Тимоти Уилльямз - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 126, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 769 & 770, September/October 2005

The next morning, an hysterical Alain De Guerre phones 911 and summons the police to the Benedict Canyon cottage he and his wife had rented for the duration. Gilly is on the floor of the master bedroom, dead of a .22-caliber bullet in the head that later will be shown to match the one imbedded in the stone at Grauman’s Chinese.

They continued their argument after the forecourt ceremony, he tells detectives. He fled the cottage, spent the night in aimless driving on the freeways, lost his way a few times on his way back, and found her like that. And in other variations on the theme: He drove the freeways after the forecourt ceremony, got back to the cottage the next morning, and saw Wheeler hugging his wife goodbye. He drove off again, the freeways again, lost again, home again; Gilly dead. More variations, each time claiming she threatened to kill herself if he walked out now, Alain angrily tossing the .22 at Gilly and leaving. But, absent the gun anywhere in the cottage, absent a suicide note, the idea of suicide is as suspect as Alain De Guerre.

Wheeler has a verifiable alibi for his whereabouts following the altercation at the theater.

Alain can’t account for his time.

Alain has motive, opportunity, and the means to kill his wife.

Alain is indicted.

Alain flees the country.

No amount of memory-rummaging was telling me why I had been convinced of Alain’s innocence. What struck me now was how much of his story seemed to mirror facts and rumors surrounding Harlow and Paul Bern. Was that what drew Alain to their story and ultimately took us to the forecourt and Harlow’s signed slab? Was that—

What?

What else?

His not mentioning Gillian Lance’s signed cement or thinking to visit it before we left Grauman’s today... Did it say he wasn’t the grieving husband he had always played at being or that he didn’t want brought back ugly memories of events that had led to her death? Or, was it that he didn’t want me raising the wrong questions and learning the right truths?

My phone rang and surrendered to the answering machine midway through the first ring, before I could get to it.

Alain screaming: “I don’t know why I ever bothered with you. I will accomplish this by myself, what I should have done before this, without you, you—” He descended into French at a clip where one word crashed into the next, none making any more sense than his shout of outrage before clicking off.

I looked at the receiver as if it were a time bomb ready to explode.

A time bomb named Alain De Guerre, who was living out the final chapter of a truth he’d buried inside the fantasy of a motion picture he would never make.

It was half-past midnight.

Research had chewed up the evening.

I dialed Alain’s hotel.

The operator connected me to his room.

The phone rang until automatic response kicked in.

“Alain, it’s Neil. Pick up, please. Please. Alain, pick up, damn it...”

I threw my act together and headed for the Renaissance, praying I’d get there before the crazy son of a bitch killed himself.

A little reputation goes a long way in this town.

The night clerk remembered my byline from the Daily column I used to write.

He had the housekeeping manager check Alain’s suite.

Empty.

I tipped a memory-deprived bellman a fiver and he suddenly remembered noticing “that rabbi kind of guy you described.”

Alain had left about a half-hour ago.

I took off for Grauman’s Chinese.

The last screenings had ended. The theater had emptied and the forecourt seemed naked without the tourist hordes. A parade of overhead lights transformed cement plots that during the day screamed with honored stars’ demands for love and remembrance into a somber community of gray and black valleys. Floor spots bathed the militant lion-dogs, guarding them against after-hours trespassers.

I headed toward the Harlow block stage-whispering for Alain.

Got an echo back, then — evidence Alain had been there:

A small triangle of cement that appeared to have been chiseled out of the lower right corner, near the Blonde Bombshell’s heel-prints; nothing I remembered seeing earlier.

A sense he’d discovered what a formidable, impossible task he had set for himself.

I tried Alain’s name again, tracking quickly across the forecourt, over the likes of Bob Hope and the Marx Brothers, almost tripping on Gene Kelly’s shoes, to the northeast section where Gillian Lance and Walker Wheeler shared side-by-side fame in perpetuity. I got only silence in response, marred by a few night-crawling cars humming along the boulevard.

On her cement block, Gilly had written a few words in French, in an elegant, precise hand as petite as her long-fingered hands and shoe size, a Thank you, dear America, for this honor to go with a heart with an erratic arrow drawn through it, aimed toward Wheeler’s block; her signature; the film title, Strangers; and the date.

On his slab, Wheeler had drawn a heart twice as large, its Cupid’s arrow pointed toward Gilly, and printed in irregular block letters that spiraled down like a train heading around a bend, LOVE CONQUERS ALL, followed by his signature and the date.

The hammer and chisel abandoned on top of Wheeler’s block had been used to deface it, Wheeler’s signature and the inscription barely surviving a dozen or more stab and scrape marks, one word changed to make the inscription read: Death CONQUERS ALL.

I eased onto my hands and knees for a closer look, ran my fingers over the damage as if it were some kind of Braille that would tell me things I should know, and unthinkingly glided my hands into Wheeler’s prints. Mine measured larger.

Alain De Guerre said, “You or anybody would also have an easy task of filling his shoes, mon ami.” He was posing against the closest stone lion-dog, one leg propped up on its pedestal. I held up a hand, defending myself against the brilliant moon made by the Maglite he was shining at my face. “One need only look at the arrows to see the truth of their relationship. The arrows aim at one another, publicly and defiantly telling the world I am a cuckold.” Approaching, he abruptly changed the subject. “My only fellow countryman enshrined here is Maurice Chevalier. Since nineteen hundred and thirty-four. The singer Jeanette MacDonald, his costar in Love Me Tonight and The Merry Widow, her signature, her hand and footprints, placed in the cement on the same day.”

He brought up phlegm and spat on Wheeler’s cement.

I managed to get my hand out of the way before the wad landed.

Alain said, “It should be me also here, Neil, next to my precious Gilly, not him. Me. Like Chevalier with MacDonald, the same day, side by side with her. Not only here but for eternity.” He glanced toward the stars, wondering, “Do you think they slept together?”

I said, “Let’s get out of here and talk about it somewhere else, Alain.”

“Oui, somewhere else. Where I want you to see something.”

“You’ll tell me back at the hotel.”

“Non, not there.” He adjusted the Maglite so I could see the .22 aimed at me.

“There is somewhere else you need to see.”

Alain’s precise directions led my Jag to an English-style cottage in Benedict Canyon. It was half-hidden behind a marvel of ageless trees and a chest-high brick wall that could not keep out a determined coyote, about a quarter-mile off the main road. I recognized the address. This was the cottage where Paul Bern was found dead three days after his marriage to Jean Harlow. Years later, it was owned by Jay Sebring, the hairstylist who was among the victims of the Charles Manson Family.

Alain added to the history while inspiring me with the .22 to traverse the wall using the clinging vines and follow the Mag-lit brick path to the front door, saying, “In here is where my darling Gilly and I reposed while I was directing Asthma. A place they now tell is haunted, for me only by memories and by Wheeler, who gave me the arm by acquiring it and moving in after he had defiled Gilly and I was back to Paris, like the sick dog he always was.”