10
The Witch’s Curse
IT WAS NOT necessary for The Three Investigators to fabricate a story about a school journal in order to see Elliott Farber. The former cameraman was not protected by a receptionist, and the three boys had only to walk into his dusty little shop in order to talk with him. Once they were in the shop–a narrow hole-in-the-wall sandwiched between a barber shop and an upholsterer–Jupe said, quite simply, “Mr Farber, you were Madeline Bainbridge’s favourite cameramen, weren’t you?”
Elliott Farber was a thin man with a yellowish tint to his skin. He squinted at the boys through the smoke that wafted from the cigarette between his lips. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “Let me guess. You’re old movie buffs.”
“Something like that,” said Jupe.
Farber smiled and leaned back against a counter. “I worked with Bainbridge on almost every picture she ever made,” he said. “She was tremendous. Great actress!”
Farber dropped his cigarette to the floor and ground it out with his foot. “She was beautiful, too. Some of the so-called glamour queens needed every bit of make-up and ever trick of lighting to look good. They had to have every break the cameraman could give them. That’s why I quit the business. I got sick of taking the blame if some dame didn’t look enough like Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile. But with Bainbridge, there was no sweat. She was purely and simply beautiful. I couldn’t make a mistake when I was filming one of her scenes.”
“Was she difficult to work with?” asked Jupe.
“Oh, she liked to get her own way, once she got established. That’s how we all got involved in that horrible turkey about witches and Puritans.”
“The Salem Story?” prompted Jupe.
“Right,” said Farber. “Ramon Desparto thought that one would be great. Madeline was nuts about him, so anything he wanted, he got. Madeline saw to it. We used to worry about her–that he’d wreck her career.”
“That’s what he did, didn’t he?” asked Pete, who had been listening quietly. “I mean, after he died, she was so heartbroken she didn’t work again.”
“She blamed herself,” said Farber. “She and Desparto had quarrelled just before he had the car accident that killed him. She’d said some pretty nasty things to him. Not that I blame her. He was playing around with another actress, Estelle DuBarry, and Madeline was jealous. If you’re organizing some fan club for Madeline, or doing an article for some kid magazine, you could just forget I told you that bit. No sense in stirring up old troubles.”
“Do you ever see Madeline Bainbridge these days, Mr Farber? Or talk with her?” asked Jupiter.
“Nope. Nobody sees her. Nobody’s in touch with her at all.”
Bob showed Mr Farber the copy of the picture he had found at the library. “Wasn’t Estelle DuBarry one of the people who were very close to Madeline Bainbridge?” he asked. “She’s in this photo that was taken at an awards dinner.”
“Oh, that?” Farber took the picture from Bob. “Yes. The magic circle. There they are–all thirteen of them–including yours truly.”
“Isn’t thirteen an odd number to have at a dinner table?” said Jupe.
Farber smiled. “Not if you’re a witch,” he said.
“Then there was a coven!” cried Bob.
Now Farber laughed out loud. “Sure. Why not? Madeline was a witch–or at least she thought she was. She called it the Old Religion. It didn’t have anything to do with riding broomsticks or selling your soul to the devil, but Madeline was convinced that she had some magical powers. We all went along with the act. Madeline was the star, after all, and if she’d decided that we were all going to paint ourselves purple, we’d all have done it. We became members of the coven. Estelle DuBarry and Lurine Hazel and Janet Pierce and even poor, dull Clara Adams–witches one and all.”
“And Jefferson Long?” said Jupe.
“Sure,” said Farber. “I don’t suppose he’d like it known today. He’s got kind of a stuffy image on his television show. But he was a witch.”
Jupiter smiled. “Do you keep in touch with any of those people?”
“With some of them,” said Farber. “Jefferson Long speaks only to policemen these days, so nobody keeps in touch with him. Poor little Estelle, who caused all the trouble between Madeline and Desparto, never made it to the big time. She didn’t really have talent and she didn’t wear well. She now looks like my grandmother and she runs a little motel in Hollywood. She’s not a bad sort.”
“Do you think she’d consent to be interviewed?” asked Jupe.
“Sure. She’d enjoy the attention. Hey, what are you kids doing, anyway? The project of the year for a juvenile fan magazine?”
“Well, I’m taking a course on the history of films,” said Jupe, “and . . .”
“I see.” Farber took the photo from Bob and studied it. “I’ll give you Estelle DuBarry’s address,” he said. “And I’ve got Ted Finley’s telephone number. He’s a great old guy. And still working in pictures even though he must be about eighty. Mention my name when you call him.”
“How about the others?” asked Bob.
“Well, Ramon Desparto is dead, of course,” said Farber. “I don’t know how you’d get to talk to Clara Adams. She lives with Madeline and they don’t see anyone. Nicholas Fowler, the scriptwriter, is dead, too. He had a heart attack a few years back. Forget about Janet Pierce. She married a count or a duke or somebody like that and went to Europe to live and never came back. Lurine Hazel’s gone, too. She married her hometown sweetheart and went to live in Billsville, Montana. And Marie Alexander–well, it’s a shame about Marie.”
“She’s the pretty girl with the long hair, isn’t she?” said Pete. “What happened to her?”
“She went swimming off Malibu one day and got caught in a riptide and drowned.”
“Good grief!” exclaimed Pete. “That’s three people in the coven who are dead!”
“It’s been a long time since that picture was taken,” said Farber. “We haven’t done too badly. Now Gloria Gibbs, the plain one who was Ramon Desparto’s secretary, she works for a broker out in Century City. Every once in a while I take her out to dinner.”
Jupiter took the photo and looked at it again. He pointed to the man who was identified in the caption as Charles Goodfellow. He was a very thin young fellow with dark hair that was slicked back. “He looks familiar,” said Jupe. “Is he still working in films?”
Farber frowned. “Goodfellow? I’d almost forgotten about him. He did bit parts back in the old days–you know, playing taxi drivers and doormen. You’ve probably seen him if you watch a lot of old movies on TV. I don’t know what happened to him. He’s the only one I’ve completely lost track of. He’s one of those people who are easy to forget. About the only thing I remember is that he was American, but for some reason his parents lived in Holland when he was a child. He was a strange one. Very fussy. He almost had a fit when he found out that we were all supposed to sip honey and water out of the same cup at the Sabbats. He used to do it, but he always went and gargled afterwards.”
The three boys laughed. “You make a witch’s coven sound as sinister as a square dance,” said Jupiter.
“It was all very innocent,” said Farber. “Only, after Desparto died, some of the people began to wonder whether Madeline didn’t, in fact, have some power.”
“She put a curse on Desparto?” asked Jupiter.
Farber sighed. “Maybe I shouldn’t tell you. It was . . . well, the sort of thing people say when they’re very angry. She told him to go hang himself. Now that’s just an expression. I’m sure she didn’t mean it. Only right after she’d said it, Ramon Desparto climbed into his car and drove away–and the brakes failed so that he drove into a tree. There were no seat belts in those days, and he was thrown clear of the car. We found him wedged in the fork of a tree part way down an embankment on the side of the road. He was just hanging there with his head to one side. His neck was broken.”
“My gosh!” said Pete.
“So the coven broke up, and Madeline withdrew, and that was the end of that. Now no one talks to Madeline, and I guess not many talk about her.”
“How about her manager? He used to be her chauffeur,” said Jupe.
“Didn’t really know him,” said Farber. He took a piece of paper from a pad on the counter and wrote Estelle DuBarry’s address on it. Then he added Ted Finley’s telephone number and the address where Gloria Gibbs worked in Century City. He gave the paper to the boys, and when they left the shop he stood leaning on his counter, staring straight ahead in an unseeing fashion.