Today there would be no matinée, so the theatre belonged to Fflytte Films until six o’clock. Hale dismissed the unwanted actor-pirates, handing them each a day’s pay to make up for their rejection, while Pessoa translated Hale’s words and I began to fetch chairs from backstage. Fflytte wanted them set in a circle, although I did not get the chance to carry even one since the pirates instantly seized it from me. By dint of dragging my insistent helpers across the stage and using emphatic hand gestures, I got the chairs assembled in only twice the time it would have taken me to shift them myself.
When Pessoa and Hale had finished with the others and the doors were closed behind them, Fflytte pulled a break into the circle and told Pessoa, “Have them sit down.”
The instructions were passed on, and the men and boys (after a glance at La Rocha for permission) drifted into the circle, each taking up position before a chair. Hale sat. La Rocha and his right-hand man sat. The others looked at me; they remained standing.
Fflytte took no notice. “Miss Russell, we’ll be working here for the rest of the afternoon. See what you can do about bringing in some sandwiches or something, would you?”
“Right away?”
“One o’clock would be fine. Now, sit, you men.”
Fourteen large rough figures hovered over their chairs as if waiting for the gramophone needle to drop. I snorted as I turned away, but the image of piratical musical chairs kept a smile on my face until the pavement nearly had me on my backside. After that I concentrated on my feet.
I made it to the hotel without mishap and told the maître d’ what I required. He stared at me blankly, although that morning, he had spoken a quite serviceable English.
“Sandwiches,” I repeated. “For twenty.”
“These are English men?”
“What does it matter? They’re men, they need to eat.”
“This is lunch?”
“That’s right. In an hour, if you please.”
“Sandwiches.”
What was wrong with the fellow? “Yes. Sandwiches. For twenty. In an hour. And some drinks – I suppose most of them would like a beer. I’ll also need someone to help me carry everything,” I added, just imagining myself trying to negotiate the paving stones with a load of glass bottles.
“Very well,” he said dubiously, pulling a small tablet out of his pocket and writing a few words. He went away, frowning at the message, but I had no interest in pursuing the minor mystery.
I only had an hour in which to burgle my employer’s rooms.
CHAPTER TWELVE
PIRATES: Let’s vary piracee
With a little burglaree!
ON THE STEAMER out from London, in the calmer intervals when my head and stomach were not spinning, I had tried to get a sense of which members of the cast and crew were permanent fixtures, and thus conceivably linked to any criminality that Fflytte Films might be trailing behind it. Fflytte and Hale, of course, were omnipresent, but I had been surprised at just how many of the others were long-time employees.
From cameraman to costumer, at least a dozen members of Fflytte Films had consistently worked together for five years or more. Another twenty individuals had come and gone in various projects. Sister two, “Bonnie,” had acted in half a dozen Fflytte films over the years – although one would never know it by the way Fflytte and Hale treated her, which was with the same mild lack of interest that they used to address any of the girls. Mrs Hatley, whose daughter “June” was the victim of an involuntary hair-cut, had herself acted in four or five Fflytte productions, including one so early, it was before Fflytte Films actually existed. Daniel Marks’ first Fflytte production was the 1919 Quarterdeck, and since then he had appeared in five others, in various hair colours and styles, with facial hair or clean-shaven, peering through spectacles or not.
The only people I had eliminated for certain were Bibi, who had worked in America for the past few years, and the six of her “sisters” who were under eighteen: Surely I could omit children from my list of suspects?
I had compiled a rough list of those whose careers spanned the years that troubled Lestrade, but before I investigated the shell-shocked camera assistant and the petite redheaded Irish lass whose needle produced costumes ranging from Elizabethan collars to beggars’ weeds, I wanted to eliminate the two men in the best position to manipulate the company. By breaking into their rooms.
In my experience, hotels generally count on the presence of doormen and desk personnel to repel potential burglars. All one need do is become a guest of the hotel, and defences are breached.
My choice of targets was a toss of the coin: Hale, or Fflytte? Granted, I could not envision Fflytte wasting any energy on an enterprise not directly connected with the making of films; on the other hand, I could well imagine our director simply not taking into account that the laws of nations applied to him, so why not dispose of the drugs or guns that one had assembled for the purpose of a realistic (damn the word!) film by selling them? I might imagine Hale involved in a surreptitious criminal second career, but he must surely be aware of the consequences were it to be uncovered – and in any event, why then encourage a newly hired assistant to watch for untoward activities?
It might help to know if Lonnie Johns, the missing secretary, had been located yet. Back in Lestrade’s office, the woman’s unexplained absence had a sinister flavour, but the longer I lived in her shoes, as it were, the more sensible a tear-soaked flight to a Mediterranean beach or the Scottish highlands sounded.
My choice was made by the hotel’s cleaning staff: As I came out of the lift, they were coming out of Hale’s room. I walked around the corner, waiting for them to disappear into Fflytte’s room next door.
They went in – and they came out rapidly, moving backwards, blushing and apologising and making haste to get the door shut between them and whatever had startled them. Or rather, whomever. Three middle-aged Catholic ladies stood in the hallway, given over to a shared gale of stifled laughter, then scuttled down the corridor to the next room. Where they knocked loudly before letting themselves in.
When no one popped instantly from the director’s room, I sidled down the corridor and applied myself to the latch. Less than thirty seconds’ work put me inside Hale’s suite. I took off my shoes to pad silently through the four rooms, checking for a sleeping guest or a particularly diligent cleaner, but all I found were the sitting room, a bedroom, a second bedroom from which the furniture had been stripped, and a bathroom with fittings considerably more elaborate than those in my room on the floor below. No missing secretary stuffed into a traveling-trunk; no packets of unsold cocaine in the sock-drawer. Yes, there was a small hand-gun in the bedside table, but I had no way of knowing where it had come from.
In the suite’s second bedroom, the bed and dressing table had been replaced with a desk, a laden drinks cabinet, four comfortable chairs – and a small mountain of wooden file cabinets, which I had last seen going out the door of the Covent Garden office. They were held shut with locks. I laid my shoes on the desk, and got to work.
Because Fflytte Films spent so much of the year in locations around the globe, Hale was in the habit of carrying his office with him. The file cabinets bore labels, 1 through 12, and as I’d expected, the last two bristled with details concerning Pirate King, while the files in the first were concerned with early films. I started with 3, looking for the year of Lestrade’s earliest suspicions.
I quickly realised two things. First of all, these files were not complete – which made sense, because trailing every scrap of paper around the world would make for cumbersome travel indeed. And second, that even with the condensed files of the earlier drawers, my search would take me a lot more than the hour at hand.