Echoes of Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon(72)
Perhaps the last word belongs to Vicars, a distant cousin of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who told a Daily Express reporter: “The detectives might well say that it is an affair for a Sherlock Holmes to investigate.”
UNDERSTUDY IN SCARLET
by Hallie Ephron
It’s not an open casting call, Angela Cassano realizes as she takes in the emptiness of director Glenn Lancaster’s outer office. The gloomy space, on the second floor over storefronts on Santa Monica in Beverly Hills, has rough stucco walls painted off-white. The furnishings are chrome and ebony and black leather, and the stale air smells faintly of cigar. Her appointment was at two. At three she’s still waiting for Lancaster to emerge from his inner sanctum.
“They want you,” her agent had said when he called, sounding as surprised as she was that a remake of A Scandal in Bohemia was afoot, this time as a major motion picture. Same director, same actor as Sherlock Holmes, and they wanted her to read for the role she played twenty-five years ago: Irene Adler, the one woman who outsmarted the great detective.
Was she interested? Of course she was. The only gig she’s got lined up is summer stock in Ojai playing Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? But she’s also more than a bit wary. She and Lancaster didn’t part on the best of terms, not after she refused to sleep with him—something he seemed to think was his due for casting her in his movie. Bygones, she hopes. Because if he were holding a grudge, why would he be calling her agent?
The office suite hasn’t changed much since she was here last. The door to a small inner office stands open, and Angela has a dim memory of Lancaster’s bookkeeper working in the now-empty room, his desk piled high with computer printouts. The receptionist, who is studiously avoiding eye contact, could be the same one Angela had to get past years ago. The woman’s chin sags and her hair is more salt than pepper.
Angela sits up, straightening her shoulders, fluffing her hair, and bunching a bit more cleavage into the deep V-neck of her top. She crosses her legs and tugs at the hem of her pencil skirt.
Last night she got out the old script and put on a slinky red silk gown like the one that she wore in the film. She practiced her lines, watching herself in the mirror. Then practiced again with her eyes closed. She could feel Irene Adler spring back to life inside her.
She’s capable of far more nuance than when she first played the part, though reviewers were kind. The LA Times critic called that performance, her first in a starring role, “luminous” and “dangerous.”
She’s still luminous. Still dangerous. And at forty-five, far more suited to the role of the retired opera singer whose torrid love affair with the Crown Prince of Bohemia—captured in a compromising photograph—threatens to derail that Royal’s impending marriage.
Her best line in Scandal is the painfully grammatically correct, “I love and am loved by a better man than he.” She can deliver it sad and brooding. Or defiant. Or proud. Or secretive. She can even make the statement sound self-deluding if that’s what they want. Or start one way and end another.
Anthony Fox, the actor who played Sherlock opposite her Irene, is reprising his role in the remake, too. Even way back then, he was on the downhill side of a semi-distinguished acting career. The Times reviewer called his performance “solid.” After Scandal he found himself showered with cameos in films like Scream IV and The Muppet Mystery. Not the Royal Shakespeare, but it was a living. On top of which he had points on the back end of Scandal, which Angela did not. That’s turned out to be the gift that keeps giving.
Because who could have predicted that their Scandal would develop a cult following? At classic film festivals, Angela’s Irene Adler is nearly as recognizable as Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia. Fans come to midnight showings dressed in character and intone famous lines like “To Sherlock Holmes she was always the woman.” They boo and throw popcorn at the screen when the king dismisses his former lover as “a well-known adventuress.”
At last the door to Lancaster’s inner office opens. “Angela!” The man himself emerges. He doesn’t look half bad. Black T-shirt tucked into jeans, sockless loafers, his shaved head gleaming. That weird scruffy beard is new. He bounds over to her with the intensity of a much younger man.
“Darling!” he says. “There you are.” He bends down and, pure reflex, she crosses her arms over her chest as she leans in for what turns out to be a perfectly innocent air kiss. He whispers, “There’s someone I need you to meet.”
Coming out of the office behind Lancaster is a young woman. A tiny sprite, pale and ethereal as a ghost, she’s got to be a natural blonde. Her tight blue jeans are artfully ripped like the ones that cost hundreds. She’s carrying an enormous pumpkin-colored bag, its straps too long and floppy to be a real Birkin.
“Angela, this is Ruby Lake,” Lancaster says.
“Miss Cassano!” Ruby says, holding back, shy. “I’m such a fan girl. I’ve seen you in this movie a gajillion times. I just hope I can be as good.” Angela doesn’t get time to consider what that means because the girl, she’s barely out of her teens if she’s a day, adds, “And I adored Wallflower.”
Angela is taken aback. She stands. “You saw it?”
“At Sundance. It was great. Really terrific.”
“Thank you so much,” Angela says, and she means it. Wallflower was a low-budget film that she wrote and directed, and when it got into Sundance a few years ago Angela thought maybe, just maybe she’d break into Tinseltown’s most exclusive boys’ club. But despite rave reviews, the film didn’t get picked up. No opportunities to direct more motion pictures came flooding her way.