The Cinema Murder - E. Phillips Oppenheim
THE CINEMA MURDER
BY E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM
1917
BOOK I
CHAPTER I
With a somewhat prolonged grinding of the brakes and an unnecessary
amount of fuss in the way of letting off steam, the afternoon train from
London came to a standstill in the station at Detton Magna. An elderly
porter, putting on his coat as he came, issued, with the dogged aid of
one bound by custom to perform a hopeless mission, from the small,
redbrick lamp room. The station master, occupying a position of vantage
in front of the shed which enclosed the booking office, looked up and
down the lifeless row of closed and streaming windows, with an expectancy
dulled by daily disappointment, for the passengers who seldom alighted.
On this occasion no records were broken. A solitary young man stepped out
on to the wet and flinty platform, handed over the half of a third-class
return ticket from London, passed through the two open doors and
commenced to climb the long ascent which led into the town.
He wore no overcoat, and for protection against the inclement weather
he was able only to turn up the collar of his well-worn blue serge coat.
The damp of a ceaselessly wet day seemed to have laid its cheerless
pall upon the whole exceedingly ugly landscape. The hedges, blackened
with smuts from the colliery on the other side of the slope, were
dripping also with raindrops. The road, flinty and light grey in colour,
was greasy with repellent-looking mud--there were puddles even in the
asphalt-covered pathway which he trod. On either side of him stretched
the shrunken, unpastoral-looking fields of an industrial neighbourhood.
The town-village which stretched up the hillside before him presented
scarcely a single redeeming feature. The small, grey stone houses, hard
and unadorned, were interrupted at intervals by rows of brand-new,
red-brick cottages. In the background were the tall chimneys of several
factories; on the left, a colliery shaft raised its smoke-blackened
finger to the lowering clouds.
After his first glance around at these familiar and unlovely objects,
Philip Romilly walked with his head a little thrown back, his eyes lifted
as though with intent to the melancholy and watery skies. He was a young
man well above medium height, slim, almost inclined to be angular, yet
with a good carriage notwithstanding a stoop which seemed more the
result of an habitual depression than occasioned by any physical
weakness. His features were large, his mouth querulous, a little
discontented, his eyes filled with the light of a silent and rebellious
bitterness which seemed, somehow, to have found a more or less permanent
abode in his face. His clothes, although they were neat, had seen better
days. He was ungloved, and he carried under his arm a small parcel,
which appeared to contain a book, carefully done up in brown paper.
As he reached the outskirts of the village he slackened his pace.
Standing a little way back from the road, from which they were separated
by an ugly, gravelled playground, were the familiar school buildings,
with the usual inscription carved in stone above the door. He laid his
hand upon the wooden gate and paused. From inside he could catch the
drone of children's voices. He glanced at his watch. It was barely twenty
minutes past four. For a moment he hesitated. Then he strolled on, and,
turning at the gate of an adjoining cottage, the nearest to the schools
of a little unlovely row, he tried the latch, found it yield to his
touch, and stepped inside. He closed the door behind him and turned, with
a little weary sigh of content, towards a large easy-chair drawn up in
front of the fire. For a single moment he seemed about to throw himself
into its depths--his long fingers, indeed, a little blue with the cold,
seemed already on their way towards the genial warmth of the flames. Then
he stopped short. He stood perfectly still in an attitude of arrested
motion, his eyes, wonderingly at first, and then with a strange,
unanalysable expression, seeming to embark upon a lengthened, a
scrupulous, an almost horrified estimate of his surroundings.
To the ordinary observer there would have been nothing remarkable in the
appearance of the little room, save its entirely unexpected air of luxury
and refinement. There was a small Chippendale sideboard against the wall,
a round, gate-legged table on which stood a blue china bowl filled with
pink roses, a couple of luxurious easy-chairs, some old prints upon the
wall. On the sideboard was a basket, as yet unpacked, filled with
hothouse fruit, and on a low settee by the side of one of the easy-chairs
were a little pile of reviews, several volumes of poetry, and a couple of
library books. In the centre of the mantelpiece was a photograph, the
photograph of a man a little older, perhaps, than this newly-arrived
visitor, with rounder face, dressed in country tweeds, a flower in his
buttonhole, the picture of a prosperous man, yet with a curious, almost
disturbing likeness to the pale, over-nervous, loose-framed youth whose
eye had been attracted by its presence, and who was gazing at it,
spellbound.
"Douglas!" he muttered. "Douglas!"
He flung his hat upon the table and for a moment his hand rested upon his
forehead. He was confronted with a mystery which baffled him, a mystery
whose sinister possibilities were slowly framing themselves in his mind.
While he stood there he was suddenly conscious of the sound of the
opening gate, brisk footsteps up the tiled way, the soft swirl of a
woman's skirt. The latch was raised, the door opened and closed. The
newcomer stood upon the threshold, gazing at him.
"Philip!" she exclaimed. "Why, Philip!"
There was a curious change in the girl's tone, from almost glad welcome
to a note of abrupt fear in that last pronouncement of his name. She
stood looking at him, the victim, apparently, of so many emotions that
there was nothing definite to be drawn either from her tone or
expression. She was a young woman of medium height and slim, delicate
figure, attractive, with large, discontented mouth, full, clear eyes and
a wealth of dark brown hair. She was very simply dressed and yet in a
manner which scarcely suggested the school-teacher. To the man who
confronted her, his left hand gripping the mantelpiece, his eyes filled
with a flaming jealousy, there was something entirely new in the hang of
her well-cut skirt, the soft colouring of her low-necked blouse, the
greater animation of her piquant face with its somewhat dazzling
complexion. His hand flashed out towards her as he asked his question.
"What does it mean, Beatrice?"
She showed signs of recovering herself. With a little shrug of the
shoulders she turned towards the door which led into an inner room.
"Let me get you some tea, Philip," she begged. "You look so cold and
wet."
"Stay here, please," he insisted.
She paused reluctantly. There was a curious lack of anything peremptory
in his manner, yet somehow, although she would have given the world
to have passed for a few moments into the shelter of the little kitchen
beyond, she was impelled to do as he bade her.
"Don't be silly, Philip," she said petulantly. "You know you want some
tea, and so do I. Sit down, please, and make yourself comfortable. Why
didn't you let me know you were coming?"
"Perhaps it would have been better," he agreed quietly. "However, since I
am here, answer my question."
She drew a little breath. After all, although she was lacking in any real
strength of character, she was filled with a certain compensatory
doggedness. His challenge was there to be faced. There was no way out of
it. She would have lied willingly enough but for the sheer futility of
falsehood. She commenced the task of bracing herself for the struggle.
"You had better," she said, "frame your question a little more exactly. I
will then try to answer it."
He was stung by her altered demeanour, embarrassed by an avalanche of
words. A hundred questions were burning upon his lips. It was by a great
effort of self-control that he remained coherent.
"The last time I visited you," he began, "was three months ago. Your
cottage then was furnished as one would expect it to be furnished. You
had a deal dresser, a deal table, one rather hard easy-chair and a very
old wicker one. You had, if I remember rightly, a strip of linoleum upon
the floor, and a single rug. Your flowers were from the hedges and your
fruit from the one apple tree in the garden behind. Your clothes--am I
mistaken about your clothes or are you dressed more expensively?"
"I am dressed more expensively," she admitted.
"You and I both know the value of these things," he went on, with a
little sweep of the hand. "We know the value of them because we were once
accustomed to them, because we have both since experienced the passionate
craving for them or the things they represent. Chippendale furniture, a
Turkey carpet, roses in January, hothouse fruit, Bartolozzi prints, do
not march with an income of fifty pounds a year."
"They do not," she assented equably. "All the things which you see here
and which you have mentioned, are presents."
His forefinger shot out with a sudden vigour towards the photograph.
"From him?"
"From Douglas," she admitted, "from your cousin."
He took the photograph into his hand, looked at it for a moment, and
dashed it into the grate. The glass of the frame was shivered into a
hundred pieces. The girl only shrugged her shoulders. She was holding
herself in reserve. As for him, his eyes were hot, there was a dry
choking in his throat. He had passed through many weary and depressed
days, struggling always against the grinding monotony of life and his
surroundings. Now for the first time he felt that there was something
worse.
"What does it mean?" he asked once more.
She seemed almost to dilate as she answered him. Her feet were firmly
planted upon the ground. There was a new look in her face, a look of
decision. She was more or less a coward but she felt no fear. She even
leaned a little towards him and looked him in the face.
"It means," she pronounced slowly, "exactly what it seems to mean."
The words conveyed horrible things to him, but he was speechless. He
could only wait.
"You and I, Philip," she continued, "have been--well, I suppose we should
call it engaged--for three years. During those three years I have earned,
by disgusting and wearisome labour, just enough to keep me alive in a
world which has had nothing to offer me but ugliness and discomfort and
misery. You, as you admitted last time we met, have done no better. You
have lived in a garret and gone often hungry to bed. For three years this
has been going on. All that time I have waited for you to bring something
human, something reasonable, something warm into my life, and you have
failed. I have passed, in those three years, from twenty-three to
twenty-six. In three more I shall be in my thirtieth year--that is to
say, the best time of my life will have passed. You see, I have been
thinking, and I have had enough."
He stood quite dumb. The girl's newly-revealed personality seemed to fill
the room. He felt crowded out. She was, at that stage, absolutely
mistress of the situation.... She passed him carelessly by, flung herself
into the easy-chair and crossed her legs. As though he were looking at
some person in another world, he realized that she was wearing shoes of
shapely cut, and silk stockings.
"Our engagement," she went on, "was at first the dearest thing in life to
me. It could have been the most wonderful thing in life. I am only an
ordinary person with an ordinary character, but I have the capacity to
love unselfishly, and I am at heart as faithful and as good as any other
woman. But there is my birthright. I have had three years of sordid and
utterly miserable life, teaching squalid, dirty, unlovable children
things they had much better not know. I have lived here, here in Detton
Magna, among the smuts and the mists, where the flowers seem withered and
even the meadows are stony, where the people are hard and coarse as their
ugly houses, where virtue is ugly, and vice is ugly, and living is ugly,
and death is fearsome. And now you see what I have chosen--not in a
moment's folly, mind, because I am not foolish; not in a moment's
passion, either, because until now the only real feeling I have had in
life was for you. But I have chosen, and I hold to my choice."
"They won't let you stay here," he muttered.
"They needn't," she answered calmly. "There are other ways in which I can
at least earn as much as the miserable pittance doled out to me here. I
have avoided even considering them before. Shall I tell you why? Because
I didn't want to face the temptation they might bring with them. I always
knew what would happen if escape became hopeless. It's the ugliness I
can't stand--the ugliness of cheap food, cheap clothes, uncomfortable
furniture, coarse voices, coarse friends if I would have them. How do you
suppose I have lived here these last three years, a teacher in the
national schools? Look up and down this long, dreary street, at the names
above the shops, at the villas in which the tradespeople live, and ask
yourself where my friends were to come from? The clergyman, perhaps? He
is over seventy, a widower, and he never comes near the place. Why, I'd
have been content to have been patronized if there had been anyone here
to do it, who wore the right sort of clothes and said the right sort of
thing in the right tone. But the others--well, that's done with."
He remained curiously dumb. His eyes were fixed upon the fragments of the
photograph in the grate. In a corner of the room an old-fashioned clock
ticked wheezily. A lump of coal fell out on the hearth, which she
replaced mechanically with her foot. His silence seemed to irritate and
perplex her. She looked away from him, drew her chair a little closer
to the fire, and sat with her head resting upon her hands. Her tone had
become almost meditative.
"I knew that this would come one day," she went on. "Why don't you speak
and get it over? Are you waiting to clothe your phrases? Are you afraid
of the naked words? I'm not. Let me hear them. Don't be more melodramatic
than you can help because, as you know, I am cursed with a sense of
humour, but don't stand there saying nothing."
He raised his eyes and looked at her in silence, an alternative which she
found it hard to endure. Then, after a moment's shivering recoil into her
chair, she sprang to her feet.
"Listen," she cried passionately, "I don't care what you think! I tell
you that if you were really a man, if you had a man's heart in your body,
you'd have sinned yourself before now--robbed some one, murdered them,
torn the things that make life from the fate that refuses to give them.
What is it they pay you," she went on contemptuously, "at that miserable
art school of yours? Sixty pounds a year! How much do you get to eat and
drink out of that? What sort of clothes have you to wear? Are you
content? Yet even you have been better off than I. You have always your
chance. Your play may be accepted or your stories published. I haven't
even had that forlorn hope. But even you, Philip, may wait too long.
There are too many laws, nowadays, for life to be lived naturally. If I
were a man, a man like you, I'd break them."
Her taunts apparently moved him no more than the inner tragedy which her
words had revealed. He did not for one moment give any sign of abandoning
the unnatural calm which seemed to have descended upon him. He took up
his hat from the table, and thrust the little brown paper parcel which he
had been carrying, into his pocket. His eyes for a single moment met the
challenge of hers, and again she was conscious of some nameless,
inexplicable fear.
"Perhaps," he said, as he turned away, "I may do that."
His hand was upon the latch before she realized that he was actually
going. She sprang to her feet. Abuse, scorn, upbraidings, even
violence--she had been prepared for all of these. There was something
about this self-restraint, however, this strange, brooding silence, which
terrified her more than anything she could have imagined.
"Philip!" she shrieked. "You're not going? You're not going like this?
You haven't said anything!"
He closed the door with firm fingers. Her knees trembled, she was
conscious of an unexpected weakness. She abandoned her first intention of
following him, and stood before the window, holding tightly to the sash.
He had reached the gate now and paused for a moment, looking up the long,
windy street. Then he crossed to the other side of the road, stepped over
a stile and disappeared, walking without haste, with firm footsteps,
along a cindered path which bordered the sluggish-looking canal. He had
come and gone, and she knew what fear was!
CHAPTER II
The railway station at Detton Magna presented, if possible, an even
more dreary appearance than earlier in the day, as the time drew near
that night for the departure of the last train northwards. Its long strip
of flinty platform was utterly deserted. Around the three flickering
gas-lamps the drizzling rain fell continuously. The weary porter came
yawning out of his lamp room into the booking office, where the station
master sat alone, his chair turned away from the open wicket window to
the smouldering embers of the smoky fire.
"No passengers to-night, seemingly," the latter remarked to his
subordinate.
"Not a sign of one," was the reply. "That young chap who came down from
London on a one-day return excursion, hasn't gone back, either. That'll
do his ticket in."
The outside door was suddenly opened and closed. The sound of footsteps
approaching the ticket window was heard. A long, white hand was thrust
through the aperture, a voice was heard from the invisible outside.
"Third to Detton Junction, please."
The station-master took the ticket from a little rack, received the exact
sum he demanded, swept it into the till, and resumed his place before the
fire. The porter, with the lamp in his hand, lounged out into the
booking-hall. The prospective passenger, however, was nowhere in sight.
He looked back into the office.
"Was that Jim Spender going up to see his barmaid again?" he asked his
superior.
The station master yawned drowsily.
"Didn't notice," he answered. "What an old woman you're getting, George!
Want to know everybody's business, don't you?"
The porter withdrew, a little huffed. When, a few minutes later, the
train drew in, he even avoided ostentatiously a journey to the far end of
the platform to open the door for the solitary passenger who was standing
there. He passed up the train and slammed the door without even glancing
in at the window. Then he stood and watched the red lights disappear.
"Was it Jim?" the station master asked him, on their way out.
"Didn't notice," his subordinate replied, a little curtly. "Maybe it was
and maybe it wasn't. Good night!"
* * * * *
Philip Romilly sat back in the corner of his empty third-class carriage,
peering out of the window, in which he could see only the reflection of
the feeble gas-lamp. There was no doubt about it, however--they were
moving. The first stage of his journey had commenced. The blessed sense
of motion, after so long waiting, at first soothed and then exhilarated
him. In a few moments he became restless. He let down the rain-blurred
window and leaned out. The cool dampness of the night was immensely
refreshing, the rain softened his hot cheeks. He sat there, peering away
into the shadows, struggling for the sight of definite objects--a tree, a
house, the outline of a field--anything to keep the other thoughts away,
the thoughts that came sometimes like the aftermath of a grisly,
unrealisable nightmare. Then he felt chilly, drew up the window, thrust
his hands into his pockets from which he drew out a handsome cigarette
case, struck a match, and smoked with vivid appreciation of the quality
of the tobacco, examined the crest on the case as he put it away, and
finally patted with surreptitious eagerness the flat morocco letter case
in his inside pocket.
At the Junction, he made his way into the refreshment room and ordered
a long whisky and soda, which he drank in a couple of gulps. Then he
hastened to the booking office and took a first-class ticket to
Liverpool, and a few minutes later secured a seat in the long,
north-bound express which came gliding up to the side of the platform. He
spent some time in the lavatory, washing, arranging his hair,
straightening his tie, after which he made his way into the elaborate
dining-car and found a comfortable corner seat. The luxury of his
surroundings soothed his jagged nerves. The car was comfortably warmed,
the electric light upon his table was softly shaded. The steward who
waited upon him was swift-footed and obsequious, and seemed entirely
oblivious of Philip's shabby, half-soaked clothes. He ordered champagne a
little vaguely, and the wine ran through his veins with a curious
potency. He ate and drank now and then mechanically, now and then with
the keenest appetite. Afterwards he smoked a cigar, drank coffee, and
sipped a liqueur with the appreciation of a connoisseur. A fellow
passenger passed him an evening paper, which he glanced through with
apparent interest. Before he reached his journey's end he had ordered and
drunk another liqueur. He tipped the steward handsomely. It was the first
well-cooked meal which he had eaten for many months.
Arrived at Liverpool, he entered a cab and drove to the Adelphi Hotel. He
made his way at once to the office. His clothes were dry now and the rest
and warmth had given him more confidence.
"You have a room engaged for me, I think," he said, "Mr. Douglas Romilly.
I sent some luggage on."
The man merely glanced at him and handed him a ticket.
"Number sixty-seven, sir, on the second floor," he announced.
A porter conducted him up-stairs into a large, well-furnished bedroom. A
fire was blazing in the grate; a dressing-case, a steamer trunk and a
hatbox were set out at the foot of the bedstead.
"The heavier luggage, labelled for the hold, sir," the man told him, "is
down-stairs, and will go direct to the steamer to-morrow morning. That
was according to your instructions, I believe."
"Quite right," Philip assented. "What time does the boat sail?"
"Three o'clock, sir."
Philip frowned. This was his first disappointment. He had fancied himself
on board early in the day. The prospect of a long morning's inaction
seemed already to terrify him.
"Not till the afternoon," he muttered.
"Matter of tide, sir," the man explained. "You can go on board any time
after eleven o'clock in the morning, though. Very much obliged to you,
sir."
The porter withdrew, entirely satisfied with his tip. Philip Romilly
locked the door after him carefully. Then he drew a bunch of keys from
his pocket and, after several attempts, opened both the steamer trunk and
the dressing-case. He surveyed their carefully packed contents with a
certain grim and fantastic amusement, handled the silver brushes, shook
out a purple brocaded dressing-gown, laid out a suit of clothes for the
morrow, even selected a shirt and put the links in it. Finally he
wandered into the adjoining bathroom, took a hot bath, packed away at the
bottom of the steamer trunk the clothes which he had been wearing, went
to bed--and slept.
CHAPTER III
The sun was shining into his bedroom when Philip Romilly was awakened the
next morning by a discreet tapping at the door. He sat up in bed and
shouted "Come in." He had no occasion to hesitate for a moment. He knew
perfectly well where he was, he remembered exactly everything that had
happened. The knocking at the door was disquieting but he faced it
without a tremor. The floor waiter appeared and bowed deferentially.
"There is a gentleman on the telephone wishes to speak to you, sir," he
announced. "I have connected him with the instrument by your side."
"To speak with me?" Philip repeated. "Are you quite sure?"
"Yes, sir. Mr. Douglas Romilly he asked for. He said that his name was
Mr. Gayes, I believe."
The man left the room and Philip took up the receiver. For a moment he
sat and thought. The situation was perplexing, in a sense ominous, yet
it had to be faced. He held the instrument to his ear.
"Hullo? Who's that?" he enquired.
"That Mr. Romilly?" was the reply, in a man's pleasant voice. "Mr.
Douglas Romilly?"
"Yes!"
"Good! I'm Gayes--Mr. Gayes of Gayes Brothers. My people wrote me last
night from Leicester that you would be here this morning. You are
crossing, aren't you, on the _Elletania_?"
Philip remained monosyllabic.
"Yes," he admitted cautiously.
"Can't you come round and see us this morning?" Mr. Gayes invited. "And
look here, Mr. Romilly, in any case I want you to lunch with me at the
club. My car shall come round and fetch you at any time you say."
"Sorry," Philip replied. "I am very busy this morning, and I am engaged
for lunch."