Read Online Frequent Hearses by Edmund Crispin - Free Book Online Page A

work together, but in the present instance circumstances had been altogether too strong for them, and they had achieved a compromise solution of their social problem by coagulating into uneasy cliques. The atmosphere was not improved by the fact that at least half of them could be of no possible service on such an occasion as this, and were there only because Giles Leiper, who conceived films to be Corporate Works of Art, had insisted that all of the artists chiefly concerned should contribute to the planning of this one. Leiper was not—as Stuart North had prognosticated—himself present, but his influence impended over the gathering like a malediction in a fairytale, and an aura of gloom inevitably resulted… But perhaps (Fen told himself) the mood of this particular conference—its mistrustful mutterings and its air of obscure apprehension—had some more potent and immediate cause than the whims of Leiper; persons eminent in the film industry do not, in pursuing their avocations, commonly exhibit any very marked symptoms of gaiety—but at the moment the sullenness of such of them as were present seemed extreme, and it was reasonable to suppose that there lay behind it some undivulged issue of a gravity sufficient to enhance even a melancholy so pervasive as that engendered by The Unfortunate Lady: the death, perhaps, of Gloria Scott… Out of the corner of his eye Fen watched Maurice and Nicholas Crane while Humbleby spoke to them, and received the impression that both of them were discomposed by his request for an interview—and more specially (which was odd) Nicholas…
    His furtive scrutiny was interrupted by Gresson, a diminutive, futile Cambridge don whose task it was to advise on the history and sociological background of Pope’s period. In an access of nervousness Gresson had failed, at the first script conference, to be able to recollect the date of Queen Anne’s death, and this had so lowered him in the general esteem that he had scarcely been consulted since. He was not, however, much cast down by this unlucky circumstance, since his motive in accepting the post of historical adviser had been less a desire to ensure the accuracy of the film under consideration than a dream of fair women. Like Humbleby—though in Gresson’s case to a degree so extreme as to border on actual hallucination—he conceived the studios to be a sort of stalking-ground or game reservation for the male devotees of the pandemic Venus, where young and beautiful girls, intent upon fame and fortune, were to be found in immense numbers lining up for the purpose of surrendering their bodies to whomever of the opposite sex they supposed capable of obtaining a screen test for them. With any man less immitigably ensnared by lubricious fancies than Gresson, this preposterous notion would not have stood the test of observation for a single day. He, however, clung to it even yet, and it was in a satyr-like tone of voice that he said to Fen, after the conventional greetings had been perfunctorily accomplished:
    “Those girls—they’re wearing engagement rings.”
    Fen was aware of Gresson’s delusion and could not summon up much interest in it. He followed his gaze to where two indistinguishable blonde secretaries, belonging to Jocelyn Stafford and to Nicholas Crane, sat murmuring together, their notebooks balanced on their thighs, while they waited for the conference to begin.
    “Yes,” he agreed. “So they are.”
    “Now, do you think,” Gresson pursued, “that they really are engaged? Or do they just wear the rings as—as a protection?”
    “The rings are nothing but camouflage,” Fen replied firmly. He disliked Gresson and had just remembered that the fiancé of one of the girls was a heavyweight boxing champion. “As far as that’s concerned, I should say that either of them was yours for the taking. And in particular, perhaps, the one on the left.”
    Gresson laughed nervously; he was not altogether pleased at having the