Simon looked at his watch.
“Maybe five minutes to go,” he said. “I better be getting back inside. Have a look at the audience. Count the calls.”
He went back into the theater. They watched him go. After a bit, they went in after him. From backstage they could hear the applause. It was loud and sustained. There were even a few cheers, somewhat subdued. They found they were in one of the wings and stopped just in time. “Damn near took curtain calls ourselves, didn’t we?” Tony said, his voice low.
A couple of inadvertent steps more and they would have, intruding on Arlene Collins and Kenneth Price, who were downstage center, holding hands and bowing to the audience. Price released the girl’s hand and she moved back a step. He bowed to her. She returned the bow with a curtsy. The curtain came down.
The two left by way of the terrace. The applause continued. Helen Barnes and the young actor who played Foster went to the front of the stage and took bows. The applause spurted up, but only briefly. The curtain went down again, and then the applause increased. There was a short interval, and then Ken Price and Arlene Collins came on from the terrace hand in hand (and trying, Nathan thought, to look reluctant) to take another call.
People in the audience were standing up by then and moving toward the aisles. The curtain came down. The applause trickled away. Shapiro and Cook went on backstage and waited outside the door of Dressing Room 1.
They did not have long to wait. Price—wearing the white dinner jacket again—came offstage and was opening the dressing-room door when he saw the two tall detectives. He said, “Evening,” but the tone was You again? Then he said, “Want to see me?”
“A couple of questions,” Shapiro said. “About Edgar Lord.”
Price said, “Lord?” with a question in his voice. Then he said, “Oh, Clive Branson’s dresser, isn’t he? What about him?”
Shapiro told him what about Edgar Lord. Price said, “Jesus Christ,” and then, “Why me, Lieutenant? Think I mugged him?”
“Just a couple of questions?” Shapiro said.
They were told to come on in and “watch me get this muck off my face.”
They followed him into the room. It was larger than Helen Barnes’s to which Nathan had climbed one flight up. Price sat at the dressing table and began to tissue makeup from his face. He said, “I didn’t hit Lord over the head with a blunt instrument. Or a sharp one, if that’s what it was. I was onstage. Acting, you know. Or maybe, changing—without a dresser of my own, incidentally. Not that I won’t be hiring one. Anyway—how do I fit in?”
“You did telephone Lord this afternoon? Ask him to come to the theater—to this dressing room—to pick up Branson’s makeup?”
Price wheeled abruptly from the dressing table to face the detectives. “What the hell gave you that crazy idea, Lieutenant?”
“Lord gave it to me, Mr. Price—an hour or so ago, here in the theater. Told me that was what had happened. You say it didn’t?”
“I sure as hell do. I didn’t telephone him. You want to know where Branson’s makeup is?” He had stood up while speaking and crossed to where some clothes were hanging and took a shoe box from a shelf above the clothes. He took the lid off the box and held the box out to Shapiro.
Shapiro had no reason to doubt that the miscellany he saw in the box was Branson’s makeup. He said, “I see. It was in your way, evidently. But you didn’t—”
Price’s interruption was vehement. “I had other things on my mind. Tonight’s performance—”
“Then,” Shapiro said, “someone must have lied to Lord. Identified himself as you and asked him to pick up the makeup.”
“Or Lord may have lied to you.” Price set the box down at one end of the dressing table and sat in front of the table again. “To explain his being here.”
“Possibly, of course. Although I don’t see why he should, do you? No need I can see for his explaining why he came to the theater. Wanting to see how you did in Branson’s old role would be reason enough. Don’t you agree?”
Price turned back to the mirror and resumed dabbing at his face. After a few seconds, he said, “All right. Somebody called Lord, pretending to be me, and got him up here so he could kill him. Is that what you think?”
“Assuming you didn’t make the call yourself, yes.”
“You can damn well assume I didn’t.”
“All right. Did you know Branson had an unlisted telephone number? And did you know what it was?”
“No to both questions. But I’m not surprised the old boy had an unlisted number. Didn’t want his hordes of fans calling him at all hours.” Abruptly he turned back from the makeup mirror and again faced Shapiro. “Listen,” he said, “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. The hordes-of-fans bit. As if I were quoting something he’d said, or maybe thought. He was a nice old guy. No more ego than—well, than the rest of us. Actors aren’t precisely noted for modesty. And damn it all, Branson had no reason to be modest. He was one hell of an actor. In his day, anyway.”
“Which, I take it, you agree had passed?”
“To play Louis Derwent, yes. Derwent is in his early forties. Askew makes a point of it. Actually, he pretty much made his play of it. Branson was somewhere in his sixties. Makeup can do a lot, sure … but there are limits. Simon or Bob Kirby, or somebody, should have spotted that during rehearsals. Hell, it stuck out to me. And I haven’t their experience.”
“And,” Tony Cook said, “you thought you could play the part better than he was doing?”
Price laughed, rather harshly. He did not answer directly. “I didn’t kill poor old Lord,” he said. “Also, I didn’t kill Branson to get his role in Summer Solstice. And yes, it’s a good part and I like playing it. And playing it will give me a step up in the profession, to say nothing of more money from Rolf Simon. About half as much as the ten he was paying Branson, but a lot more than he was paying me to understudy and play young Foster. All right. I still didn’t kill Branson—or his dresser.”
“All right, Mr. Price. That tennis racket you carry onstage. Does it happen to have a steel frame?”
Price said, “Huh?” Then he said, “Hell. It’s just a prop. Can’t say I ever noticed. It’s right over there, by the door. Look at it yourself. You mean, it wasn’t a blunt object Lord was hit with? Killed with?”
“Lord isn’t dead, Mr. Price. Yet, anyway. He was wearing a derby hat which apparently cushioned the blow.”
Shapiro went to the doorway and picked up the tennis racket. It did have a steel frame. And one of the strings was broken. He raised the racket to the serving position. It was fairly heavy. He brought it down in what would have been a hard serve; only he turned its face so that the steel frame whipped down like a thin steel rod. It hit nothing, of course, as he checked what would have been a blow.
“Could have been that way, I guess,” Price said. “Only like I said, not by me.”
“We’ll have to take the racket along,” Shapiro said. “Have it examined. See what broke the string. Strain on the frame, could be. Have to get another one for tomorrow night, I’m afraid.”
“No problem, Lieutenant. Assuming I’m not in jail.” His inflection was light. It was a joke, or almost a joke.
“If you’re not in jail,” Shapiro agreed. There was no inflection in his voice. “One other thing, Mr. Price. Mind telling us where you were this afternoon? From four o’clock on, say. As a matter of routine. The sort of question they want us to ask.”
“They” are the unidentified rulers in Shapiro’s terminology. “They” are demanding superiors. They are never named.
“In Mrs. Abel’s apartment. And yes, she has a telephone. And no, I didn’t use it.”
“All right.”
“And probably she knows Branson’s unlisted number. And could have given it to me.”
“Yes, Mr. Price. We’ll ask her about that.”
“So?”
“That’s all for now, Mr. Price. For the moment, let’s say. We’ll have to ask M
rs. Abel. Try to find out who else knew this unlisted telephone number.”
They left the dressing room, Tony carrying the steel tennis racket. Outside, they arranged for its delivery to the police lab. “Might as well give Bellevue another buzz,” Shapiro said. “And tell Mrs. Abel we’ll come around to see her. In half an hour or so.”
Tony Cook went to the nearby telephone booth. He came out of it. “Critical,” he said. “Touch and go. Sounds more like go, I guess. And Mrs. Abel says O.K.”
Tony had Martha Abel’s address in the East Seventies. They went to the street to look for a taxicab. It was a long look. Finally a cab came with its top light on. It even stopped for them. “Could be Price is our boy,” Tony said as the cab pulled away from the curb.
Shapiro didn’t disagree. He didn’t agree, either. He said, “Mmm.”
“Why not?” Tony said. “Gained a lot. A starring part, or close to it. A lot more money, he says. Not as much as Branson was getting, but a lot more than Price was getting as the Foster twerp. And he had this racket handy—if that was what was used on Lord. And probably he tried to poison Askew with those alkaloids, the ones that dilate the pupils. He’s the only one who had a chance.”
“Not the only one, Tony. And why?”
“Askew saw something at this party. Saw Price do something. Get him out of the way.”
“Only,” Shapiro said, “he didn’t, did he? Get him out of the way. Just made him a little groggy for a few hours.”
“All right, Nate. So he didn’t know the dosage.”
“Or didn’t want Askew dead. The way it looks, maybe nobody did.”
“He’s still our best bet,” Tony Cook said.
Sometimes, challenged, Nathan Shapiro comes through. It is worth trying. This time, it didn’t seem to work. They went several blocks and were stopped in traffic before Shapiro answered. Then he said, “Could be Simon, as a way of buying up a contract. Could be Mrs. Abel … to give Price a boost—she’s fond of him, I think. Could even be young Withers.”
“Withers?”
“Peter Withers. The boy who’s playing Ronald Foster.”
Cook said, “Oh.” Then he said, “Why?”
“Haven’t the foggiest,” Shapiro said. “And here we are, apparently.”
Where they were was in front of a towering and new-looking apartment house on Seventy-second near Second Avenue. Like the building’s exterior, the lobby was new and shining. It contained a counter with a man in uniform behind it. He was gracious with them, although Shapiro suspected he would rather have seen them differently dressed. Black tie, anyway. And who should he say was calling?
Shapiro told him. He omitted the title. The man in uniform used a telephone. It was quickly answered.
“Mrs. Abel is expecting you, Lieutenant.” There was a slight note of inquiry on the word Lieutenant. “Penthouse A. Third elevator, please.”
They went into the third elevator and up, without a stop, to a floor marked 22. From the stopping place, corridors stretched in two directions. One was marked A, and they went along it for thirty feet or so. They came to a door, which was also marked A, and Tony pressed the bell push. Chimes sounded beyond the door, and very quickly a pretty black girl in a dark-green uniform opened the door. She said, “Lieutenant Shapiro?” with a faint note of puzzlement in her voice.
Shapiro admitted that, strange as it might seem, he was Lieutenant Shapiro. “And Detective Cook,” he added.
She said, “Gentlemen,” and would they please come in.
The room they went into was large and pretty much walled with glass. The lights of Manhattan seemed to be all around them. Beyond the windows on one side of the big room there was a terrace with summer furniture on it. Martha Abel rose from a sofa near a large fireplace set with summer logs. She said, “Lieutenant. And Mr. Cook, isn’t it? You make late calls, don’t you? It must be almost midnight.”
“Yes,” Shapiro said. “Sorry to bother you so late. We shouldn’t need more than a few minutes.”
“It’s all right,” she said. “I’m a bit of a night owl, actually. Won’t you both sit down somewhere?”
She herself sank back onto the sofa. She did so very gracefully and, as gracefully, drew the folds of a deep-green hostess gown around a slim body. Altogether a very graceful lady, Shapiro thought. One living in grace.
“And how can I help you?” she asked. “I suppose it’s about poor dear Clive. My late client.”
It was, Shapiro told her, but only indirectly. It was about Clive Branson’s unlisted telephone number. He assumed she had it?
“Of course, Lieutenant. He was in my stable. I try to keep them—well, tethered. Know where I can reach them in case something comes up, you know.”
“Yes,” Shapiro said, “I supposed you would. Have you any idea who else might have known this telephone number? Which the Bell people won’t give out, of course.”
She really didn’t know. Not too many, she thought. “Dear Clive was essentially a private person. A few friends, I’d suppose. But I don’t actually know who. One or two on the West Coast, probably. People in the studios, I suppose. And my Hollywood office, of course.”
“I was thinking of people here,” Shapiro told her. “In New York.”
“Mr. Simon, I’m sure. Perhaps Miss Barnes, who used to be married to him. One of the several who were, poor dear. I don’t know who else he may have given it to.”
“Mr. Price?”
“I’d doubt it. They weren’t all that chummy, I shouldn’t think. But I don’t really know.”
“Mr. Askew?”
“Yes, I think so. Although I don’t know why I do. Something Clive told me about talking to Bret Askew on the phone. Wait, I remember now. It was about the contract. Simon wanted to buy it up, you know, and wanted to do it on the cheap. We weren’t having that. Clive was a big name, one of the biggest in the profession. That was why Simon wanted him, wasn’t it? And why Askew was so keen on getting him. At least until those nasty, unfair reviews. Then Askew—yes, Clarice?”
The pretty black girl was standing just inside a door into the big room. She carried a silver tray with what, from the distance, looked like a glass of milk on it.
“It’s twelve o’clock, Mrs. Abel,” the maid said. “It’s been two hours.”
“Oh, dear,” Martha Abel said, “how monotonous. But all right. Put it down here, Clarice. I suppose I have to drink the damn stuff, however I hate it.”
The black girl put the tray with the glass, now obviously of milk, on an end table.
Martha said, “Thank you, dear,” and then, “Sorry, Lieutenant. My doctor insists. Yes, an ulcer flare-up—the ailment of the profession. Tension, they think it is. Sorry to interrupt. Yes, I think Bret did call Clive. Tried to argue him into being what Mr. Simon called reasonable.’ Not that it was, of course. Not from our point of view. Fifty thousand. Five weeks for a run of the play. Simon should have known better. He—sorry, it’s a dead issue now, of course. Dead issue with a dead man.”
“Yes,” Shapiro said. “Mr. Askew wanted the contract bought up? Tried to talk Branson into selling? And yet you’ve just said how keen Askew was on getting him in the first place.”
“Wanted a big name. A name that would be a draw. Actually, it was Simon who first came to me about Clive, but Askew—yes, Askew was just as keen. As I said. Kept bothering me about it. Getting me to pressure Clive.”
“Mr. Branson didn’t too much want the role, Mrs. Abel?”
“Oh, he liked the play, but he wasn’t sure the part was right for him. Kept pointing out it had been years since he’d played light comedy—years, in fact, since there’d been light comedy like Solstice. And he kept saying, ‘I don’t know. I just don’t know.’ I more or less argued him into it, I’m afraid. And then those nasty notices, making all those remarks about his age.”
“They weren’t true? I mean you didn’t think they were? After all, there was rather a gap between Branson’s sixties and Derwent’s early forties.”
“Nothing his technique didn’t take care of. Damn it all, he was an actor. He could play Ken Price off the stage. Not that Ken isn’t damn good, too—better than he realizes, in fact. The time I spend trying to build him up! In his own mind, I mean. Take this afternoon. I spent hours talking him out of the jitters about going on tonight. Kept telling him it was in the bag—that he’d be the hit of all time. You saw the play tonight, Lieutenant? And you, Mr. Cook? He was good, wasn’t he?”
“I thought so,” Shapiro said.
“He seemed fine to me,” Tony said, “and to the girl I brought with me. And she’s in the profession. An actress, I mean.”
“He was damn good,” Martha Abel said, “and I hope the Chronicle man has sense enough to know it. And to say it.”
She drank from the glass of milk and made a face. She said, “Ugh,” but she drank all of it. “There! Now I have two hours’ respite. You’d think there’d be something better, wouldn’t you? And there is, only my doctor won’t give it to me. Says mine is the wrong kind of ulcer. Bret Askew’s doctor gives it to him, though. He told me about it. Even gave me the name of it. Only it needs a prescription, and Dr. Alexander won’t give me one.”
She shook her head. She lighted a cigarette and said, “Sorry—you two didn’t come to hear me bellyache about a bellyache. It’s that damn milk sets me off.”
It was quite all right, Shapiro assured her. As a matter of fact, he’d been having some ulcer trouble himself. If there was some kind of miracle drug for it, he’d like to know what it was, so he could ask his own doctor about it. Did she remember the name of the drug which had worked for Bret Askew?
She had it written down someplace, she thought. She took a little bell from the table and jingled it, and that brought Clarice. “Yes, Mrs. Abel?”
There was a little black book on her desk. Would Clarice bring it to her? And then, after she had let Mr. Price in, Clarice could go to bed. She’d had a long day.
When Clarice brought the little black book, Martha Abel thumbed its pages. “Donnatal Extentabs,” she said. She spelled the words out. “One every twelve hours for peptic ulcer,” she read. Then she said, “I remember now. Bret told me he’d been having to take a different tablet—or capsule or whatever it was—every four hours. And that every twelve hours was a lot easier to remember.”
The Old Die Young Page 15