London 1946. An actress is murdered, not just on camera but in full view of a crowded film set. Only six people had an opportunity to administer the poison yet not one of them had a conceivable motive. As Evadne Mount, bestselling crime novelist, discovers, however, all six did have a motive for committing another, earlier, still unsolved murder yet, on that occasion, not one of them had the opportunity . . .
A Mysterious Affair of Style
GILBERT ADAIR
The cinema is not a slice of life but a slice of cake.
ALFRED HITCHCOCK
Dear Walter,
When, prompted by your enthusiasm for
Gilbert
‘Great Scott Moncrieff!!!’
Chief-Inspector Trubshawe – or, if one is to be a stickler for accuracy, Chief-Inspector Trubshawe, retired, formerly of Scotland Yard – had just stepped into the tea-room of the Ritz Hotel in quest of repose for his feet and refreshment for his palate, and it was while endeavouring to attract the eye of a waitress that he heard the voice which caused him to stop dead in his tracks.
If the truth be told, the Ritz was not the kind of establishment to which he would normally have accorded his patronage, certainly not for the steaming cup of tea which, for the past hour, he had craved. He had never been one to throw his money about, the less so since having had to learn to subsist on a police officer’s pension, and a Lyons Corner House would have been more to his unashamedly plebeian tastes. But he had found himself by chance at the posher end of Piccadilly, whose sole common-or-garden tea-room had teemed with secretaries and short-hand typists gabbling away to one another about the trials and tribulations of their respective working days, all of which had simultaneously come to a close. It was, then, the Ritz or nothing; and he thought to himself, alert to the incongruous reversal of values, well, why not, any old port in a storm.
So there he was, in this unostentatiously elegant room – a room in which the dulcet drone of upper-crust conversation clashed harmoniously (if such an oxymoron is possible) with the silvery rustle of the finest cutlery, a room he had never entered and had never expected to enter in his life – and before he had even properly orientated himself, he had run into somebody from his past!
The person who had hailed him was seated by herself at one of the tables located near the door, her face just visible behind a wobbly stack of green-jacketed Penguin paperback books. When he turned his head to confront her, the voice boomed out a second time:
‘As I live and breathe! Do these rheumy eyes of mine deceive me or is it my old partner-in-detection, Inspector Plodder?’
Trubshawe now looked directly at her.
‘Well, well, well!’ he exclaimed in surprise. Then, a note of sarcasm creeping almost imperceptibly into his voice, he nodded, ‘Oh yes, it’s Plodder all right. Plodder, alias Trubshawe.’
‘So it
‘Why, naturally I do. It’s an essential part of my job – I mean to say, it used to be an essential part of my job – never to forget a face,’ laughed Trubshawe.
‘Oh!’ said the slightly deflated novelist.
‘Except,’ he added tactfully, ‘when you and I first met, it was
Here came that note of sarcasm again. ‘And the disobliging nickname, of course.’
‘Oh, you must forgive my jollification. “She only does it because she knows it teases”, what? Good heavens, it really is you!’
‘It
‘Well, sit down, man, sit down. Take the weight off your brains, ha ha ha! We must talk over old times. New times, too, if you’re so minded. Unless,’ she said, dropping her voice to a self-consciously theatrical stage-whisper, ‘unless you happen to be here on a romantic assignation. If that’s the case, you know me, I wouldn’t want ever to be
Trubshawe lowered himself onto the chair opposite Evadne Mount’s, his broad boxer’s shoulders heaving as he dusted down his trouser-knees.
