Page 4 of The Gathering Storm (Morland Dynasty #36)

The Hays Code, as it was generally known, covered everything.

Profanity – the use of words like God, Jesus, hell, damn, bastard and so on – was forbidden.

There was to be no nudity, even in silhouette; men and women were not to be shown in bed together; no excessive or lustful kissing, especially if one of the characters was a bad person.

Crime was not to be treated sympathetically in case it encouraged the impressionable.

There was to be no mockery of the clergy or law-enforcement officers or the institution of marriage.

Scenes depicting childbirth, surgical operations, or the judicial death sentence were outlawed.

And the Flag was to be treated at all times with respect and dignity.

It was natural that, with the content of films so strictly overseen, the studios should clamp down on their stars.

In the early days actors, even the females, had enjoyed a freewheeling, buccaneering kind of life.

But now even a big star like MGM’s Mr Clark Gable had to conduct himself carefully in public: he was separated from his wife, Ria Langham, but she was unwilling to grant him a divorce, so if he romanced any lady it had to be strictly outside the bedroom.

Divorce was acceptable in Hollywood, but adultery was anathema.

Lennie pondered these things as he was driven over to the nursing home in Wilshire. Beanie glanced at him in the mirror, and finally spoke up when they were halted by traffic.

‘Doan worry, Mist’ Manning. Dat Ardmore place is the best. Dat whaur William Powell went, time he got his kinney stones fixed. Miss Rose’ll be okay.’

Lennie gave him a stern look. ‘Oh, you’re talking to me now, are you? You didn’t say a word before, when I might have helped her.’

Beanie looked wounded. ‘I’d have tole you all right, but Wilma, she said notta. She said you wasn’t to be upset.’

‘And do you always do what Wilma tells you?’ Lennie said scornfully.

Beanie thought about it. ‘Pretty much,’ he concluded.

‘She like to whale on me if I cross her any. Wilma, she got a temper on her. She flang a pan o’ potatoes at a journalist feller one time, boiling water an’ all, jus’ cos he trad mud on her clean floor.

’ He chuckled appreciatively. ‘She’s some woman, that Wilma. ’

At the Ardmore, Lennie found Estelle in the sister’s room, sitting at a desk, telephone glued to her ear.

Estelle Cable was tiny, but made up for it with enormous masses of hair, dyed a deep, henna red, and flamboyant clothes.

She never went unnoticed. The air was blue with smoke.

She smoked incessantly from a long-stemmed holder, crushing each cigarette out halfway down, claiming in her harsh bray that she was trying to give up, but lighting another immediately.

No-one knew how old she was: her face, under thick make-up, was hatched with fine lines, so that her detractors sometimes referred to her as the Shrunken Head.

She was fierce, fearless, inexhaustible, and hugely successful at her job.

She raised her baleful eagle’s glare to Lennie as he came in, waved the cigarette at him to wait, barked a few more furious things into the telephone, then slammed it down.

‘This is a bad business,’ she said. Her voice was as smoky as a railway tunnel and her accent was pure Noo Yoik.

She crushed out the current cigarette and, as though without volition, began fumbling in her handbag for another.

‘There’s only so much money can do. I can’t bribe a whole hospital.

’ She waved a free hand at the door. ‘Oh, this place is sound. Discretion is their sell. But someone at the Park will blab. Worse luck, Phil Stuckey from the Herald was outside the Parrot and saw it all. They love all that schmeer down at the Herald , Hollywood gossip, especially the bad kind. Most of all when some little Miss Susie Perfect falls flat on her face.’ She gave him a skin-stripping look. ‘What’ve you heard?’

‘Rosecrantz came to see me this morning. That’s the first I knew she was in any trouble.’

‘Came to see you ?’

‘He’s dropping her as a client,’ Lennie admitted reluctantly. ‘He thought I’d want to know.’

‘Crap,’ Estelle said explosively. She had finally fidgeted a new cigarette out of a pack and fitted it into the holder.

Lennie fished his lighter from his pocket and leaned across.

‘Thanks.’ She blew the first cloud politely away from his face, evidently deep in thought.

‘That may not be all bad. I like Rosecrantz, he’s a great guy, but he’s one of the old school.

Maybe she needs a different kind of agent now, someone with more pizzazz.

I gotta work fast, though, make it that she dumped him . ’

‘But there’s the drink and the drugs at the club,’ Lennie began.

‘Yeah, we gotta work out a story. How’s this? She was taking tablets for hay fever, had one cocktail, had a bad reaction.’

‘But Rose doesn’t—’

‘I gotta tame doctor’ll say he was treating her, warned her not to drink, but she’s young, impetuous, she’s out for an innocent lark with her young pals, who can blame her for forgetting in the heat of the moment?’

‘ One cocktail?’

She shrugged. ‘Bobino, manager of the Parrot, he’s one of mine.

And he’ll keep a hold on his staff. It’s the rest of her posse that’s the problem.

She’s pals with some kids that suffer from loose mouths.

She’s been running with a wild bunch lately.

And some of ’em will do anything to get their names in the papers.

’ She took another mouthful of smoke and absently blew straight at Lennie.

‘If we can keep her out of sight for a month or so, it’ll give time for things to calm down.

We’ll say she’s suffering with nervous exhaustion from working too hard.

What you gotta do is talk to Al Feinstein.

And talk to her . She’s gotta shape up.’

‘It’s a bad business,’ Lennie said gloomily.

‘It’s a shit show, is what it is,’ said Estelle, ‘and nobody’s going to come out smelling like roses. But we’ll fix it between us. Now get out of here and let me get on with my job. I got a thousand favours to call in.’

Beanie had been a mine of information. Rose’s companions in the Parrot had been Don Acres, Kent Millburn, Tab Minkle, Mimi Cates and Jeannie Hooper – members of a large circle of young film actors, including Dean Cornwell, who in various combinations had been getting a reputation – at least on the drivers’ circuit – for wild behaviour.

Tab Minkle, brooding star of Race to the Devil , he of dark forelock, curling upper lip, and smouldering eyes, was the principal hell-raiser.

With a reluctance to meet Lennie’s eyes in the mirror, Beanie mentioned that Tab Minkle’s driver had told him the two of them were ‘having a walk-out’ – his euphemism for an affair.

Six weeks before, she’d been seeing Kent Millburn.

‘It don’t mean nothing,’ he went on. ‘She don’t care a rap about either of ’em. I reckon she’s just sore about Mist’ Howard.’

‘Who’s Mr Howard?’

Beanie’s eyes opened wide. ‘Why, Mr Leslie Howard, sir, who else?’ he said deliberately. ‘Played Sir Percy Blakeney in The Scarlet Pimple-nell ?’

‘I’ve seen the movie.’

‘Starring opp’site Miss Merle Oberon? She’s English too, like Mist’ Howard. After that Pimple movie MGM signed her up, and now she—’

‘What has Leslie Howard to do with Rose?’ Lennie interrupted him before he got too far down the rapids.

‘Well, sir, I’m gettin’ to it. Last year they was having a walk-out.

That was after he stopped seein’ Miss Oberon – you know how she played Anne Boleyn in The Private Life of Henry VIII ?

And our Miss Rose, she was Anne Boleyn in The Falcon and the Rose ?

So Mist’ Howard’s driver, he reckoned Mist’ Howard kinda stuck on the character.

’ He chuckled. ‘Ain’t that a kick? He’s a very romantic gentleman, Mist’ Howard – and a real ladies’ man.

I reckon it’s that accent they fall for. Makes everything you say sound classy.’

‘But he must be twenty years older than Rose.’

‘Yessir, but Miss Oberon only twenty-five. It don’t matter in Hollywood.’

‘You say it’s all over between them now?’

‘Well, sir, Miss Rose was partying too hard and I reckon Mist’ Howard scared there gonna be scandal, so he skedaddled.

But he’s over to New York right now, predoocin’ a play on Broadway, so it’d be over anyhow.

But Miss Rose, I reckon she was fonder of him than he was of her.

Maybe that’s why she been cuttin’ rigs jus’ lately. To show like she ain’t heartbroke.’

Lennie shook his head, aghast at how much he had missed. ‘So tell me,’ he said at last, ‘what’s wrong with Miss Rose’s marriage? Why is she having affairs when she’s not been married a year?’

‘I don’t like to say,’ Beanie murmured, ‘but Mist’ Cornwell, he ain’t no ladies’ man, no, sir, not at all.’

‘Mr Rosecrantz said Mr Cornwell’s a troubled soul.’

‘Dat one way of puttin’ it.’ He hesitated a moment. ‘Word is, he pitches for the B team, if you get my drift.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Beanie gained confidence now. ‘And he likes low comp’ny. Mr Cornwell’s driver, he takes him to all kind o’ dives. Pool halls. Bars down at the docks.’

‘And Rose knows about it?’

‘That’s why she gone a bit crazy, that and Mist’ Howard.’ He looked anxious. ‘She gonna be okay, though?’

‘No thanks to you,’ Lennie said roughly. But he didn’t blame Beanie. He blamed himself.

Rose looked tiny and fragile in the high hospital bed. She raised exhausted, blue-smudged eyes to Lennie, and slow tears leaked out. ‘I thought he loved me. He said he loved me.’ Lennie took hold of her small, damp hand. ‘But it was all just publicity. He only married me for publicity.’