The Fourth Wall

by Barbara Paul

  Leo

  We were waiting in a cab when Leo locked up his schlockfest for the night. “Let’s get out of this zoo,” he said, meaning the Village. He gave the driver the name of a Greek restaurant forty blocks uptown and explained, “I didn’t get a chance to eat tonight.”

  Only when we were seated and Leo had ordered did he explain what it was all about. “It’s what you said this afternoon, Abby—about Michael Crown’s lover being unable to sit there in the committee room and watch Crown going to pieces without giving himself away. I thought of something this afternoon but I didn’t want to say anything until I had a chance to think it over. So I thought it over, and now I think I’d better mention it.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Leo,” I said, “what is it?”

  “That day we confronted Michael Crown—I’m pretty sure Hugh Odell wasn’t there.”

  Ian and I were silent, letting this sink in.

  Leo ran his left hand through his hair. “Missing a committee meeting doesn’t make a man a killer, but I thought I’d better mention it.”

  “How sure is ‘pretty sure,’ Leo?” I asked.

  He lifted his shoulders. “Just … pretty sure.”

  “You know,” Ian said slowly, “somebody wasn’t there that day. That room had one big table and exactly nine chairs, and one of them was rickety. Remember? When we had full attendance, the last one in always had to take the rickety chair. And when Crown came in, I remember noticing he had to sit on the bad chair. That means only eight of the committee members were there.”

  This had happened nearly ten years ago; I just didn’t remember. There were no records to check to see who’d been there that day. Keeping formal minutes of every meeting we held was impractical. Too many times we had to meet on the spur of the moment to decide something quickly, sometimes only four or five of us for ten minutes or so. Hugh Odell’s absence on any one day wouldn’t have attracted any particular attention.

  Leo’s moussaka arrived and he fell to. Ian and I split a spinach pie just to have something to nibble on. None of us talked until Leo finished eating. When the dishes were cleared away and three cups of coffee set out, Ian finally spoke.

  He said one word: “Rosemary.”

  That was the kicker. No one who’d ever seen how besotted Hugh had been with Rosemary could ever forget it. “Do you really think Hugh could kill someone he loved that much?” I asked.

  “Odell is a damned good actor,” Ian said quietly.

  I thought about that. “You mean he didn’t really love her at all? That it was all an act?”

  “It makes sense, Abby,” said Leo. “Everybody on the committee was being punished. It’d look odd if Odell was the only one who didn’t get hurt. So he had to lose something. Just like the rest of us. But he wouldn’t really want to hurt himself. The solution would be to provide himself with a wife he didn’t care for, and then at the right time—kill her. To make himself look like one of the victims.”

  “If that’s true, do you know what that means?” I said. “That means Hugh Odell married Rosemary for the sole purpose of murdering her.”

  The enormity of the thing struck us dumb. I began to feel removed from what we were talking about, distanced by the unreality of it all.

  “Christ,” muttered Ian.

  “That,” I said, “is just about the cruellest thing I’ve ever heard of. Picking out some rather stupid young girl, marrying her, making a fuss over her, puffing her up and making her feel important. Fattening her for the kill. It’s a kind of cruelty that’s consistent with other things the killer has done. But the question is, is it consistent with Hugh Odell’s character?” I looked at the two men. “We’ve known Hugh … what, fifteen, twenty years. Has either of you ever seen anything at all that would suggest he’s capable of that kind of cruelty?”

  They both thought a while, and then shook their heads.

  We finished our coffee and left. We walked to Thirty-fifth Street in silence, all three of us trying to remember everything we knew about Hugh. In all the time I’d known him, I don’t think I saw him more than three or four times socially. We just didn’t have the same friends.

  In my apartment, I asked Ian and Leo if they’d ever seen Hugh at parties or dinners or the like. “Was he with someone? Man or woman?”

  “Just Rosemary,” said Ian. “About a year ago. I can’t remember if I ran into him at parties before that or not. But I almost never go to parties, so that doesn’t mean anything.”

  Leo just shook his head.

  “There’s one thing,” Ian said. “Remember Hugh lived fifty years before ever feeling the need for a wife. Now I don’t buy that theory that any man who doesn’t marry has to be homosexual—” He suddenly remembered Leo and shot a look in his direction. “Sorry, Leo, but these things have to be said.”

  Leo nodded, not offended.

  “But my point is,” Ian went on, “that Hugh was available until just a couple of years ago. He could have been Crown’s lover.”

  Good point. But. “I feel uncomfortable,” I said, “building a case against a man based solely on his absence from a meeting ten years ago. We need something more concrete than that.”

  “But what?” said Leo. “The police have been over everything a hundred times. What can we find out that they haven’t already found out?”

  “Maybe nothing about what’s already happened,” I said. “I was thinking of the next thing to happen. If the killer goes on and … hurts one of us again, maybe the other two could find out where Hugh was at the time it happened. If Hugh’s in the clear, that would tell us we’re on the wrong track. If he’s not …”

  “That’s a gruesome thought,” said Leo.

  “And don’t forget Loren Keith,” said Ian. “The killer never tracked down John Reddick, but a blind man and his wife can’t fade into the scenery as easily as a single, mobile man.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Leo said to Ian.

  “Keith and his wife have gone into hiding,” Ian explained. “Abby called and warned them, right after Jake Steiner was murdered. It could be the killer won’t even try to find them, though—making them run and hide is punishment itself.”

  I’d been thinking. “What time is it in California?”

  Leo looked at his watch. “About eleven-thirty.”

  I went to the phone and called the hotel where Vivian Frank was staying in Los Angeles. “There may be a way of finding out quickly if anything happens to Loren—or Dorothy, more likely,” I told the men. “If something does happen and we check immediately and find out Hugh isn’t in New York—hello? Vivian Frank, please.”

  But the switchboard operator wouldn’t ring her room. No ma’am, sorry, but Ms Frank has an early call tomorrow morning and doesn’t want to be disturbed. Would I like to leave a message?

  I argued with her, but fruitlessly. Ian mouthed Hang up at me. I’d no sooner replaced the receiver in the cradle than he picked it up and said, “Dial again.”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked, dialing.

  “Impersonate a police officer.” The next time he spoke, he’d moved his voice’s tonal center up a couple of keys and added a slight nasal quality. He sounded exactly like someone else we all knew. “Hello, I’d like to speak to the night manager, please … yes. This is Lieutenant Goodlow, Homicide Division, New York Police Department. To whom am I speaking?”

  Slight pause.

  “Mr. Timms, do you have a Vivian Frank registered there?”

  Pause.

  “Do you happen to know what time she came in tonight?”

  Pause.

  “You saw her yourself? Did she appear nervous or upset in any way? Frightened, perhaps?”

  Longer pause.

  “Has Ms Frank requested additional security?”

  Pause.

  “No, no, nothing like that. Just precautionary measures, that’s all. You’ve been very helpful, Mr. Timms. Now will you please connect me with Ms Frank? Thank you.” Ian
handed me the receiver.

  I spent the first minute making sure Vivian was awake enough to understand the urgency of what I was going to ask her to do.

  “But why?” she complained. “What’s this all about?”

  “It’s about our safety,” I said. “Vivian, that madman is going to attack us again. Do you know about Jake Steiner and Sylvia Markey?”

  That woke her up. She knew; Jake’s murder and Sylvia’s catatonia had made the national news. Vivian took a few moments to collect herself and then said quietly, “All right, Abby, what can I do?”

  “Are you on good terms with a newsman in Los Angeles? I don’t mean a movie columnist or an interviewer, but a reporter-type newsman. Somebody you could ask a favor of.”

  “Hm, well, yes, Jim Donaldson at the Times.”

  “Would you ask him to keep a sharp eye out for any incoming news item about Loren Keith? And to call me here the minute he hears anything? Anything at all.”

  “You think Loren’s next?”

  “Lord, I hope not. Loren and Dorothy are hiding somewhere, I don’t know where. But Vivian, please impress upon your friend that it’s time that’s important here. Ask him to call me within thirty seconds of learning anything.”

  “All right, I will. This is terrible,” she said. “I hope he doesn’t have to call you at all.”

  So did I. Then I took a deep breath and told her what Ian had done. “So if the people at the hotel look at you oddly tomorrow, don’t blame them, blame us.”

  To my surprise she was delighted. “Are you kidding? They’ll treat me like royalty! You’re nothing out here without a little scandal to make people notice you. Tell Ian I said thanks.”

  I said I would and hung up. “Vivian says thank you for making her a shady lady.”

  Ian grimaced.

  “No, she really thanks you. You’ve increased her stature there.”

  Neither Ian nor Leo thought that worth commenting on.

  We talked all night. Trying to think what to do, making contingency plans, abandoning them, making others, talking at cross-purposes, sometimes getting on one another’s nerves. What we were really trying to do, of course, was get used to the idea that a man we all knew and liked might in truth be a vicious, evil, murdering madman.

  5

  The next day Leo Gunn moved into my spare room.

  One thing we’d decided the night before was that there was indeed safety in numbers. I hadn’t known whether Leo was living with someone or not, but it turned out he wasn’t. He had been, up to a couple of months ago—but like John Reddick, he’d grown fearful of jeopardizing another person’s life and had ended the affair.

  My spare room really was a spare room now; formerly I’d used it for extra storage, mostly of books and papers and play programs I almost never looked at but couldn’t quite bring myself to throw away. After my place had been wrecked, I’d gotten around to placing only a chest of drawers in there—which I now emptied for Leo’s use. Leo had a bed delivered, Ian brought down a chair and a lamp from the workroom, and that was Leo’s room.

  Ian and I escorted Leo to and from his theater each night for the rest of the week until his schlockfest closed. We agreed on some ground rules. No one was ever to go out alone; if one of us even wanted to mail a letter, one of the others would go too. If one of us was at home alone while the other two were out, that one was not to unlock the door for anyone, not even the police.

  None of us was quite willing to believe we’d uncovered the murderer’s identity in our first stab at it. We went over everything that had happened, looking for opportunity. Was Hugh Odell in the right place at the right time for all the attacks?

  1. The deaths of Preston Scott and Albert Heath.

  Scott had died in Chicago and Heath in Miami, but no one could remember the exact dates. Nor did we know much in the way of specific detail. We didn’t have enough information to reach a conclusion about opportunity here.

  2. The vandalizing of Sylvia Markey’s personal belongings in her home.

  According to Jake Steiner, the vandalizing had come to an end once Sylvia had stopped leaving her keys in her dressing room. Before that, the keys were available to anyone backstage at the Martin Beck Theatre. Opportunity: yes.

  3. The killing of Sylvia Markey’s cat.

  The beheading and dismemberment had taken place while the cast was getting into costume and make-up for an evening performance. Opportunity: yes.

  4. The blinding of Loren Keith.

  The blinding took place on a Monday night, when no performance of Foxfire was scheduled. Anyone in the cast could have flown to Los Angeles and back in time for the Tuesday night performance. It would take a lot of stamina, but it could be done. Opportunity: yes, but with a question mark. How long could Hugh Odell function in southern California before his asthma acted up to the point of incapacitating him?

  5. The disfiguring of Sylvia Markey.

  The acid-contaminated cold cream could have been placed in Ian’s dressing table at any time by any member of the Foxfire company or even by a visitor backstage. Opportunity: yes.

  6. The wrecking of the stage set.

  The wrecking took place during the day, hours before the scheduled evening performance. Opportunity: yes.

  7. The murder of Rosemary Odell.

  This was the hard one. Rosemary had been killed on the Saturday when Phil Carter was playing Hugh’s role in the matinee performance. Hugh had left his apartment shortly before eleven in the morning to keep a dental appointment, and presumably the police had checked to see that he did keep it. But it was after three when Hugh reported finding the body, putting at least two hours between the murder and the discovery of the murder. From eleven to three—how many dental appointments last four hours? Hugh could have run some errands after leaving the dentist’s office or stopped in somewhere for a drink. Or, he could have gone straight home. Opportunity: yes.

  8. The attempted emasculation of John Reddick.

  The attack had taken place in a steam bath in the middle of the night. Anyone in New York City could have done it. Opportunity: yes.

  9. The vandalizing of Abigail James’s home.

  Again, the wrecking had been done during a day when no matinee was scheduled. Opportunity: yes.

  10. The amputation of Leo Gunn’s hand.

  Leo had been attacked immediately following an evening performance, while the entire cast was still in the theater. Opportunity: yes.

  11. The bombing of Ian Cavanaugh’s house.

  The bomb had gone off during Foxfire’s final performance. If the radio transmitter used to detonate the bomb had a range equaling the distance between West Forty-fifth Street and Yorkville where Ian’s house was located, then the explosion could have been set off from the Martin Beck Theatre. Opportunity: yes.

  12. The murder of Jake Steiner.

  All we knew about Jake’s death was that his throat had been cut and he’d been found late at night near the Grand Army Plaza, only a few blocks from his apartment. Opportunity: unknown.

  It didn’t prove anything, of course, but it did demonstrate that we couldn’t rule Hugh out—something I think we were all halfway hoping for. It was odd: we’d lived so long with this agonizing need to know who was doing these things—but now that we had an idea who he might be, we tended to pull back. We wanted to put a name to the killer, but we didn’t want it to be Hugh Odell’s name.

  We had to know more than just opportunity. As far as that went, Ian had just about the same opportunities Hugh had. Rosemary Odell died around one o’clock on a Saturday, and the matinee performance began at two—a tight squeeze, but possible. Take it one step further, I had the opportunity also, assuming I hired someone to wreck my own place. And also assuming you buy the notion that a five-foot-three-inch woman can put on a ski mask and make people think she’s a man.

  There was one other possibility that we reluctantly considered. John Reddick. Say he had staged that scene in the steam bath just to provide him
self with an excuse to disappear. He’d be free to roam about at will; everyone would list him among the victims instead of the suspects.

  “I think I read that one too,” said Leo. “And Then There Were None, wasn’t it? Ten Little Indians—same thing. Too obvious. No, Reddick’s really hiding, I’m sure of it.”

  “Look,” sighed Ian, “we all love John Reddick. We don’t want him to be the murderer. If it comes down to a choice between him and Hugh Odell, we’ll all take Odell any day of the week. But what we want has nothing to do with it. We don’t know Reddick is innocent.”

  “I do,” I said. “John Reddick never held a grudge in his life, and you both know it. So overnight he turns into a vengeance-obsessed maniac? Bull.”

  The men allowed as how that did seem a trifle far-fetched.

  Then late one night Leo brought up the one subject we’d all been avoiding. “Suppose it does turn out to be Odell,” he said. “Then what? What’s our next step?”

  Ian made a vague gesture. “Police?”

  Leo laughed derisively. “Why bother? They charge him, take him to trial, he pleads insanity. He’s out again in five or six years, depending on where they send him. The police aren’t the answer.”

  Ian nodded; he’d more or less reached the same conclusion himself.

  Leo turned to me. “Abby, when will you feel safe again? How do things have to be before you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this madman will never hurt you or any one of us ever again? When will you feel safe?”

  So I was to be the first to say it. “When he’s dead.”

  “Exactly,” Leo nodded.

  “Odd,” said Ian dreamily. “For the first time I’m beginning to understand what motivates the killer. What satisfaction there must be in watching your enemy suffer. I’m not sure I want him dead. I think I want him alive and suffering the same way he’s made us suffer. Only worse—much worse.”

  “We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” I said tiredly.

  The phone rang at seven the next morning.

  I fumbled for the extension beside the bed. “Is it important?” I said sleepily.

  “I don’t know,” answered a strange voice. “This is Donaldson, L. A. Times. Vivian Frank asked me to call you the minute I had news.”