“Us, spies? You? Me? Me, who has been known to keep a secret for as long as three minutes?” She erupted with laughter. “Oh, that is wonderful! Oh, how delicious! And what did Mickey tell this gentleman from Whitehall?”
“He most politely told him to go to hell, but most politely. Alma? Remember a few weeks back when I said we’re not in the midst of a spy thriller? Well, my dear, I rescind the statement. I have a suspicion we have become very innocently involved in a very troublesome situation.” He arose from the chair and crossed around the desk to Alma and helped her to her feet. “We have another two months here in Germany, my darling. We must proceed with very great caution/’
“Hitch,” she said darkly.
“What is it, my love?”
“You’ve just sent a freezing chill up my spine.”
“Oh, and mine too, mine too. Come, my love, let’s repair to the canteen for some double whiskeys. We both deserve and need them.”
La-la-la-la… la-la-la…
“And will you please scrub it with that bloody melody!”
“I can’t seem to, Hitch. I just can’t seem to.”
BOOK TWO
BOOK TWO
London,
June 1936
Five
The years were kind to Alfred and Alma. They married December 2, 1926, after the shooting was completed on The Mountain Eagle, a film so incredibly bad, there are no longer existing prints (“Mercifully,” commented Hitchcock). On Saturday, July 7, 1928, their daughter Patricia was born in their charming flat at 153 Cromwell Road in London. In 1929, Hitchcock directed his first all-talking film, Blackmail, and his leading lady was the luscious blonde Anny Ondra, whom Fritz Lang had pointed out to him in the restaurant in Munich, although her voice was dubbed by a British actress. In June of 1936, the Commonwealth emerged from mourning for the late King George V, who had died on January 17 of that year, and now speculated dolefully as to whether the somewhat inadequate King Edward VIII would fulfill his rumored threat to abdicate the throne unless he was permitted to marry the woman he loved, the ambitious American divorcee from Baltimore, Mrs. Wallis Simpson.
Eleven years after the unsolved Munich murders, Alfred and Alma were preparing their twentieth film. In the past two years, Hitchcock had begun to win an international reputation with such superb spy thrillers as The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Thirty-Nine Steps, The Secret Agent, and Sabotage. The script of his next feature, The Lady Vanishes, was giving him trouble. The writers, Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, were not extracting Hitchcock’s vision from Ethel Lina White’s The Wheel Spins; only Alma could do that, and in the back of his mind, Hitchcock knew Alma would have to take over the project. This would be his second film with producer Edward Black, the previous one, Young and Innocent, having fallen somewhat short of Hitchcock’s usual mark, one of the rare occasions that found Hitchcock and the critics in agreement.
In addition to the Cromwell Road flat, the Hitchcocks had acquired a modest country home in the quiet, picturesque village of Shamley Green, near Guildford, less than an hour’s drive from London. They called the cottage, which was their sanctuary, “Winter’s Grace.” They spent as much time in it as possible, and of late, Alma was there often alone. Hitchcock was usually at his office in the Gaumont-British Studios trying to get the script he wanted from his writers. This particular June day, Patricia had been taken away for a long weekend with her cousins, her Aunt Nellie’s children. Hitchcock had phoned earlier to tell Alma he’d be home early, but he was bringing a surprise guest for dinner. Alma wasn’t too fond of that kind of surprise, but at least on this occasion he had given her fair warning and she’d been able to prepare a passable dinner. She wasn’t sure as to what to serve for the sweet—fruit and cream, which Hitchcock usually found boring, or a bang-up pudding calorically threatening. Hitchcock had gained so much weight over the past eleven years, Alma found herself smothered in guilt every time she tried to prepare a sensible meal for him. It was that look on his face when she gave him boiled fish and a vegetable, the look of a man betrayed, by a wife who deserved the firing squad, despite the fact that he loved her very much. Alma decided on sponge cake and jelly.
The phone rang.
Alma recognized the voice immediately. That damned woman reporter again, trying to get a story out of Hitch. “Miss Adair, I’ve told you three times today Mr. Hitchcock is at the studio. I haven’t the vaguest idea when he’ll be home,” she lied gracefully. She didn’t like Nancy Adair. She hadn’t the vaguest idea what she looked like, because she was only a disembodied voice on the telephone, a voice in pursuit of her husband for the past three days. The determined voice of a freelance journalist anxious to earn a few quid with some sort of story from Great Britain’s most famous and most respected director. Why, even Hollywood was singing its siren song in his not unresponsive ear.
“I know he’s at the studio because I’m parked outside the gate. They won’t let me in without a pass.”
“Well, then, hadn’t you best go home?” Wherever that is, and let me get on with this bloody sponge cake recipe.
There were teardrops in Nancy Adair’s voice. “Please help me, Mrs. Hitchcock. I only want a half hour of his time. This could mean so much to my career. It’s so difficult for a woman to get a foot into Fleet Street.…” Well, then, thought Alma, try using some other part of your anatomy. And then Alma wondered if she had a good figure and worse, blond hair. Hitch was an easy target for a good figure and a head of blond hair, peroxided or otherwise. She knew he privately swooned over such Hollywood blondes as Jean Harlow, Helen Twelvetrees, and Alice Faye. He was
