Echoes of Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon(77)

Lancaster continues, “A gun loaded with blanks can kill you if it’s been jammed with—”

“Aging makeup?” Angela finishes the thought. “The stuff that makes me look old?”

“Older.” Lancaster nods, but it’s an uneasy nod. Maybe he’s starting to realize he’s overplayed his hand. Tipped over into caricature.

Angela says, “There’s only one person who behaved as if he knew something was about to go wrong before it did. Just one person who moved well out of the way before Ruby fired the gun.” Angela scans the faces of the actors and camera operators and crew. “Surely I’m not the only one who noticed.”

No one steps forward. And why would they? All eyes had been on Ruby. A herd of orangutans could have sauntered across the soundstage and no one would have noticed when Lancaster crept away.

“Bastard!” Ruby screams. She’s a red blur as she throws herself at Lancaster, clawing at his face. It takes both of the burglars and an electrician to pull her off. She struggles and finally shakes them loose. In a cold, clear voice, she says, “My father trusted you and you betrayed him. Again.”

In the uneasy silence that follows, Angela can feel the polarity in the room reverse. Lancaster has become the focal point.

“Who’s your father?” Angela asks.

Before Ruby can answer, Lancaster raises both arms and says, “That’s enough. Clear the set.” When no one moves, he bellows, “Now!”

Moments later, it’s just Ruby and Angela and Lancaster on the soundstage.

“My father was Ralph Lago,” Ruby says, her soft voice echoing in the vast empty space. “He”—Ruby tips her head in Lancaster’s direction—“and my father were long-time business partners.”

Of course Angela’s heard the name. Seen Lago’s picture in the paper, a Hollywood accountant who committed suicide a few months ago after he was convicted of embezzling studio funds. Now she realizes that Lago must have been the man she saw years ago, working surrounded by computer printouts in the small office next to Lancaster’s. Angela had assumed he was Lancaster’s bookkeeper.

“You were best friends.” As Ruby spits out the words, Lancaster recoils. “Dad padded production charges so you could skim profits. When you realized you were being investigated, you got my dad to take the rap. God forbid the great director should face charges.”

Lancaster doesn’t contradict her.

Ruby takes a deep breath and wipes away a tear. “Just hours before he killed himself, Dad told me you’d promised to give me this part. But you couldn’t even do that for him, could you? You’ve got someone else you’ve promised the part, haven’t you? I can only imagine what she’s got on you.”

Lancaster just hangs there, staring at the floor and looking deflated. No wonder he needed Angela. Not only to play Mrs. Hudson and stand in for Irene Adler and mentor an inexperienced performer, but also to play an aging actress desperate enough to kill off her rival. How convenient it would have been for him, disposing of both Ruby and Angela with a single blank.



Eight months later, the new Scandal in Bohemia opens in Westwood Village at the Fox Theatre. Strobes light up the crowd gathered beneath its phallic Art Deco tower and a searchlight arcs across the sky. Ruby and Angela arrive together in a black limo.

Ruby steps out, resplendent in a red, off-the-shoulders gown with a flowing cape. Angela follows in a black-silk tuxedo jacket over a long skirt slit up to her thigh. She looks down, trying to slow time as the pointy toes of her black stilettos hit the red carpet. She lifts her gaze to the marquee.





WORLD PREMIERE TONIGHT


Yes! She gives a mental fist pump.

Anthony Fox, starring in the film as Sherlock Holmes, comes over to them. He’s every inch the dashing elder statesman in his tux. He and Angela pose for photographs, standing on either side of Ruby.

A young reporter—his press pass says he writes for Variety—draws Angela aside. “Ms. Cassano, ‘Scandal in Bohemia’ marks your transition from actor to filmmaker. At what point in your career did it hit you that you wanted to make this big career move?”

“I’d been thinking about directing films for quite a while,” she says, not bothering to correct him, to say that this isn’t the first film she’s directed. It’s a better story if it is. “When this opportunity literally fell into my lap, how could I pass it up?”

Fell into my lap is a bit of an overstatement, but Glenn Lancaster took defeat more gracefully than Ruby or Angela expected. In return for their silence about the lethal prop pistol and Lancaster’s part in the embezzlement scheme, Ruby got to play the lead she’d been promised and Angela took over as director. Angela let Lancaster know that she’d stashed the cassette with footage from that disastrous first take in a safe-deposit box. She’s taking her cue from Irene Adler, who tells Sherlock Holmes that she’s keeping the compromising photograph “to preserve a weapon which will always secure me from any steps which he might take in the future.”

The reporter gives Angela an earnest look. “As a female director—”

“Just ‘director,’” she says, cutting him off. “You don’t say ‘female reporter,’ or ‘female postal worker.’”

The reporter colors. Licks his lips. “I understand you’re finished shooting a sequel and starting something new? Can you tell me more?”