Chapter 12 #2
‘Have you ever worked with Alice Graceland, Mr Baker?’
He carried on glaring at Sloane for a few more seconds before turning towards me. ‘No, I’ve never had that pleasure.’ His reply was terse, and I felt that his choice of vocabulary was deliberately insincere.
Before I could reply, Sloane stepped in. ‘Alice would never work with you, Freddie, and even if she wanted to, Louie would never allow it.’
Still trying to turn this into a normal conversation, I queried the name. ‘I’m sorry, Louie? Who’s Louie?’
Freddie Baker answered without taking his eyes off Sloane for a second. ‘Jack’s referring to Alice’s agent, Louis Leder. He’s another old man like Jack, soon to be on the junk heap like Jack.’
There was a sinister growl from the big man, possibly presaging a volcanic eruption, and it came as a welcome distraction at that moment to see Valentina arrive at our shoulders with a huge steaming dish of risotto.
Silence fell once more as she served the rice and we all started eating.
I’ve never been a great fan of rice – unless it’s buried beneath a liberal helping of curry – but this was excellent.
I could taste mushrooms and maybe smoked ham, with more than a hint of truffles, and it was predictably delicious.
As I ate, I reflected on the tetchy exchange between the two men, and this confirmed the feeling I had already begun to get that at least some of the guests not only were not that keen on our host, but were also not that keen on each other.
After an afternoon spent finishing off some work that Lina had sent me, I finally closed my laptop at five and took Oscar out for a little walk around the garden.
I heard splashing and wandered over to the pool in the centre to find two people in the water.
They couldn’t have been more different. One was Freddie Baker’s French girlfriend, Antoinette, and the other, to my considerable surprise, was Desmond Norman.
The eighty-five-year-old was doing a leisurely backstroke while Antoinette had obviously just completed her workout and was emerging from the pool.
She gave me – or more probably Oscar – a friendly wave and came over to where I was standing, keeping my hand on Oscar’s collar to prevent him from jumping into the pool.
As the party was due to start in less than an hour, the last thing I wanted was a smelly, wet dog to further sour the already strained atmosphere among at least some of the guests.
‘Hello again, Dan, and hi, Oscar. Have you tried the pool? The water temperature’s perfect. Isn’t this an amazing place?’ Without Freddie Baker beside her, she looked and sounded decidedly more relaxed and happy.
I nodded in agreement. ‘I can’t think of many more charming places to have a party, although not everybody seems to be enjoying it.
’ The atmosphere over lunch hadn’t improved, in spite of further culinary delights produced by Valentina so, seeing as I now had Antoinette to myself, I thought I might do a little bit of investigating.
‘It’s a pity Freddie and Jack Sloane don’t get on.
Is that recent, or have things always been strained between them? ’
She cast an apprehensive look over her shoulder, but Norman was still in the pool and nobody else was to be seen. ‘To be honest, Freddie doesn’t get on well with most people.’ She took another wary look around. ‘I’m not sure that he likes anybody here.’
‘Apart from you, of course, Antoinette.’
‘Oh, yes, there’s me.’ The deadpan expression on her face and her lacklustre tone when she said it confirmed my suspicion that all was not well in this relationship either.
‘Presumably, he likes Alice, and she likes him, otherwise he wouldn’t have come, would he?’
For a moment, it looked as if she was going to say something more, but then she must have thought better of it and just nodded.
‘I don’t think he knows her that well. I get the feeling he only really came here because he knew there were going to be some big-name producers among the other guests, and he’s always on the lookout for potential investors in his projects.
’ After another glance around, she added in a low voice, ‘The fat man wasn’t so far off the mark when he said Freddie would soon be going round knocking on doors for work.
He has a habit of upsetting everybody he meets and, although he’s a very good director, he’s been blacklisted by a number of high-profile studios. ’
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Desmond Norman heaving himself out of the pool.
Antoinette must also have noticed as she gave me a little nod of the head and went off.
I turned away, and Oscar and I continued our leisurely stroll, my mind churning.
The more I discovered about this selection of guests, the more convinced I became that Alice would appear to have gone out of her way to invite the most ill-assorted group of people she could possibly have assembled.
I felt sure she was an intelligent woman, so I couldn’t help asking myself why she had done this. It seemed so senseless.
I explored the possible reasons she might have had, and not many presented themselves to me.
First was the possibility that she was so na?ve that she genuinely thought these people loved her, but I instantly dismissed that as a non-starter.
I had no doubt that, after over forty years in the movie business, she would have developed keen antennae when it came to other people and their feelings towards her.
If I discounted this hypothesis, what was I left with?
Did she have a dark, malicious streak in her that had made her put together a group of people who disliked each other, so that she could watch them fight amongst themselves for her sport?
Once again, I dismissed this idea. Of course, she was a very talented actress, and the impression I’d gained of her so far might have been an elaborate act, but I hadn’t sensed anything of the kind, and I normally pick up on that sort of thing.
Ruling out the other alternative that she was going gaga and was unaware of what she was doing, I struggled to come up with an explanation until my thoughts returned to the manuscript I’d seen lying on her desk with the title Payback.
Could it be that she had deliberately invited people who would figure in a tell-all exposé?
Was she going to break the news to them that their reputations were about to be trashed?
But, if so, how was she planning on doing this and why?
Surely if she expected them to be annoyed, furious even, it made little sense to bring them here to her home.
Of course, maybe I’d got it wrong, and what she was actually writing was a thriller.
If so, I could see the logic of bringing together a group of Hollywood’s movers and shakers – even if a number of them weren’t her favourite people – in the hope of convincing them that her work was going to be the next big blockbuster.
I glanced down at Oscar, who was happily sniffing a statue of Venus – probably with the intention of marking it so that other dogs would know that he claimed the island as his own.
I, too, knew that I wanted to do some sniffing about and I wondered which of these scenarios might be behind Alice’s invitations, or if there was something I was missing.
Somehow, I had the feeling the big event tonight might answer that question.
When Alice had told me the evening would have a twist in the tail, had she been referring to this?
Maybe tonight’s murder mystery would turn out to be the prequel to Payback.
It promised to be an uncomfortable evening – and not just because I was going to be spending it in those damn blue tights.