Joanna picked her way through the boxes, choosing to start with one of the corners furthest away from the steps. Twenty minutes later, she had settled for three boxes whose cracked yellow newspaper cuttings suggested their age, as well as a battered suitcase.
Back downstairs, she sat on the hearth trying to grab what warmth there was. ‘I’m fre-freezing!’ She laughed as she shivered uncontrollably.
‘Shall we head to the pub first? I could murder a pint of foaming ale. We could warm up with some bowls of soup.’
‘No thanks.’ She headed for the old suitcase. ‘I want to get started.’
‘Right. If you don’t mind, before my fingers drop off from frostbite, I’ll pop off to the local. Sure you don’t want to come?’
‘Marcus, we haven’t even started! I’ll stay here,’ she said firmly.
‘Okay. Well, don’t secrete anything you find on your person, or I might have to find it later,’ he said as he left the sitting room. As he drove out of the gates, he noticed a grey car parked on the grass verge a few yards past the house. He glanced in and saw two men sitting inside, dressed in Barbours and ostentatiously poring over a walking map. Marcus wondered whether he should call the police. They might be casing the house for a robbery.
Joanna, in spite of the now leaping flames of the fire, still felt chilled to the bone. She could not chance sitting too close because of the fragile paper she was handling. She had so far discovered absolutely nothing that she had not already gleaned from the four biographies.
She skimmed through the notes she’d been keeping as she’d read them. Born in 1900, Sir James had begun to make a name for himself as an actor in the late twenties, starring in a string of Noël Coward plays in the West End. In 1929, he’d married his wife, Grace, and become a widower in 1937 when she had died tragically abroad from pneumonia. According to the newspaper cuttings and interviews with friends in his various biographies, the death of Grace was something from which James had never fully recovered. She had been the love of his life and he’d never married again.
Joanna had also noted that there wasn’t a single photograph of him as a child or a young man. The biographer had attributed this to a fire at James’s parents’ house – apparently somewhere near here – destroying everything they owned. The first photograph on record was of James and his young wife Grace, on their wedding day in 1929. From what she could tell from the black-and-white photograph of the wedding party, Grace had been a slight woman, her new husband towering over her, and Joanna saw how tightly she gripped his arm.
After her death, James had been left to care for Charles, his five-year-old son. One biographer had noted that the child had been put in the care of a nanny, and then sent to boarding school at the age of seven. Father and son had apparently never been close, a fact which James had later blamed on his son’s resemblance to his wife. ‘It pained me to even see Charles,’ he’d admitted. ‘I kept him at a distance. I know I was an absent father, and it’s caused me great heartache in my later years.’
In the thirties, James had made a number of successful films for J. Arthur Rank in England, and it was this that had really brought him to the public’s attention. He’d had a brief fling with Hollywood, then, when war gripped Europe, James had gone abroad as part of ENSA, the entertainment branch of the British war movement, visiting British troops and boosting morale.
Once the war had ended, Sir James had worked at the Old Vic, taking on some of the big classic roles. His portrayal of Hamlet, followed two years later by Henry V, had moved him into the elite ranks of the great. It was then he’d bought the Dorset house, preferring to spend time alone there rather than circulate amongst the glitterati of the London theatrical scene.
In 1955, James had moved to Hollywood on a permanent basis. He’d spent fifteen years making some good and some – according to one reviewer – ‘frighteningly bad’ pictures. Then he’d returned to the UK stage in 1970, and in 1976 had played King Lear with the RSC – his swansong, as he’d announced to the media. After that, he had devoted himself to his family, especially his granddaughter, Zoe, who had recently lost her mother. Perhaps, a biographer had suggested, he had been trying to pay penance for the earlier neglect of his own son.
Joanna sighed. Her lap and the floor were covered in ageing newspaper, photographs, letters . . . none of which bore any further illuminating information. Although ‘Siam’ was most definitely confirmed as Sir James’s nickname, as it was used regularly throughout the mass of correspondence he had kept. Having read through every word of the letters at first, about people with nicknames like ‘Bunty’ and ‘Boo’, she had grown bored at the descriptions of the roles he was playing, general theatre gossip and the weather. Nothing incriminating there.
She glanced at her watch. It was ten to three already and she was only halfway through the suitcase.
‘What am I really looking for?’ she asked the dusty cold air.
Cursing the lack of time, she continued working her way through to the bottom of the suitcase and was just about to dump all the papers back in when she noticed a photograph sticking out of an old programme. Pulling it out, she saw the familiar faces of Noël Coward and Gertrude Lawrence – the famous actress – and, standing next to them, a man she also recognised.
She rummaged through the pile for the photograph of James Harrison on his wedding day, and put it side by side with the one she’d just found. With his black hair and trademark moustache, James Harrison was instantly recognisable as he stood next to his bride. But surely the man standing next to Noël Coward, despite his blond hair and clean-shaven face, was also James Harrison? Joanna compared the nose, the mouth, the smile and – yes! – it was the eyes that gave him away. She was sure it was him.
Perhaps, she mused, James had dyed his hair blond and removed his moustache for a role in one of Coward’s plays?
She hastily put the photo to one side as she heard the key in the lock.
‘Hello.’ Marcus entered the sitting room, bent down and massaged her shoulders. ‘Find anything interesting for the article yet?’
‘Lots, thanks. It’s been absolutely fascinating.’
‘Good. Fancy some smoked salmon sandwiches? You must be starving, and beer always gives me an appetite.’ He wandered towards the door.
‘No smoked salmon for me,’ she called after him. ‘Just some of that lovely bread you brought, and a nice hot cup of tea would be wonderful.’
‘I have caviar too. Want some of that?’
‘No! Thanks, though.’
Joanna went back to the piles of photographs and papers then ten minutes later Marcus put down a tray with a plate of generously buttered bread and a pot of steaming tea onto the coffee table. He gave her a sweet smile.
‘Can I help you?’
‘Not really, no. I mean, thanks, but I know what I’m looking for.’
