Murder Most Conventional

by Verena Rose (ed)

  At twelve years of age, Dan earned a sizable income as a child actor employed on a soap opera—and not just any run of the mill sudsy melodrama, but the show every kid in school raced home to watch in the 1960s. Dark Secrets, featuring a craggy-faced vampire named Sebastian Craven, scared the bejesus out of my sister, Emma, which was reason enough to lure her into watching it.

  A good number of parents refused to let their children see the show at all, but due to our sitter, Thelma, our living room became a magnet for the disenfranchised adolescents in the building denied the privilege of watching the spooky series. Thelma, an elderly woman who lived in a one bedroom on the building’s third floor, had been hired to mind us when we got home from school. Thanks to her vague presence, we were technically not latchkey kids and parents would therefore allow their own children to play in our flat after school.

  But Thelma did little more than set out milk and biscuits before retiring to an armchair in the study to knit. It helped that she was practically deaf and unable to hear us in the living room whooping and shrieking around our twenty-four-inch Sylvania, with its rabbit ears antenna. Emma generally watched lying under the coffee table, her fingers squeezed over her eyes.

  What was most remarkable about our after-school viewing party is that Daniel, himself, on days when he wasn’t working, watched the show with us. He pointed out bloopers, such as mic shadows and missed cues that we’d otherwise have missed. On one memorable occasion, a supposedly dead body was seen to sneeze and rub his nose on camera. We were also privy to the behind-the-scenes stories Daniel told about the other actors on the show, gossip that included an illicit romance between an older married actor and a young ingénue. Daniel would often get up to mischief on the set, one time short-sheeting a burly character actor who had to play a scene with his legs doubled up in bed. Watching that episode, we screamed with laughter knowing what was going on with that actor under the bed linens.

  We all envied Daniel. It wasn’t just his star turn on Dark Secrets, however. It was his complete independence. While he lived with his mother and two older sisters, he came and went as he pleased with pocket money he’d earned himself. He attended a special school for children in performing arts and had a tutor on set, but it was clear he was in charge of his life to an extent none of the rest of us could begin to imagine.

  He was, therefore, precocious in every regard—alarmingly so, in the view of my parents. Although it did not precipitate our move back to England, my parents were somewhat relieved to have an excuse to disengage my thirteen-year-old sister from her love-struck infatuation with Dan. At sixteen, he’d become a heartthrob sensation, gracing the covers of teen fan magazines. That he had kissed Emma (actually made out with her, only to be discovered by my mother) gave her bragging rights she boasted about for years. If I was unhappy to return to England, Emma was utterly distraught to leave “hunky” Dan behind. Still a spinster on the cusp of her sixtieth birthday, I’m not convinced she ever quite got over her schoolgirl crush on Dan.

  But Dan wasn’t at all unhappy to turn his back on teenage fame and fortune. At age eighteen, he abruptly gave up acting, went to university, and seldom again referred to his years in front of the camera. “It would’ve been the death of me,” he once confided. “That much adulation can’t be good for the soul.”

  As soon as the doorman announced his arrival, I poured martinis and presented one to Dan as he arrived at my flat. We greeted each other warmly, and I invited him in. He was wearing a tan linen suit and a cream-colored shirt opened at the neck. He may have turned his back on a promising Hollywood career, but he looked every inch the trim, tanned movie star. At age sixty-two, his light brown hair hadn’t thinned and there was no sign of a paunch.

  “I should never have agreed to attend this convention,” Dan said, his voice rising. “I knew it would come to no good.” He took a large sip, then sighed. “Thanks. I needed that.”

  “I figured you might,” I said, saluting him with my own martini. “But surely murders don’t happen at all these conventions or attendance would drop off.”

  My jocular comment was met with a grim stare. “A man was murdered, Paul. That’s not to be taken lightly.”

  “No, of course not,” I said hastily. “Please, sit down and tell me all about it.”

  We settled ourselves in club chairs on either side of the coffee table. Dan distractedly rearranged my offerings of snacks—force of habit, I imagined, for a man steeped in high-end food and beverage catering.

  “If I hadn’t attended, this probably wouldn’t have happened. I’ve always declined these invitations, but this time, the woman who runs the event insisted I come because they were celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the series. It would be their last big convention. She’s very persistent and signs herself, ‘Your Lady in Waiting’.”

  “Of course, a reference to your longing for the ghostly apparition of the girl in the attic. Very clever,” I said, recalling the steamy plotline.

  “It’s really quite something to see so many of yourself just wandering around,” he mumbled, shifting the Brie on the platter before cutting into it. “Doppelgangers everywhere.”

  “Come again?” Hoping to look as practiced as Dan, I gave the martini shaker a sharp swirl or two before pouring refills, then wiped up the spill with a soggy napkin. “Doppelgangers? As in doubles?”

  “Everywhere, lurking throughout the hotel. All ages. Short, thin, fat, tall—bald, even. But all meant to be me, or some semblance of Chuckie, the role I played on Dark Secrets. You remember, of course.”

  “The world remembers,” I said drily. “Has that series ever been off the air?”

  “Not that I know of. I still get residual payments wired directly to my account several times a year. All the episodes were available in boxed sets of VHS, then DVD. Now I’m sure it’s streamed, decanted, and poured into every other new device available. It’s Star Trek for Goths.”

  “Your kids watched it?”

  “Oh yes, in reruns. In Portuguese, of course. It’s quite a novelty to see yourself talking in a foreign tongue about werewolves and witches. The children found it hysterically funny to see old Dad cavorting with vampire types. Then I began to get recognized in the hotel by people on package tours, so I grew a beard for a few years until the craze slacked off.”

  “But what about these Chuckies at the convention?”

  “Cosplay is what it is. They call these annual events Dark Secrets Festivals, and fans come dressed up as characters from the show. This year, because I’d never attended before, everyone seemed to want to come as Chuckie.”

  “With bare chest and rippling muscles?” I couldn’t help but smirk.

  “No! The brown leather jacket and newsboy cap version, circa thirteen years old. My voice was cracking. It was essentially live television in those days, so I figured no one would ever see those dreadful shows but one time.” Dan swilled down the last of his martini and set the glass rather too firmly on the glass-topped coffee table. “I mean, Chuckie, for God’s sake. Falsetto!”

  “Is nothing sacred,” I murmured, recalling those particular episodes. Indeed, most of the surviving production images one still saw of Danny showed a dreamy-eyed kid looking wistfully into camera, a tweed newsboy cap cocked fetchingly low over one ear. As I remember, Emma had a signed copy of this photograph that migrated with her to college.

  “The other actors, who regularly attend these shindigs, are used to it, but it’s unnerving to be surrounded by people looking like a former you. They love the cracking voice bit. Some of them have got the falsetto down pat.”

  “But how dreadful that one of them was murdered—”

  “Before my eyes.” Danny winced, his hands white-knuckled as they gripped his knees. “Horrible.”

  “You couldn’t stop it?”

  “Yes, yes, I think I could have, had I known what was in store. You see, there was a sc
ene in which I played a prank on my governess—don’t ask why I had a governess at age thirteen, unless that’s what was referred to as ‘home-schooled’ back then—but she found me hanging in the closet, one of my uncle’s neckties artfully slung around my throat and tied to the clothes railing. Well, we did that show live, but when it came time for reruns and all the VHS and DVD copies, that scene was excised. I mean, for obvious reasons. After the fact, programmers realized kids at home were reenacting scenes. I believe there was one incident where a young boy actually hurt himself. Dreadful!”

  “So someone actually got hanged at the convention? Someone pretending to be you?”

  “Yes, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

  “But are you sure it was murder? Could it have been an accident?”

  “Not as it was staged. You see, they’d asked me to participate in this skit in which, of course, this woman dressed up as my governess was supposed to open a closet door and find me. You won’t believe how perfectly they recreated this set. I was shown the closet with this clear Plexiglas cube on which I was supposed to stand. I was presented with a brown leather jacket and newsboy cap—they even had a replica of the necktie to sling around my neck. The curtains were drawn, so the fifteen hundred or so fans sitting out front couldn’t see the preparation, and it was set to go once I was costumed. All I had to do was step in . . . And, of course, I refused.”

  “Of course. But then—”

  “I agreed to stand in the wings and wave to the crowd when it was over. But I certainly made my objections to this reenactment clear. I think the only reason I consented to witness the proceedings at all is because they’d gone to so much trouble. Honestly, you can’t imagine how devoted these people are. Scary.”

  “So, I’m guessing someone else stepped in.”

  “Yes, some middle-aged guy put on the leather jacket and cap meant for me. By this time I just wanted to get the hell out of there and figured I’d be able to hit the hotel bar in ten minutes, tops.”

  “They played out the whole scene? The governess, I recall, was played by a leggy brunette wearing a miniskirt—”

  “Right, and she comes in calling, ‘Chuckie, Chuckie, where are you? You haven’t finished your maths,’ or something—”

  “Whatever happened to that actress?”

  “Oh, Margot Ramsay? She was already ensconced in the bar running an open tab, looking very jolly at two hundred pounds with orange hair graying at the roots. I think they hoped she’d don a miniskirt for the reenactment, too, but she absolutely refused. Someone else wearing a miniskirt put on the wig and geeky glasses. Good call on Margot’s part.”

  “So she didn’t even watch?”

  “Margot’s a regular at these things, apparently with a reputation for downing buckets of chardonnay in the hotel bar. But there I was hovering behind the curtain as this surrogate governess opens the closet door and lets out an almighty scream. I nearly jumped out of my skin. She clutches her heart, backs away—and that’s when I see Chuckie hanging there. His face blue, feet dangling. Someone had kicked the clear plastic cube over. My God! Horrifying!”

  “So you rushed in to get him down?”

  “Before I could budge, the organizer and two crew people were untying him—”

  “Someone kicked the cube?” I shook my head. “This calls for another martini, Danny. Good show! You almost had me.”

  Danny stared at me, his face white. “I’ll have another martini, but as God is my witness, that man was dead. I stepped up. I saw him as they laid him out on the floor. I saw the bruising on his neck, his blackening tongue—awful. There was complete panic as someone called for an ambulance. I’m telling you, Chuckie was dead. And it was meant to be me.”

  “Nonsense. It was a prank gone wrong, not murder. Didn’t you stick around for the EMTs to arrive? That would have told the story right there.”

  “The ambulance arrived as I left. I slipped out through the back doors to the kitchen and let them deal with it. For God’s sake, I’m a businessman. I haven’t been around that craziness for decades, and I can’t afford to be associated with it now. I should never have gone. I’m lucky to be alive. I’m telling you, it was meant to be me hanging there.”

  I looked hard at my friend and, good actor though I knew him to be, I sensed his horror at what had happened was genuine. “So let me get this straight, Dan. You think someone meant to do you harm?”

  “Without question.” He handed me his glass, a sheepish look flushing his handsome face. “I hate to admit it, but up until the murder I was kind of enjoying myself. Those were good times back then, my friend. It made me wonder why I’d given up work I loved so much.”

  I looked at him incredulously. “You miss acting?”

  “Sorta,” he said wistfully. For a moment I saw the dreamy-eyed kid in the newsboy cap that Emma mooned over and the rest of us all wanted to be. “Maybe I’ve left it too long to come back now, but I used to be pretty good.”

  “The best,” I said, with some feeling.

  He leaned forward, looking me square in the eye. “I could go for that martini, if you don’t mind. Maybe a touch less vermouth—and stir, don’t shake.”

  Dan got his martini. I got my suit jacket. If, indeed, murder had taken place at the convention, my friend was required, by decency alone, to return to the scene of the crime. I’m not an attorney, nor do I have any relationship to law enforcement, but I’ve edited enough crime fiction in my capacity as a book editor to know what’s expected when murder is involved. I rang down and had the doorman secure us a taxi.

  Dan protested, but three martinis in, was relatively compliant. The hotel he directed us to was in Midtown Manhattan, part of a large chain of the sort where most of the clientele haul their own luggage to their rooms. The lobby was a sea of roller bags and humanity outfitted appropriately for a day, say . . . cleaning out the Winnebago? We saw no Chuckies on our way to the mezzanine-level ballroom, where the Dark Secrets Festival was taking place. The double doors were shut when we arrived.

  “Odd that there’s no police presence,” I mumbled. “Perhaps the body has been removed and they’ve secured the room to question everyone. It’s what I believe they do in these cases.”

  “Fifteen hundred fans?” Dan sucked in breath. “Could take a while.”

  “Well, we may as well have a look.” I made a move to open the door, but Dan caught my arm.

  “Down this way. There’s a service door that opens on to the stage area up front,” he said with the authority of a man who knows his way around hotel service doors.

  I followed Dan down the corridor, my heart banging with trepidation. With a quick glance at me, he pulled the door open a crack and peered inside. “What the...?”

  I looked over his shoulder as a tidal wave of laughter rumbled through the darkened room. A video was playing, casting an eerie light that illuminated the faces of hundreds of people rollicking with glee at the scene unfolding on the big screen. Many of the fans were holding up cell phones and video cameras to record the proceedings.

  Dan, larger than life, appeared in close-up on the screen, gasping and looking horror-stricken as the camera pulled back to show several people grappling with the body of a man wearing a Chuckie jacket and cap hanging inside a makeshift closet. As they dragged him out, the face of the ragdoll-limp corpse was neon blue, the blackened tongue lolling at a ludicrous angle. Meanwhile, using a bit of trick camera work, a clip of Dan gasping, gaping, and stepping forward, then back, was replayed over and over to comical effect, his horror-stricken face contorted in some cross between the tormented visage in Edvard Munch’s The Scream and Macauley Culkin’s in Home Alone. Then, as the audience roared with laughter, Dan was seen turning on his heels and fleeing the stage.

  I glanced at Dan standing next to me, his face in his hands. “I’ve been had,” he mumbled. “This is why I don’t do conventi
ons.”

  Just then, the bulky figure of Margot Ramsay, the erstwhile ingénue and Queen of Screams, strode onstage, drink in hand, moving at a speed remarkable for someone of her age and girth. “Stop!” she bellowed, halting center stage, her well-upholstered silhouette blocking the image of the “corpse” and its handlers. “This ain’t funny! Not one bit! Shut that damn thing off!”

  A groan swelled from the audience as the lights came up, obliterating the video. Margot took a swig of chardonnay and glared at the audience.

  “My God, what’s that all about?” I whispered to Dan.

  “Remember that sequence when her character jumped off a cliff with the vampire? Apparently some gal fell off a roof emulating her. Didn’t come to a good end.”

  Somebody handed Margot a mic, which I suspected wouldn’t come to a good end, either. The woman was clearly angry, her voice shaking.

  “You numbskulls can’t seem to understand what this sort of thing can lead to. You can dress up however you like, but you can’t just play around with death like this. You don’t know what can happen. We did because we had scripts, you idiots. Get a life!”

  Another figure, just as angry, strode on stage, mic in hand. I recognized her immediately, despite geeky spectacles and an odd wig with ringlets cascading down her back. Her ’60s-era miniskirt revealed the stick-thin legs that could only be the ones Emma inherited from our mother.

  “It’s Emma,” I hissed. “What’s she doing here?”

  “Emma? That’s our Emma? She was playing the governess, and I didn’t even recognize her.”

  “I had no idea she was mixed up in this fandom scene. How awkward.”

  Emma boldly stepped up to Margot and shouted, “You’re not pulling a Shatner on us! We don’t need you to tell us fans to get a life. This is what we do . . . and it’s for fun! Maybe you forgot that what was so great about Dark Secrets is that nobody stayed dead. You all came back from the dead again and again, maybe in different roles, but...”