‘The premiere? Do you have a ticket?’
‘I do.’
‘Lucky blighter. I wish I had a couple of tickets. You can’t get them for love nor money, now, I believe.’
‘Are there not three in your party?’
‘What of it?’
‘You said you wanted a couple of tickets. I am wondering whom of your companions you would abandon.’
‘Need you ask? I say, has Miss Ibbott ever said anything to you … you know, about myself or Timberley? About where her preference might lie?’
‘You will hardly be surprised to learn that I am not in Miss Ibbott’s confidence.’
‘What about Miss Dillard? Perhaps Miss Ibbott said something to her and she confided it to you?’
‘I am no more in Miss Dillard’s confidence than Miss Ibbott’s.’ Quinn had a vision of Miss Dillard’s grey eyes, looking searchingly, sadly, into his. As if to say, And whose fault is that?
‘At any rate, it is pleasant to promenade the square, rubbing shoulders with famous celebrities such as yourself.’ Appleby made this comment without any real enthusiasm. He looked morosely over to where Timberley had succeeded in provoking uncontrolled – and unladylike – guffaws from Miss Ibbott. The young man nodded decisively. ‘Enjoy the show, Mr Quinn.’ He pushed his way back to rejoin his companions, his face resolutely set.
A fresh charge of energy passed through the crowd. There were cheers and applause. Flash powder explosions signalled the presence of the press.
As far as Quinn could gather, it was all in honour of a small group who had just come out of the entrance to Porrick’s Palace. The three policemen found themselves unconsciously pulled along with the crowd towards this group, until they were just a few feet away from them. There was a strange and impressive intensity to the physical presence of these individuals. They were no larger than ordinary mortals, and there was nothing abnormal about the surfaces of their beings – that’s to say, they did not glisten or pulsate, and were not fashioned from burnished steel. But there was no denying that they exercised an inordinate hold over the gathering.
Leading them out, with a high-stepping, almost prancing gait, was a tall, fair-haired man wearing an eye patch. Quinn recognized Waechter from his photograph. He reached a point in front of the theatre and held himself excessively upright, almost bending over backwards in his desire to reach the perpendicular. There was something defiant about this stance, his chest pushed aggressively forwards. It was as if he believed that people expected him to be cowed and defensive, and he was determined to prove them wrong.
Waechter held out his right arm towards a woman so petite she might almost be described as a midget. And yet she was compellingly attractive. Her physical beauty, as well as Waechter’s strange air of authority, had been part of what had drawn them towards the group. This was magnetism, Quinn realized. He believed she was the first truly gorgeous woman he had ever seen. His heart quickened at her proximity. The evening sun seemed to lavish its last rays on her alone, glinting in the golden bed of hair in which her pretty pillbox hat was settled, twinkling in her cornflower-blue eyes, burnishing her perfect cheeks with a gentle glow. As if this moment, and her loveliness, was the whole focus of its existence.
Her smile was serene but, more than that, it was generous. You felt, when it was directed towards you, that a blessing had been bestowed. And yet, there was no element of condescension in it. It made you believe that you were worthy of it. That you had some share in it. It was as much your smile as hers.
‘Who is she?’ asked Quinn.
‘Don’t you know?’ said Macadam.
‘An actress?’ Quinn knew as he asked the question that she could be nothing else.
‘She’s more than an actress, sir. She’s a star. She’s Eloise.’
‘She has beautiful eyes,’ observed Quinn.
His two sergeants nodded in agreement, but said nothing.
‘She is … French?’ asked Quinn.
‘Yes.’
Quinn thought back to his last case. He had believed the girls working as professional mannequins at Blackley’s department store to be attractive. Certainly they were youthful and bold and female enough to thoroughly discomfit him. But not one of them, he saw now, could hold a candle to this Eloise. Except perhaps the girl whose death had sparked that last investigation. He could not say for sure, however, because by the time he got to see her, she was beyond such considerations. Ironically, she had been French too, the only one of Blackley’s fashion mannequins who really was.
He wondered whether Eloise would turn out to be genuinely French. This was a business based on illusion and pretence. It was possible that no one was who they seemed to be.
The thought brought him back to the reason they were there. ‘All right, you men. Time to find our Germans, if they’re here.’
But neither sergeant could take his eyes off the actress.
There was some mute buffoonery with a stout man whose deep-set eyes gave his face a mournful but slightly seedy cast. The crowd responded with far more hilarity than the dumb show warranted. Quinn understood that their laughter was not for the mournful comedian. It was for her, Eloise, to reciprocate the generosity of her smile. She brought out the best in them.
Quinn studied the rapt expressions of some of those watching. Mouths open, hanging on every gesture: for there were no words, as if the actors really were mutes, and it was for that reason that all the films they appeared in were silent. But, of course, what they were doing was playfully showing their commitment to their chosen medium. They were bringing the voiceless world of the film out into the lively bustling clamour of Leicester Square. And in so doing, they were beginning the enchantment.
As Quinn scanned the faces, he had a premonition that he would see someone else that he recognized. A moment later, he caught sight of Lord Dunwich, standing to one side of the group of film people.
It was an electrifying discovery.
Quinn tracked Dunwich’s gaze back towards the troupe of performers. In among them, he spotted a couple who seemed strangely awkward and ill at ease considering they were presumably actors. They stood slightly back from the play-acting, distancing themselves from it. Their expressions of hilarity were disengaged and forced. Perhaps they were simply bad actors, amateurs essentially, who had been roped in to take on walk-on parts as servants or bystanders. Or perhaps they were the sort of people who had more ambition than talent, and had been drawn into the motion picture business because they thought it would be an easy way to make their fortune. Whatever the reason, they seemed to be connected, in their shared contempt for the activity in which they were engaged.
The girl – a brunette in her twenties – was pretty enough, but of course she suffered in comparison to Eloise. There was something affecting about her face, a kind of frailty, but he realized that it was just as likely to make you despise her as love her. It seemed put on. A delicate, gossamer mask covering a hard-faced egotism. He couldn’t quite believe in her, and certainly didn’t trust her.
As for the man, if Quinn had been forced to make a snap judgement of his character based on this first impression, he would have said lazy and selfish. He might even have gone further than that. There was a ruthless quality to his undoubted good looks, something cruel as well as calculating. It was clear that he approved of his own handsomeness, and valued it considerably, but only for what it brought him, for the doors – and purses – it opened.
If he was not a gigolo, then he was a pimp. And that was not to exclude many other unsavoury things that he might also be.
Of course, Quinn accepted that he might well be doing them both a great injustice. And really they were nothing to him, and he should not have let himself become distracted by them. Except … except that he detected that they were somehow interested in Lord Dunwich. He had noticed subtle glances pass between them, indicative of some dark purpose regarding his lordship. He did not think it boded well for Lord Dunwich that they had him in their sights.