The War of the Worlds Murder d-6

by Max Allan Collins

  “Riiight,” Gibson said.

  Welles and Williams had barely arrived when Houseman came bustling up the hall, alone, but with a key in hand.

  “The janitor shared this passkey with me,” Houseman said. “Should do the trick…”

  The producer stood before the door, and drew a deep breath, perhaps gathering courage to unlock so ominous a passageway. Then he inserted the key, a click was heard, and Houseman gently pushed the door open, and all three men stepped inside, to find…

  …the room was empty.

  Oh, the table was there, all right; but no young woman.

  And no blood.

  Houseman whirled on Gibson, saying, “You pledged you would stand guard!”

  Gibson extended his hands, palms up. “I did-I swear I did! No one went in or out.”

  The security guard, looking about as bright as a potted plant, asked, “What was it you wanted me to see, anyway, Mr. Welles?”

  Welles turned to Williams and patted him on the shoulder of his powder-blue uniform. A little too pleasantly, Welles said, “Bill, I made a small wager with Mr. Houseman here that I could go summon you on a crisis and that you could get here before our esteemed producer could acquire the key from the janitor. Leaving at the same time, you understand.”

  Gibson and Houseman exchanged glances; neither man had ever heard such incoherent inanity in all their lives.

  But Bill the security guard just grinned in a horsey fashion and said, “So I won you some money, huh, Mr. Welles?”

  “Yes, Bill,” Welles said, walking him to the door, an arm around the man, “and I mean to share the wealth with you.”

  “Ha! Just like Huey Long, right, Mr. Welles?”

  “Just like him, Bill-like the man says, ‘Every man a king.’ ”

  The guard was in the hall now, Welles in the doorway, turning toward Gibson to say, “Walter-do you have a five spot for this gentleman?”

  Gibson dug out his wallet and handed a five-dollar bill to Bill, who grinned in his Seabiscuit way, and trotted off, chuckling as if he’d really put one over.

  His expression grave, Welles shut the door.

  The three were now alone in the small studio.

  To Gibson, Welles said, “No one in, or out?”

  “No! That fiver’s going on the expense account, by the way.”

  Houseman, who’d been prowling the room, was over in the lefthand corner. “This connecting door to Studio Eight-it’s locked, too.”

  Impatiently, Welles said, “Well, hell, Housey-you have the janitor’s passkey!”

  Absentmindedly, Houseman looked at the key, still in his hand, and said, “Ah, yes, of course,” and unlocked the door.

  The adjacent studio, whose own control-booth window was across the room, was even emptier than Studio Seven-not even a table, much less a corpse. Various microphone stands and stools and various junk lined and littered the walls, indicating the room saw more storage than production, these days.

  Dazed, the trio returned to the studio where they’d seen the dead girl.

  “Maybe she did get up and walk out,” Welles said hollowly.

  Gibson was having a look at the table and chair. “There was blood here! Look, you can see the faint smearing on this tabletop-somebody used a cloth or towel or something, and sopped and wiped it up….”

  The others came over, had a look and confirmed the writer’s opinion.

  Gibson, however, was already crouched on the floor, kneeling, Sherlock Holmes-style. “And blood drops-starts on the chair and dribbles onto the floor. The killer missed these.”

  Welles, hands on his knees, bent down. “By God, you’re right-it’s a trail…”

  Houseman saw it, too. “Leading away…toward that door to the other studio….”

  The blood drops had been sopped into the soundproof-friendly carpet and led into the adjacent Studio Eight, where the droplets continued to the side of the room and a coat tree (empty), next to which lay a stack of tarps, from some recently finished painting job.

  The trail drizzled to the tarps, then started up again, ending at the doorway to the hall.

  Gibson, hand on his chin, said, “I’m sure I’m merely saying what you’re all thinking, but it needs to be spoken…”

  “Do,” Houseman said.

  “Please,” Welles said.

  Gibson went to the door that connected the studios and reenacted it from there: “The murderer heard us entering the control booth, and scooted next door, to Studio Eight. But he…or she…couldn’t slip into the corridor, to make a getaway, because, Jack-you and I went back out into the hall almost immediately. So the killer waited, hearing us speaking…and we spoke quite a while, truth be told.”

  “We did not,” Houseman dryly said, “spring into action, no.”

  Gibson continued: “When the killer heard your voice in the hall, Orson, he, or she, knew the control booth with its window was free of observers. So the killer returned, sopped up the blood with something…what I don’t know…and dragged the corpse into the adjacent studio. The killer wrapped up the body in a tarp, ready to transport it, and-”

  “No,” Welles said, raising a finger. “I believe the killer waited until hearing John and me go to get the security man…and a key…and, realizing that you were outside standing watch, Walter, the killer had to stay trapped in these adjacent studios, otherwise risk a confrontation.”

  Gibson was nodding. “I think you’re right, Orson. But the killer must have figured out that when help-and a key-did arrive, we would all rush into Studio Seven!”

  Picking it up, Welles said, “That is when the killer cleaned up the table, moved the body, wrapped it for transport, and…when he…”

  “Or she,” Houseman said.

  “-heard help arrive, and all of us enter Studio Seven-prompting the killer with tarp-wrapped cargo in tow to quickly exit Studio Eight and make it away, down the hall.”

  “A killer who by now,” Gibson said, “thanks to our blathering, is well away from here.”

  “But probably still in the building,” Welles said.

  “Well…” Gibson thought about that. “…possibly still in the building. Certainly, Orson, you were right in that assumption you made earlier, and I was wrong to pooh-pooh it.”

  “But what now?” Houseman said, hands widespread. “We have no murder, because we have no body.”

  “We have blood droplets,” Gibson said, pointing floor-ward, “and a table with what I believe to be smeared traces of cleaned-up blood.”

  In full tragedian mode, Welles asked, “Would you have me call the police?”

  Gibson shrugged. “Yes. Sure. Of course.”

  Houseman seemed puzzled. “What do we have to show them?”

  “The traces I mentioned,” Gibson said. “And our report of what we saw.”

  “Including,” Welles said aghast, “a murder weapon with my name attached?”

  Gibson shrugged again, more elaborately. “What else is there to do?”

  Welles, quietly, reasonably, and conspiratorially, said, “We go on with the show. We have our broadcast in…” He checked his wristwatch. “… less than fifteen minutes. If we call the authorities now, I may well be tied up with them, and we’ll let CBS down.”

  “I would think,” Gibson said, edgily, “that the welfare of Miss Donovan is rather more important than that of the Columbia Broadcasting System.”

  Welles looked properly abashed, but nonetheless said, “While I understand that sentiment, the truth is, Miss Donovan in no way benefits from our scuttling the broadcast.”

  “If we call the police now,” Gibson said, “the chance of the killer’s apprehension is greater…much greater. The first several hours of a murder investigation are key-”

  “But,” Welles said, lifting a lecturing forefinger, “our killer is either in the building, or not in the building…would you agree?”

  Gibson frowned. “Well, aren’t those the only two options?”

  “Indeed. But
if the killer is gone, the killer is gone, and bringing the police here sooner doesn’t catch him…or her…any the sooner. But if the killer is in the building, perhaps one of our own broadcast family, then we may have the opportunity to nab him, or her, ourselves.”

  “Ourselves?” Houseman said, eyes popping. In other circumstances, this reaction from the low-key producer would have amused Gibson; right now, it merely seemed grotesque.

  “Think about it,” Welles said. “The killer knows that we are aware a murder has been committed. If we go about our business as if nothing has happened-and, again, if the killer is one of our own-he or she may well tip their hand…express in some fashion surprise, behave nervously, or even blurt something incriminating.”

  “Possibly,” Gibson granted.

  “Also,” Welles said, “while I undertake to go on with my broadcast-business-as-usual, you, Walter…if I am not imposing…could make a few discreet inquiries around the building.”

  “I’m not sure I follow.”

  Welles made an expansive gesture. “Well, on Sunday this building is something of a skeleton operation…so to speak. The offices, whether clerks or executives, are shut down-really, only the seventeenth floor, which is the news department, and the twentieth and twenty-first floors, where the studios are, are in use.”

  Gibson asked, “What about the eighteenth and nineteenth floors?”

  “Strictly offices. Some are assigned permanently, others are for general use.”

  Lifting his eyebrows, Gibson said, “Plenty of places for a killer to hide.”

  “Yes, but I’m not suggesting you search a twenty-two-floor office building.”

  “Thank you so much. What are you suggesting, Orson?”

  “Seek out the other security people, the actors and crew on the floor above us…working on Norman Corwin’s show, for instance…and say that Mr. Welles wondered if any of them have seen his wife, Virginia, today. Then ask the same thing about George Balanchine. In addition, ask if they saw Dolores Donovan at all today, away from her desk-and who she might have been speaking with.”

  Finally Gibson was starting to buy in. “And whether or not any suspicious characters are around? Madden’s boys?”

  Welles thought about that. “Maybe limit that query to the security guards. They’d note a presence like that, and you could say ‘Mr. Welles has had some death threats’ or some such.”

  Fumbling for a fresh Camel, Gibson said, “So let’s say I agree to gather this info, Orson. Then what?”

  “Right after the broadcast, you let Jack and me know what, if anything, you’ve discovered. Then…by all means…we call the authorities.”

  “How do we explain waiting more than an hour to report a murder?”

  With a gesture reminiscent of a ringmaster introducing an elephant act, Welles said, “We tell the truth-that we saw what appeared to be the dead body of our receptionist. That we found the door to be locked, and went after the key, and fetched our security guard…but found the studio empty.”

  “What about the evidence traces we discovered?”

  “That,” Welles said, raising a forefinger, “would be best discreetly left unremarked upon. The police are quite capable, I’m sure, of discovering clues for themselves.”

  “What do we say to the cops,” Gibson said, “when they ask us what we thought when the corpse disappeared?”

  “We say,” Welles said, with a pixie smile, and a mock-innocent tone, “that we simply didn’t know what to think…that we got quite naturally caught up in the pressures and deadlines of putting on our weekly broadcast, but that after the show, we determined we needed to inform them of what we’d seen.”

  Sighing, Gibson asked, “Isn’t Howard Koch a lawyer? Maybe he could advise us as to whether we’d be breaking any laws, waiting to make that call-”

  “I would suggest not,” Houseman said. He was clearly on Welles’s side in this. “Howard is indeed an attorney, which means he’s an officer of the court. He would be legally required to make that call, immediately.”

  Gibson was shaking his head, not in a “no” fashion, rather indicating his uncertainty. “The odds of us…of me…solving this thing in the next hour is, well, it isn’t much, Orson.”

  Welles looked somber now; that flash of a pixie smile had been only a mild interruption in his desperate state. “It isn’t much, Walter-but it’s all I have. I’ve been framed for murder, dear boy. And the only Shadow that can help me now is a shadow of doubt cast over my guilt…which I am counting on you to conjure.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  WAR OF THE WELLES

  At 7:56 P.M., E.S.T., miss Holliday was wandering through Studio One with a wastebasket in hand, a Joannie Appleseed in reverse, bending to pluck the litter of the long day, chiefly waxy sandwich paper and empty cardboard coffee cups. It wouldn’t do for anyone to step on such refuse and make an uncalled-for impromptu sound effect.

  As she completed her task and disappeared with her small infectious smile through a doorway, Orson Welles-his shirtsleeves rolled up-stepped up onto his platform-style podium. To his left was Bernard Herrmann at his smaller podium (piano nearby) and his twenty-seven-piece orchestra. To Welles’s right was the horizontal picture window of the control booth, behind which were numerous anxious faces, belonging to CBS exec Davidson Taylor (in the sub-control room’s separate adjacent pane), Howard Koch, Paul Stewart, and John Houseman; next to Houseman, engineer John Dietz in his headphones, attending his console, lacked the anxiety of the others, seeming instead coolly focused and professional. Assembled before Welles were his actors, some on their feet, at microphones, script in hand, awaiting their cues within the rectangle of carpet, others at the two tables where they sat waiting for their own time to come.

  A few moments before, Welles had casually asked if any one had seen his wife Virginia around today, or even this morning. No one had, or at least so they professed. Then, as a seeming afterthought, he said, “Say, somebody said George Balanchine was hanging around, earlier-anyone see him?” No, they said.

  Now Welles was at his conductor’s post, a microphone stand with its large CBS head on a skinny chrome neck squeezed between him and his music stand. His Andy Gump-ish assistant Alland (aka Vakhtangov)-in a fedora and suspenders-was one of the actors this evening, but right now was attending to his charge. He handed up to Welles a large bottle of pineapple juice, which the director chugged-part throat remedy, part superstition-then passed the empty bottle back.

  Alland walked over to set the bottle on one of the actor tables-already cluttered with Sunday newspapers and magazines, as well as scripts-and returned to the carpeted square.

  Welles cleared his throat, clamped on his earphones, loosened his tie, made rubbery motions with his mouth, limbering up his face. High on the wall behind Welles-where everyone but himself had a good view of it-was a round gray clock with white hands; alongside this circle a rectangular extension held two bold white-letter warnings, the upper one of which was lighted up now: STAND BY. Hands lifted in a conductor’s manner, echoing nearby Herrmann who stood poised before his musicians, Welles waited, poised to begin. Then-though he couldn’t see the second white warning flash on-he somehow heeded the words perfectly: ON THE AIR, and…

  …cued his announcer, Dan Seymour, who rather liltingly, even lightly intoned: “The Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Orson Welles and The Mercury Theatre on the Air in ‘The War of the Worlds’ by H.G. Wells.”

  The other Welles threw Herrmann his cue and the maestro led his musicians in twenty seconds of the Mercury Theatre theme: “Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B Flat Minor.”

  Then Seymour, hand to his ear in time-honored announcer fashion, said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the director of the Mercury Theatre, and the star of these broadcasts-Orson Welles.”

  Not missing a beat, Welles spoke into the microphone in a fashion both intimate and important: “We know now that in the early years of the twentieth century, this worl
d was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man’s, and yet as mortal as his own. We know now that-as human beings busied themselves about their various concerns-they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water….”

  Welles paused.

  “With infinite complacence,” he continued, “people went to and fro over the earth about their little affairs-serene in the assurance of their dominion over this small, spinning fragment of solar driftwood which, by chance or design, man has inherited out of the dark mystery of time and space.”

  Another dramatic beat, then Welles pressed on: “Yet across an immense ethereal gulf, minds that are to our minds as ours are to the beasts in the jungle…intellects vast, cool and unsympathetic…regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.”

  After the slightest breath, Welles changed his tone from vaguely portentous to briskly matter of fact: “In the thirty-ninth year of the twentieth century came the great disillusionment. Near the end of October, business was better, war scare was over, more men were back at work, sales were picking up. On this particular evening, October thirtieth, the Crosley service estimated that thirty-two million people were listening in on radios….”

  A starry night seemingly like any other had settled over Grovers Mill, a bump in the New Jersey roadside consisting of little more than a gas station, general store, feed store and mill pond. Eight miles east of Trenton, the state capital, fifty miles southwest of New York, this was the epitome of sleepy small-town America, described by one wag as “nestling in a time warp of refinement and genteel country living.” To find a hamlet more typically American than this, you’d have to go to the backlot of MGM.

  On a small farm just a few miles east of Grovers Mill, family members had gathered around the tall walnut cabinet of the household radio in a living room that also held a wood-burning stove and a spinet piano, as well as doily-pinned furnishings reflecting the tastes of the woman of the house, who had passed away less than a year ago.