The Covent Garden Murder by Mike Hollow

Author:Mike Hollow [Hollow, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Published: 2023-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Jago had never had occasion to visit a film star before. This wasn’t an omission that troubled him, but he feared that for Cradock the prospect might have the allure of a life-changing moment. His fear was confirmed before they reached Constance Merivale’s door.

‘Just wait till I tell my mum,’ said Cradock. ‘A real film star.’

‘Have you seen any of her films?’ Jago asked.

‘Er, no – but I bet my mum has.’

‘That’s nice. I hope she’s impressed. But just one word of caution, Peter – don’t gawp. She may or may not be famous, but we’re police officers, and to us she’s just the same as any other member of the public.’

He glanced up and down the street while they waited for a response to their ring of the bell. He didn’t know what to expect the residence of a film star, albeit a fading one, to look like on the inside, but the surroundings were not auspicious. Hanover Court was an easily missed alleyway, narrow enough, he thought, to present an element of hazard for two bicycles to pass, and the side opposite the flat was entirely taken up by Hazell’s printing works. But perhaps this was only Miss Merivale’s pied-à-terre in London. For all he knew she might also have a country house in the Chilterns – handy for escaping the bombs – and perhaps even a villa in Cannes, although that would be decidedly less handy now that the South of France was labouring under the collaborationist regime of Marshal Pétain.

The door eventually opened, revealing not a maid, as he’d half expected, but a pale-faced woman with a Marcel wave hairstyle who identified herself as Miss Constance Merivale. When he introduced himself and Cradock as police officers who were making inquiries into the murder of Roy Radley, she seemed to take it in her stride as if it was the sort of thing that happened to her every day. Jago thought she was surprisingly calm, but then he reminded himself that she was, of course, an actress.

Miss Merivale invited them in and took them to what she called the drawing room. It was tidy and well furnished, but its walls and curtains were in such overwhelming shades of pink that he couldn’t help thinking ‘boudoir’ would have been a more appropriate designation.

She herself was decorated with a pale blue chiffon dress in layers that floated around her as she glided ahead of them. With a long cigarette holder that she seemed to be using more as a theatrical prop than as a means of smoking, she presented, he thought, a picture of elegance, and an artfully contrived picture at that. Close up, he suspected that beneath her powdered face she might well be older than himself, and the fact that Adelaide Mansfield had mentioned her career in silent films before the advent of talkies lent weight to that suspicion.

She motioned them to a pair of delicate armchairs and arranged herself decorously on a softly upholstered chaise longue.

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