The Brink of Fame by Irene Fleming

Author:Irene Fleming
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

Miss Slater’s performance at Ross McHenry’s funeral was so spectacular that it completely masked the quiet collapse of Little Babs. By the time the spectators took their eyes off the blonde’s histrionics, the rest of the studio people had left the auditorium. It wasn’t until the following day that Emily learned from Holbert Bruns that Babs had been packed off to Glendale Sanitarium.

They were breakfasting at the studio commissary, where there were fresh oranges and better coffee than what could be had at the Hotel Hollywood. Bruns had read Emily’s typed report without comment. Her life in Hollywood was settling into a rhythm, the breakfast meeting with Bruns, the after-breakfast meeting with Carl Laemmle, lunch at the commissary, then the wild afternoon of unfettered detecting. The clues they had gathered in McHenry’s house were spread before them on the oilcloth table covering, but before addressing these items they were addressing their food.

Emily buttered her toast. “How badly off is Little Babs, anyway?”

“They’re keeping her confined in the mental ward.”

“What did she do to get herself locked up?”

“Something involving her mother’s face and a sharp instrument. I didn’t inquire too deeply.”

“She’s in a straitjacket?”

“I’m fairly certain.”

“A shame. There goes my picture. Hester Mink told me at the funeral that Carl Laemmle was making Captain Jinks solely as a vehicle for Babs. No Babs, no picture.” No jam, either. Emily ate the last of her toast and considered going back for an egg.

“Good Lord. You were talking to Hester Mink? What did you tell her?”

“Nothing. I don’t talk to newspaper people. What do you take me for?”

“What did she tell you, then?”

“In spite of the column you got her to write she says she hasn’t made up her mind yet whether McHenry killed himself or was murdered.”

“She used the word ‘murdered.’”

“Yes.”

“She have any ideas about who did the murdering?”

“Not that she said.”

“What about McHenry’s daughter? Did you see anything of her?”

“No.”

Holbert Bruns finished his coffee. He took the stack of snapshots in his elegant square hands and dealt them out on the table one by one. Sepia-tone views of fun on a beach, taken with a Brownie camera; beyond the beach, a flight of steps, the risers inlaid with curiously decorated tiles.

Here was Ross McHenry in a bathing costume, grinning into the sun and holding a huge beach ball. What a handsome man. What a waste his death was. Another angle showed the same tiled steps leading up to a house, Spanish in feeling but modern, almost hidden in tropical foliage.

The other snapshots were similar, shots of McHenry posing and clowning, taken on that very beach, in front of that very beach house. No one else was in any of the pictures, although Emily could see someone’s shadow in one of them; she made out a wide-brimmed hat.

“There’s your killer,” Holbert Bruns said. “Boris, in one of those hats the Theosophists wear.”

“No, it’s a woman,” Emily said. “In a skirt, don’t you see?”

“A trick of the light.”

“It’s a woman. Her lip rouge is on these pencil stubs.

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