“This morning I am typing script revisions.” She was holding the sheets of paper behind her back and now displayed them as though they were a cache of fine jewels.
“Well, go find her. We’ll be late getting started this morning, and we can’t afford that.”
“And who is this?” asked Hitchcock, as a tall man in his mid-forties wearing a raincoat and a bowler hat approached. “Not another mountain actor, I pray.”
The man removed the bowler and inquired, “Herr Hitchcock?”
“I hope you’re not an actor. I’ve already had one actor too many this morning.”
“I’m Detective Inspector Wilhelm Farber.” Hitchcock paled. Police. He was terrified of the police.
Hitchcock bravely struggled out of his chair and shook the man’s proffered hand. “How do you do. I have no part for a policeman in this film, Herr Detective Inspector.” The man smiled. He liked Hitchcock on sight. He nodded at Alma while Rosie scurried away with Alma’s order.
“I am not looking for a part as an actor, although…” Hitchcock started to tremble. “…I was once told I might have a future in the theater. But no, I find police work much more challenging. Is there someplace we might talk in private?”
“I seem to recall being assigned a small office. Don’t I have an office somewhere in the vicinity, Alma?” Alma led them to the office. When the three were seated, Hitchcock behind a fragile desk with his hands folded over his stomach, wondering if Alma knew how to bake a cake with a file in it, asked Herr Farber, “Of what am I accused?”
“Oho, you are accused of nothing, Herr Hitchcock. Why are you so defensive?”
Why indeed? wondered Alma, who knew Hitchcock’s fear of the police and made a mental note to try to do something about that in the very near future.
“I am not being defensive,” said Hitchcock. “I was just making a small joke. Terribly small, since you didn’t find it funny.”
“Anna Grieban was in your employ?” Alma didn’t like the use of the word was.
Neither, apparently, did Hitchcock. “What do you mean, ‘was’?”
“She is dead.”
“Dear God,” gasped Alma. Hitchcock feared the worst. Policemen don’t arrive to announce death by heart attack or vehicular accident or infected hangnail.
“That is terrible news,” intoned Hitchcock gravely, tempted to add, And where the hell do I get that competent a script girl on such short notice?
“She was murdered,” said Farber.
“That’s even worse news,” commented Hitchcock.
“Quite brutally.” Alma’s hand covered her mouth, her face screwed up with horror.
Farber directed his attention to Alma. “You are connected with this film? With Herr Hitchcock?”
Hitchcock answered for her. “She is my assistant and my fiancee, in no particular order. And as of this moment, she is also my new script girl, with no increase in salary.”
“Oh, Hitch, really,” said Alma. He could see she was shaken by the terrible news.
“How did Miss Grieban die?” asked Hitchcock.
Farber told them, sparing no gruesome detail.
“Twenty-nine stab wounds?” asked Hitchcock with a look of incredulity, while inwardly thinking, how delicious! “Twenty-nine! It was either the act of a maniac or a knifer badly in need of practice. “
“She was not a pleasant sight. Her body was found by a tenant who is now in hospital in a state of shock. “He looked from one to the other. “Tell me, please. What do you know of Miss Grieban?”
“I don’t know too much at all,” said Alma, “although I was the one who hired her. You see, coming from England to film here, we weren’t too familiar with the film work force in Munich, so we asked around for suggestions. As a matter of fact, I think we got Anna with an introduction from Freddy Regner.”
“Who is this Freddy Regner?” Farber had whipped a notebook and pencil from his inside jacket pocket and was taking notes, first, Hitchcock noticed, licking the lead end of the pencil. What a marvelous idea, thought Hitchcock, death from lead poisoning by someone who licks pencil ends. He heard Alma telling Farber that Freddy was a scriptwriter. Hitchcock added that Regner had a film shooting in the adjoining stage. “I would like to speak to this Regner.”
“He’s about,” said Hitchcock. “In fact, he gave me a script to read this morning.” He said to Alma, “I left it on my chair. I hope nobody pinches it.” Alma couldn’t care less about anybody’s script; she was too preoccupied with the ugly thoughts of Anna Grieban’s horrible murder. “Would you like Alma to fetch Freddy?”
“Soon. There’s plenty of time/’
Oh no, there isn’t, thought Hitchcock, I’ve a day’s shooting ahead of me, and every minute I spend with you is costing us money we can’t well afford to spare. He heard Alma saying something about dining the previous evening with the Fritz Langs.
“Of course!” cried Hitchcock. “We saw her last night. Why, we’re probably among the last to see her alive!” How, wondered Alma, can the man speak with such relish when a colleague has been so brutally dispatched? But then, she reminded herself, that’s Hitch. His sense of humor would always transcend his sense of tragedy. “She was with this terribly fascinating man. Face very ghastly, very disfigured. Bad plastic surgery, or perhaps nothing much that plastic surgery could do to improve it. Undoubtedly a veteran of the late unpleasantness.”
“You mean the war, of course.” Farber’s pencil flew across the page.
“Oh, indeed, I mean the war. My film is not yet completed.”
“And did you speak to Miss Grieban and this man?”
“I was most anxious to,” explained Hitchcock. “That face, I mean it is so distinctive, I want to capture it on film. But they had an argument.”
“Ah! You overheard this argument?”
“Oh, no, they were on the opposite side of the room near the string orchestra. “From the sound stage, they could hear Rudolf Wagner and the violinists tearing into a Lehar melody. “But we did see Anna slam her hand on the table, looking quite irate…”
“A woman scorned, perhaps?” suggested Farber.
“A woman angry,
