I put the clues together. “Some members of the House of Lords are worried about the money they put up to back a picture, and mentioned it to the Chancellor of the Exchequer over sherry, and Winston sent someone to talk to you?”
“Worse than that—the Palace itself have invested in the company, if you can believe that. And the trouble is, I can’t say for certain that there’s nothing to it. The studio has been linked to … problems.”
“I should imagine that picture studios generate all sorts of problems.”
“Not generally of the criminal variety. There are some odd coincidences that follow this one around. Three years ago, they made a movie about guns, and—”
“An entire moving picture about guns?”
“More or less. This was shortly after the Firearms Act, and the picture was about a returned soldier who used his military revolver in a Bolshevik act, accidentally killing a child.”
“The Bolshevist terror being why the Firearms Act was introduced in the first place.” The 1920 Firearms Act meant that every three years, Holmes and I were forced to go before our local sheriff for weapons permits, demonstrating that we were neither drunks, lunatics, or children.
“That and the sheer number of revolvers knocking around after the War waiting to go off. Which more or less concealed the fact that someone sold quite a few of said firearms in this country, unpermitted, shortly after the picture came out.”
“What does that—”
“Wait. The following year, Fflytte did a story about a young woman whose life was taken over by drugs—Coke Express, it was called. The month following its release in the cinema houses, we had an unusual number of drugs parties along the south coast.”
“Yes, but—”
“And last year, one of their pirate movies was about rum-running into America. It came out in November.”
“I was busy in November. What happened?”
“McCoy’s arrest. ‘The Real McCoy’? The man’s made a small fortune smuggling hard liquor into the United States.”
“Hmm. Is this perhaps the same studio that was making a film about Hannibal?”
“Fflytte Films, that’s them.”
“Odd, I don’t recall hearing about a sudden influx of elephants racing down the streets of—”
“I knew this was a mistake. Never mind, Miss Russell, I’ll—”
“No no, Chief Inspector, sit down, I apologise. Surely there must have been something more concrete to interest you in the case, even in a peripheral manner?”
He paused, then subsided into his chair. “Yes. Although even that I can’t be at all certain about. We were beginning to ask some questions—in a hush-hush fashion, so as not to set the gossip magazines on fire—when the studio’s secretary went missing. Lonnie Johns is her name.”
“When was that?”
“Well, there’s the thing—it was only four or five days ago. And there’s nothing to say that the Johns girl didn’t just quit her job and go on holiday. The girl she shares a room with said it wouldn’t surprise her, that Lonnie’s job would shred the nerves of a saint.”
“But Miss Johns didn’t say anything to her, about going away?”
“The room-mate didn’t see her go—she’d just got back herself from a week in Bognor Regis.”
“Any signs of foul play at the flat?”
“Neither disturbance nor a note, although some of her things did seem to be missing, tooth-brush and the like.”
“If the girl had run off to the Riviera with a movie star, she’d probably have told everyone she knew,” I reflected.
“Normally, we’d barely even be opening an enquiry into a disappearance of a girl missing a few days, but time is against us. The entire crew is about to set sail out of London, and if we don’t get someone planted in their midst, we’ll lose the chance. And when my likely officers were unavailable, I thought, just maybe Mr Holmes would have a few days free to act as a sort of place-holder, until I could get one of my own in line for it. But never mind, it was only a—”
“And in addition, if it does blow up in the face of a gaggle of blue-bloods and splatter them all with scandal, it would be nice if Scotland Yard were nowhere in sight.”
“Miss Russell, I deeply resent the im—”
“Chief Inspector, I have nothing in particular on at the moment. I’ll be happy to devote myself to the Mysterious Affair of the Coincidental Film Crew.”
He looked shocked. “You mean you’ll do it?”
“I just said I would.”
“I thought you’d laugh in my face.” He gave me a suspicious scowl. “You aren’t a ‘fan’ of the cinema world, are you?”
“By no means.”
“And yet you seem almost eager to take this on.”
Motion pictures, or Mycroft? I reached out to snatch the folder from his hand. “My dear Chief Inspector, you have no idea.”
Laurie R. King, Beekeeping for Beginners
(Series: # )
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