashed. He shook his head. All the force and radiance of his personality, which seemed to animate even his toothbrush moustache, was directed towards disabusing her mind of this fantastic notion.

  ‘But I thought – I understood –’

  ‘No, no, no, no, no,’ said Mr Hackett. ‘Mr William Cartwright is to work on Desire, and he’ll teach you what you need to know about the business. You, Miss Stanton, are to do us the screen-play for Mr Cartwright’s new detective novel, And So To Murder.’

  II

  The Tactless Eloquence of a Bearded Man

  1

  IF Mr Dunne’s theory is correct, some very peculiar things go on in the subconscious mind. Monica, even though for a moment she was breathless with shock, had nevertheless the feeling of being able to say: ‘I have been here before.’ The whole scene – the white-painted office, the chintz curtains at sunny windows, Mr Hackett’s voice mouthing and echoing – all returned to her with horrible familiarity, as though she had been through the same scene somewhere before, and should have known what was coming.

  The real reason was that, secretly, she had feared it couldn’t last. It was much too good to be true. Somewhere, ran her secret conviction,
the fates must be waiting to spoil her dreams again with some poisonously dirty trick.

  And, when it occurred, this dirty trick would of course concern the name of Cartwright. It was inevitable. She was haunted by Cartwright. Her universe was blackened by Cartwright. At the end of every pleasant avenue, up there popped Cartwright’s detestable face.

  Yet she fought against it.

  ‘You don’t mean that,’ she pleaded, hoping against hope. ‘Mr Hackett, you can’t mean it!’

  ‘I do mean it, though,’ said Mr Hackett affably.

  ‘I am to work on a detective-story instead of my own book?’

  ‘That’s it exactly.’

  ‘And Mr Cartwright’ – she managed to pronounce the name, though with incredible loathing – ‘is to work on the script of my book; my book?’

  ‘You’ve guessed it,’ beamed the producer.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Monica was so much in awe of him that, ordinarily, she would not have had the courage to protest. She would have suffered in silence, thinking that it must somehow be her own fault. But this was too much. There rose to her lips, spontaneously, the words: ‘It’s the silliest thing I ever heard of!’ Though she did not speak these words, something of their spirit must have got into her tone.

  ‘I said “why?”’ she insisted. ‘I mean why should we have to do each other’s books instead of doing our own?’

  ‘You don’t understand these things, Miss Stanton.’

  ‘I know that, Mr Hackett; but –’

  ‘Miss Stanton, are you a producer of ten years’ experience, or am I?’

  ‘You are, of course; but –’

  ‘Then that’s all right,’ said Mr Hackett more cheerfully. ‘You mustn’t try to change us all at once, Miss Stanton. Ha, ha, ha. We have our own little ways, you know. You must take my word for it that we know a little something about this business, after ten years’ experience. Eh? And you’ll learn. Yes, indeed. Why, with Bill Cartwright to teach you, you’ll pick up the business in no time.’

  The full enormity of the proposition was gradually seeping into Monica’s mind. She jumped to her feet.

  ‘You mean,’ she said, ‘that I’m to stay here and be taught – taught – how to write screen-plays by that – that repulsive – that foul –’

  Her companion was interested.

  ‘Ah? Do you know Bill Cartwright?’

  ‘No, I don’t know him. But my family have met him. And they say,’ cried Monica, departing from the strict letter of the truth, ‘they say he’s the most repulsive, disgusting, funny-looking object that ever walked the face of the earth!’

  ‘Oh, here! No, no, no.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘You’ve got it all wrong, Miss Stanton,’ the producer assured her. ‘I’ve known Bill for years. He’d never take any beauty-prizes, Lord knows. But he’s not as bad as all that.’ Mr Hackett reflected. ‘In fact, I’d say he was rather distinguished-looking.’

  Monica choked.

  To Mr Hackett it seemed, dimly, that the little lady was annoyed about something.

  For Monica had long ago built up a mental picture of Mr William Cartwright, which she refused to alter by one line. Mr Cartwright was everywhere praised, at least in the book-reviews, for the ‘flawless soundness and pains-taking accuracy’ of his plots. This made the man even more insufferable. Monica felt that she could have despised him less if only he had been a little more slipshod. She pictured him as studious-looking, withered, dry, and donnish, with enormous spectacles. And she dwelt with loving hatred on the image.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ she said abruptly. ‘I’m terribly sorry. You know how grateful I am. But I can’t.’

  ‘Oh, of course,’ said the producer, with cold indifference, ‘if you want to break your contract –’

  ‘It isn’t that,’ said Monica desperately. ‘Please understand me, Mr Hackett. I’m not trying to dictate to you. I’m sure you know best.’ (She believed this: it was all Cartwright’s fault.) ‘I could do anything you asked me, if only you’d tell me: why? Why do I have to work on a detective-story, which I don’t know anything about, instead of my own book, that I know every line of? Can’t you please just tell me the reason?’

  Mr Hackett showed a face radiant with relief.

  ‘Oh, the reason?’ He accented the last word. ‘Is that all? Why didn’t you say so in the first place? The reason?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Why, my dear young lady,’ explained her companion, in a pitying tone, ‘there’s nothing simpler. The reason –’

  The telephone on his desk rang.

  Mr Hackett, shivering like a dynamo, seized the telephone. Everything else was instantly dismissed from his mind.

  ‘Yes … yes, Kurt? … Yes? … Well, ask Howard! … No, no, not for a minute. The new writer has just arrived.’ He flashed his dental smile, a conspiratorial smile, at Monica, over the top of the telephone. ‘Yes, very pleasant girl … Yes … All right, all right, I’ll be there.’ He whipped up a pencil and made a note. ‘Stage three in five minutes … Yes … All right … ’Bye.’

  He replaced the receiver.

  ‘And now, Miss Stanton! What were we talking about?’

  ‘I don’t want to detain you –’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Mr Hackett, waving his hand in a way which implied that it wasn’t all right, but that he would have to put up with it. ‘Five minutes, five minutes! No hurry! What were you going to tell me?’

  ‘I wasn’t, Mr Hackett. You were going to tell me the reason why you want me to work on a detective story instead of my own book.’

  ‘Ah, yes! Yes. My dear Miss Stanton, there’s nothing simpler. The reason –’

  The door of Mr Hackett’s office was flung violently open, and a man walked in.

  He did not merely walk in: he stalked in. With him there came such a current of quiet, cold, contained rage that he might have been opening the door of a refrigerator. The atmosphere of it spread round the walls and struck against the sunshine. It was evident in every aspect of his behaviour. Though he hurled the door open, he did not allow it to bang against the wall; he caught it with quiet, quivering fingers and placed it gently there. Then he walked across the room with cat-footed steps, as though anxious not to explode a mine. He was a tall, youngish man who carried a book under his arm. It was only when he stood by the producer’s desk, looking Mr Hackett in the eye, that the mine did explode in one blast of anguish.

  He said:

  ‘Hell’s – sweet – bells!’ And he whacked the book down on the desk with a crash which jarred the hat off a china ink-pot shaped like a mandarin.

  The book was a copy of that best-selling novel, Desire.

  Mr Hackett reached out and replaced the hat on the mandarin.

  ‘Hello, Bill,’ he said.

  ‘Look here,’ said the newcomer. ‘This is too much. I can’t do it, Tom. By God, I won’t do it.’

  ‘Sit down, Bill.’

  The newcomer began to edge round Mr Hackett’s desk. An outsider might have thought that his intention was to strangle Mr Hackett; as perhaps, for a moment, it was. The newcomer’s voice, normally suave, was now even more suave, though with a note of hoarseness. We have heard that same note in the voices of men who go down on their knees, carefully, to talk to golf-balls.

  ‘Listen to me,’ said the newcomer. ‘I do not, in general, object to preparing screen-plays for bad books. I may point out, in extenuation, that these are the only kind of books for which anybody is ever asked to prepare screen-plays. Very well!’

  He lifted his hand.

  ‘But there are limits beyond which no pander of the English language, however conscienceless, can go. I have reached my limit. This book is not only eye-wash. It is the most complete, unmitigated, and appalling drivel ever foisted upon an unsuspecting public by illiterate maniacs masquerading as publishers. In a word, Tom, it is LOUSY. Do I make myself clear?’

  He reac
hed down and tapped the copy of Desire. His fingers were twitching.

  ‘Tut, tut,’ said Mr Hackett blandly. ‘Let me introduce you to Miss Stanton. Mr Cartwright – Miss Stanton.’

  ‘How-do-you-do?’ said Cartwright, giving Monica a quick glance over his shoulder and turning back again. ‘To continue, Tom. This book –’

  ‘How do you do?’ said Monica sweetly. For she was happy.

  It may sound odd to say this, but, in her first look at William Cartwright, she had seen something which almost compensated her for the situation. Through her hatred struck a thrill of unholy joy like the note of a diabolical tuning-fork. Monica glowed to it. She felt her resolution tighten, her courage swell back, in the conviction that the enemy had been delivered into her hands.

  True, her original portrait was wrong. William Cartwright was not withered, dry, and donnish, though he had an offensive habit of striking a pose and lecturing. Ill-advised persons might have said that he was not bad-looking: he had good shoulders, good eyes, a lean face, and close-cut brown hair. Ill-advised persons (not seeing below the surface into his guilty soul) might even have said that it was a good-natured face. Monica admitted all this, for she wished to be fair. In compensation, she saw about him something so awful that it was even better; something which put him completely beyond the human pale; something which must lay him open to the mercy of her derision for ever. Mentally, she jumped up and down in her chair with the joy of it.

  For William Cartwright had a beard.

  2

  Again justice must be done. It was not a W. G. Grace beard. Nor was it one of those scraggly beards abominated by everybody. On the contrary, any male would have said that it was a pretty good hirsute effort, as beards go: trim, close-clipped like the moustache, giving its owner something of the look of a naval commander.