A Curtain Falls

by Pintoff, Stefanie

  I tried again. “But someone must be left who can help us.”

  He glared at me before making a curt reply. “If she even agrees to see you, Mrs. Layton will be no help.”

  Then, pulling his cap over his ears, he ignored our questions, and our efforts to learn more were of no avail.

  As we approached the ferry landing, soaked through and chilled, we looked across the street and saw Prospect House, a majestic white hotel that seemed to stretch half a mile long beside the green expanse that was named Prospect Park, just like its Brooklyn counterpart. Alistair had explained to me earlier that the area was a popular summer resort, but I had not expected to see a building on this grand a scale.

  “Let’s stop in there for a moment and get something hot to warm us up. It will only take a few minutes,” Alistair said.

  I checked my watch and overruled him. We had spent most of the morning in transit, and what ever awaited us on Bay Avenue, I was ready to confront it without delay.

  We circled Prospect Park and turned the corner onto Bay Avenue. Alistair had explained that the neighborhood we were in, known as Shelter Heights, had been designed as a planned community. In fact, during this morning’s long train ride, Alistair had given me a virtual treatise on its history: how landscape architects including Frederick Law Olmsted had designed it to be a resort setting, with more than a hundred cottages laid out on scalloped roads rising to ever greater heights, many with sweeping views of the water. Each was an easy walking distance to the ferry, Prospect Park, and Union Chapel— which we soon saw, set far back from the road in a grove. Bay Avenue itself was lined on each side by rows of neatly buttoned-up, white summer cottages with steeply pitched gable roofs and elaborate wood trim on their windows, doors, and front porches.

  The house at number 13 was near the end of the street, at the corner of Waverly Place. It stood slightly apart from its neighbors, much like a neglected, ugly stepsister embarrassed to draw too close. For though it shared their architectural features, its wood trim was broken and shingles were falling off, its paint was chipped and peeling, and there were multiple shattered windows on its top floor.

  Our steps slowed the moment we saw it.

  “Does anyone live there?” Alistair asked in disbelief.

  “Hard to imagine, isn’t it?” I replied. Of course I’d seen people living in even more-deplorable conditions, simply not amid what was supposed to be a luxurious resort community.

  Even worse, its front veranda was filled with furniture, abandoned toys, and all manner of trash. We stared, silent, for several minutes before gathering the courage to go on— and squeezing past the piles of refuse, we made our way to the front door. I took a deep breath and sounded the knocker.

  Though all was silent inside, we could make out the slight glow of a light from the back of the house.

  I rapped the knocker again, more loudly this time.

  We heard slow, shuffling footsteps making their way toward the door, and instinctively I backed up— forcing Alistair to do so as well. Based on what the ferryman had told us, I expected a Mrs. Layton to answer the door. But we didn’t know whether she actually would— or even if she did, what her connection to the Coby family would be.

  The woman who answered our knock glared at us from behind the screen. “What do you want?” The question may have been belligerent, but her voice— quavering and timid— was not.

  I made the introductions, but she seemed not to hear me. Instead, she stared into my face, and for a moment her eyes flashed with something like recognition. “Robby, is that you?”

  “I’m not Robert,” I said gently, “but I came to ask you about him.”

  Her confused brown eyes watered slightly as she stared at me with a vacant expression.

  “May we come in?”

  Her eyes lit up with a flash of comprehension. “Have you seen him recently?”

  “We’d like your help figuring that out.” I opened the wooden screen door that still separated us. “May we?” I asked again.

  Again, she seemed not to have heard or comprehended— but then she finally stepped back and permitted us to enter. Arms folded, she eyed us suspiciously.

  I could see her more clearly now that we were inside. Her heavyset frame was bundled in at least two shawls; they hung over a green floral dress. It was no wonder, as the house was frigid and damp.

  Plip-plop. Plip-plop. The rain beat a steady rhythm as it dripped into pails placed strategically throughout the first floor, including two in the entry hall itself. I suspected the broken windows we’d observed were responsible— but the house was in such disrepair, there were no doubt many sources to blame. Water always found its own path, often far from the root of the problem. That lesson I’d learned the hard way in the Lower East Side tenement building where I’d grown up.

  “Perhaps we can help you lay a fire, Mrs. Layton. Where do you keep your wood?” I asked.

  Her answer was a blank stare.

  “Do you have a covered porch out back?”

  She continued to ignore my question, but as my coat was still on, I ventured through the kitchen to the back porch, where I found a small stockpile of wood. There was not much— but it was enough to build a fire and warm her sitting room. We could help her secure more later on.

  I corralled Alistair into helping me carry in several logs and, together, we followed Mrs. Layton into her front parlor, laid the logs in the fireplace, and coaxed them into roaring flames. Only then did we settle back into uncomfortable hard-back chairs and survey the rest of the room.

  It was tired and broken-down, filled to capacity with the residue of her life. The fireplace wall was lined with old newspapers, piled at least five feet high and three rows deep. When Alistair pointed out that it wasn’t safe to keep newspapers like that, especially so close to the fireplace, she laughed— a full cackle that revealed a mouthful of missing teeth.

  “My reviews,” she said, chortling. “Well, some mine, some hers. My mother would’ve said old news is no news and not worth keeping around. God knows she never kept anything of ours. But I like seeing ’em.”

  “What kind of reviews?” I asked, wanting her to clarify.

  “Theater reviews. Sure, we were actresses once. She got lots of write-ups.” She looked in the direction of the window as though she were acknowledging another person— so convincingly that I actually turned my head. But of course no one was there.

  “Who is she? A friend?” I asked.

  But she didn’t answer. She crossed her arms, then graced us with another toothless grin. And I could not help but wonder: was she a bit off in the head, or simply ignoring half of my questions?

  Alistair picked up one of the yellowed papers and handed it to her.

  “May we see the review in this one?”

  She emitted another laugh that was almost a cackle as she opened the paper and flipped the brittle pages so vigorously that they began to disintegrate and fall to the floor right in front of her. But when she found what she wanted, she cradled its page with surprising delicacy— even as the remaining pages she held dropped to the floor.

  Alistair and I both drew nearer to see what she held. The strong scent of old newspaper and smoke mingled with her own odor: musky and slightly sour. The smell of unwashed old age. Breathing through my mouth, I focused on the yellowed page she showed us. A vibrant young woman in a lacy dress twirled onstage as a young man held her one outstretched arm.

  “That’s her,” she said. “She played Rosalind in As You Like It.”

  I scanned the article below the picture. The reviewer focused upon the production’s elaborate staging, but did mention an Elaine Coby briefly. Was this the woman beside me— before marriage changed her name and age ravaged her looks? She was a “refreshing new voice” with “surprising emotional range.” She was also beautiful. It was sad to think what was lost, assuming she had evolved into the woman here— alone and apparently half addled by dementia.

  “The review is a glowing
one; you must have been quite talented when you were young,” I said.

  “Not me,” she said, irritated. “Didn’t I just say it was her? I’d left the stage before she even got her first role.”

  “Who is she?” I hoped she would remain cognizant.

  “Elaine, my sister,” she said, her tone irritated. She seemed to think she’d told me half a dozen times. Her earlier reply at least answered my question about their age difference. It had to be significant, probably well over a decade— even assuming she had not aged well, which I presumed, given her current living conditions.

  We returned to our seats and I asked her for clarification. “She was much younger than you?”

  At first, she seemed not to hear me— but finally she nodded. “We both started out working in repertory theaters; me in the seventies, she in the eighties,” she said. “I was good. Elaine was better. Once, she had a supporting role in a production with Ellen Terry.”

  “Ah, the fabulous Ellen Terry,” Alistair said, working hard to gain Mrs. Layton’s trust. “I saw her perform with Henry Irving in King Arthur maybe ten years ago. Her Guinevere was the finest performance I’ve ever seen.”

  “That was Elaine’s dream,” she said in a soft voice, “until they took it all away.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Who else?” She sighed in frustration. “Charlie Frohman ended her career with a few choice words. He and his brother— they and their clerk spread lies about her. They didn’t just end her stint at the Garden. They made sure she’d never work again, anywhere, just because she was with child.”

  Alistair explained that Mrs. Layton was apparently referring to an earlier time period, when Charles Frohman had gotten his start in the theater by working with his older brother Daniel at Madison Square Garden. Even when he’d been new to the business, Charles had been controlling of his performers and particular about their conduct— especially their moral behavior.

  “What clerk?” I asked.

  “Iseberg,” she said with a shudder. “Horrible man. He was sweet on Elaine. But then he turned on her when she needed his help most.”

  “Do you mean Leon Iseman?” I mentioned his name carefully— I didn’t want to presume, and yet the name was so close.

  “Maybe.” She spat on the floor. “Whoever he was, he was tight with Charlie.”

  That sounded like Leon Iseman— and it served as a powerful reminder that I shouldn’t discount Frohman’s longtime assistant, who was entangled with this family in a way I hadn’t anticipated.

  “And Elaine’s child?”

  “They wanted her to get rid of it. But she wouldn’t.” She leaned back in her chair, and a look of terrible sadness crossed her face.

  “That child was Robert,” I said, prodding her carefully.

  But I lost her again as she retreated somewhere deep in the recesses of her memory, and her answer ignored my question. “Watching the way the Frohman brothers have treated others over the years, they’d never have given her a second chance anyway,” she said.

  “Were there no other options, perhaps outside of New York?”

  She interrupted me. “Not for an actress with ambitions like Elaine. He destroyed her, he did,” she pounded the end table beside her with vehemence, “when he took that away from her. She was forced to come here and have the child. My husband, Eddie, and I took her in. We spread the word she was recently widowed.”

  “And she stayed over the years, with her son?”

  She nodded. “What else would she have done? Besides, we were family. Her Robert and my daughter were very close. Though they were ten years apart in age, they were as close as brother and sister.”

  I followed up by asking whether Robert had developed close childhood friends or, as he’d grown up, even romantic attachments. But Mrs. Layton’s mind seemed to grasp the distant past far better than more-recent events, and she could tell me nothing.

  “Where is your sister now? I take it she no longer lives here,” I said.

  “No, but she’s nearby; just right over there.” She lifted her arm and pointed out the window toward the bay and ferry landing.

  “She lives on the mainland? In Greenport?”

  Another cackle. “I mean right in the bay. She has, ever since the day five years ago that she went out for a short walk and never returned.” She shook her head sadly. “She’d gone for a walk as usual, right about eleven o’clock. They said at the post office that she’d stopped by and mailed some letters. Then she headed toward home. But at the last minute, she went to the bay instead. A young boy saw her.” She began breathing heavily, laboring under the memory of what had happened. “He thought she was collecting shells. But it turned out they were heavy rocks to put in her pockets. When she found enough, she walked right in. The boy ran for help, but it was too late. They found her three weeks later, when a fisherman on the other side of the island pulled her body out.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it. Was there some lack of sanity, I wondered, that affected the entire Coby family? Each generation had been touched in some way by it: Mrs. Layton maintained a precarious grip on present reality, her sister had committed suicide, and her nephew was quite possibly responsible for a series of heinous murders.

  “Did Robert live here at the time?” Alistair asked.

  “He was nearby, in Montauk, working odd jobs on the fishing boats.”

  “Where is he now, Mrs. Layton? Please think hard,” I said.

  She gave me an annoyed look. “I don’t have to think hard. He’s out on the boats. But he visits me every year, on the anniversary of her death.”

  “When is that?”

  “Why, April first.” She seemed surprised by the question— and I wasn’t entirely sure it was relevant. But the anniversary would occur in a matter of days, so if we had no better luck beforehand . . . But I immediately pushed the thought out of my head. Someone’s life was at stake, and this was no time to anticipate failure. We’d succeed now— simply because we had to.

  We continued to talk, uneasily conversing in the front sitting room, listening to the drip of the rain leaks, smelling the dank, musty odor of the house. Alistair helped me to wrap up our conversation with Mrs. Layton quickly, passing over the details of her life on Shelter Island and Robert’s upbringing. We soon came to the present: her husband was long deceased, Robert was away on the fishing boats, and her own daughter had inherited her love of the theater and gone onstage, albeit with limited success, doing traveling shows. The postcards came regularly: from Philadelphia and Boston, St. Louis and Chicago. “But I don’t know where she is, either. Anywhere but New York,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Do you have anything of Robert’s to help us to locate him? His most recent address? Even a picture?”

  Mrs. Layton had no address, but she duly looked for a picture to give us. Among the newspapers, she found a dog-eared silver-and-gray photograph from Robert’s childhood, and I recognized Elaine from the newspaper. She caressed a five-year-old, earnest-faced boy who must have been Robert, as well as a younger Mrs. Layton with her husband and their daughter. Mrs. Layton, I was startled to realize, had been attractive once. And though her face was half obscured by an elaborate hat with many feathers and a fishnet veil, her daughter was also obviously a beauty. They gave every appearance of being a contented family . . . and I wondered anew what had happened to upset it all. Elaine Coby’s suicide must have played a large role . . . but I didn’t think it alone sufficed as an explanation. Perhaps mental illness had played the largest role in destroying this family, taking hold of its members one by one. A family curse, of sorts.

  “We were so happy then,” she said wistfully, gazing at the photograph.

  “Is there any other room in the house that Robert used?” I asked. “Perhaps he maintained a desk somewhere? Or stored his things in the basement?”

  I was thinking about his plays— or anything else he might have written while living in this house. We still didn’t know if he w
as truly the killer we sought— but his handwriting might settle the issue immediately.

  She shook her head. “He took everything when he moved out. Besides, the basement’s prone to get water anyway. Can’t store anything there.”

  We thanked her for her time. When we had almost left the property, I stopped Alistair short.

  “Do you see that?” I asked. “There, in the back corner,” I added, pointing to a ramshackle building to the rear of the property.

  “It looks deserted.” Alistair and I exchanged meaningful glances.

  I surveyed the manicured neighboring lot. The division between what was well kempt and what was neglected could not have been clearer. “It’s on the Layton property.”

  With purposeful steps that belied my apprehension— even my fear— I turned back. In a few short strides, I led Alistair to the far northwest corner of the yard, where, nearly obscured by trees, vines, and overgrown shrubs, there was a wood-plank shed secured with a rusted iron padlock. There were no windows; only the small door in front. I’d have preferred to keep walking, right back to the street and the ferry landing, as for away as I could get from this godforsaken place.

  But we had come too far today not to see our inquiry through, wherever it took us.

  And so, with very little force, I broke open the padlock that secured the deserted shed and pushed open the door.

  I didn’t regret my choice the moment I entered— making my way through cobwebs into a small, enclosed space that seemed to contain the very heart of evil itself.

  CHAPTER 27

  The Woodshed. Bay Avenue, Shelter Island

  I entered first, breaking through the cobweb mesh that blocked the door almost as if by design. It had a dirt floor beneath wood planks haphazardly laid, which was no doubt responsible for the strong damp, putrid odor that nearly overwhelmed me. Within seconds, I had stumbled into a collection of five boxes at the center of the room.

  “Is everything all right?” Alistair’s voice sounded worried.