Pirate King (4 page)

I kept my face still, although my heart gave a little thump. Was the man aware of the same activities that had attracted Lestrade’s attention? Or had one of his blue-blooded chums dropped a hint about the investigation, and he wished me to share any findings with him? Or—further concern—could he be laying a false trail for me by claiming concern for illicit behaviour?

Pirates within pirates, crime within crime …

“Perhaps you’d best explain what you mean by ‘out of the ordinary.’ ”

He picked up his glass, to swirl the contents into an amber whirlpool.

“Three years ago, Fflytte Films made
The Moonstone
. Do you remember it?”

“I did see that one, yes. Very realistic, as I remember, the scenes in India.”

“As I said, our hallmark. The actor playing Ablewhite—who you may remember dies in the story—was killed a few days after his final scenes were filmed.”

“How unfortunate.”

“He was drunk playing the Dame in a Christmas panto and fell into the orchestra pit, breaking his neck on the kettle drum, but yes, it was a tragedy. Later that year, we went to Finland for
Anna Karenina
, Finland being the closest we could come to Russia without getting involved with the Reds. But as I said, it was cold, and our Anna got frostbite when the filming was only halfway through and went home (quit the profession entirely, I heard the other day; she now runs a boarding house in Leeds), so we had to turn the story into a short about the frozen North instead. And even then, the polar bear rather chewed up its handler.”

“Oh dear. Perhaps a crew as accident-prone as yours ought to go into a less hazardous business.”

“And then in
Jolly Roger
, we almost lost two men in a freak wave.”

“Yes, so you mentioned.”

“With
Krakatoa
, two of the cinema houses where it was running burned down. In
Coke Express
, one of our actors decided to drive through Town in the altogether—that one took a
lot
of work to hush up. I had to prove that he was just drunk, not coked.”

I said nothing: True, the coincidences were piling rather high, but clumsiness in stunts did have a way of bringing its own punishment, and Hale himself had pointed out how inflammable film could be. And actors had been known to drink.

“
Hannibal
was cancelled, but one of the men we’d used as a consultant for
Rum Runner
was arrested, for rum-running.
The Writer
, about a failed writer, well, failed.” He knocked back a hefty swallow from his glass, and continued bleakly, “We’re cursed. Whatever the movie’s about, it
happens
. There: Now you’ll probably quit on me, too.”

I blinked. Lestrade wanted me to look into chronic lawbreaking; Hale was suggesting I investigate—

“You want me to help you with a curse?”

Hale went on with an air of determination. “Miss Russell, this current picture is about piracy. And yes, I will admit it sounds mad, but I’ve got the wind up about it. Getting fined for mistreating an actor is one thing, but I don’t have time for a court case involving some dastardly deed on the open seas.”

I opened my mouth to say something along the lines of
If a beaten galley slave sells movies, wouldn’t a pirates’ curse make for a sure-fire hit?
but caught myself. If someone in Fflytte Films had come up with
that
brilliant publicity scheme, it would either be Hale, or Fflytte himself.

Still, looking into a fantasy threat would give me the ideal excuse to snoop, if Hale happened to catch me at it. And he would be so grateful I stayed with the company—at any rate, stayed long enough to find who was responsible for the crimes that concerned Lestrade: say, fourteen days, 336 hours—that he would overlook any oddities in my behaviour.

“It would appear that building a reputation for realism has its drawbacks,” I remarked.

“It’s a major pain in the backside,” Hale replied. “But it is what we do. When we’re filming
The Moonstone
, we send a camera to India. If we’re making a film about the Punic Wars, we take some elephants to the Alps. Even if it nearly kills us all and leaves us bankrupt.”

“And when the script says pirates, you go to sea.”

“Lisbon first.”

“ ‘On, on, the vessel flies, the land is gone.’ ”

He cocked his head, and replied,
“ ‘What beauties doth Lisboa first unfold!’ ”

“ ‘But whoso entereth within this town / That, sheening far, celestial seems to be / Disconsolate will wander up and down.’ ”

“Yes, Byron was not fond of Portugal, even before he had an unhappy
affaire
there.”

Long, long ago, as an unschooled orphan preparing for university examinations, I had a tutrix with a marked, even startling, affection for Lord Byron. There were lines of
Childe Harold
that the Byron-besotted Miss Sim had taken care to skip lightly over—thus guaranteeing that her adolescent student should commit them indelibly to memory. Triggered by mention of the Portuguese capital, some of those phrases began to rise now to the surface of my mind:
memorials frail of murderous wrath
, and
the shrieking victim hath / Pour’d forth his blood beneath the assassin’s knife
, and
Throughout this purple land, where Law secures not life …
I could see from the way Hale fiddled uneasily with his cigarette case that those phrases were pressing at his memory as well.

“No doubt much has changed in the past eleven decades,” I observed.

“So I have been reassured.”

“Very well: We set off on Monday for some weeks in Lisbon.”

“And Morocco.”

“Africa?”

“The town of Salé, on the coast north of Casablanca. In the seventeenth century, it was a pirate kingdom.”

“ ‘Sun-burnt his check, his forehead high and pale,’ ”
I blurted out.
“ ‘The sable curls in wild profusion veil.’ ”

“ ‘There was a laughing Devil in his sneer / that raised emotions both of rage and fear,’ ”
Hale agreed. Before any more of Miss Sim’s Byronic
Corsair
images could trail before my eyes, I pushed the glass of brandy away from me. “Mr Hale, you’re making a film
about a film
about pirates. Unsuccessful Victorian pirates from fifty years ago, not blood-thirsty African pirates three hundred years in the past. And from Penzance, not Salé. Why on earth don’t you just film the thing in Penzance?”

“Because at some point real pirates enter the scene, and they are based in Morocco.”

“But if you are telling a story about some people telling a story, why not just construct a fake-Africa studio? Which, since you’re after realism, is what your fictional film company would have done, in any event.” Real realism about realistic verisimilitude …

“As I said,
Pirate King
is about a film crew that is making a picture—which is also called
Pirate King
—about
The Pirates of Penzance
. The picture’s director—the fictional director, not Randolph Fflytte—is dissatisfied with the looks of the men in England, so he takes the production to Lisbon to hire some swarthy types, only to have their boat captured by actual pirates, who take them to Salé. The fictional director and the apprentice pirate Frederic are both played by Daniel Marks. The fictional director’s fictional fiancée is an actress. That is to say, she is an actress working on the fictional film, playing the part of Frederic’s girlfriend, Mabel, both parts being played, I’m afraid, by Bibi, who is an actual actress. Or so she claims. You don’t know Bibi? Oh, blessed innocence!

“But lest you think there’s a further stratum of reality, Daniel Marks and Bibi are not in turn romantically connected. Daniel is, shall we say, otherwise inclined. Then there’s Major-General Stanley, who is not only Mabel’s father but the fiancée’s father, and also a financial backer of the film. The fictional film, that is—the actor himself, Harold Scott; you’ve heard of
him
, I expect?—is unrelated to Bibi, and doesn’t have a sou. Spent it all on drink and horses.”

I made a small noise rather like a whimper.

“I know, it gives one a headache. Still, that’s Randolph’s plan. Ours not to reason why.”

Ours but to do and die?
God, I hoped he wasn’t thinking of blending in “The Charge of the Light Brigade”:
Cannon to the port of them, cannon to the starboard of them; some Major-General had blundered …

Where were we? “So, you load everyone on a boat for Africa?”

“Lisbon first.”

“Don’t tell me: Mr Fflytte also wants to hire swarthy actors?”

“In part—and it’s true, English actors just don’t look very piratical. Plus, Will the cameraman threatened mutiny at what an extended period of sand would do to his delicate machines, even though I don’t believe Salé is very sandy, and Bibi—the female lead—put her tiny foot down at the idea of what sand would do to her delicate complexion, so compromise was reached. We’ll cast the parts in Lisbon, then start rehearsals and work out the choreography of the fight scenes. After ten days, we’ll load the entire circus onto a boat—everything but the horses, thank heavens: I managed to convince Randolph that horses were one thing Morocco had plenty of—and sail to Salé. Or actually Rabat across the river, which I am told is friendlier to infidels.”

“And you’re filming there so as to capture the essence of a seventeenth century pirate kingdom within a nineteenth century comic opera for the edification and amusement of twentieth century house-maids, factory workers, and garage mechanics.”

He grinned. “You’ve got the idea now.”

Even in the early stages, it turned out, the script would make for a two-hour picture, and Hale admitted that it was likely to grow by at least half. Apparently, embedding an operetta into a film, then making a film of the process, requires time.

And although the
The Pirates of Penzance
is all about the songs and the silliness,
Pirate King
would be dead earnest and without the songs.

In addition, to put the cap on the enterprise, certain portions of the film were due to be tinted, in an as-yet secret (and, I suspected, as-yet unperfected) technique similar to the DeMille-Wyckoff process, which Fflytte intended to patent under his own name.

Pirate King
would either set the standard for movie-making for a generation to come, or it would set a match under the Fflytte fortune, incinerating a boat-load of careers along the way. And displeasing the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the current resident of Buckingham Palace, and a number of Peers of the Realm.

Actual peers, one assumed, not fictional and piratic peers.

CHAPTER FIVE

FREDERIC
[
looking off
]: By all that’s marvellous, a bevy of beautiful maidens!

            
RUTH
[
aside
]: Lost! lost! lost!

T
HAT FIRST EVENING
, Hale and I worked until nearly midnight. At 7:00 the next morning I turned the key to the Covent Garden office, and the telephone rang: The shipping agency was concerned that a trunk labelled with the name of Scott appeared to be leaking something that smelt of whisky. I made a note for Hale, reached to take off my hat, and the instrument rang again. I laid the hat on the desk and took up the receiver: An irritable voice demanded Hale, asked who I was, said never mind that I’d do, and issued a command that the offices were under no circumstances to be left unattended for so much as ten seconds that day since a delivery was to be made that would have disastrous consequences if someone were not there to receive it. Or so I guessed was the message, it was a bit garbled and before I could get a single word in, the man rang off. I set the earpiece into its hooks, reached for the buttons of my coat, and it rang again.

It did not stop ringing until the evening, alternating with the arrival of telegrams. (The new actress whom Geoffrey Hale had offered a part the previous afternoon agreed to his terms: I found the blank forms in a filing cabinet while the telephone balanced atop the files, its cord stretched to its full length; typed in the relevant information as I fielded three more telephone calls; handed the forms to Hale for signature as he dashed past an hour later; he handed them back to me as he went out for lunch; I folded them into an envelope, addressed the thing—in between two more telephone conversations—and thrust it into the hands of the building’s mail-boy just in time for the mid-morning post.)

When Hale returned, he carried a grease-stained parcel by way of peace offering and, more to the point, swore a blood oath not to step foot from the offices for five minutes lest the urgent parcel arrive in my absence. When I returned, much comforted by my wash-room outing, he was just ringing off the telephone and three more telegrams had arrived.

“I have to go out again, Miss Russell,” he announced, picking up his hat.

“Very well,” I said, ripping open the flimsies. “Would you bring some milk when you come? The bottle’s gone sour. Oh, wait. Do you know anything about a Mr … Can this be right? Pessoa?” Surely not Pessary?

“Who? Oh, Pessoa?” He pronounced it
Pess-wah
. “He’s the translator chap, in Lisbon. A friend said he was good. Why, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing, just a request for confirmation—I did see something about him, somewhere …”

Hale left; the phone rang. I spoke to a mother of one of the actresses, one-handed, while lifting various elements of the previous day’s avalanche of papers that I had tidied into piles but not yet filed away. Eventually, I unearthed an inch-thick pile of letters and telegrams that Hale had exchanged with a Portuguese translator. The voice continuing to stream into my ear—something about her daughter’s delicate digestion, good luck with that on a steamer crossing the Channel, I thought—I soon had them in chronological order, and read through them, frowning. It was possible that their infelicitous style reflected the inherently brutal prose of the telegraph. However, if the choppiness was a sign of inadequacy on the part of our would-be translator, I should have to do something immediately, since we were going to be heavily dependent on the fellow from the instant we landed.

I put the earpiece on its stand, wondered vaguely what I had agreed to with the mother, and immediately picked it up before it could sound again. Once I had phoned around to the translator chap’s references, I felt somewhat better: Senhor Pessoa (Pess-
oh
-ah) had a good enough grasp of English to have published verse in the language, but more to the point, he had attended an English-language public school and worked for a number of English companies in the translation of actual documents. There were going to be enough flights of fancy from my new charges without adding a poet’s nonsense into the mix, and I did not intend to stay long enough to add Portuguese to my store of languages.

I set that stack of papers aside, wrote a brief telegram confirming the date of our steamer’s arrival in Lisbon and a letter reviewing our needs on arrival, then went on to the next pressing task.

Clearly, I would not be given more than thirty seconds at a time to question mail-boy, tea-lady, charwoman, or inhabitants of neighbouring offices concerning Fflytte Films’ missing secretary. However, by giving up on a second night’s sleep, I could go through Hale’s files during the night—and I’m sure I would have learnt a great deal, except that at five that afternoon, a team of large men arrived and carted the files off, cabinets and all.

The advantage of being immersed in a mad flurry of preparation was that I could push to the back of my mind the voyage itself. The disadvantage was that I could push the voyage to the back of my mind.

My own list of Urgent Tasks was necessarily short to begin with, and of the twelve items on it (
dress footwear, dinner frock, ammunition, hair-cut
, and so on) I only managed to check off half, most of which had to do with clothing.

Hale and I went down to Southampton on the train, he dictating letters to the last possible instant. Which meant that my actual arrival on the docks, standing and looking up at my home for the next few days, came as a dreadful shock.

I loathe ocean travel. After what felt like a lifetime of Atlantic crossings, I had only to glimpse a smoke-stack to be hit by nausea. I pulled the bottle of paregoric from my pocket and took my first swig of many. Not that the drug lessened the sea-sickness, but it did put it at a distance.

Moments after Hale and I set foot on the ship, a tornado of blonde heads descended on us to pelt our ears with questions, complaints, and helpful suggestions. Hale, cowardly male that he was, pointed to me and said, “This is Miss Russell. She’s my new assistant. Introduce yourselves to her. If you have any problems, she’s your woman.” And walked away.

There on the deck, valise in one hand and portable type-writer in the other, still wearing hat and coat, I was verbally assaulted by what sounded like a girls’-school luncheon hall. I surveyed the expanse of young females, decided that these were the Major-General’s thirteen daughters (with maternal chaperones looming in the background), and decided further that I did not need to submit to the assault then and there. I chose one, based on the ill fit of her dress and the impatient arrangement of her hair, and held out the slip of paper with my cabin number on it.

“Can you find that for me?” I asked her.

And bless the child, she turned instantly on the heels of her new, too-large shoes and led the way, the others trailing behind.

At the door to my cabin, I handed my possessions to the attendant and took up a position in the door, to keep the girls from following me inside. I held up a hand. The voices died away.

“If anyone is in need of medical attention, talk to your cabin’s attendant. If your baggage hasn’t shown up, talk to your cabin’s attendant. If you need anything else, I will be on the foredeck in ten minutes. I suggest you wear your coat.”

And I shut the door in their faces.

“Actresses,” I told the wide-eyed young man, and pressed a coin in his hand.

“Yes, Madam. Will your maid—”

“Didn’t bring one, don’t need one.”

“Very well, I shall make certain your cabin is included in the ship’s service.”

“I won’t need that, either. I shan’t be spending very much time down here.”

Hard experience had taught me that the best way to cope with sea-sickness was fresh air, copious and uninterrupted. I planned on establishing a well-wrapped beach-head on the foredeck, out in front of the smoke, and staying there until we docked in Lisbon. If things went well, I could celebrate with a riotous cup of tea and a water biscuit. If not, well, it was the open air, after all.

And, it now occurred to me, although being trapped on the deck might make it more difficult to carry out my investigatory duties, it might have the advantage of discouraging all those yellow-haired young beauties from seeking me out too often. The wind on deck could be chill, and hard on permanent waves.

The initial novelty of Hale’s assistant holding court, as it were, among the deck-chairs meant that when I got to the specified location, my arms laden with fur coat, fur hat, two woollen travelling rugs, three books, a writing pad, mechanical pencil, small tin bowl, and flask of weak tea, almost every one of Hale’s actresses was waiting for me. The questions (and their Greek chorus of echoes) began as soon as I appeared.

“What happened to Miss Johns?”

(“Who?” “Mr Hale’s secretary.” “But isn’t this—?”)

“I don’t know, I was just hired three days ago.” Although I was beginning to suspect why the woman might have run off.

“Will there be a decent band for dancing tonight?”

(“There was a socko band the other night at—” “—oh I saw them coming on—”)

“I don’t know.”

“When will the sun come out?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is there going to be a script for the picture?”

“I don’t know, that’s Mr Fflytte’s decision.”

“Is it true that last spring Mr Hale went to the cinema with Agnes Ayres?”

(“Ooh, can you imagine being her?” “I can imagine being her in
The Sheik
, cuddling Valentino!” “More than cuddling, I’d like—” “Shh, darling, the children!” “Who are you calling—?”)

“I really don’t know.”

“Did he meet Valentino?”

(Instant silence, as all ears awaited the answer.)

“I don’t know.”

(“I’ll bet he did.” “I heard Valentino was supposed to be our Frederic until Daniel got it.” “Can you
imagine
? On a ship with Valentino?” “Did you see
The Young Rajah
?” “Wasn’t he the
dreamiest
?” “No! Mama wouldn’t let me!”)

“How long before we get to Spain?”

At last, something I could answer. “I think we put in at Coruña the evening before we arrive in Lisbon.”

“Where’s Coruña?”

“In Spain.”

“But Lisbon’s in Spain.”

“No, Lisbon’s in Portugal.”

“Isn’t Portugal part of Spain?”

“No, it’s a separate country.”

“Have
you
ever met Valentino?”

“Have I— Heavens no.”

“Would you like a table for that?”

“I don’t— What? Oh, yes, that’s very thoughtful of you.” The child in the too-short frock and too-large shoes settled a small table at the head of my deck-chair. I arranged my books, bowl, and flask on it, and thanked her. She appeared to be chewing cud, or some similarly tough substance. “What are you eating?” I asked her.

“Bibi gave me some chewing gum. It’s Doublemint. She gets it from America. Want one?” She held out a packet.

“No, thanks. And I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t chew around me.”
Not unless you want to encourage me to use that small bowl on the table
.

“Okay,” she said cheerfully, and spat it onto the deck. I closed my eyes, and asked her to take it with her and find a wastebin for it.

“When weel we be given a place to rehairse?” I opened my eyes. Neither the questioner’s accent nor her appearance fit our crew—would not fit many places, come to that. She was as tall as I, but dark, her lithe form dressed in what appeared to be stitched-together scarves. She wore a turban-like hat of multiple colours of scarf. Her feet were bare. And blue.

“I’m sorry, who are you?” I asked.

“Graziella Mazzo.” She stretched out an artistic hand. “I teach the girls to dance.”

“Very well. I’ll find out where you can practice, and when.”

The ship’s horn blasted away the next question, and the girls jumped and squealed and rushed off to the rail to watch the lines fall and the land recede. The wind would soon pick up—the rain, too, by the looks of the sky, although the bit of overhang above me should keep the worst of it off. I put on my fur coat, stretched my legs onto the chair, and picked up a book.