Let the Dead Keep Their Secrets

by Rosemary Simpson

  It was supposed to be me. The sandbag was directed at me. Claire reached out to touch the hemp rope that held the sandbag fast to its mooring. Her fingers glided over the shredded fibers until they reached a smooth surface. Cut. Cut through just enough to be ripped apart with a strong tug. That’s all it would take. One tight fist, one determined yank, and the hemp rope would disintegrate.

  The sabotage had been so skillfully done that Claire doubted anyone would suspect Lucinda’s life had been taken by anything but chance. She might be the only person in the theater who knew it wasn’t an accident.

  The sandbag was meant for me.

  CHAPTER 5

  Claire’s hands had to be untangled from Lucinda’s blood-soaked hair before she could be lifted away from the body to which she clung.

  “Let go, Miss Buchanan,” urged the dresser whose responsibility it was to make sure the cover singer’s costumes were pressed and ready to be worn onstage every night. “We’re going to help you up now. There’s nothing you can do for Miss Pallazzo. You need to come along to your dressing room and let me wash you off.”

  Someone laid a soldier’s scarlet cloak over Lucinda’s body, hiding from sight everything but the edges of the pool of blood in which she lay. The stage manager ordered the company out into the audience seats to await the arrival of the police. He instructed the lighting man to turn off all but the dimmest gas work-lights onstage and to do the same with the houselights.

  From every corner of the theater, people’s eyes were drawn to the scarlet bundle that had been a living woman. No matter how hard they tried to look away, an awful fascination with sudden death drew them back. As the minutes ticked by, the hum of conversation increased.

  “I was standing right next to her.”

  “I heard the sound of the sandbag striking something, but I never thought it would be one of us.”

  “Did anyone hear a whistle before it fell?”

  Inevitably, the mezzo-sopranos in the chorus wondered whether one of them might be chosen to cover the role of Amneris. What had happened to Lucinda Pallazzo was a terrible tragedy, but it would also be someone else’s opportunity.

  Beatrice Morgan washed Claire Buchanan’s hands as gently as she could; the blood had caked around her fingernails and worked its way into the cuticles. She rubbed the cream used to remove heavy stage makeup into the skin, murmuring comforting words as she worked. Then she held a glass of whiskey to Claire’s lips, coaxed her to swallow.

  “I’m all right now, Beatrice,” Claire said.

  “Not yet, miss.” The dresser wiped the cream from her hands, then immersed them in a basin of warm, soapy water. The front of Claire’s gown was saturated with blood, ruined beyond any hope of cleaning. She had to be held on her feet while it was cut off her. Beatrice bundled it into a basket and threw a makeup towel over it. She wrapped her charge in a dressing gown, dried off the now-clean hands, and led her to the couch, where quick naps could be taken on days when rehearsals ran long.

  “One more swallow of this whiskey,” Beatrice urged.

  “The police are here,” called out one of the stagehands, opening and closing the dressing-room door.

  “We’ll stay here together, Miss Buchanan,” said Beatrice. “If they want to talk to you, they can just come find you.”

  * * *

  Detective Steven Phelan drew the soldier’s cape from Lucinda Pallazzo’s body and handed it to the uniformed policeman standing behind him. His partner, Detective Pat Corcoran, careful not to get the victim’s blood on his shoes, used one of the fake wooden spears to lift the hair from the side of her face.

  “Looks simple enough,” Corcoran said. “A hundred pounds of sand dropping from that height was more than heavy enough to kill her.”

  “The stage manager says they hire sailors on shore leave to work the rigging because they’re better at it than anyone else.”

  “Stands to reason.” Corcoran summoned another policeman to the stage. “Make sure the sailors up in the flies don’t leave. We’ll need to talk to them.”

  “He also says they’ve never had a fatality in this theater before today.” Detective Phelan pointed at the ragged end of the hemp rope attached to the sandbag. “I don’t like the looks of that. It’s only unraveled on one side. The other side is smooth enough to have been cut.”

  “You think somebody helped it along?”

  “Maybe. I’ll know more when we can get one of those sailors to explain what the hell it is they do with these things. Could be they splice the ropes to make adjustments and one of them got careless.”

  Corcoran stared into the darkness high above the stage. Nothing moved. If anyone was still up there, he was taking pains not to be noticed.

  “Keep everyone away from the body until the medical examiner gets here,” Phelan instructed the patrolman holding the soldier’s bloodstained cape. “There’ll be a photographer, too, on Chief Byrnes’s orders.” They were all getting used to the chief of detectives’ new ideas and procedural requirements, but the changes slowed things down at the scene.

  “Let’s get everybody out of here except the ones who were close to the victim or who actually saw something,” Corcoran said. “That’s probably no more than a handful of people, and not enough witnesses to do us any good.” He moved off toward the steps leading from the stage to where the audience sat.

  “Is there anyone else who might have seen something?” Phelan asked the patrolman who had been first on the scene.

  “When I got here, there was a woman kneeling next to the victim. Holding her. She had blood all over her dress and her hands. One of the backstage people took her to a dressing room to clean her up. She looked like she needed a doctor, from the shock of what happened.”

  “Did you get her name?”

  “I did.” The patrolman took out the notebook in which he had written everything he thought the detectives might need to know. “Here it is. Claire Buchanan. She’s what they call a cover singer, which somebody explained to me means she takes the place of one of the main singers if that person gets sick or can’t perform for some reason. The dressing rooms are down that winding metal staircase over there, sir.”

  “Let me know when the medical examiner arrives. I’ll be downstairs until then.”

  * * *

  The woman sitting on the couch in the closet-sized dressing room stared at Detective Phelan as if she had no idea who he was or what he was doing here. Haunted, he thought, she looked haunted. He’d seen that look before—when an intended victim escaped injury, but an innocent bystander did not.

  “I’d like you to tell me everything you can about what happened onstage this afternoon,” Phelan began, keeping his voice low and intentionally matter-of-fact. He pulled a chair from in front of the mirrored makeup table, turned it around, and straddled the seat. He smelled liquor, and realized that an older woman held a glass of whiskey. She’d said she was a dresser by the name of Beatrice Morgan.

  “A dresser gets the performers ready to go onstage,” she’d explained. “I take care of Miss Buchanan and Miss Pallazzo. I have to make sure the principal costumes are ready in case they have to sing those roles, and also the crowd costumes if they’re singing in the chorus.” She’d held the glass of whiskey out to Miss Buchanan, who’d shaken her head and pushed it away. “I got a couple of swallows into her, Detective. For the shock.”

  “Miss Buchanan, can you tell me what happened?”

  “We were waiting in the wings. Places had been called.”

  Phelan had to lean forward to hear what she was whispering. When Beatrice pressed the glass of whiskey into his hand, he nodded encouragingly at Miss Buchanan and held it out to her. “Try to get some more of this down, miss,” he said.

  This time she accepted the glass.

  “One big gulp,” Phelan said, tilting his wrist to show her what to do.

  When she handed him back the glass, it was empty. Her pale skin flushed a healthier rosy hue; memory and reality brought a fl
ood of tears to her eyes.

  “We were in the wings,” she repeated, “about to take our places. Then the stage manager called ‘ten minutes.’ There was a lot of chattering and complaining and everyone started moving out onto the stage. We were so crowded in the wings that you couldn’t move and it was hard to breathe. A ten-minute wait onstage is better than ten minutes crushed together in the wings. Lucinda and I were standing next to each other. She was about to climb up to the throne where she sits next to Pharaoh as the processional comes in.” Claire shuddered. “Then she leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek.”

  “Was that unusual? She wasn’t leaving for the day. She was just going across the stage.”

  “Lucinda was always impulsive. And affectionate. She was Italian, Detective. They’re a demonstrative people.”

  “So she leaned forward and kissed you on the cheek. What next?”

  Beatrice Morgan slipped a knitted shawl around Miss Buchanan’s shoulders. The room was stuffy and fetid, but cold with the chill of a basement in winter.

  “She looked up. I remember that very distinctly. Then she pushed me. So hard I fell onto the stage.” Claire rubbed one knee, ran a hand over an elbow to soothe the bruises blooming there.

  “She pushed you deliberately?”

  “I’m sure of it. Her hand came out like this,” she said, thrusting her arm forward with a sharp snap. “Then she was lying on the stage near me, but crushed under that sandbag, blood flowing all around her head. It was so red, and I couldn’t do anything to make it stop.” Her hands twisted in her lap, the intertwined fingers kneading each other.

  “Who got the sandbag off her?”

  “I did, Detective. I shoved as hard as I could, and maybe somebody else helped. I don’t remember. But I felt it roll off her body, and when it did, I could see that her back was broken and her head damaged. There was blood in her hair.”

  “I washed it off Miss Buchanan’s hands,” contributed Beatrice, “and cut off her dress. It’s in the basket over there.”

  “The patrolman said you were cradling Miss Pallazzo’s body when he arrived.”

  “Was I? Yes. I remember thinking how glad she’d be to know that her face hadn’t been injured. Lucinda cared a great deal about her looks.” Claire’s speech had begun to slur, her eyes to glaze over again.

  Whiskey and the strain of telling what she’d seen and done, Phelan thought. She’d turned out to be a better witness than he’d hoped for, but it was time to let her rest. He doubted she’d be able to talk for too much longer.

  “I’ll take care of her,” Beatrice said.

  Detective Phelan stood for a moment in the doorway. Claire Buchanan lay stretched out on the narrow couch, covered with the knitted shawl. Her eyes remained open, one hand curled beneath a cheek. She looked like someone who couldn’t decide whether to seek oblivion in sleep or fight to stay awake.

  Phelan had always pictured opera singers as stout women of a certain age, commanding presences onstage, domineering harridans off. This one was young and slender, rendered fragile and vulnerable by the terrible accident that had taken the life of her friend. It must be a lonely life, he thought, waiting to sing in a great opera house, being disappointed night after night by the robust health and strong lungs of the principal you were covering.

  A life in the shadows.

  He’d been a copper for a long time. He’d seen a lot and interviewed more witnesses than he could count. But he’d never felt tenderness before now.

  * * *

  “One of the men who carries a fanfare trumpet says he held the instrument above his head to protect it in the crowd and was looking up to make sure it was still all right when he spotted some movement in the flies. He was trying to figure out what it was when he saw the sandbag swing violently from side to side. They’re not supposed to do that.

  “He knew right away something was wrong, and then the victim, Miss Pallazzo, leaned forward toward Miss Buchanan. He said Miss Pallazzo saw him looking up and he thinks he probably had some kind of horrified expression on his face that made her glance in the same direction. That’s when the sandbag fell. He didn’t see the victim push Miss Buchanan, but he’s positive Miss Buchanan was standing right under where the sandbag struck. It hit Miss Pallazzo across her back when she leaned forward to shove Miss Buchanan out of the way. He said it happened so fast there wasn’t time to think about it until afterward.” Detective Corcoran closed his notebook and shoved it into a coat pocket. The best kind of case was when there wasn’t a case, just an accident.

  “Anything else?” Phelan asked.

  “The trumpet guy is the only one who saw anything. It’s dark up in the flies and nobody else had a reason to look up.”

  “Did the photographer get here?”

  “Right behind you.”

  “You know what to do, Riis,” Detective Phelan greeted the hardworking Dane who was so oddly fixated on capturing images of the city’s poor immigrants. “Same as usual. Chief Byrnes wants everything captured exactly as we found it before the medical examiner or anyone else starts poking around.”

  Jacob Riis busied himself setting up his tripod and camera, readying the flash pan he used to illuminate the scene, checking the supply of glass plates slotted into a wooden carrying case. In Mathew Brady’s day so many things could go wrong in the relatively new field of photography that it was a wonder half the exposures taken during the war turned out to be printable. New advances were being touted all the time now, the best being that photographers no longer had to coat their glass plates individually and develop them within ten minutes of exposure. Riis could concentrate on composing the images he wanted to create without the constant interruption of having to disappear into a portable darkroom. He was getting wonderful slices of dark and desperate tenement life with the magnesium flash that made it possible to photograph his subjects in all kinds of light. Even the absence of light.

  What Chief of Detectives Byrnes wanted wasn’t artistry, though. It was a faithful and permanent record of what men who had to depend solely on the witness of their eyes would never agree on. Memory was an unreliable documentarian.

  The magnesium flash exploded softly every time it ignited, spilling out small chemical clouds that had an acrid odor to them. Riis concentrated on the victim’s body, the sandbag, and the pool of blood on the stage floor. He took his photographs in tight sequence, following the invisible path along which the human eye would move from one point to another, pausing to verify the details of what it was seeing.

  He had one glass plate left when the sound of footsteps climbing the spiral metal staircase from the dressing rooms made him look up.

  A woman with a shawl over her shoulders walked slowly from the blackness of the wings out into the half-light of the stage. The woman was bareheaded, her pale blond hair twisted up off her neck, a few soft curls escaping their pins. Her gaze was focused on the body that lay at Jacob’s feet; she didn’t seem to notice the photographer or his equipment.

  “I came upstairs to say good-bye before they take her away,” she said to Detective Phelan. The hand she had been holding to her face dropped away.

  Jacob Riis’s last glass plate slid from his grip and smashed to bits on the stage floor.

  The woman standing not three feet from him was the same woman whose dead, painted eyes had stared up at him through his enlarger.

  CHAPTER 6

  “I saw your dead woman,” Jacob Riis announced. “Very much alive, though I’m told it was a close call.”

  Out of breath from hauling his camera, tripod, and wooden case of glass plates up two flights of stairs to the offices of Hunter and MacKenzie, he stood in the open doorway of Geoffrey Hunter’s office, panting and shaking his head, an indignant Josiah Gregory behind him.

  “He stomped right past me,” Josiah fumed. “Dumped all his equipment in the corner and invited himself in.”

  “I got her name from the police detective on the scene.” Riis pulled a scrap of paper from hi
s pocket. “Claire Buchanan. She’s a cover singer at the Met this season.”

  “Mr. Riis?” Prudence eased her way past Josiah to the photographer’s side. “Has something happened to Miss Buchanan?”

  “I think it’s time you told me what’s going on,” Riis answered. “I dropped a glass plate on the stage when she walked out into the light. I was that startled. Your dead woman isn’t dead, Miss MacKenzie.”

  “Josiah, would you brew up some coffee for us, please?” Prudence steered the photographer toward one of the client chairs in front of Geoffrey’s desk.

  “What was a detective doing at the Met?” Hunter asked. “And why were you there?”

  “She’s not dead,” Riis insisted. “It’s the same woman whose photograph you brought me. She’s as alive as you are.”

  “Start at the beginning, Mr. Riis,” Prudence coaxed. “Why were you at the Met?”

  Jacob Riis looked from the determined young woman to the former Pinkerton and knew the only way he was going to get information was to exchange what he knew for what they were willing to tell him. He’d worked with Chief Byrnes’s detectives long enough to recognize a stone wall when he came up against it.

  “I was in police headquarters delivering some prints. A call came in from the Met. Detective Phelan and his partner, Corcoran, were on their way out the door when Chief Byrnes came out of his office and yelled for a photographer. I was the only one there, so I said I’d follow along as soon as I picked up some more plates. Which I did.”

  Riis accepted the cup of coffee Josiah held out to him. He took a large swallow and tried not to grimace. American coffee bore no resemblance to the thick Danish blend flavored with cinnamon, cloves, and spiced rum.