“On to Lingate, then, is it?”
“Lingate?” asked Nancy Adair and Hitchcock gave her a look.
“I’ll explain in the car,” said Hitchcock; then he turned to Madeleine Lockwood with a warm smile. “You have been an absolute delight, Madeleine Lockwood.”
“Well, of course, my dear, my voice isn’t quite in a class with Jessie Matthews’, but in its days, I’m sure you realize, it brought many an audience to its feet in ovation after ovation. You can well imagine why I was invited to sing before most of the crowned heads of Europe. Lily Langtry hated my guts, but then, I was young, prettier, slimmer…”
“… and nosier,” added Hitchcock.
Miss Lockwood tee-hee’d and swatted Hitchcock with her feather fan. “You wicked man.” He kissed her cheek. “How nice! The touch of a man’s lips. It’s been a memory for too long. Well, now, here’s the door.” Phoebe Allerton held it open. “And you must be on your way.” She now held Hitchcock by the hand and squeezed it gently by way of warning. “The best of luck. “
“I shall be in touch with you very soon,” he said, and she appreciated the sincerity in his voice. He thanked Phoebe Allerton and promised to read her manuscript of Blood and Gore provided she managed to complete the writing before the next solstice. The women stood in the doorway watching Hitchcock and Nancy Adair as they passed through the gate and crossed the road to their car. When the car pulled away, a black sedan pulled out of a side road and from a safe distance followed them.
“They’re being tailed,” said Miss Lockwood out of the side of her mouth to Phoebe. “I hope it’s one of the good guys. Oh, well, kismet is kismet, and never the twain shall meet.” Phoebe followed her back to the drawing room. “And now, Miss Phoebe Allerton, what was all that crap about that book you’re writing?”
“We’ll be needing petrol soon,” said Nancy Adair. “How far is this Lingate?”
Hitchcock was studying the map. “I’d gauge it at about thirty miles farther along the coast. It’s on the way to Harborshire.”
“What did the old lady tell you?”
“When?”
“When she so unsubtly exiled me to the kitchen.”
“Well, actually, she asked if she might audition for me,” he replied drolly.
“If that twenty minutes of caterwauling was an audition, she should have been strangled at birth.”
“Don’t be uncharitable. It doesn’t become you.” He wondered what did. Nancy Adair was hardly a scintillating companion. The exterior blonde did not quite match the interior moodiness. Hitchcock now realized what had been gnawing at him ever since he had reluctantly teamed up with the woman. The facade was not only false, it was all wrong. She was a blonde without a blonde personality. He was hard put exactly to define the blonde personality, but he would later give as an example that Sylvia Sidney, the brooding brunette he’d just directed in Sabotage, could never be a blonde because her personality was too dark.
“Your personality’s too dark,” said Hitchcock, surprised to hear the words suddenly erupting.
“What’s that?” asked Nancy, bewildered.
“Your personality is dark,” persevered Hitchcock, realizing there was no turning back. It wasn’t the first time he’d been betrayed by his subconscious, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. “Your exterior is blonde, but your interior is dark. “
“What a lot of eyewash!”
“No. What a lot of hair dye. “
“So what? So I dye my hair? Who needs such a foolish conversation at a time like this?” There was that strange lilt again, that strange flow upward and then downward as she spoke, a pattern that more comfortably belonged to a continental woman.
“I know nothing about you. Where do you come from?”
“South Africa.”
Like hell you do, thought Hitchcock. “Have you ever lived on the continent?” he asked, his eyes staring straight ahead through the windshield.
“Listen, Mr. Alfred Hitchcock, I’m the one who should be interviewing you. I’m the journalist, not you.”
“You know so much about me. I know so little about you. I’m uncomfortable when disadvantaged. Are your parents alive?”
“I don’t want to talk about my parents. I want to talk about Madeleine Lockwood. What did she tell you when you were alone with her?”
Hitchcock folded his arms, narrowed his eyes, and spoke between clenched teeth. “You’ll not get a bleeding word out of me until you give me the courtesy of answering my questions.”
They drove along in an uncomfortable silence. Hitchcock was angry and resolute, and Nancy Adair didn’t quite know how to deal with it. She finally said, trying to sound friendly, “Petulance doesn’t become you.”
“There’s a petrol station on our right,” he said, “in case you haven’t noticed.” She pulled in, and five minutes later, after the tank’s thirst had been assuaged, they were back on the road heading toward Lingate. Hitchcock asked, “Have you ever met Frederick Regner or Hans Meyer?”
She snorted. “Oh, come now. I never heard their names until yesterday. Where would I have met either of them?”
“Somewhere in the past,” he added dryly, “assuming you have a past.”
“I’m more concerned at the moment with the future. What are we going to do in Lingate?”
Hitchcock, to himself, admitted defeat. There was no use trying to spar with the woman. The enigma was impenetrable. “We’re going to the circus.” Now he looked at her, and there was no expression of childish delight on her face. “I take it you don’t like circuses.”
“I don’t like the way you have turned against me. I thought we were friends. We
