“Don’t you want it?” asked Mr. Farquhar. “It’s pretty. I could make a frame for it.”
“Take it directly to Mr. Thomas McGeady at the Cunard office. Tell him that I said to find this couple and send it to them.”
“You know Mr. McGeady?”
“I own a pub, Mr. Farquhar. I know everyone— Hurry! I’ll hold your tea.”
“What’s the rush?”
“Next month is their anniversary.”
On Nob Hill, in one of the very few mansions to survive the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906, Isaac Bell was telling Marion, “It is possible that my eyesight is not as keen as it once was, so if I am to inspect this supposed wrinkle on your cheek you’re going to have to come closer into the light, here on my lap,” when he was interrupted by a child who ran in with the morning mail, dumped it beside them on the sofa, and ran out.
After the supposed wrinkle had been thoroughly debunked, they went through the mail and discovered a large manila envelope from the Cunard Line.
“Captain Turner?” asked Marion, though it couldn’t be. Over the years, Turner used to write on their anniversary. But he had retired from the line after the war and had become a recluse after being unfairly blamed for the torpedoing of the Lusitania.
Bell opened it with the knife from his boot.
Inside the manila envelope was a note from a Cunard executive: “The company thought you might enjoy this. It was found by Mr. Alec Farquhar of the Swan Works in Newcastle whilst refitting Mauretania, and sent along by Mrs. Alison Skelton. The chairman joins me in offering the line’s heartiest congratulations on your upcoming anniversary.”
Isaac and Marion recognized immediately the elaborate envelope that the ship’s printer had run up for their wedding. Moisture had blurred the recipient’s name. “Whose was this?” Marion asked, leaning closer to study the faded letters. Wisps of her golden champagne hair brushed Bell’s cheek. “Oh my gosh, this is Clyde Lynds’s invitation. Oh, poor Clyde.”
Marion pulled out the invitation itself, only slightly less for wear. “This is lovely. Oh, my dear, it’s like being married again.”
Isaac Bell asked, “What’s this on the back?”
Isaac Bell was raising a glass of champagne to the resounding success of the premiere of Marion’s new film, the screwball comedy Listen Here, New York, when he overheard a critic dictating his review from a coin telephone in the lobby:
“Marion Bell’s Listen Here, New York, is a lulu about speakeasies, chorus girls, and gangsters. But while the first electrically recorded sound-on-film high-fidelity talking picture vastly improves The Jazz Singer with actual audible talk, a viewer still observes that the director ordered James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson to park themselves under a microphone before they delivered their snappy lines.”
Isaac Bell put down his glass.
Marion laid a restraining hand on his arm. “Isaac, where are you going?”
“I’m going to punch that man in the nose.”
“Instead of punching a critic in the nose, which might influence reviews of my next movie, let’s toast Clyde, whose plans made my picture possible — even though Talking Pictures was always more complicated than Clyde hoped it would be.”
Marion defused Bell with a smile and a moment later the critic redeemed himself, saying, “Everyone agrees the talking pictures system will improve quickly, which in this critic’s opinion cannot happen soon enough, at least when it comes to showing the bright, witty direction by Marion Bell. One hopes the studio will team her up again with Irene Vox, the Shanghai-based silent-film scenarist. Mrs. Bell’s direction made possible what this critic predicts will be the rarely successful leap from ‘silent’ to ‘talkie.’”
Bell was watching Vox across the lobby. The blond screenwriter was swathed in sable, dripping in jewels, and equipped with a dashing silver-haired escort. The rumors Bell had gathered so far claimed he was her cousin or her husband and either fabulously wealthy or a penniless refugee. To Bell’s chief investigator’s eye, he looked like a fellow who had spent time in jail. He said, “I now know who that woman reminds me of.”
“Who?”
“She wasn’t a blonde back then.”
“Who?’ asked Marion. She had never met her writer until tonight, having communicated with the famously reticent scenarist by mail, cable, and telephone.
Bell said, “I offered her a ride to their hotel. Take a good look at her in the car. Then you tell me.”
Vox and her escort were staying at the Plaza. Bell and Marion had come in their J-198 torpedo-body Duesenberg, which sat only two, so he telephoned the garage to send the J-140 town car instead. Bell drove, with the silver-haired gent seated in front beside him, and learned nothing, as the man spoke no English.
“Well?” he asked Marion as they pulled away from the Plaza. “I saw you talking quite intimately in the mirror. What did she say?”
“We had a lot to discuss, having made an entire picture without ever meeting.”
“What did she say?”
Marion laid her hand on his as he shifted gears. “She said that it’s a custom in Shanghai for a woman writer to kiss a woman director’s handsome husband firmly on the lips.”
“What did you say?”
“I said we were not in Shanghai.”