It was an exaggeration, but not by much. The other men trying out for the parts of pirates were swarthy, hard-looking men with nicely photogenic moustaches or beards, but the person currently at stage centre would have looked more at home in a European counting-house than as a high-seas privateer. He wore elderly but well-polished shoes, his shoulders were stooped, and his hair was not only thinning, but a most unthreatening light brown colour. His facial hair consisted of an apologetic line above his lip.
“He’s just not … swashbuckling enough,” Fflytte said. La Rocha cocked his ear back, and Pessoa struggled for synonyms.
“Er,
“Ah.
“I really don’t think so,” Fflytte said. “He looks like my book-keeper, Bertram, who’s the least exotic person I know.”
“Next,” Hale called.
“No!” The syllable echoed through the empty theatre like a crack in glass; the entire theatre stopped dead. The balding Swedish accountant looked near to fainting. I fought an impulse to leap for the aisle. Hale, veteran of the trenches, appeared to be wrestling the same urge.
Fflytte, on the other hand, turned to peer up at the source of the countermand, frowning in disbelief. “Mr. La Rocha, are you making this picture, or am I?”
I had thought the silence profound before; now one could have heard a hair settle on the floor. The cracked pane trembled, preparing to shatter in an explosion of deadly shards – until La Rocha looked back at the stage.
“Go,” he squeaked. The accountant fled. Fflytte sat back in his seat. The rest of us drew breath. Hale settled more slowly, but within a few minutes he, too, was wrapped up again in the casting process. Pessoa’s shoulders gave a motion that was halfway between a shrug and a shiver, as if to shake off an idea he could neither justify nor account for.
It took somewhat longer for the hair on the nape of my neck to go down. Something large and dangerous had flitted through the theatre. I did not know who or what La Rocha was, but the man’s potential for violence had snarled at us, just for a moment. That he had so easily shut it away again was perhaps the most unsettling part of all: Having this man play the pirate king was like hiring a lion to play a tabby.
I studied his scar, and was struck by the image of the man standing before his looking-glass each morning holding a razor to his face, deftly manoeuvring its keen blade around that obstacle, touching weapon to scar …
That was why he went clean-shaven – and why he wore a loop of gold that attracted the eye: He wanted people to notice the scar. Wanted them to see it, and to consider the man who had survived that injury, and to be afraid.
* * *
Well short of mid-day, Fflytte and Hale had eliminated three men too ancient (even in this post-War era) to marry a Major-General’s young daughters, a couple of others too ugly, one with a disconcerting facial spasm, and another with a mouth that refused to shut. In the end, they settled on fourteen men, allowing for two extras. These were all friends or associates of La Rocha. None had any experience with the stage. Two were mere boys, one of them so young he carried a pet mouse in his pocket. Some were willing, others sullen, a few treated the enterprise as a huge joke, but they would all make believable pirates, and they all obeyed La Rocha. Of course, if Fflytte’s pirate king decided to quit, the picture would go up in smoke, but that was hardly my problem.
Today there would be no matinee, so the theatre belonged to Fflytte Films until six o’clock. Hale dismissed the unwanted actor-pirates, handing them each a day’s pay to make up for their rejection, while Pessoa translated Hale’s words and I began to fetch chairs from backstage. Fflytte wanted them set in a circle, although I did not get the chance to carry even one since the pirates instantly seized it from me. By dint of dragging my insistent helpers across the stage and using emphatic hand gestures, I got the chairs assembled in only twice the time it would have taken me to shift them myself.
When Pessoa and Hale had finished with the others and the doors were closed behind them, Fflytte pulled a break into the circle and told Pessoa, “Have them sit down.”
The instructions were passed on, and the men and boys (after a glance at La Rocha for permission) drifted into the circle, each taking up position before a chair. Hale sat. La Rocha and his right-hand man sat. The others looked at me; they remained standing.
Fflytte took no notice. “Miss Russell, we’ll be working here for the rest of the afternoon. See what you can do about bringing in some sandwiches or something, would you?”
“Right away?”
“One o’clock would be fine. Now, sit, you men.”
Fourteen large rough figures hovered over their chairs as if waiting for the gramophone needle to drop. I snorted as I turned away, but the image of piratical musical chairs kept a smile on my face until the pavement nearly had me on my backside. After that I concentrated on my feet.
I made it to the hotel without mishap and told the maitre d’ what I required. He stared at me blankly, although that morning, he had spoken a quite serviceable English.
“Sandwiches,” I repeated. “For twenty.”
“These are English men?”
“What does it matter? They’re men, they need to eat.”
“This is lunch?”
“That’s right. In an hour, if you please.”
“Sandwiches.”
What was wrong with the fellow? “Yes. Sandwiches. For twenty. In an hour. And some drinks – I suppose most of them would like a beer. I’ll also need someone to help me carry everything,” I added, just imagining myself trying to negotiate the paving stones with a load of glass bottles.
“Very well,” he said dubiously, pulling a small tablet out of his pocket and writing a few words. He went away, frowning at the message, but I had no interest in pursuing the minor mystery.
I only had an hour in which to burgle my employer’s rooms.
CHAPTER TWELVE
PIRATES: Let’s vary piracee
With a little burglaree!
ON THE STEAMER out from London, in the calmer intervals when my head and stomach were not spinning, I had tried to get a sense of which members of the cast and crew were permanent fixtures, and thus conceivably linked to any criminality that Fflytte Films might be trailing behind it. Fflytte and Hale, of course, were omnipresent, but I had been surprised at just how many of the others were long-time employees.
From cameraman to costumer, at least a dozen members of Fflytte Films had consistently worked together for five years or more. Another twenty individuals had come and gone in various projects. Sister two, “Bonnie,” had acted in half a dozen Fflytte films over the years – although one would never know it by the way Fflytte and Hale treated her, which was with the same mild lack of interest that they used to address any of the girls. Mrs Hatley, whose daughter “June” was the victim of an involuntary hair-cut, had herself acted in four or five Fflytte productions, including one so early, it was before Fflytte Films actually existed. Daniel Marks’ first Fflytte production was the 1919
The only people I had eliminated for certain were Bibi, who had worked in America for the past few years, and the six of her “sisters” who were under eighteen: Surely I could omit children from my list of suspects?
I had compiled a rough list of those whose careers spanned the years that troubled Lestrade, but before I investigated the shell-shocked camera assistant and the petite redheaded Irish lass whose needle produced costumes ranging from Elizabethan collars to beggars’ weeds, I wanted to eliminate the two men in the best position to manipulate the company. By breaking into their rooms.
In my experience, hotels generally count on the presence of doormen and desk personnel to repel potential
