“So I killed her and then I called you to show you her corpse in the trunk of my car?” Charlie said dryly. “Makes perfect sense. You’re a regular Ellery Queen.”
“Well, then, who killed her?” Meehan asked.
“Good God, I don’t know,” Charlie said. “But what possible motive would I have?”
“I don’t know yet,” Meehan said. “But I’m going to find out.” And with that he threw his cigarette on the driveway, ground it into the pavement with a worn-down heel, and stormed off with his trademark panache.
“Quite the unlicked cub,” Margaret said, reaching a hand up to massage Charlie’s neck. “We’re going to find out who did it.” She tried to sound reassuring as the valet pulled up with their car. “We’re going to find out who killed that poor girl.”
After that uncomfortable morning confrontation, Margaret cabbed solo to a Universal Pictures soundstage where she watched a flock of ravens rip apart an ingenue.
Margaret’s motivation was no mystery—she missed zoology and, more to the point, she missed accomplishing something other than tending to the needs of Charlie, Dwight, and Lucy. So she’d taken Symone LeGrue up on her invitation to visit the set of The Birds.
“It’s going to be a hellish day,” LeGrue told Margaret at the security gate after the cab dropped her off. She was holding a clipboard in one hand and had a raven sitting on her shoulder; it cawed a strange hello at Margaret.
“‘Quoth the raven,’” Margaret said.
“This is Archie,” said LeGrue. “He absolutely loathes Rod Taylor, so I’m keeping watch on him today. He happens to love me and does anything I say.”
“What do you mean, he loathes him?” Margaret said, slowly reaching out to pet the bird. “Is he dangerous?”
“Only to Rod, and none of us can figure out why,” LeGrue said. “I mean, The Time Machine wasn’t that bad. Follow me.”
Margaret laughed as the two walked past industrial soundstages so enormous they could have been housing cattle or hogs, though without the aroma. The Universal lot was immaculate and professional: Men and women walked briskly to various studios, carrying food or props, often dressed in costume. Policemen, soldiers from myriad armies, a barbershop quartet, gladiators, Greek goddesses, waitresses, and flappers all passed them by. A teenage boy dressed as a cowboy rode a magnificent white horse past them, clip-clop, clip-clop. Four young women in swimsuits walked behind the horse; they couldn’t have been out of high school. They reminded Margaret of Violet, and she tried to chase that discomfort from her mind immediately.
“So why is today going to be hellish?” Margaret asked.
“We’re shooting this scene where Tippi—that’s the lead, she’s a new girl, quite nice, Tippi Hedren—she goes up to a bedroom all alone and is ferociously attacked by a flock of ravens.”
“A conspiracy,” Margaret corrected her. “It’s a conspiracy of ravens, not a flock.”
LeGrue playfully rolled her eyes. “Oh,” she said. “You’re one of those.” Margaret laughed. “Yes, I know, it’s a conspiracy of ravens. Or an unkindness of ravens. I confess I’ve dropped those fits of fancy—men out here look at me cross-eyed as it is. The Hollywood Mensa chapter is rather small, Margaret.”
“Fair enough.” Margaret smiled. “I know what it’s like for a man to look at you like you’re speaking Khoikhoi.”
“But I assure you I know all of them!” LeGrue said. “A ballet of swans, a bind of sandpipers. On land or water, it’s a gaggle of geese, but in the air it’s a chevron. A water dance of grebes!”
“Okay, okay.” Margaret laughed.
“Anyway,” LeGrue continued, “Hitch had told Tippi they would all be mechanical ravens. You need to understand—this might be the most horrific part of the whole movie, like the shower scene in Psycho. The birds will be relentless and almost kill her.”
“Sounds ugly but manageable, no?”
“No,” said LeGrue. “The mechanical birds aren’t working. So we have to use live ones.”
“Ugh,” said Margaret. She knew just how uncontrollable and vicious scavengers could get, having once seen a turkey vulture behead a baby squirrel.
“Here we are,” said LeGrue, pointing to a blue building.
Inside, in the center of the long room and against the far wall, an attic bedroom had been constructed, with a hole torn in the roof and, off camera, a giant cage built around a side door, stage right. Margaret and LeGrue stood behind the cage as burly men wearing blue polyester jackets that read BERWICK ANIMAL HANDLERS gently hauled cartons of ravens, doves, and pigeons into its confines. Once the birds were freed from the cartons, they quietly grasped the metal stands and awaited their cues. They shared their cage with three prop men, all of whom wore thick rubber gloves.
“Birds have never looked less exotic to me than they do right now,” Margaret said. “And I live in Manhattan, where we have fifty pigeons per person.”
“Yeah, this looks like an infestation,” LeGrue allowed. “That’s kind of the point. This is Hitchcock, not Audubon.”
The stagehands’ heads turned as a pretty, lean blond woman sporting a beehive hairdo and a lime-green suit walked onto the set rubbing her arms, clearly nervous.
“That’s Tippi,” LeGrue whispered.
“Never heard of her,” whispered Margaret.
“No one has; this is her big break. She already had one mishap on set, with phone-booth glass breaking on her face. She’s going to freak out during this scene. No one wants to work with these birds. Last week we had a dozen crew members in the hospital from bites and scratches. From just one day of shooting! Birds are dangerous. Seagulls deliberately go for your eyes.”
A stagehand helped Hedren up onto the set and she walked behind the faux door to the attic bedroom. Hitchcock waddled in from wherever he’d been, presumably hiding to avoid any of Hedren’s complaints. “There she is,” he boomed with his familiar working-class London drawl. A hush fell over the
