“What’s that?”
“She died soon after. Too many sleeping tablets.” Groom’s voice had an almost ghoulish flatness. “She was pregnant. She was trying to get into pictures, but I guess she never got any further than the casting couch.”
“Is that on record?”
“No — it’s just more gossip. Ufferlitz went out with her quite a lot. However, Mr Templar will probably tell you that I murdered her too.”
“What was her name?” asked the Saint.
“Trilby Andrews.”
Something smooth and magnificent like a great wave rolled up over Simon Templar’s head, and when it had passed he was outside the studio, alone, and the conversation had broken up and petered out in the frustrated ineffectual way that had perhaps always been doomed for it, but that didn’t seem to matter anymore. It had ended with Groom sulky and sneering, and Condor turning his long predatory nose from one to the other of them like the beak of a suspicious bird; there was nothing much more that he could do, it was only talk and suggestion and leads that he could remember to follow later, but Simon hardly even noticed how the scene ended. Clear as a cameo in his mind now he had a name, a name that had been written on a photograph of a face which in some faint disturbing way had seemed as if it should have been familiar and yet was not, and now the wave rolled over and left him with a serenity of knowledge that out of all the cold threads that he had been trying to weave into patterns he had at last touched one that had a warmth and life of its own...
He found himself crossing the boulevard to think it over with the mild encouragement of a few drops of Peter Dawson. The interior of the Front Office was dim and soothing after the bold light outside, and he had been there for several minutes with a drink in front of him before he was aware that he was not the only customer ahead of the five o’clock stampede.
“H’lo,” said the heart-shaking voice of Orlando Flane, now somewhat thickened and slurred with alcohol. “The great detective himself, in person!”
He unwound himself from the obscurity of a booth and steered a painstaking course to the bar, only tripping over his own feet once.