definitely didnât want to know what kind of love scene would follow. âShow me how you change character.â Iâd keep the seductress Louise for later â if and when.
She took me at my word. She shut her eyes and the face became expressionless and immobile. Then it began slowly to alter and when the eyes flew open again the woman before me was a stranger, full of contradictions, doubts, determination, malicious, vulnerable, and with the face of a Delilah. Then she relaxed and Louise was back with me.
âDid you see?â she asked doubtfully.
âI prefer Louise to Julia.â
âThank you, Jack.â Then she kissed my cheek.
It had been meant lightly, but something had happened between us. From her look of sudden bewilderment she too realized that and wasnât sure she liked it. My move. I took her hand, and she smiled.
âIs there a Mrs Colby?â she asked.
âAn ex of twenty years standing. Is there a Mr Shaw?â
âYes.â
I knew life couldnât be this kind to me.
âTwo in fact,â she continued. âMy father and my brother.â
âTheyâre
wonderful
people,â I said fervently.
âYouâll like them.â
This studio wasnât Number One, it was Cloud Nine.
âThe tour,â she added pointedly, and I promptly leapt off my cloud and returned to business mode. Studio Three was vast. It was here that the Jubilee Ball was to be shot, and if someone had told me that there were a thousand people working on this set Iâd have believed them. The crew was here in force, with generators, lamps, candles, cameras, moving platforms, Steadicams, and audio equipment, plus a construction team setting up the ballroom. There was accompanying noise, with shouts, cries and general hum so loud that it assaulted the ears. It was like being faced with the merry old land of Oz, watching people busily rigging lights, adjusting camera angles and polishing the floor. And Bill Wade was the wizard in charge of the lot.
âCrew time,â Louise told me, âuncontaminated by cast or extras. Weâre not shooting here until tomorrow.â
âAre there many extras?â
âYou bet, though theyâre often called background now. Rogerâs rubber-stamped a hundred and fifty for two daysâ work. Costumeâs been stretched to produce enough dress jackets and evening gowns for that number. Let alone the tiaras.â
âWould there be lists of both cast and background for the days when the incidents occurred?â
âSure to be. Ask Casting.â
âEr . . .?â I tried to place this but failed.
âTheir roomâs in the production building, first floor somewhere.â
âGreat.â I could see that trying to approach the case by eliminating them one by one was likely to be a non-starter. I had to plough on, however, if the answer to the Auburn theft lay within the studios. It seemed Kafkaesque; I would be plunging through a never-ending fog towards some indication of where that beautiful object now was. In a scrapyard? No one could be so crass as to destroy it. A thing of beauty was a joy for ever, Keats said, and he would have drooled over the glories of the 1935 Auburn. Those amazingly elegant pontoon fenders, that breathtaking boattail, that gleaming cream paint . . .
âLetâs have that coffee,â Louise suggested. âIâll grab a sandwich too, and then Iâll have to disappear. And you can get your cast lists. Did someone give you a security pass?â
âSomeone did.â Reception had unbent sufficiently to hand me one with her own fair hand.
The canteen was plush and huge, so plush that I wondered how the hospitality suite could better it. I suppose the canteen needed to be on a grand scale with that number of cast and crew to be fed and watered all day long. It was nearly lunchtime, and it was reasonably full. There were plenty of crew here, plus some
Emma Daniels, Ethan Somerville