After Harriet Cole’s visit, I did not speak to anyone about Nora and Tyler for a very long time. I did not speak of Elizabeth either, even after her untimely death five years later, when she was only forty-one. The papers said it was consumption, but I suspected otherwise, for after Tyler was gone there was nothing left to keep her from the bottle. My sorrow for her was private and deep, and filled with regret; if I’d been a better man I would have helped her. But her death was one more tragedy to add to all the others, and I did not discuss it with anyone for several years. When I finally did, it was entirely by chance, and while I learned several things I rather wished I didn’t know, they also helped me understand what had happened.
This was in the winter of 1931, long enough after the events that ended my career that I could appear in public without being recognized. I had by then moved to my present town house, and purchased my current car, the Packard—a suitable choice for a mature gentleman no longer in the flush of youth. Although several of my neighbors did know who I was, I could generally conduct my daily business without anyone bothering me.
I was taking lunch one afternoon at a small nondescript restaurant off the Boulevard—I avoided any place that was frequented by picture people—when a man slid into the booth across from me. I was about to ask him why he was interrupting my meal when I recognized him as John Vail. He was still handsome, still slightly fragile-looking, although his hairline had crept back an inch or two and there were deep lines now in his forehead. He grinned the old mischievous grin that had made him such an effective scoundrel. “Hello, gorgeous. Fancy meeting you here.”
I smiled. To my surprise, I was genuinely happy to see him. “John Vail,” I said. “How have you been?”
He told me he was well—he was still in pictures, but on the other side of the camera now, writing scenarios—and he was kind enough not to ask about my career. After telling me about the latest project he was developing, he hesitated and said, “We sure do miss you down at the studio. You wouldn’t recognize the place. It’s so uptight—not the jovial place that you and I cut our teeth on. And the sound equipment, the technicians—hell, the whole idea of sound period. Sometimes I think we’ve gotten so caught up in voices that we’ve forgotten about character and story.”
“Well, times have changed, and change is inevitable.”
“Maybe, but it’s been real tough on people. Gloria Swanson and Greta Garbo have done all right, but John Gilbert and Clara Bow are finished. Their voices weren’t even bad, you know? They just weren’t what people imagined. Shit, Clara was the biggest star in Hollywood four years ago. Now she’s done and she isn’t even thirty.”
We sat staring at the table, which was streaked from the dirty towel that had been used to wipe it. Vail must have realized who he was talking to, for now he looked up at me sheepishly and shook his head. “And you too. What a horrible shame. I wish they hadn’t run you out, the prejudiced bastards.”
I looked up at him. “What do you mean?”
“The studio men,” he said. “The way they talked about you. It was almost like they were glad you got caught up in the Tyler mess, because it gave them an excuse to let you go.”
I considered this information for a moment. “You’re mistaken, John. David Rosenberg came personally to ask me back to work.”
“Yeah, but that was David, don’t you see? Not Normandy or Stillman. It’s not like they were tripping all over themselves to give you another contract. By that point, with all the papers making a fuss about the Yellow Peril, they considered it an embarrassment that you were under contract. I heard them talking about it, Jun. It wasn’t a secret. Why do you think the roles were drying up?”
I pressed my lips together to quell my irritation. “They were not ‘drying up.’ I was just being more selective. It was Ashley’s death that changed everything. If he hadn’t died, I might still be a leading man. I might be as big as Fairbanks, as Gary Cooper.”
Vail looked at me sadly and started to say something, then appeared to change his mind. “Well, yes,” he said finally. “The murder did have its reverberations. Poor Elizabeth Banks. Poor Nora Niles. Not to mention poor all of us for how clean pictures got after the studios agreed to the Hays code.”
Neither of us spoke for several moments. Then Vail shook his head and said, “The funny thing is, if Nora really was pregnant like people said, and if Harriet Cole did kill Ashley, then she went after the completely wrong guy. Ashley Tyler couldn’t have made Nora pregnant.”
“Why do you say that?”
He looked at me with genuine surprise. “Why, Ashley was as queer as a three-dollar bill. He wouldn’t have touched a woman if his life depended on it.”
I just stared at him. “How do you know? Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. And I know the surest way you can. I have, how can I put
