The Tormentor
When Julia Blondell opened the door, she expected to see a man who looked like Broderick Crawford or Ernest Borgnine. She had never met a private investigator before and envisioned one who was a gruff, overweight ex-cop who drank and smoked too much and wore cheap suits that did not fit him properly. At best, she hoped he would resemble Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade. She certainly never imagined anyone who looked like Vincent McCurdy. Although not tall, dark and handsome like Rock Hudson, Tyrone Power, Cary Grant, Clark Gable or Gregory Peck, he was definitely leading man material. He wore his blond hair slightly longer than most men, and there was a stray lock in front that had the habit of falling over one of his hypnotic blue eyes. As attractive as his other features were, it was his smile that caused women's hearts to beat a rapid staccato.
This guy should definitely be in front of the camera, she thought.
"Miss Blondell? I'm Vincent McCurdy," he introduced himself. "We spoke on the phone."
"Yes, I found your number in the classified ads section of the newspaper."
In person, his voice sounded different than it had over the telephone. It was seductive, like his smile and the steamy look in his eyes.
"Won't you come in? Can I get you something to drink?"
"Coffee would be nice."
"Would you like something in that coffee?" she asked, indicating a fully stocked bar with a nod of her head.
"Just milk and sugar."
Julia rang for Hildegarde, her maid, and told her to bring two cups of coffee, one with bourbon added.
"Getting down to business," Vincent said once his new client took a seat. "What's the case you want me to handle? Is it a cheating husband?"
"No, I'm not married."
"Is somebody trying to blackmail you?"
"No, but someone has been tormenting me through the mail."
She reached into the pocket of her voluminous skirt and took out a sheet of paper.
"This came in the mail yesterday," she announced and handed it to him.
The salutation was followed by a simple, four-line poem:
Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
I won't be happy
Until I kill you.
"A death threat," the good-looking gumshoe declared after reading it. "Is this the only one you received?"
"No. The first one arrived about a month ago. I thought it was just a tasteless joke and threw it in the trash. But they kept coming."
"You're taking them seriously now?"
"Yes."
"Is the wording always the same?"
"No. The first few simply said, 'You'll be sorry.' Then the writer became more creative."
"Creative? I wouldn't call it that. Whoever penned this poem is no Shakespeare," Vincent laughed and then continued in a more serious tone. "What about the envelopes these came in? Since this letter is not signed, I assume none had a return address."
"That's right, but they were all the same color, beige, and postmarked here in Hollywood."
"Do you have any enemies that you're aware of?"
Now it was Julia's turn to laugh.
"You've got to be kidding! I'm a Hollywood gossip columnist. Everyone in the city hates me!"
"I suppose it comes with the territory," Vincent observed, taking a notepad out of his jacket pocket.
The journalist went to the bar and filled her empty cup with bourbon sans coffee.
"Are you sure you don't want a drink?" she asked.
"Positive. Now, you said the letters started arriving about a month ago."
"That's right."
"Can you think of anyone you might have angered then or shortly before that time?"
"Not offhand but I can look back at my columns and see who I wrote about."
"Would you? If you could give me a list of their names, I'll check them out. I would suggest going back about six months before the first letter."
"That long?"
"There are people that have explosive tempers and act out immediately. Others stew in their juices and get madder as time passes. We don't know which of these two types is sending you the threats."
"I'll start working on that list tonight and drop it off at your office when I'm done with it."
"I'm rarely at my office, and I don't have a secretary—just an answering service. Why don't I come back here on Thursday and pick it up?"
"Fine. I ought to have it done by then."
Ten minutes later, Vincent McCurdy exited the swank Beverly Hills mansion, leaving behind a full cup of cold coffee.
* * *
The office in Julia Blondell's mansion was as large as the one Louis B. Mayer had over at MGM but was much more tastefully decorated. The cream-colored silk wallpaper and carpeting were an excellent canvas for the French provincial furniture and the lavender moiré upholstery and matching drapes. The always-present vase of freshly cut flowers on her desk gave the room a soft, feminine feel and drew attention from the clunky Smith-Corona typewriter that sat beside it.
Julia went not to her desk but to the filing cabinet, one she had custom-made by an out-of-work carpenter from Paramount to match the other furniture in the room. She took out a folder that contained clippings of her columns that appeared in print since the beginning of the year. Then she returned to the living room where, with a tall glass of bourbon in hand, she began reading her articles, starting with the one written just before she received the first anonymous letter and working her way backward through time.
Throughout her career, the columnist would use the celebrities' actual names when writing fact-based statements that could easily be proven in a court of law should she be sued for libel. These included snippets such as "Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks are calling it quits after sixteen years of marriage," "grand jury finds no evidence of foul play in Thelma Todd's death" or "Victor Fleming replaces George Cukor as director of Gone with the Wind." But in her juicier, more scandalous stories, which were often based on unsubstantiated rumors and gossip, she did not name names. However, most people in the film industry and many not in the business had a pretty good idea of who she was writing about. Certainly, the subjects of her columns could identify themselves easily enough.
Shortly before the first letter arrived, she had written such an article about Ramone Marco, an Oscar-winning director, whose first two wives had both been sixteen years old. Those marriages ended in less than two years, and he was getting married for the third time to a fifteen-year-old. The industry was rife with rumors about his preference for even much younger girls.
I basically called him a pedophile, Julia thought, picking up a pen and pad of paper and writing down his name. I imagine he might have found that quite upsetting.
She then perused the previous article. In it, she referred to Lolita Vassar as a dark-haired, blue-eyed leading lady who, despite being married to Hollywood heartthrob Pierre LeSueur, had a "very close friendship" with a popular redhead singer and dancer named Goldie Pippen. She did not name any of the romantic trio in her column, but she was certain all three had been upset when they read it. Thus, she wrote their names on her list below Ramone Marco's.
For several hours, Julia read through her columns, stopping only long enough to refill her glass with bourbon. There was one about Vidal DelRay, a Broadway star who, since moving to the West Coast, was cheating on his wife back east. Another told about aging actress Lucia Brannon, an alcoholic who was sent to a private sanitarium to dry out.
With the Hays Code dictating what was morally acceptable and unacceptable content in films and many studios inserting morals clauses in their contracts, actors and actresses faced severe consequences should their secrets be made public. Thus, not only did gossip columnists represent an embarrassment to them but they also threatened their careers.
I wonder if Louella or Hedda ever get any death threats.
It was after midnight when she reached the last clipping in the folder. In that column, she accused Tex Ruggles, one of America's most beloved comedians, of being gay despite having been married for twenty years and being the father of four children. She picked up her pen and wrote Tex's name at the bottom of her three-page list.
Mr. McCurdy is going to have his work cut out for him!
As she headed upstairs to her master bedroom, she felt no guilt for any humiliation or pain she might have caused the people she wrote about. She was just doing her job, after all. It wasn't personal. Some of the celebrities she wrote about she had never even met. By the time she crawled between the silk sheets of her bed, she was already thinking about how she would describe Mimsy Stahl, the blonde sex symbol recently arrested for shoplifting. Although she felt no animosity toward the former child star, Julia would not hesitate to smear her name and ruin her reputation in her next column.
* * *
After learning that one of the year's Oscar nominees for best actress in a supporting role had given birth to an illegitimate child when she was just thirteen years old, Julia went to her office and began writing an article filled with snide innuendos but few specific details. She was typing away on her Smith-Corona when Hildegarde brought the mail to her office.
"Just put it on the desk," she said.
While her left hand was poised above the carriage return lever, she glimpsed a beige envelope in her peripheral vision. Hand trembling, she reached over and picked it up. As was the case with the previous letters, her name and address were typed, not handwritten. She did not bother to open the drawer and take out her fancy silver letter opener with the flowered porcelain handle. Instead, she tore open the envelope flap with her fingers.
Violets are blue.
roses are red.
I won't be happy
until you're dead.
Her hand went to her mouth to stifle a scream, and the macabre poem fell to the desk. Julia reached for the phone on the corner of the desk and dialed the detective's number.
"McCurdy," he answered his phone after three rings.
The columnist did not identify herself but simply blurted out, "I got another letter."
"You're lucky you caught me in my office. I'll be right over."
Ten minutes later, Hildegarde showed the private investigator into her employer's office. When he saw the letter on the desk, he immediately dusted it for fingerprints. However, the only ones he found belonged to Julia.
"This guy is clever," he announced. "He didn't leave prints on any of the letters you showed me, not even partials."
"What about the envelopes? Did you check them?"
"Do you know how many people handle a piece of mail from the time it goes into a mailbox until it gets delivered?"
The detective picked up the envelope and examined it, not expecting to find any new clues. Like the others, it bore a Hollywood postmark and no return address.
"What's this?" he asked, removing something from inside.
"What's what?" Julia answered his question with a question.
"It looks like a photographic negative."
"No," the columnist said. "It looks more like a single frame cut from a motion picture reel."
Vincent held the piece of celluloid up to the light. Although the frame was small, he could see that it was an image of a room, but no people were in it.
"Does this place look familiar to you?" he asked.
"No."
The detective put the piece of film and the poem back into the envelope and tucked it into his pocket.
"I'll keep this with the others. For now, I'll go back to checking out the names on that list you gave me."
Although it was only eleven in the morning, Julia went to the bar and poured herself a bourbon before returning to her office to finish her column.
* * *
Over the next three days, Julia received three more poems accompanied by frames cut from a strip of movie film.
"Look here," Vincent said, pointing out a detail in the last frame after examining it. "That appears to be the heel of a shoe."
"I suppose so."
Julia was less interested in the film than she was in discovering the identity of the person who was sending her the vile poems.
"Have you learned anything about the people on the list I gave you?" she asked.
"Ramone Marco is on his honeymoon in Paris with his young wife," he announced, reading from his notebook. "Lolita Vassar and Pierre LeSueur have been filming a movie on location in San Francisco for the past six weeks. Goldie Pippen is appearing in a Broadway musical, and Tex Ruggles is doing his comedy act at Grossinger's in the Catskills. None of them could have posted a letter in Hollywood. I'm still checking the other names you gave me."
"It's been five days already. I would have thought you'd found the man by now."
"You gave me three pages of names. I could easily eliminate the people who are out of town, but that's only a small percentage of the total."
"All right. Keep me posted," Julia said.
"And you let me know if you get anything in tomorrow's mail."
The next day the columnist received another threatening poem and another frame of film. This time the heel of the shoe was more pronounced.
"It's definitely a woman's high heel," Vincent declared, holding the image up to the light. "Does it look like one of your shoes?"
"I can't tell from a small portion of a heel."
The following day brought another envelope from the mysterious tormentor. It differed from the others in that it contained no poem. Also, the strip of film consisted of several frames, not just a single one.
"These images must have all been cut from the same reel of film," the detective surmised. "The sequence starts on the floor, goes to the woman's foot and travels up her leg to her back. Maybe your tormentor isn't a man, after all. Maybe you're being harassed by this woman. Do you recognize the dress?" he asked his client.
"It's not one of mine. That's all I know."
"Assuming the sender continues in the same vein, we may see this woman's face soon."
"Once you know who she is, will you be able to make her stop threatening me?" Julia asked.
"I don't know. We'll have to wait and see."
Two days later, an even longer strip of film was delivered to the columnist's house. As the handsome investigator had predicted, the most recent frames revealed the woman's face. Due to the small size of the film, however, Julia needed to use a magnifying glass to identify her.
"Barbara Jean Ravenel!" she gasped.
* * *
"I drove over here as soon as I got your message," Vincent declared after Hildegarde showed him into her employer's office.
"Where have you been? I've been calling you for hours."
"I can't do my job sitting behind a desk."
Julia saw the logic of his argument and dropped the matter.
"Do you recognize the woman in the film clips?" McCurdy asked. "Does she have a reason to want you dead?"
"Yes to both questions," Julia replied. "The woman was an actress named Barbara Jean Ravenel, but she's not the one who sent me the letters."
"How do you know? Did you speak to her?"
The columnist shook her head.
"Then how can you be sure it isn't her?"
"Because Barbara Jean is dead now. I wrote a column about her several years ago. I had learned that before coming to Hollywood, she lived in the South. I don't remember whether it was Mississippi or Alabama. Anyway, she fell in love with a black man, which was taboo in the rural community where she lived. When their relationship became known, the young man was lynched, and she headed west."
"Why would you write about such a thing?" Vincent demanded to know. "You must have known she was traumatized by the man's death!"
"I didn't use her name," the columnist said in her own defense. "Still, the studio execs knew who I was writing about. They released Barbara Jean from her contract and found another actress to replace her in the picture."
"What happened to her then?"
"She killed herself."
An uncomfortable silence permeated the room. The investigator picked up the magnifying glass that was lying on the desk and examined the last frames that had been sent to his client. Rather than concentrate on the actress' face, he examined the rest of the image.
"She's not alone," he suddenly announced.
"What do you mean?"
"Look here. That's a man's hand on her shoulder. She wasn't alone when this film was shot."
"He must be the one who's been tormenting me!" Julia exclaimed. "The poems and film clips might be his twisted way of seeking revenge for Barbara Jean's death."
"If you're right, this guy must have been close to her. I'll start looking into her past and see what I can find."
* * *
For the first time in many years, Julia did not go into her office in the morning to work on her column. Expecting another film clip from her still unknown tormentor, she paced the floor in the living room for several hours, listening for the mailman.
There he is! she thought when she heard his footsteps on the walkway and beat Hildegarde to the front door.
The mail that was pushed through the slot did not include any beige envelopes with a Hollywood postmark, however.
"I didn't get anything today," she told the private detective when he telephoned her.
"You sound disappointed," Vincent laughed.
"I am. I was hoping we could identify the man with Barbara Jean and finally end all this nonsense."
A week went by with no further contact from the tormentor. No poems. No film clips. Nothing.
"Have you discovered anything helpful?" Julia asked McCurdy.
"Not much, I'm afraid. Miss Ravenel led a pretty quiet life. As far as I can tell, she had no lovers or even close friends."
"What about relatives?"
"She had none here in California. Do you want me to go to her hometown and see what I can learn there?"
"Yes. She might have had a brother or some other male relative follow her here to Hollywood."
"I'll look into it," Vincent said. "But don't be disappointed if I don't find anything."
Another week went by without Julia hearing from her tormentor.
Why has he suddenly stopped? she wondered.
The answer seemed fairly obvious. For two weeks, she had been expecting him to send her more frames. She had actually wanted to hear from him and learn his identity if only to satisfy her curiosity.
He's playing some kind of cat-and-mouse game with me.
Determined not to let him get the better of her, she put the letters out of her mind. During the past two weeks, she had been neglecting her work. It was high time she went back to slinging mud at celebrities.
A week later, Vincent phoned her. He had come back from his trip to the South and knew no more about the dead actress than he did before he left.
"Honestly," he confessed, "I don't know how to proceed. Until we see the face of the man next to Barbara Jean, I'm not going to pursue your case. I would only be wasting your money if I did."
"All right. I'll phone you if I hear from him again."
It occurred to her that maybe her tormentor had learned McCurdy was looking for him. It might have scared him off. If so, the detective's fee and expenses were money well spent.
* * *
Not having received any further communication with the tormentor for more than two months, Julia destroyed the letters and film clips, put aside her fears and went back to her normal, daily routine. While writing a column hinting that one of Hollywood's most beautiful leading ladies was having an affair with a notorious East Coast gangster, she had to stop typing to change the ribbon in her Smith-Corona. She looked up to see Hildegarde in the doorway.
"This package just came for you, Miss Blondell," the maid announced.
It was a small box, roughly ten inches long, four inches wide and one inch high.
"I wonder what it could be."
Once the new ribbon was in the typewriter, the columnist used her letter opener to slice through the packing tape. She then opened the lid of the box.
"Scissors? Who would send me ...?"
Beneath the antique Wiss shears was a film clip.
Her tormentor had returned!
Julia's heart raced and her hands trembled as she picked up the piece of celluloid and held it up to the light. She could immediately discern that the image was that of a man's face, but she could not make out the details in the small frame. She opened her desk drawer, took out the magnifying glass and peered through its lens.
Her scream brought the maid back to the office.
"Is something wrong, miss?" she asked.
"N-no. I'm f-fine."
No sooner did Hildegarde leave than Julia felt another presence in the room. She turned and saw Vincent McCurdy holding the pair of scissors.
"You!" the columnist cried.
"Me."
"Why? What was this all about?"
"Like so many other people, I came to Hollywood to be an actor. I left New Jersey with dreams of fame and fortune and was soon given a golden opportunity. I was cast in a role that was sure to make me a star, but you ruined it for me."
"I never wrote an article about you. Hell, I never even heard of you."
"I was cast to play opposite Barbara Jean Ravenel, but after you smeared her in your column, both she and I were cut from the picture. I was never offered another role after that. That was why I ended my life."
"What? Are you telling me you're a ... a ...?"
"A ghost. Yes. You can say it. Like my costar, I killed myself, not that anyone cared. After all, I was a nobody, a wannabe actor who wound up on the cutting room floor."
"And you hold me responsible?"
"Not just for ruining my life and Barbara Jean's but for all the others you've destroyed with your viperish words as well!"
"And what are you planning on doing, stabbing me with those scissors?"
"No. Despite my lousy poetry, I'm much more creative than that."
Holding the pair of scissors in his right hand and a film clip in his left, he carefully cut the strip. The bottom two frames fell to the floor. He then put down the scissors and held the remaining frame up to the light. Held captive in a celluloid prison, was Julia Blondell. Her eyes were wide with fear, and her mouth was open in a scream.
* * *
When Hildegarde finished work and was ready to go home that evening, she went to her employer's office to say goodnight. The desk light was turned on and there was a sheet of paper in the typewriter, but there was no sign of Julia anywhere.
"Miss Blondell?" the maid called.
There was no answer. She searched the Beverly Hills mansion but found no one.
When police were called to the house after the columnist was reported missing, they found no sign of foul play. The woman had simply vanished. Hildegarde was questioned, but she had no idea what had become of her employer.
Before starting her new job as a maid to a well-known screenwriter, she cleaned Julia's house one last time. Seeing no significance in the two film clips that were lying on the floor of her office, she picked them up and tossed them into the trash.
The journalist's disappearance became one of the great mysteries of the Golden Age of Hollywood and a favorite topic of gossip columnists and rumormongers. To this day, tabloid newspapers occasionally carry stories asking what had become of Julia Blondell.
To the people she maligned in her columns, her winding up on the pages of these modern-day scandal sheets was a well-deserved instance of poetic justice!
There's no doubt as to the identity of my tormentor!
