She was the most beautiful person who ever died.
Her silver evening gown was a small lake around her. Her fingernails were five scarlet beetles dead and shining on either side of her slumped body.
All the hot lights looked down, trying to keep her warm when she was fast cooling. My blood too, thought Cleve. Keep me warm, lights!
The shock of it held everybody as in a still photo.
Denim, fumbling with a cigarette, spoke first.
“We were in the middle of a scene. She just fell down and that was all.”
Tally Durham, about the size of a salt shaker, wandered blindly about the stage telling everybody, “We thought she fainted, that’s all! I got the smelling salts!”
Denim sucked, deeply nervous, on his smoke. “The smelling salts didn’t work…”
For the first time in his life Cleve touched Diana Coyle.
But it was too late now. What good to touch cold clay that didn’t laugh back at you using green eyes and curved lips?
He touched her and said, “She’s been poisoned.”
The word “poison” spread out through the dim sound stage behind the glaring lights. Echoes came back with it.
Georgie Kroll stuttered. “She—she got a drink—from the soft drinks—box—a couple minutes ago. Maybe—”
Cleve found the soft drinks dispenser blindly. He smelled one bottle and tucked it aside carefully, using a handkerchief, into a lunchbox that was studio property. “Nobody touch that.”
The floor was rubbery to walk on. “Anybody see anybody else touch that bottle before Diana drank out of it?”
Way up in the glaring electrical heaven, a guy looked down like a short-circuited god and called, “Hey, Cleve, just before the last scene we had light trouble. Somebody conked a main switch. The lights were doused for about a minute and a half. Plenty time for someone to fix that bottle!”
“Thanks.” Cleve turned to Jamie Winters, the cameraman. “You got film in your camera? Got a picture of—her—dying?”
“I guess so. Sure!”
“How soon can you have it developed?”
“Two, three hours. Got to call Juke Davis and have him come to the studio, though.”
“Phone him, then. Take two watchmen with you to guard that film. Beat it!”
Far away the sirens were singing and Hollywood was going to sleep. Somebody onstage suddenly realized Diana was dead and started sobbing.
I wish I could do that, thought Cleve. I wish I could cry. What am I supposed to do now, act tough, be a Sherlock? Question everyone, when my heart isn’t working? Cleve heard his voice going on alone.
“We’ll be working late tonight, everybody. We’ll be working until we get this scene right. And if we don’t get it right, I guess we don’t go home. Before the homicide squad gets here, everyone to their places. We’ll do the scene over. Places, everybody.”
They did the scene over.
* * *
The homicide squad arrived. There was one detective named Foley and another named Sadlowe. One was small, the other big. One talked a lot, and the other listened. Foley did the talking and it gave Cleve a sick headache.
R. J. Guilding, the director and producer of the film, slumped in his canvas chair, wiping his face and trying to tell Foley that he wanted this whole mess kept out of the papers and quiet.
Foley told him to shut up. Foley glared at Cleve as if he were also a suspect. “What’ve you found out, son?”
“There was film in the camera. Film of Diana—Miss Coyle’s death.”