by James Yaffe
“No, as a matter of fact, we can’t. The play murder was supposed to be committed with a prop knife, made of wood, that Hapgood carried in a pocket inside his poncho, but that knife was still there when he woke up in the broom closet. The real murder weapon is an ordinary kitchen knife, with a black rubber handle. It’s mass-produced, most of the hardware stores in town carry it.”
“And I gather you didn’t find Mrs. Michaels’s fingerprints on it. Or you certainly would’ve mentioned it a long time ago.”
“There were no fingerprints on the knife. That type of handle wouldn’t show any.”
“Well, there you are then,” Ann said. “And another thing—where’s the motive? Why should Sally Michaels want to kill Martin Osborn?”
Grantley gave a little shrug. “We haven’t uncovered her motive yet, I admit that. It’s not necessary to prove motive in a murder case, I’m sure you know this better than I do. As long as you can prove everything else. Nevertheless, we’re working on it, and I’m sure we’ll come up with something. These theatrical people are such emotional types.”
“What this all boils down to,” Ann said, “is that you haven’t got much of a case. Certainly not for such an early arrest.”
Grantley smiled and got to his feet. “Well, it seems to be time for my next appointment. Mrs. Swenson, Dave, it’s been a pleasure. And listen, now, I want you to know you can count on my full cooperation in your investigation. As District Attorney McBride said to me only the other day, this office isn’t in the business of getting convictions. This office is in the business of making sure that justice is done.”
* * *
You get from the new court building to the new jail by an underground passageway, which already, though the buildings have been in existence only two years, smells as damp and musty as a men’s shower room. Once at the jail, Ann and I were shown into the small basement room where prisoners get to confer with their attorneys. This room has a wooden table and a few metal chairs around it, and its only window is in the center of the heavy iron door. Outside this door sits a guard with a gun strapped conspicuously around his waist, to let the lawyers inside know that it would be useless for them to try to bust their clients out of jail.
Sally Michaels was led in a few minutes after Ann and I sat down at the table. The last time I had seen her she had been up onstage as the Queen of Scotland, cowboy-style, with an elegant evening dress circa 1890, and a diamond tiara (made of cardboard but convincingly painted) ringing her semi-blond hair. I remember thinking she might have been a handsome woman in her younger days.
Not much was elegant or queenlike about her now. After a morning in jail, the folds at her neck were flabby, her hair seemed mouse-gray, and the heavy dark smudges under her eyes made her look even older than her age, which was probably close to fifty.
When she saw us, she put on a big smile and sailed across the room to us, arms outstretched. “Oh, how good of you to come!” she cried. She was the fashionable hostess welcoming distinguished guests to her drawing room.
“Are you all right, Mrs. Michaels?” Ann said. “Are they treating you well?”
“Nothing to complain of at all—Mrs. Swenson, isn’t it? I can assure you that people couldn’t be more gracious and considerate to me. The staff, that is.” Sally tried a charming toss of her head, but her eyes suddenly started filling with moisture. I looked down at my shoes.
“The judge has scheduled a hearing for bail at three o’clock this afternoon,” Ann said. “We’ve got a good chance of getting you out then, the assistant district attorney seems to be willing to cooperate. But it can’t be until three, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, I’ve endured worse than this, believe me.” A tinkling laugh from Sally. Lady Something-or-Other presiding over an Oscar Wilde tea party. “In my old theatre days, you should’ve seen some of the dressing rooms I got stuck with.”
As far as I knew, Sally’s theatre days had been confined to her appearances with the Mesa Grande Art Players. How much of her glamorous past, I wondered, had she talked herself into believing?
“So you think I’ve got a chance of being let out on bail?” she went on. “Who’s the judge going to be?”
“Probably Judge Flannery,” Ann said.
“Henry Flannery? His little grandson was in my third-grade class a few years ago. Henry’s a charming man. A gentleman of the old school. The type who, if you don’t mind my saying so in these days of women’s lib, still holds to the old-fashioned notion that the female of the species should be treated with somewhat greater delicacy and respect than the male. Oh, I’m sure Henry will be—will fully appreciate—the difficulties of my situation and—and—”
Her voice trailed off. The eyes were filling up again.
“We’ll certainly do our best,” Ann said. “Meanwhile, not to waste any time, I’d like to go over last night’s events with you.”
“I’ve been over them a thousand times with the policemen and the district attorney. They woke me up at five-thirty this morning. Five-thirty, good God; I haven’t been up that early since I was a kindergartner! They didn’t even give me a chance to put on a decent-looking dress or take trouble with my makeup or put a drop of Magnolia Blossoms behind my ear. And I seem to have been doing nothing but telling that same damn story ever since.”
“I’m sorry,” Ann said, “but I’m afraid it’s still necessary for me, as your attorney—”
“No, no, it’s all right, I apologize for making such a fuss. You’re my lawyer, you know what has to be done. Well, let me see.” Sally put one pudgy finger to her chin and frowned prettily, her “thinking” pose. “It would be six o’clock or so when I got to the theatre last night. The curtain wasn’t due to go up till seven, but we had to get there early for makeup and costumes and so forth. I’ve got my own dressing room for this show, because there are so few women in the cast. Only little Laurie Franz, our Lady Macduff, and those three frightful old biddies who play the witches. If you can call it a dressing room, more like a hole in the wall, but a least I have it all to myself. And freezing! Would somebody please explain to me why the dressing rooms in this theatre are always so cold, even when it isn’t cold outside!”
“Did you happen to see Mr. Osborn before the show began?”
“Oh, yes. He had us all gather on the stage around a quarter of seven—with the curtain down, of course—and he gave us the usual pep talk that directors give you on opening night. He told us how wonderful we all were, and what a brilliant performance we were going to give. We always know it’s bullshit, you understand, but we’d be terribly disappointed if the director ever left it out. Actors are such children.”
“You went back to your dressing room after the pep talk?”
“Yes, I did. I chatted there for a while with Randy Le Sage. He’s got the dressing room right next to mine, he’s our big New York actor who was brought in at great expense to play Macbeth. To tell you the truth, till Martin mentioned his name I’d never heard of him. Small wonder! The way he kept stepping on my lines last night, trying to interrupt me. And he’s supposed to be a professional? Well, anyway, after a few minutes Randy had to leave and be ready in the wings for his entrance with Banquo, where they see the weird sisters. And I do mean weird. I taught at the same school as Ella Feeney once, she’s a kindergarten teacher, and everyone knows they turn into five-year-olds themselves after a few years, though most of them start off on that level—”
“How long was it before you went onstage yourself?”
“Another fifteen minutes. I begin with my letter scene, you know the one I mean, I’m sure. I read this letter from my husband, where he tells me what the weird sisters predicted, and all the time I’ve got this gleam of ruthless ambition in my eye.”
She put a gleam of ruthless ambition in her eye, to show us what she meant.
“In your next few scenes,” Ann said, “did you happen to see Harold Hapgood? He was supposed to play the Third Murderer, but I understand he had some other parts too
.”
“I certainly must’ve seen him, but I can’t say I paid too much attention. Poor Harold is such a … a washed-out actor, if you know what I mean. You hardly realize he’s on the stage at all, even when he’s saying his lines.”
“Did you see him go onstage for that murder scene?”
“No, I wouldn’t have. One of my biggest scenes comes right after intermission. The banquet scene, where Macbeth sees Banquo’s ghost, and I keep telling the guests that nothing is wrong with him. It’s an extremely taxing scene, it requires the most intense emotional concentration, so I was in my dressing room resting up for it. There’s a little couch in there, a fairly dilapidated old piece of furniture, and I was stretched out on it all the time the … the murder was happening up on the stage.”
“Did anyone see you in your dressing room at that time?” I said. “Or talk to you through the door?”
“Oh, dear me, no. When I’m resting before a big scene, working up my emotional concentration, I simply mustn’t be disturbed. Everybody in the company knows that. Randy Le Sage likes to rest up before the banquet scene too. Maybe he was in his dressing room, and he heard me tossing and turning. Those walls are as thin as paper, no privacy at all.”
“Was it your black raincoat that you wore to the theatre last night?”
“I always do, everybody knows that about me. It’s a mangy old thing, but I’d never bring one of my really nice coats into that grubby old barn.”
“The police say they found it on your dressing room floor, with one of the buttons torn off.”
“Yes, they told me that, I just can’t understand it. That button wasn’t torn off when I got to the theatre at six. I’m positive I would’ve noticed.”
“You don’t lock your dressing room whenever you leave it?”
“Good heavens, nobody does that. And certainly not me. As a matter of fact, most of the time when I leave my dressing room I don’t even bother to shut the door behind me. I’m such a trusting person, it’s my one big fault. You’ll never convince me that people aren’t innately good.”
She raised her chin on these words, and I remembered that the Mesa Grande Art Players had done The Diary of Anne Frank a few years ago.
“Everybody in the company,” I said, “knows how you feel about locks and doors, I suppose?”
“I imagine so. Everybody knows everything about me. I’m just not the type to conceal my feelings.”
“Last night, when the police took your raincoat away with them,” Ann said, “didn’t that worry you a bit?”
“Why should it?” She met Ann’s eyes steadily. “I didn’t have anything to feel guilty about.”
Ann gave a little grunt. “One last point, Mrs. Michaels. Did you have any reason to kill Martin Osborn?”
“Certainly not!”
“If there is such a reason, anything in your relationship with him, I advise you to tell me all about it right now. I can promise you, the police will dig it up sooner or later.”
Ann fixed her eyes on Sally in that riveting way Ann is so good at. Sally stared back for a while, and then her eyes lowered. “Martin and I were—we’d been having a rather close relationship. We made no secret about it. We didn’t exactly send announcements to the newspaper, either, you understand, but I suppose there must be people who know about it.”
“How long had it been going on?”
“Three or four months. Since last June, when he came up with the idea of doing Macbeth, and he consulted me about it and asked for my support at the Players meeting, and told me what a perfect Lady Macbeth I’d be.”
“All right, now go on being frank with me, will you. What was the status of this relationship as of last night?”
“Well, the truth is, we broke up a week ago. He told me … well, you know how people’s minds work. If a man and a woman break up their relationship, people assume that he dumped her, and naturally she’s furious with him. Hell hath no fury—”
“Did he dump you?”
“No! Things haven’t been going too well lately. We’ve both been feeling it. We knew we had to move on, it was necessary for our personal growth. The fact that he was the first one to find somebody else is entirely irrelevant to—”
“He started an affair with somebody else? Who was it?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea. All he told me was that there was somebody. Of course I can make a pretty good guess.”
“And what is your guess?”
“Well, when a play is in rehearsal, who does the director get thrown in with night and day, he doesn’t even have time for other people? The members of the cast, that’s who. And who are the other women in this cast? I certainly can’t see Martin coming on to one of those fat frumpy witches!”
“You’re saying,” I put in, “Osborn is having an affair with Laurie Franz?”
“I’m not saying anything. You asked me what I was guessing.” She gave a little flounce and sat back in her chair. “At any rate, it’s ridiculous to think that my breaking up with Martin gave me a motive to kill him. I’ve had plenty of relationships. It’s almost seven years since Bernie and I got divorced, you don’t imagine I’ve lived like a nun all that time? I’m a deeply emotional person, I have a need for love. If I went around murdering every man I’ve broken up with, I’d be one of those serial killers.”
She held her head high for a few moments after this, but then her lips trembled a little. “I don’t want you to think—I’m not promiscuous. I never go with more than one man at a time. It’s always somebody I truly care about. It’s just that … a woman who’s all alone nowadays … and nobody to talk to at work except a lot of eight-year-olds…”
A little later I signaled for the guard to open the door. Sally marched out of the room, chin up, eyes flashing.
“Katharine Hepburn in Mary of Scotland,” Ann said. “It was one of the late movies on TV last week.”
By now it was almost noon. Ann had to go back to her desk and munch a sandwich while she got ready for the bail hearing that afternoon. I had to meet Mom at the courthouse cafeteria for lunch. The purpose of which was to explain to her why she had to stop paying so much attention to my assistant.
I didn’t have much appetite.
6
Roger’s Narrative
I spent Friday morning at the theatre, talking to the stage crew and the stage manager. They were there, even though the play had been shut down, because there hadn’t been any time to clean up the stage last night. Also, since the theatre would be closed for a while, props and furniture had to be locked up in a storeroom.
I talked to every one of these people and found out they’d all had something important to do during the Banquo scene, and each of them did it with at least two of the others. So they alibied each other perfectly.
Also none of them could remember noticing anything particular about the masked and raincoated actor who had played the Third Murderer. A few of them got a glimpse of him standing in the wings before he went onstage, a few of them saw him moving fast as he left the stage, but nobody had any helpful details to offer.
It was lunchtime before I finished at the theatre, so I went back to the office to give Dave my report. No Dave, though. Mrs. Gibson told me he was having lunch at the courthouse cafeteria; he had left a message for me to join him.
I went downstairs to the basement where the cafeteria was located. It was crowded, of course, with the usual mix of lawyers and cops and jurors and felons. You can tell the felons from the others by the anxious looks on their faces. I spotted Dave at a table in the corner, and was surprised to see he had his mother with him. I waved at them till I caught their attention, then motioned I was going through the line to get my food.
I got chicken à la king, because at the courthouse cafeteria seeing what you’re eating can only depress you. Then I joined them at their table.
“Didn’t expect you in here today,” Dave said, giving me a glare that didn’t look particularly welcoming.
“Mr
s. Gibson said you left a message for me to meet you here.”
“I’m the one left the message,” said Dave’s mother. “I asked you should have lunch with us. Excuse me, Davie, did your secretary get it mixed up?”
Dave gave her a hard look. “She’s been working for me three years, and I’ve never yet known her to get a message mixed up.”
“It only goes to prove, nobody’s perfect.”
The old lady turned her smile on me and said, “So sit down, be comfortable. That’s all you’re having for lunch, that puddle? No green vegetables? All right, it’s your health. So you both had busy mornings, didn’t you? Davie was telling me just now about his. How about yours?”
This made me very uncomfortable. It occurred to me that Dave wouldn’t want me to come out with a confidential report in front of somebody who had no official position.
“Why so shy?” the old lady said. “You’re the old-fashioned type that wouldn’t talk about business to a woman? You think a woman wouldn’t understand such complicated things that you do at your office?”
The corners of Dave’s mouth were turned down, his bad-smell expression that I had come to know and pretty much dread. He gave a weary wave of his hand. “Okay, you may as well make your report. It’ll save time later.”
So I reported, and the old lady nodded and said, “So now it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? The murderer wasn’t wearing your client’s raincoat by accident. He didn’t pick it up just because it happened to be handy. He went out of his way he should be wearing it. He took it from her and put it on so she should get arrested.”
“What makes you think that, Mom?”
“Because when this Hapgood got knocked out and locked up in the broom closet, he had his costume on already, the black poncho that he ordinarily used for the murder scene. So why didn’t the murderer take this poncho off and wear it himself? Wouldn’t that be easier to do than go to all the trouble stealing Sally Michaels’s raincoat from her dressing room? The only logical explanation: he wanted she should be blamed.”