Elinor, darling, of course you would be here,” actress Pola Negri greeted her and pressed her cheek against Elinor’s, one side and then the other through their stiff, netted veils as they emerged from their chauffered motorcars. Elinor hoped the veils and hats might help the stars hide from the screaming crowds along the street. It was blazing hot in the sun—blazing hot in her grief.
Not only was Valentino dead, but his fans were tearing their hair and clothing and shrieking despite their proximity to the Beverly Hills Church of the Good Shepherd where the memorial service was to be held today, August 30, 1926. Clara Bow, across the way, waved and blew her a kiss, and the crowd screamed again as if that were for them. But most of the hysteria was for Valentino.
Elinor was glad the police were holding back the crowd from rushing the arriving guests. Shameful to mourn like that, for it said, Look at me, me, me! But then how appropriate for Hollywood, however great the tragedy of Valentino’s loss from appendicitis and peritonitis at age thirty-one. He’d died in New York City, and his funeral there, she’d heard, had been chaos, so she should have expected it here, too. The thing was, in her heart, she could have joined that mob, crying, wailing, falling to the ground near the heaps of dying flowers and scribbled love notes.
Because, bad enough to lose Valentino, but Curzon had died last year, and she’d smothered her grief when she’d received Lucile’s letter about his sad end. Curzon and his second wife, Grace, had been estranged for several years and hated living together. Grace had not given him the heir he’d so desired. He had lost his life’s goal to become prime minister when Stanley Baldwin was elected instead.
Ironically, Elinor thought as she gripped the iron railing and headed up the stone stairs of the church, Curzon had been sequestered at Montacute where he’d stashed her away until she learned the devastating news of his engagement to Grace. So he hadn’t been aware of the political machinations in Parliament until too late. He had died what they called “land poor,” and all that would have been rich revenge, except she still missed and mourned him. And forgave him at last.
And now Valentino was gone too.
“Chin up, Elinor,” Jesse Lasky whispered just inside the vestibule and put an arm around her shoulders. “I know many claim to have discovered Rudy in the mix of hopefuls, but you truly made him shine, him and our Clara Bow ‘It Girl,’ eh? What a loss! He could have made himself and everyone even more of a fortune.”
Elinor almost agreed, but that sounded so crass—and what would she have been agreeing with? That she had more or less discovered Valentino and helped to shape him—or that he was worth only money to her and everyone else here? It wasn’t true in her case, for she had cared for him deeply.
As Lasky melded into the crowd of mourners, Charlie Chaplin appeared as if he’d been watching for her and held out the crook of his arm to escort her into the sanctuary. At least he looked truly grieved.
“Hello, fellow Brit,” he said and squeezed her arm against his ribs. “Funny how funerals make us think about past losses, eh?”
“You are hardly the ‘little tramp’ of movie fame, but a serious, astute thinker. I see you read minds.”
“Remembering your husband’s death today?”
“It was my father who died young,” she admitted, though she hadn’t realized she would share that until she blurted it out. He escorted her up the aisle as if this were a wedding. “And Mother always used to tell Lucile and me how dashing he was, how strong and handsome and clever. We never knew him,” she said with a sigh. “But even when she wed again of necessity, our departed, fabulous father was somehow always hovering in her heart—in the room.”
“So maybe Valentino was like a long-lost, dashing, strong and handsome, and greatly missed young father to you and not a younger boyfriend or a son.”
She turned sharply to look at him, but he hadn’t meant it as a dig or joke. And had he been right? Those young, handsome men over the years, some Clayton sent away, some she did—was she looking for her lost father, not a lover? And Lucile had adored those so-called acolytes she had mentored and had suffered bitterly over the loss of that singer, Bobbie. Yet as bright as they both were, neither of them had ever thought of this, and of such were lives and longing made.
Elinor could hear what the two men behind her were saying once she was seated and Chaplin settled down. He looked not mischievous, but almost wise and benign, like some modern-day Buddha as the pipe organ began to play sonorous and sweeping music. The congregation stood as the priests and altar boys entered with the casket rolled down the aisle amid the scent of smoky incense from the censers swinging on their chains.
Yet she heard from behind her, “His sex appeal would have taken him to the top of the money heap. Women around the world would have paid anything to see him—and then fantasized he was their sheik in their tent ready to ravish them.”
“No kidding. Money talks. He’s to be interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery on Santa Monica Boulevard, I heard, and they could probably sell tickets to have a glimpse of the crypt.”
She turned to glare at the two men, who ignored her. She was struck again by the fact people here were thinking of Valentino in terms of money, not a young life gone. Had she, too, become greedy and crass? She’d noticed the attitude of avarice and self-importance among movie people before, but had she been part of that? She’d heard others call it the Hollywood curse or the Hollywood disease, and was she feeling so sick to her stomach because she’d really caught that—was like that?
The so-called religion of New Thought had ensnared her for a while with its “golden thoughts” and its worship of wealth, success, fame, even youth. But what good had any of that done Valentino? At least he was being buried as a Catholic, a believer in the Good Shepherd who cared for his flock whether they were rich or poor. That had mattered to her during the Great War, but she’d lost that all in Hollywood.
On the right-hand side of the church, she saw a lovely stained-glass window of the Good Shepherd, the Lord Jesus with a lamb on his shoulders. Sunlight streamed through it to cast a kaleidoscope of colors onto Valentino’s flower-covered coffin on its catafalque.
She jolted when the presiding priest intoned, “The Lord be with you.” But only a few in the congregation knew to reply, “and also with you.”
Lucile admitted to herself she had never felt so anxious over being alone with a man, well, not since she was young and went to her first dance on just Jersey the year she came out. She and Cosmo were here in Scotland at his Maryculter estate, alone but for his staff. He’d been courting her during the time since she had returned to London—or had she been courting him? Dinners out, motorcar rides, his help with her finances in the shop just like old times.
Despite a kiss or a hug here and there, Cosmo had been protective but entirely proper. Was he waiting for her to make the first move? Perhaps he was working up to telling her this was the way it would be—only friends? She supposed she deserved that. Despite the fact he was the one who had left her, she was really the one who had deserted him.
The Lucile, Lady Duff-Gordon Shop had surely seen better times, for few women were buying fancy frocks after the war with a looming recession and international tensions. In a way, she thought, as she looked at herself in the pier glass in her bedroom adjacent to Cosmo’s, she hoped her floor-length Scottish skirt and frilled lace blouse she planned to surprise him with tonight would further send a message to him that she wanted back permanently in his life—and as his wife.
The wooing of each other would make a good plot for a movie script or novel for Elinor. She’d never dared to offer ideas before, but her thoroughly modern sister was coming to England for a visit next week. How they used to fret and fume back and forth about “Nellie” always having her nose in a book while “Lucy” was more adventurous. She recalled one huge argument they had on Jersey when Elinor acted completely scandalized because she saw her reading the end of a book first to decide if she wanted to read it at all.
“You are ruining everything!” Nellie had shouted. “It’s the journey that matters—the getting there, what happens along the way. How can you be so foolish—so insecure?”
“Me, insecure? You’re the one hiding from real life, just you and pages and printed words! How can you waste your time on a story that may end unhappily!” Lucy had shouted back and thrown the book at her. They hadn’t spoken until Mother forced them to make up. Had they ever really made up? She still longed for happy endings, however rough the journey, despite the glorious, bright times.
Lucile jolted back to reality when a knock sounded on the door that linked the two bedrooms. Cosmo had told her it was locked, as it had never been years ago, and the key was on her side. Had he meant something suggestive by that? Perhaps that it was her decision to join him? When he’d escorted her here after dinner last night on the day of their arrival, he’d left her at the hall door with a simple kiss on her cheek, and she was astounded how sad that had made her. But, if they were to be man and wife again, shouldn’t he make the first move? He’d agreed she would keep her newly purchased house in Hampstead Heath so that she could afford to be near the shop most of the time, but she’d vowed to visit Scotland more than she ever had, and he’d simply nodded. At least he’d kept the way she redecorated Maryculter upstairs and down years ago.
She hurried to the door and unlocked it. The mere turning of the key seemed incredibly loud. She swept open the door.
“My Scottish lass is back,” he said as he put one hand up on the door frame, just leaning there and studying her. He wore his favorite kilt and dinner jacket. “You must have designed that skirt,” he added.
“I did. Ordered the material and had it made as a surprise for you. I know it’s a local plaid,” she said, turning round once, then backing up several steps until her bottom bumped into the high, four-poster bed.
“It’s called a tartan, lass. And that one’s a dress Stuart, the royals, you know. I see I need to give you some Scottish tutoring.”
“I’m always willing to learn.”
“Then let me serenade my lady love,” he said, coming closer. He took her hands in his and sang slowly, almost sadly in his beautiful, deep baritone, “Should Auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind? . . .”
Tears filled her eyes. She stood as if mesmerized, longing to throw herself into his arms, but he stopped in midword and said, “My beautiful, beloved lass, you are always brought to my mind. I may have been a cad, and you’ve been a wee bit daft, but shall we try our marriage again—for old times’ sake?”
“I say yes. But how about for new times’ sake?”
She threw herself into his arms. Just as in the old days—surely like times yet to come—he picked her up and carried her to the big ancestral bed in his adjoining room. He lay her down and nearly ripped off his jacket.
“The lord and lady of the manor are going to be very, very late to dinner,” he told her and proceeded to show her why.
Chaplin and Marion Davies, Hearst’s mistress—Chaplin had somehow been allowed to bring her without Hearst—insisted on taking Elinor back to her suite at the Ambassador Hotel after Valentino’s memorial service, so she sent her car home without her. Truth be told, Hollywood was a crime-ridden area, evidently as thieves realized how many wealthy people were running around in real jewelry. Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford had taken to having a guard in another motorcar follow Elinor home after dinner at their lovely mansion Pickfair. A woman alone—well, it was so kind of them. And somehow lately, she had really felt alone and was longing to take a trip home.
Lucile was in England now, though she’d heard little from her lately. They’d hardly seen each other in years. Besides, long absences from Elinor’s daughters and her grandchildren sometimes made the bright lights of Hollywood seem very dim.
“Come on then, old girl, let’s lift a toast to Valentino,” Chaplin said to her as his motorcar pulled up to the curb at the hotel. “Marion, pull that hat down but not the veil, because that makes people look at you. Hopefully, you will not be recognized, and we’ll go up with Elinor for a nightcap. Heaven knows, we need one.”
Marion gave him a quick punch in the shoulder. “And you think people in the lobby won’t recognize you?”
“My dears, I shall just look serious and walk straight and no one will turn a head.”
“I can’t stay long, though,” Marion said with a sigh. “It’s a miracle the old man let me out on my own for once. I do think Elinor looks like she needs friends right now, but you know who will have a rip-roaring fit if I’m late. Hearst is jealous of everyone.”
“Except me, which is a mistake,” Chaplin said as they went in single file, looking neither right nor left as the doorman opened the lobby entrance for them.
Elinor had once prided herself in being recognized from time to time as a famous authoress, but compared to the on-screen people, she could go anywhere without stares.
They were glad to snag an elevator with no one in it except the uniform-clad operator, but his eyes popped when he saw Marion. They piled out on Elinor’s floor and made the turn toward her suite. She was grateful for her friends, but suddenly, it made her so lonely for her family again, even for Lucile. Why had they not gotten on at times when so much bound them, past and present? Their lives, full of fame and fortune—and a wretched first marriage—had the blessing of daughters. They were so much the same.
“Oh my, someone’s drunk,” Marion muttered when they heard, then saw two men down the corridor, fighting. One was on the floor and one—oh, the other one was lifting a fist—no, a knife—and plunging it down again and again.
“Stop, there!” Chaplin shouted.
The standing man vaulted over the prone man’s body and ran the other way, toward the exit stairs down the way.
“Right outside my door,” Elinor cried.
“Go back down for help!” Chaplin ordered Marion and pushed her back toward the elevator.
She cried, “I can’t be seen here or Hearst will murder me. But I’ll tell them at the desk, then wait in the car!”
Chaplin rushed down the hall after the running man, though the villain had a head start. Elinor hurried to bend over the injured one. She had to tell herself this was real, not some moving picture. Blood puddled on the crimson carpet outside her door. She didn’t know him—couldn’t think what to do until help came. He lay face up, suddenly very still.
She hated to touch him but she ripped off a glove and felt for his wrist pulse. His skin was slick with his own blood. Nothing. No pulse. She felt for his neck artery. On this day of all days—a man dead, literally at her door.
Rushing down the hall came a portly man with a boutonniere in his lapel—oh, she recognized the hotel manager—and a security policeman with two other men behind them.
“Mrs. Glyn, are you all right? Do you know him?”
“Yes, I’m all right—and no. A stranger. He’s—he appears to be dead.”
“Frank, get a tarp or stretcher up here fast,” he ordered one man. “Have him taken down the fire stairs. Mrs. Glyn, you realize this never happened here. You saw nothing.”
“No, I saw the man who knifed him, though from afar. Won’t the police want to question what I saw? There was another witness, but . . .”
She glanced down the hall toward the fire escape door where Chaplin had run. Where was he? Surely he hadn’t caught or accosted a man with a knife.
“I don’t know where my friend went but I—”
The manager cut her off her words with a slice of his hand through the air. “We can’t have this happening here. Like the novels and movies you write, Mrs. Glyn—mere fiction. Reputation—everything here. In gratitude, of course, we will reduce the rate of your suite. Say nothing about this to anyone. It never happened.”
Elinor leaned against the wall for support. Shocked at their reaction as much as by the corpse, she just gaped at them. Too much today. Too much lately. But how could she be part of a cover-up of a man’s murder, especially not for a bribe? Did they intend to recarpet this entire hallway so those bloodstains would not show? So she would not have to see them and step over them every time she went in and out? Had both Marion and Chaplin known it would be handled like this? Had Chaplin really chased the killer, or did he just want to save his own skin?
Elinor’s hand shook as she walked around the men and, hugging the wall, unlocked the door of her suite and went in. She locked and bolted it, then barely made it to the sofa before her legs gave out. She was under contract here for almost three more years and was making good money and mingling with fascinating people. Even Three Weeks had finally been made into a film, somehow a justification for the attacks on it and her agony over it all these years.
But she’d been living a hollow life, a tarnished one, and—at least for a while—she was going home. Outside was a stain on the carpet and inside was a stain on her soul.