Джеффри Дивер - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 148, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 900 & 901, September/October 2016

Tiring of the war talk, I took the opportunity to sneak out to the pool, where I sat down in a deck chair, determined to enjoy a few would-be starlets swimming, diving, and (mostly) sunning themselves. A wooden side gate between the pool area and the front lawn was presumably used mostly by gardeners, deliverymen, and other inconspicuous workers. But now a nattily dressed old fellow who looked like none of these came through the gate rather surreptitiously, spotted a familiar face belonging to me, gave a friendly wave, and raised a finger to his lips in the classic “keep my secret” gesture. It was an English actor named Gordon Maltravers, whom I knew from the Classic Pictures lot where we were both working at the time. He was a character type and one-time silent-picture leading man, with a beautifully trimmed gray moustache, sartorial splendor even arriving at a pool party, and the mellifluous voice of a classically trained thespian. He drank prodigiously, even while he was working, it was said, but never seemed to show it. In the large Hollywood British colony he ranked somewhere in the wide range between C. Aubrey Smith and E.E. Clive.

Having located a drink, apparently straight whiskey, at the makeshift bar situated at poolside, he came in my direction, sat down in the deck chair next to mine, and said conspiratorially, “I like to pretend I’m a party crasher. Alice Ferguson doesn’t like me much, but I really was invited, believe me. I’ve spent hours at parties I was invited to and never even seen the host, but probably this is a smaller affair.”

“Why doesn’t Alice like you?”

“Once in the course of complimenting her beauty, I was a little too honest in my appraisal of her thespian ability.”

He fell silent for a few moments, staring into his drink. For all his hearty manner, he seemed to be in a depressed mood. I had been doing my best to put the war out of my mind, but when he asked me, “Were you in the last one, Seb?” I knew just what he meant.

“Not really,” I replied. “Joined up when I turned eighteen but it was over before I had a chance to see any action.”

“Did you want to see action, my boy?” he said, a distant and somewhat sad look in his eye.

“I sure told people I did. Don’t know why I’d have wanted them to think I was that stupid.”

Maltravers nodded approvingly. “I understand just what you mean. Nobody who was in it ever wanted to see another. But here we are again, aren’t we? Remember what a pacifist lot we were in Hollywood just a few years ago, Seb? Most of the war pictures were at least honest about what it was like. Remember those air-war pictures?”

“Sure. Wings, Hell’s Angels.”

“I thought The Dawn Patrol was the best of the lot, damned realistic, sending the pilots up younger and younger and less prepared, but of course they had to remake it with a more jingoistic slant only a few years later.”

“And how about All Quiet on the Western Front?” I offered.

“Wonderful picture. I’d have worked for free for a part in that. Old Uncle Carl Laemmle thought it would go over big in his native Germany, since all the characters were German and treated sympathetically. The Nazis couldn’t stand it, though. Germany lost the war. Sticky wicket, that.”

I smiled at the expression. Maltravers said, “I’m talking too much. Don’t listen to me.” But after a pause, he added, “I sometimes feel I should go back home to England. My people at war, and here am I debasing my art in dreadful cinematographs while they suffer. But what good could I do? You know, some of the lads inquired of the British Embassy and, to their great relief I imagine, were told they could do more good staying here.” He lowered his voice and leaned toward me confidentially. “Some have said that Hollywood is an ideal place for British spies to be at work, influencing this nominally neutral nation to get into the game, but I don’t really believe that, do you?”

It didn’t seem likely. I said, “Didn’t I hear that David Niven, as soon as he finished Raffles, was off to go home and join up?”

“Ah yes, but he’s young. Most of us here were in the last one, and not all came out in the best of shape. Did you know that five well-known actors now plying their trade and playing their cricket and polo on this side of the water served together in the London Scottish regiment?”

I confessed I didn’t know.

“Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains, Ronald Colman, Cedric Hardwicke, and Herbert Marshall. Rathbone was decorated for valor.”

“And didn’t Marshall lose a leg?”

“He did. Ronald Colman kept his but still walks with a limp. Rains was gassed and lost most of the sight in one eye. Charles Laughton was gassed too, but came out of it all right. And what about Leslie Howard, badly shellshocked and invalided out early.”

“Maybe the experience helped his acting.”

“Probably not, but I venture acting saved his life.”

“What about you, Gordon?”

He shrugged. “I heard plenty of noise, saw a few chums blown to bits, went through some scary battles the last year of the war, but survived without a scratch.” He shook his head sadly, a faraway look in his eyes. “Too many of our lads lost their lives, Seb, a generation decimated. And the ones that perished weren’t always the right ones, if you know what I mean. Good men died, while the undeserving lived on. I don’t only mean mere cowards either. I’m far too old and beaten down to make a big thing of cowardice, because we’re all cowards one time or another, aren’t we? But I saw greater evil than that, Seb, active evil, not passive evil.”

“What do you mean exactly?”

“I once knew an American officer who deserted his troops, left them to die, and in the confusion of the battlefield got away with it, probably got decorated for valor, the bloody bastard.” Then he looked at me as if I might take it the wrong way. “Mind you, your lot did a great deal of good for us, and don’t think we don’t appreciate it. Too many died, but more would have if you lot had stayed home. Still, what that officer did was a crime of the worst sort, and one that went unpunished.” Maltravers lowered his voice conspiratorially, though there was no one else near enough to hear him. “And I’ll tell you something else, Seb. That bastard is here among us. In Hollywood, the big happy family of cinema makers. No danger he’d ever recognize me. I wasn’t an officer, you see, not worthy of notice, invisible as Chesterton’s postman.”

By that time, I was thinking the old actor a little unbalanced, or maybe kidding me. He was known for tall tales. I was half joking when I asked him if that evil character might turn up at the pool party.

“Oh yes. In fact, I’ll guarantee it.” He shook his head after a moment. “There I go again. I mustn’t babble on about the horrors of war when I should be urging you chaps to join the fight and send your own youth off to die...”

What could I say to that? It was a relief that our host chose that moment to come by and introduce a couple of recently arrived guests. But first Max Ferguson greeted Maltravers with a show of facetious surprise. “Didn’t know you were here, Gordon,” he said, adding with a smile, “He doesn’t believe in doorbells or announcing himself, but why should he? This man is welcome anywhere in Hollywood.”

Max towered over the couple he’d brought with him, a little guy in his mid forties who resembled a jockey no longer able to make the weight and an unobtrusively attractive brunette ten or so years younger who had about two inches on him. “You fellows know Phil and Sophie Devine, don’t you?”

I knew Phil, had never met his wife before. They were apparently both new to Maltravers. As we both rose to our feet with the courtesy practiced at that time, the actor said, “Delighted, Mrs. Devine.”