Read Frequent Hearses for Free Online Page A

would.”
    Judy resorted to the telephone. “Johnny,” she said, “get me someone who’s working on Gaiety Sue , will you?… Yes, Weinberg will probably do.” There was a pause; with her hand over the microphone, “Weinberg is the jazz end of this department,” Judy explained. “He’s—Oh, hello, Sam. I want to know what, they’re doing with Sue today. Is the chorus here? …It is? Good. What stage are they working on? …Five? Right. Thanks very much. Bye-bye.”
    She returned the instrument to its cradle. “All’s well,” she said. “Johnny’ll take you across as soon as you want to go, and rout out the Bryant girl for you. I warn you, she’s pretty dumb… Well. Is there anything else?”
    “Let’s see where we’ve arrived.” Ceremoniously Humbleby consulted his notebook. “Gloria Scott had been given this part in the Pope film… Now, how long ago did that happen?”
    “Not more than a fortnight ago,” said Judy definitely. “Perhaps less.”
    “And she was pleased?”
    “Lord, yes—on top of the world. A few days back I met her by chance on the way here, and she told me about it then. It had quite gone to her head, silly infant, and she was so exasperatingly vain about it I could have spanked her.”
    “You get the impression that it was genuinely a fait accompli? That”—Humbleby gestured vaguely—“that things had been signed?”
    “Oh, certainly.”
    “She couldn’t have been making it all up? Have been—um—anticipating the event?”
    Judy shook her head. “She could have been—she was quite capable of counting her chickens before they were hatched—but in this case I’m almost sure she wasn’t. The thing to do would be to go to the Legal Department and look for the contract.”
    “I’ll do that, yes.” Humbleby made a note. “Because if that contract does exist, it makes her suicide somewhat unaccountable.”
    “Exactly what I was thinking,” said Judy. She got up and began to pace restlessly about the room. “From what I know of her, I shouldn’t have imagined that any motive, however overwhelming, would have been sufficient to offset that contract.”
    “Though, of course”—and here Humbleby shifted uneasily in his chair—“there is the point that if this film were not to be put—um—on the floor for some time to come, the advance of her pregnancy might make it impossible for her to act in it.”
    “I haven’t the least doubt,” said Judy briefly, “that she intended to get rid of the child before it was born. Such things are done. And she wouldn’t have been so cock-a-hoop about the part if she hadn’t envisaged a way out of that difficulty.”
    “Um. Ah,” said Humbleby, embarrassed. “Just so. Well, you’ve been very helpful, Miss Flecker. And from now on we must stand on our own feet.” He got up and did this, presumably by way of illustration. “I think, perhaps, that—”
    “Just one other thing,” said Judy hesitantly. “How—how did it happen?”
    Humbleby told her—while she stood with puckered brows, like one who swallows a disagreeable medicine, and the whining of a mechanical saw in the carpenters’ shop provided a cheerlessly impersonal obbligato to the narrative. When it was over she nodded.
    “That’s very much the way I should have expected Gloria to do it, if she was going to do it at all. No premeditation—just a sudden appreciation of the means, and a sudden uncontrollable impulse. That’s very like her. And it’s very like her, too”—Judy moved her shoulders as if to mitigate an access of grue —“to regret it the instant it was done. Her way of living was to do rash things and then regret them the instant they were done…”
    Judy’s voice dropped suddenly. “Oh, Lord” she said, and steadied herself against the desk.
    For a moment they were all silent. Then the door opened and a middle-aged man, completely bald, looked in at them. With an effort Judy pulled herself together. “Hallo, Frank,” she