“Blackmail. Chadney was blackmailing Mr. Mann for his involvement in the death of Mr. McDougall. Mr. Mann naturally wanted to get rid of the blackmailer.”
Greenblatt said, “Did he kill McDougall?” Greenblatt was talking as if Mann weren’t in the car with them.
“That’s the funny thing,” Perkins said. “I was puzzled about that for some time. Here is the reconstruction of events... Clete Williams and McDougall fight in the bar over Miss Conrad’s reputation. McDougall then goes upstairs and berates Miss Conrad in person. Williams arrives and throws him out. Then there is further argument in the corridor, and Mr. Mann comes along and breaks it up. That was easy enough to determine.”
“Go on.”
“Well, the next thing we know is that Mr. Mann is down in the bar, asking for a bottle of J&B Scotch, presumably for Mr. McDougall. And we also know that Mr. Mann was supplying McDougall with opium, which he got from Mr. Chadney.”
“This is getting complicated,” Greenblatt said. “McDougall used opium?”
“Yes. He smoked it in his pipes. His pipes, I might remind you, were never found in his room.”
I was sitting there with my mouth open. I knew about the opium, but I also knew Chadney’s girl hadn’t told Perkins about it.
How did Perkins find out?
“From all accounts,” Perkins said, “Mr. McDougall and Mr. Mann had a difficult relationship. McDougall thought he had Mann over a barrel, and he played it that way. He was petty, demanding, and insolent. Mr. Mann didn’t have the nerve to do what he should have done, which was fire him long ago. Instead, he became an errand boy for McDougall. He didn’t like it, but he did it.”
Greenblatt nodded thoughtfully.
“Mr. Mann’s relationship with Mr. McDougall deteriorated markedly that Tuesday. By then, it came to his attention that Sally had been to bed with Mr. McDougall. Sally is, of course, obviously an ambulatory schizophrenic. She is a very disturbed young woman. She has been to bed with many people in the production, and Mann knew about it. He could do nothing about Clete Williams, for instance, or about Tom Franklin, the director. But when McDougall went to bed with her, that was the last straw. He hated McDougall. He wanted to kill him. His rage must have been extreme when he was publicly humiliated by having McDougall toying with Sally on the set.”
“The missing film...”
“Yes,” Perkins said. “That is important, because it shows that by early evening on Tuesday, Mr. Mann was already not functioning well. He heard about the funny business during the morning. He wanted to get rid of the film that recorded it. He didn’t know that Franklin, in his usual diplomatic way, had arranged to scratch the setup and not print anything from that sequence in order to keep Mann from being embarrassed among his friends at the studio.”
Greenblatt shot a glance at Mann for the first time. He shook his head.
“Franklin had already taken care of it, but Mann didn’t know that. He thought he’d better destroy the film. He rode to the airport, and while the chauffeur was in the bathroom, he opened the trunk and discarded what he thought was the correct film. But he chose the wrong magazine. That was why he was so startled the next evening, when he saw dailies.”
I remembered. Mann had said, “What?” in an astonished way, and then covered with some silly remark about lighting.
“We recovered that film, as you know,” Perkins said. “But its importance is to indicate Mr. Mann’s state of mind, which was panicked and angry and confused. Now, that evening, McDougall begins ordering him around, sending him downstairs for a bottle of Scotch, treating him like a delivery boy. Mann complies. He also sends out for some opium later in the night. Mann again delivers.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“Sally told me. I had a long conversation with her. McDougall called about three in the morning for opium. Mann took it to him.”
“Go on,” Greenblatt said.
“Well, the next event of significance is the discovery of the body about two hours later. Mann finds that the hated person is indeed dead. Mann wanted him dead, and now he’s dead. The wish has come true. But Mann didn’t kill him—it was, actually, an accident—but he is overcome with guilt. He feels he will be implicated, so he removes the traces of his association.”
“You’re crazy,” Mann said. “You’re out of your mind.”
“First,” Perkins said, “he takes the sock from the bathroom floor and wipes everything of fingerprints. It never occurs to him that should his fingerprints be found in the apartment, nobody would ever question it. He feels guilty, and he acts guilty. He wipes exposed surfaces and drops the sock near the door. Then he removes the bottle of J&B, which was very foolish. He probably takes it away because he knows Ben will associate him with the bottle. But he was foolish because Millie Pink has already seen the bottle on the table. She has, of course, now gone to call the police.”
Perkins paused and looked at Mann, who was shaking his head again.
“The opium is next. It was probably sitting there on the table with the script and his pipes. Mann takes the pipes and cleans up the table. Here is another mistake. He arranges everything for a left-handed person—pencils and pens neatly set out on the left, and so on. He forgets that McDougall is right-handed.”
Greenblatt lit a cigarette. “You’re sure he’s left-handed?”
“Are you left-handed, Mr. Mann?” Perkins said.
“Maybe I am,” Mann sputtered, “but that doesn’t?—”
“He carries all this material back to his room, all this incriminating evidence of his association to the apparent murder. And then he thinks of the autopsy. The autopsy will show narcotics. So Mann goes back and puts down a razor blade and a rolled dollar bill, evidence of cocaine use. You see, he assumes, along with ninety-nine percent of the rest of the world, that cocaine is a narcotic. Which of course it is not.”
