by Barbara Paul
“Then why don’t you fire her?” said a voice from behind us. I turned to see Vivian Frank standing there.
Leo grinned crookedly. “For one thing, she’s the only one who can understand Tiny.”
Vivian smiled quickly and said, “The door of my dressing room sticks a little, Leo. Would you mind taking a look at it?”
Leo glanced around before answering, so I said, “I’ll find Carla. You go see about the door.” He nodded.
“Thank you, Abby, you’re such a help.” Vivian gave me a Betty White smile and drifted away.
What’s with Vivian? I found Carla easily enough; she’d been waylaid by Griselda Gold.
“Whatever you might think about Martin Luther’s motivation,” Griselda was saying as she pointed her finger at Carla’s nose, “you’ve got to give him one thing. He stood up for what he believed in.”
So did Hitler. “Carla,” I said, “sweep the stage?”
Carla slapped her hand to her mouth in an oh-I-forgot gesture and scuttled off.
“Come along, Griselda, we’re in the way here. Let’s go out front.”
We stood at the back of the theater, overlooking another of those package-rattling matinee crowds—not the ideal setting for a nervous actor trying to impress his boss. I spotted Gene Ramsay in one of the house seats, about halfway down.
When the performance began, Phil Carter was still nervous—and it showed. He didn’t blow any lines, but he made quite a few false starts. His nervousness persisted until almost the end of the first act, when at last he showed signs of settling into his part.
At intermission, I looked at Griselda and Griselda looked at me. “What do you think?” I asked her.
“I don’t know, what do you think?”
“I don’t think he can handle it,” said Gene Ramsay, coming up to us. “The man’s come unglued.”
“Allow for the audience,” I said. “This is the kind that can throw even a regular. It must be murder for an understudy.” Griselda excused herself and went backstage to “be supportive.” “It seemed to me he was getting into it there toward the end of the act.”
“Maybe,” said Ramsay noncommittally.
“Well, we don’t have to decide now. Wait until the next act.”
Griselda didn’t come back, so I watched the second act by myself and witnessed something of a minor miracle taking place. That air of innocence John Reddick had spoken of suddenly blossomed forth, and the character of Alex became a living human being—confused, vulnerable, making wrong choices, one of those people you want to take by the shoulders and shake at the same time you’re feeling sorry for them. At curtain call Phil Carter got as much applause as Hugh Odell usually did.
“Changed my mind,” Ramsay growled on the way out. “He’s got the part.”
John Reddick had showed up during intermission and had watched the second act from backstage. “Was I right?” he asked me, grinning. “Or was I right?”
“You were right. Once he got his nervousness under control he was solid in the role. Ramsay says okay.”
We went to congratulate Phil; Ramsay was there giving him the good word. I think everyone in the cast was glad for Phil; an understudy’s lot is not a happy one.
Most of the cast and crew elected to stay in the theater for the short time between the matinee and the evening performance, sending out to the Stage Deli for snacks—no heavy meals before a performance. But as John Reddick and I were leaving, Ian Cavanaugh called after us.
“Are you going for something to eat?” he asked. “I want to get out of the theater for a while.”
We told him to come along. Ian was no longer guarded day and night, at his own request, so he had freedom of movement once again.
“I hope you’re not going someplace like Elaine’s or Gallagher’s,” he said.
John and I had been heading for Gallagher’s, as a matter of fact. But we both understood how much Ian disliked places that catered to celebrities.
“Well,” said John, “there’s a scroungy little bar on East Forty-third that serves the best meatball sandwiches I’ve ever tasted.”
“Sounds ideal,” said Ian. “Let’s go.”
When John said the bar was scroungy, he was being euphemistic. The place was a dive. It was one of those bars that are kept so dark you either stand inside the door like an idiot for five minutes until your eyes adjust or you stumble forward like a blind man and pray you don’t sit down on some stranger’s lap.
“I think I see three places at the bar,” said John. “Bartender, are those stools empty?”
On being reassured that they were, we groped our way forward and sat down. The television was at our end of the bar, but the volume was low enough for us to be able to talk easily.
“Are you sure this place is licensed to serve food?” I said.
“I don’t know,” John said back. “I never had the nerve to ask.” He ordered beer and meatball sandwiches for all three of us, and while we were waiting I found I could see again.
Three mountainous sandwiches were slapped down in front of us. John hadn’t exaggerated; they were delicious.
“Mmm,” said Ian. “Wunderschön.”
“Was I right?” said John.
“Mmmmh,” I answered, my mouth full.
John nudged me and nodded toward the other end of the bar. “Look who’s here.”
I looked. It was the man I’d held up for five cents a couple of days ago. John gave the bartender a nickel and asked him to deliver it to the man in the tweed jacket at the end of the bar. We watched as the man looked at the nickel in surprise and said something to the bartender, who jerked his thumb over his shoulder at us. I lifted my hand and waved. At first he didn’t recognize me, but then he remembered and smiled and waved back.
A nice-looking woman in good clothing came up and stood next to Ian. “Hi,” she said. “Do I know you? You look familiar.”
Ian pretended to be shocked. “I am never familiar. In fact, I’m very proper.”
She didn’t get it. “You’re an actor, aren’t you? I know you’re an actor. I’ve seen you.”
And then this woman leaned against him, breasts first, without even the slightest pretense of subtlety. Ian pulled away from her, which made him lean against me. I pulled away from him, which made me lean into John. John leaned away from me. We must have looked like three drunks, all listing to leeward.
Ian finally got rid of the woman and we were able to sit up straight again. “Holy Moly, Batman,” I laughed, “does this happen to you a lot?” Ian just grunted.
“It was Captain Marvel who said ‘Holy Moly,’” John corrected me.
The two men ordered another beer. John was trying to read his watch in the dim light. “I wonder what time it is? I’ve got to be somewhere by eight o’clock. I’ve got a new girl, Abby,” he confided to me and at least six other people within hearing distance.
I expressed polite interest.
“I want you to meet her,” he went on. “Rachel’s a truly special woman.”
So were Julie, Laura, Barbara, Susan, Ivy, and Lou. I’d long since given up all hope that John would ever find someone with whom he’d be comfortable for more than a few weeks at a time. Now it was Rachel’s turn. John launched into a panegyric to this new woman in his life. I’d heard it all many times before, but Ian was less familiar with the spiel.
I half-listened to John’s monologue and half-listened to the other sounds around me in the bar. The television set overhead chattered away for the most part ignored; in my half-listening state the only words I seemed to catch were the ones that were mispronounced:… ant-eye perspirant … abzorb … starcher own ’erb garden … rekkanize …
“She designs clothes,” John was saying, “and she’s good at it, really good. I’m trying to get her interested in costume design.”
… maple surrup … eggszactly … gore-may dinners …
“Wait till you meet her. She’s got style, real style.”
After using one tube of Ultra-Brite
, look in the mere.
“And all woman—”
… nookyooler power … Massatoosetts … Foxfire …
“Let me tell you what she did—”
“Hold it, John,” I interrupted. “Listen.”
… found the body when he returned home at three-fifteen this afternoon. Odell told police he’d last seen his wife at eleven this morning when he’d left to keep a dental appointment. Odell was treated for shock at Midtown Hospital and released.
“What?” said Ian. “What is it?”
The killing is the latest in a series of incidents to plague New York’s hard-luck play, Abigail James’s Foxfire. In late November actress Sylvia Markey was the victim of—
“What did he say?” John demanded of the bartender. “Did you hear it?”
“Some actor’s wife,” said the bartender. “Got her throat cut.”
Rosemary Odell. Vapid, mindless Rosemary—who couldn’t possibly be a threat to anyone. Rosemary, the joy of Hugh Odell’s middle years.
Murdered.
Part Two
1
It’s always easy to look back and see what a good con job you’ve done on yourself. Everything had been going so well. I had wanted to think there’d be no more trouble, so I had thought it.
But it wasn’t just trouble now. Now it was murder. You can’t stay detached when someone you know has been murdered. You can’t deal with it objectively. But worst of all, you can’t ever relax. That fourth wall is down for good.
It’s a commonplace, how we’ve all grown calluses under the constant bombardment of stories of the violence we live with. And we entertain ourselves with fictionalized murder that’s little more than a joke. Turn on your television any night and watch somebody get murdered: it’s a comic book treatment, trivialized and unreal.
I found out how very real it is. A silly girl who’d meant nothing to me in life assumed monumental importance in death. The first time I saw Hugh Odell after Rosemary died, all I could do was keep touching him. I couldn’t say a thing: the wordsmith had no words. And all the time I was touching him, Hugh kept bobbing his head and saying yes, yes. We understood each other—it was just too big to talk about.
But Hugh had to talk about it, and he had to keep on talking. I guess it’s true that the spouse is the first one the police suspect. I don’t know what went on in the various interrogations Hugh was subjected to, but on top of the shock of Rosemary’s death it was all more than he could handle. He began to shake and stammer and in general had trouble functioning. So it wasn’t surprising that he forgot to take his medicine and had an asthma attack bad enough to put him in the hospital.
Life went on, kind of. Phil Carter was playing Hugh’s role now. We’d hired a backup actor to understudy Hugh and Ian Cavanaugh if Hugh returned to the play or to take Phil Carter’s place in the touring company if he didn’t. Gene Ramsay surprised everyone by stepping in and making arrangements for the burial of Rosemary’s body when Hugh became incapacitated. When Rosemary’s family arrived from Iowa, they found everything taken care of for them. Rosemary Odell was laid to rest with ceremony but without her husband’s presence.
Normally you could expect a performer whose wife or husband had died to return to work within a reasonable period of time—for something to do, something to concentrate on, if for no other reason. And the professionalism accumulated in thirty years on the stage, as in Hugh’s case, would dictate as quick a return as possible. But there was nothing at all normal about the present circumstances. Very few actors come home to find their wives’ throats have been cut. And Hugh hadn’t been a normal husband. He’d been obsessed with Rosemary—uxorious, possessive, sick in love. I honestly didn’t know if he could recover from losing her, especially losing her the way he did. It was a real possibility that we might never see Hugh Odell in Foxfire again.
A new man came into my life, into all our lives: Lieutenant Richard Goodlow, Homicide Division, NYPD. He called the entire Foxfire company together in the theater on the Thursday morning following Rosemary’s murder. He had us seated on the stage—a move that bothered me a little. The Lieutenant had interviewed each of us individually, and bringing us here together on the Foxfire set struck me as being a trifle, well, theatrical.
Lieutenant Goodlow was a big man, big and square-shouldered and authoritative-looking. He wore black-rimmed glasses of a kind I hadn’t seen for a few years. In his fifties, he showed none of the world-weariness I half-expected in a high-ranking police officer. But he looked as if he didn’t smile much.
The Lieutenant looked us over carefully, as if taking roll. The cast and understudies and both crews were there, front-of-house and backstage. Gene Ramsay, John Reddick, and Griselda Gold were there. Hugh Odell was still in the hospital. John Reddick was fidgeting; Androcles in Church was having its first tryout performance before an invited audience that evening.
Lieutenant Goodlow noticed and said, “I’ll make this as brief as possible. I asked you all here at the same time because together you may be able to save us some time. I want you to put your heads together and see what you can come up with.”
He started pacing around the stage. “Our investigation of the murder of Rosemary Odell has two aspects. The first assumes that her death has nothing at all to do with this company. That part need not concern you. The other aspect assumes that it has everything to do with this company, and that does concern you.”
“Rosemary wasn’t a member of the company,” said Gene Ramsay. “She was only related by marriage, you might say.”
“I’m aware of that,” said the Lieutenant, “but there are all sorts of possibilities. She spent a lot of time backstage, waiting in her husband’s dressing room. She might have seen something, something she wasn’t meant to see. We must investigate the possibility that her death is somehow related to this play.”
Lieutenant Goodlow stopped pacing and sat down at a little table Carla Banner had set up for him. He pulled out a notebook and thumbed through it. “All right. Beginning last November, we’ve had a series of incidents that constitute attacks on five different persons.”
“Five?” someone asked.
“A couple on the list may be doubtful,” the Lieutenant said, “but I’ll explain that as we go along. First, Sylvia Markey. Her apartment was vandalized twice and her cat was killed and dismembered. These are spite acts, pure and simple. Their only purpose was to make Sylvia Markey unhappy.” I perked up; that was exactly what I’d said to Sergeant Piperson and had been brushed off for my efforts.
“Second, Loren Keith,” Lieutenant Goodlow continued. “Keith was blinded when someone threw carbolic acid in his face in the parking lot of a food store in Los Angeles. This is one of the doubtfuls. Keith did not work on Foxfire. His blinding is connected with the next incident by the presence of carbolic acid, but that’s all. But we’ll leave him on the list for the time being.
“Third, Ian Cavanaugh. A tin of cold cream to which carbolic acid had been added was taken from Cavanaugh’s dressing table by Sylvia Markey with the tragic results we all know. There are two possible interpretations of this. The first is that Cavanaugh himself put the carbolic in the cold cream for purposes known only to himself and was keeping it in his dressing table for later use.”
Ian turned ghost-white. Before he could say anything, Lieutenant Goodlow went on, “The other possibility—and the more likely one—is that someone else placed the cold cream there for the intended purpose of disfiguring Cavanaugh. Either way, it was sheer chance that Sylvia Markey was the one to use the cold cream.
“Fourth, Abigail James.” Lieutenant Goodlow read his notes. “It’s the opinion of the investigating officer, Sergeant Piperson, that the destruction of the Foxfire set was carried out for the purpose of closing the play. Which would make the playwright the most prominent although not the only victim.” The Lieutenant paused. “This is quite possible,” he said tactfully, “but it’s also possible that wrecking the set was an act of undifferentiated hatr
ed, a generalized kind of hitting out at everyone and everything connected with the play. However, we’ll also leave Abigail James’s name on the list for the time being.
“Fifth, Rosemary Odell. At one o’clock last Saturday, give or take fifteen minutes either way, someone entered the Odell apartment on East Thirty-seventh Street and cut Rosemary Odell’s throat. Mrs. Odell either let the murderer in or he had keys—there was no sign of a forced entry. Mrs. Odell was not sexually violated and nothing was taken from the apartment, so it appears the murder was not incidental to another act. Whoever entered that apartment at one o’clock did so for the express purpose of killing Rosemary Odell. No weapon was found on the premises.”
Lieutenant Goodlow cleared his throat. “Here, of course, is the big change. Up to now, everything that’s been done has had a vindictive, hurtful quality to it—but it’s always stopped short of total destruction. Sylvia Markey’s career is over, but not her life. Same for Loren Keith. The stage set was wrecked, but the play reopened. But if all these acts were committed by the same person, that person has now crossed some kind of boundary. Damage is no longer enough. If the murder of Rosemary Odell is part of the same series of acts.
“This is where I need your help. Think of these five names together—Markey, Keith, Cavanaugh, James, Rosemary Odell. What’s the connection among them? What do these five people have in common? Please don’t say ‘theater’—that’s too general to be of help. Give me something specific. What’s the connection?”
We all looked at each other helplessly. Finally John Reddick said, “None that I can see. I don’t think Rosemary Odell and Loren Keith even knew each other, did they, Abby?”
I shook my head. “I’m fairly certain they didn’t.”
“She never worked in the theater, did she?” asked Lieutenant Goodlow.
“She was a schoolgirl,” Gene Ramsay snapped. “A senior at Hunter College when Hugh met her. The only people she knew were other schoolgirls. She didn’t know anybody, she hadn’t been anywhere, she hadn’t done anything.”
We all looked at him in surprise.