Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 52, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2007
- Автор: Baldwin Barry, Campbell Melodie
- Год: 2007
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: ISSN:0002-5224
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 52, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2007». Краткое содержание книги:
“That might account for the forty-year hiatus.”
“What?”
“This Stumpy holds a grudge against you for getting him fired, which led to the murder and the conviction. His need for revenge festers for forty years before he’s finished serving out his sentence or gets paroled. And your stalker is back, only now with your murder on his mind as well. How’s that sound, Laura? Make sense?”
“What?”
“What I was suggesting about Stumpy?”
“Who?”
“Elrod Stump. Your stalker.”
A deep crevice developed between her brows. Then, her eyes brightened with enough wattage to light a premiere at Grauman’s Chinese. “That’s him, the bad apple! You nabbed him, handsome. Bless you.” She pushed herself off the dirt floor and onto her feet with a suddenness that brought on a sonic change in her pulse and caused her to falter. She reached for the wall as dizziness buckled her legs and swooned.
I caught Laura before she hit the ground, cradled her in my arms, and stepped from the stable into the courtyard, anxious to get her into the house. Even in a fading daylight, backlit by the exotic blend of orange, lavender, and scarlet painted across the skyline, I recognized the man moving in on me by his elaborate handlebar mustache.
Marnie skipped out of the limo idling across the courtyard, calling, “It’s okay, he’s with me,” and raced toward me shouting her aunt’s name, asking, “What is it? What’s wrong? What’s happened to her? Is she all right?” She tripped over a moss-covered rock jutting from the ground and vaulted forward, belly-flopping on the dirt.
Mustache Man wheeled around and helped her up, stepping back while she shook the surprise from her face and dusted herself off. Once again he had moved with a speed belying his age. “I’m fine, Mr. Hatcher,” she said. She tugged her sweater and a pair of jeans that fit her like body paint into place, covered the rest of the distance between us, and waited for me to tell her about Laura.
“A fainting spell that doesn’t look to be serious,” I said. She let out enough breath to stir a windmill. I asked, “She do that a lot?”
Marnie’s modest overbite disappeared behind pursed lips while she weaved her head left and right in slow motion. “Not as often as we have to change her sheets,” she said.
“What’s his story?” I said, inclining my head toward the Mustache Man.
“Let’s get Aunt Laura to her room first, okay? Clifton, give Mr. Gulliver a helping hand, won’t you?”
We settled in armchairs across from one another on the mezzanine landing, separated by a glass-topped table decorated with fashion magazines and outdated issues of Daily Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, silently waiting for Marnie to finish with Laura and join us. Mustache Man avoided me by leafing through the trades, while I subtlety examined him over the top of a W Magazine whose cover offered one of those sexily posed someones mostly famous for being famous.
On close inspection, there was something tricky about his face. It didn’t match the body that had traded in the fancy dress for casual wear, tailored slacks, and a camel’s hair jacket, high collar dress shirt open at the neck, showing off a gaudy sterling silver cross nesting on a bed of reddish brown hair.
He looked up from his Reporter, caught me staring. “Clifton,” he said. “Clifton Hatcher.” His voice stronger, far more vibrant than it had sounded at the studio. “Miss Nichols told me all about you on the ride over. I read your column once in a while, Mr. Gulliver. It’s not so bad.”
Once in a while.
Not so bad.
Mustache Man knew how to win friends.
I said, “What don’t I know about you?”
“Enough to fill one of your columns,” he said, suddenly my greatest fan, his overripe smile exposing an abundance of capped teeth. “I’m an actor. You probably figured that out by now.”
“The face isn’t familiar.”
“Not even under this ton of makeup, but someday,” he said. “It’s for a Brynie Foy movie shooting next door to Miss Nichols’s film on a third of the budget. My friend the casting director got me the gig knowing I needed a credit to keep from losing my SAG medical. Only a bit, one line, delivered by an old geezer.” He rose and took a few tottering steps away, touched his brow with the back of a hand like he was measuring a fever, tilted up his chin, and recited in a British accent: Yes, so teddibly hot for this time of year. His makeup was better than his accent.
“And you made a wrong turn on your way over and wound up on the set of Melancholy Baby.”
“Knew from the trades it was Miss Nichols’s flick. I’m a big fan, so when I heard the shoot was so close to ours, I took a chance and headed there instead of for the lunch wagon. Arrived in time to see her entering her trailer. Guessed that might be Laura Dane with her. Her aunt, and an actress my pappy admired in his day. Time ran out and I had to split before I could catch them to say so much as hello.”
Marnie had rejoined us in time to hear his gushing adoration and picked up the thread. “I asked around after you and Auntie Laura left and learned the shoot on Stage Eight was pirating a standing set from the Dennis Morgan and Jack Carson shoot, Two Guys from Surrey. Natty, my flack from the publicity department, went looking for me and located the man with the mustache, Mr. Hatcher here. Since seeing is believing, I invited him to come home with me, so she could meet him and confirm for herself it was no stalker closing in on her today.”
He pressed a palm to his heart. “A beaucoup thrill,” he said, enthusiastically, pronouncing it bow-coop. “And you won’t forget about the autographed photo, will you?”
“I have a better idea,” I told Marnie. “One that can put an end to this stalker business once and for all.”
Marnie motioned us into Laura’s room after about twenty minutes.
Laura was propped up in a reclining position in her canopy-covered bed, under a pair of lace-trimmed pillows.
Her eyes struggled for focus as I pushed Clifton Hatcher forward, hands locked behind his back, urging, “No tricks, nothing stupid, if you know what’s good for you,” loud enough for her to hear. At her bedside, I announced: “Look at the gift I brought you, Laura. This him? This the stalker you spotted at the studio today?” She reared back against the pillows. “Not to worry. He’s cuffed.”
She raised her head and squinted against the dull light, signaled me to bring the Mustache Man nearer. I applied pressure to Hatcher’s shoulder blades, moving his face to within inches of hers. She studied him through eyes that quickly grew wide with alarm. “Him, yes!” she said.
“I also want you to hear him speak, confirm it’s the voice you heard on the phone,” I said, then pulled Hatcher upright and ordered, “Recite the words I told you, mister.”
Hatcher said, “I am as close as your shadow, Laura, and will be coming after you soon,” in what I imagined he imagined was a nifty impression of Pacino as Scarface. How this guy got any acting jobs was beyond me.
Laura made a frightful noise. “Yes! Yes! Him, the SOB! Get the police!” she said and managed to pull the covers over her head.
Marnie eased Hatcher aside and, comforting Laura with her voice while she worked back the covers enough to level a kiss on her aunt’s forehead, said, “The police are here already, dear, waiting outside to take him away once you’ve provided positive identification.”