Mom Doth Murder Sleep

by James Yaffe

  “Sorry. He didn’t lie there long enough for you to be sure he wasn’t going to speak. He couldn’t have been lying there more than twenty or thirty seconds when you jumped to the conclusion he was dead and ran up on the stage. Nobody else in the audience thought there was anything wrong. I’ve been looking at dead bodies on a regular basis for thirty years, and I didn’t think anything was wrong. Why should you have such a quick reaction? Unless you already knew for sure that the Third Murderer had killed him, and your job was to put that button in his hand.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous! I saw the blood, the position of his body made it seem he was really dead—”

  “Sure it did,” I said. “As members of the audience we want things to look real on the stage. If a body is contorted in a way that suggests death, we don’t scream and shudder and believe somebody really has died. We praise the actor for doing such a realistic job. That’s the whole point about a theatre.”

  And Mom’s words from last night were still ringing in my ears. “A theatre is a funny place,” she had said to me. “Here’s the audience, there’s the stage, and nothing is keeping the two of them apart from each other. No iron bars, no invisible glass shield like in the toothpaste commercials on television. Nothing stops you from getting up from your seat during the play and walking onto the stage. So why don’t you do it?

  “Because there is something that separates the actors up there from the audience down here. It’s inside your mind, which makes it even harder to break through than iron bars. You sit in your seat, you look at what’s happening on the stage, and you don’t ask yourself if it’s real. You know it isn’t real, but you say to yourself, ‘So what? This is how it’s supposed to be.’ What happens up there on the stage, it has to be a very big mess before you decide it shouldn’t be happening.”

  “Wait a second, Mom,” I had said. “That might be true for ordinary audiences, but Allan Franz is an experienced professional, he’s directed hundreds of actors, he’s in a better position than anybody to know the difference between what’s real and what’s playacting.”

  “He’s in a worse position to know such a difference. Who is it looks at a play or a movie and takes it all for real, and sometimes even jumps up on the stage to stop the actors from doing something? It’s people from primitive tribes that never saw a play or a movie before. People with experience know nothing on the stage is real. They know the actors are only pretending. There’s nothing they wouldn’t take for granted. They see somebody getting his head chopped off on the stage. ‘Look at that,’ they say, ‘I wonder how they did it!’

  “What I’m saying, Davie, this Allan Franz didn’t behave like an experienced member from the audience. He behaved like an actor that was doing his part in a play. Only the play wasn’t Macbeth by William Shakespeare, it was ‘Killing Martin Osborn’ by Allan Franz.”

  I finished making this point, and Franz didn’t have anything to say to it. He turned away from me to his daughter, putting a heavy dose of bewildered innocence into his voice. “Laurie, honey, don’t listen to this man, for Christ’s sake. Everybody knows what’s going on. They’re desperate to get their client off, so they grab at straws. They pick on me, because I’m a well-known personage, because they know the public is always willing to believe the worst about successful people.”

  Laurie was staring at him as he talked. She wasn’t saying a word, but her eyes were bulging.

  “Look, Laurie, sweetie, I swear to you I didn’t kill that Hapgood fellow. And I didn’t kill Marty Osborn either.” Franz swiveled around, waving his arm to include everybody else in the theatre. “I had dinner last night at the Richelieu. I had it sent up to my room at six-thirty, because I was expecting some important phone calls from the coast. They didn’t come, actually, but I passed the time reading scripts. I never travel without half a dozen scripts to read. I was still in my room at nine or so when the DA’s office called to tell me about Hapgood’s murder. So if I’d been in the theatre killing Hapgood at eight-thirty, how did I get back to the Richelieu by nine? I don’t have a car with me here in town. My daughter’s been chauffeuring me around, and she stayed home last night.”

  “There’s a car-rental agency in the Richelieu lobby,” I said.

  “I didn’t rent any car at the Richelieu. Ask them if you don’t believe me.”

  There was something about his tone of voice as he rapped this out, something about the gleam in his eyes too. I stared at him for a moment, and then I knew the answer. He had overplayed his hand; it’s amazing how often they do. People who kill other people have a way of being arrogant bastards.

  “Mesa Grande is full of car-rental agencies,” I said. “Maybe you used one of the others. Just so it wouldn’t be easy to check. But you know, Mr. Franz, it will be easy. All it takes is a little patience.”

  The gleam stayed in Franz’s eyes, but it seemed to freeze there, and no words came out of his mouth. His daughter was looking at him, her eyes wider than ever.

  Roger had been heading in her direction ever since I began hammering at Franz. I had seen him edging toward her out of the corner of my eye. Now he was right next to her. He reached his hand out to her, then thought better of it and didn’t touch her. He turned and looked at me, and there was nothing ambiguous about that look. You son of a bitch, it said.

  “Now just a minute, Dave,” Leland Grantley was saying. “Mr. Franz is a distinguished visitor to our town. You can’t just make a lot of unsubstantiated accusations. What reason could he have to kill Osborn? How could he possibly talk Harold Hapgood into doing the job for him? And how do you explain that scene Hapgood made in this theatre last night? Telling Roger here that he smelled Sally’s perfume on the person who hit him. That sure doesn’t sound as if he was about to finger Mr. Franz as the murderer.”

  I had put the same questions to Mom, so I was ready with the answers. “I’ll explain about last night first,” I said. “Franz got Hapgood to kill Osborn—I’ll go into their motives in a minute—but Hapgood made conditions. He was a nervous little man, and he wasn’t about to do a murder without protecting himself. There had to be a good scapegoat to take the blame for him. Sally was the best prospect, so he insisted that the murder be pinned on her. That’s why he stole her coat and her ring and wore them on stage. That’s why he grabbed Roger around the chest instead of the neck, making sure he’d see the ring. That’s why he wanted the police to find one of Sally’s buttons in the dead man’s hand; he thought that would clinch the case against her. And since he wouldn’t have a chance to put the button in Osborn’s hand himself, he made Franz do it for him. Hapgood pulled the button off Sally’s coat right after she hung it up in her dressing room on opening night, then he slipped it to Franz out in the street, before Franz officially showed up in the lobby—isn’t that the way it happened, Mr. Franz? And you had to agree to jump up on the stage and plant the button in Osborn’s hand, whether you wanted to or not. You had no choice. If you didn’t go along with Hapgood’s precautions, he’d pull out of the murder.

  “But you didn’t much like it, did you, Mr. Franz? Hapgood was carrying his frame-up of Sally too far. Too many details, too much evidence. It was overkill. The man made you very nervous.

  “Even after Sally got arrested, Hapgood wasn’t satisfied. Roger and I started poking around, asking dangerous questions. We weren’t on to Hapgood, far from it, but he didn’t know that. Just being questioned at all threw him into a panic. First he told us a farfetched story about Sally threatening to kill Osborn. Then he came up with the idea of meeting Roger in the theatre, pretending he’d just remembered about Sally’s perfume, and acting as if he was afraid Sally or Bernie or both of them would try to kill him.

  “It was a crazy scheme, of course. And my guess is, Mr. Franz, that this was about the time you decided you’d have to get rid of Hapgood. He wasn’t acting rationally anymore, he was getting hysterical. How long could it be before he broke down and confessed the whole thing, including your part in it? So you enc
ouraged him to meet Roger at the theatre, and you followed him there. And when he had told Roger just enough to incriminate Sally, but not enough to give away the truth, you knocked Roger out, and killed Hapgood. Then you stowed them away in the basement because you didn’t want any janitor or passing patrolman or whoever wandering into the theatre and finding them too soon. You had to get back to the Richelieu and be in your room before the police could check up on your whereabouts.

  “How about it, Mr. Franz? I haven’t been so far off up to now, have I?”

  On Franz’s face was a soft smile, a little bit amused. Also, I thought, a little bit condescending.

  “And what was my motive in all this?” he said. “Why did I want Martin Osborn dead?”

  “I’ll make an educated guess about that one,” I said. “I’d say the key to the whole thing was Osborn’s relationship with your daughter. He made her fall in love with him. She was about to quit college and go to New York with him. But from what I’ve been hearing about Martin Osborn, a nice quick affair with a pretty young girl wasn’t what he really had in mind. I think he came to Mesa Grande last April specifically because he’d heard your daughter was going to school here. I think he took up with her and made her fall in love with him specifically because he knew you’d blow your top when you found out about it. You’d hate the idea of your little girl throwing herself and her future away on this second-rater, this has-been who never made it as an actor in Hollywood. You said it yourself the other night, when you overheard your daughter telling Roger about her plans to run away with Osborn. What you said was, if you’d known about it you’d have killed him.”

  “Yes, and I meant it. But I didn’t know about it. I didn’t find out anything about it until that night. And Osborn, I’d like to point out to you, was dead by then.”

  “I don’t think you found out about it for the first time that night. I think Osborn called you at home in Hollywood at least six weeks ago, in August, when he got your daughter to agree to go to New York with him. I think he told you he’d break up with her, he’d promise never to see her again, if you’d do something for him in return.”

  “Blackmail?” said Grantley. “It won’t hold up, Dave. Osborn had plenty of money, a lot more than he ever spent.”

  “It wasn’t money that Osborn wanted from Allan Franz,” I said. “He wanted something else a lot more. To get back into movies. And he wanted good parts, for once in his life. That’s what he asked you for, wasn’t it, Mr. Franz? Your daughter in return for a good part in your next picture.”

  Franz still said nothing, with that quiet unruffled little smile on his face.

  “But you didn’t like that deal,” I went on. “You were damned if you’d compromise your picture for this creepy little nobody. You let Osborn believe you’d close the deal with him during your visit to Mesa Grande. Maybe you told him you’d have some scripts for him to choose from. But actually you were looking for your chance to kill him. And you thought you had it when Lloyd Cunningham quit the play and Osborn took over the part of Banquo.

  “As a matter of fact, you pretty much egged Cunningham on during that argument. You’re a first-rate judge of acting, you must have known that Cunningham was giving a good performance as Banquo. Yet he was the only one in the cast you actually tore to pieces. You needled him about his performance because you knew Osborn would go along with you. And because your assessment of Cunningham’s character made you pretty sure he’d blow up at this and quit the show. And like everybody else, of course, you’d heard Osborn boast about how he played Banquo on Broadway when he was a young man.”

  “The bastard didn’t think I was giving a lousy performance?” Cunningham burst out. “He was manipulating me all along?” His voice appeared to be trembling with rage, but on his face there was relief and satisfaction.

  “And how did I manipulate poor little Harold Hapgood?” Franz said. “It would take quite a manipulator, don’t you think, to finagle a man into committing murder?”

  “It wasn’t too hard for you, I’m afraid,” I said. “You took a leaf from Osborn’s book. You saw that what Hapgood wanted more than anything else in life was to be an actor, to give up the insurance business that he hated and join the profession. You started softening him up on the day Cunningham quit the play. You told him what a nice performance he was giving in his two or three small roles, and you followed that up, I’d guess, by telling him there was a part for him in your new movie.”

  “You’ve got some evidence for that absurd theory, I assume?”

  “Hapgood dropped hints about it to his partner, Ted Hillary. That’s why Hillary kept digging at him while I was questioning Hapgood, making cracks about Hapgood wanting to be a Hollywood star and how he couldn’t believe the big shots out there were totally crazy. Anyway, when you had poor Harold salivating over that prospect, you dropped the bomb on him. I think you admitted to him—very frankly, very openly, like you really trusted him—that Osborn had something on you, and was blackmailing you into giving him the part you were hoping to give Hapgood. You said you didn’t want to give in to Osborn’s blackmail, you knew Osborn would go on bleeding you for the rest of your life. And besides, Hapgood would be much better in the part—but what else could you do? If only Osborn could be got out of the way. Some lucky accident maybe. But how could you expect a stroke of luck like that to happen? And then, bit by bit, you came up with your plan for Hapgood to kill Osborn, and you fed it to him, and he was all primed for it by opening night. And that’s pretty much the whole story.”

  I paused a moment, then went on, “What you’re thinking now, Mr. Franz, is that I don’t have any evidence, the kind that’ll stand up in court. But you know something, I don’t expect to have much trouble finding it. If Hapgood was wearing elevator shoes on the stage during the murder, I’ll bet we’ll find those shoes somewhere in his dressing room or in his home. I’ll bet there’s somebody out at the Richelieu, a guest or a doorman or a parking-lot attendant, who saw you driving away in your rented car around eight o’clock last night or driving back again around nine. The phone company’s records will certainly show calls that you made from your number in Hollywood to Osborn’s number here in Mesa Grande. Once the police really start combing this theatre for fingerprints, you can’t tell me they won’t find a few of yours—on the trapdoor, on the doorknob of the broom closet, some other places where they have no business being.

  “And one more thing I’m taking bets on. Hapgood told his friend Ted Hillary a lot more about your dealings with him than he ever let on about. With Hapgood dead, Hillary may just be eager to testify against his killer.”

  “No!” A cry of pain and fury suddenly broke out of Laurie Franz. “He didn’t do it! I was with my father all last night, I was in his hotel room with him! I’ll testify to it under oath!”

  Everybody turned to look at her. Franz turned too, and looked at her harder than anyone. Then he reached out to her, pulled her to him, and patted her shoulder while she sobbed into his. “Thank you kindly, sweetheart,” he said. “Don’t waste your sacrificial gestures, though. No point playing Hamlet’s mama and swallowing the poison that was meant for me.”

  He disentangled himself from her gently and turned to face me. “Congratulations, Dave, you did a first-rate job. But let me save you a little sweat on one point, okay? You won’t find any records of phone calls from me to Osborn. There was only one phone call, back in August, and he made it to me, from Mesa Grande to Hollywood. And after midnight too! The son of a bitch wanted to get the cheap rates! That’s when he told me I had to give him a part in my next picture, and I told him I’d need a few weeks to work out the arrangements. By that time, you understand, there was no other course I could take. He was trying to take my daughter away from me. He was trying to take my picture away from me. The bastard was asking for it, right?”

  Then suddenly Franz gave a chuckle, as if some terribly amusing story had just popped into his head. “It was a really terrific plot, wasn’t it? Beaut
ifully constructed, ingenious complications, all those people to manipulate! Take my word for it, I never shot a better script!” Then he sighed, a little sadly. “Where did it go wrong?”

  “Your second biggest mistake,” I said “was thinking you could depend on Harold Hapgood. That pitiful, little shlump, he was bound to cave in under the pressure.”

  “Sure he was. Do you think I didn’t know that ahead of time? I was prepared for it, for God’s sake. Once he’d established my alibi, I was watching him like a hawk, ready to shut him up if he looked like he was going to do me any damage. It’s like actors, you know what I mean? All actors are imperfect. None of them ever gives you the performance you really want. But you have to use them anyway, there’s no getting along without them. So you use them, you pull whatever you can out of them. You turn their limitations into advantages. All right, all right, what was my biggest mistake?”

  “Why did Osborn have to be killed when he was onstage, in front of a couple of hundred people?”

  “I told you, it was necessary so I’d have an airtight alibi.”

  “Why was it necessary? As long as you were going to use an accomplice, why not arrange for Osborn to be killed in a dark alley somewhere, while you were miles away playing poker with half a dozen reliable witnesses?”

  Franz gave a shudder. “That stinks. Excuse me, Dave, but you could never be a movie director. No dramatic imagination. A dark alley somewhere! Don’t you see, Osborn getting killed onstage, in front of an audience, was the most beautiful touch in the whole scenario. He was an actor. He lived like an actor—when he made love to my daughter, he was giving a performance—so he had to die like an actor.”

  “But the risks you—”

  Franz laughed. “Risks, for God’s sake! I take them all the time in my business. Do you think I could ever make a movie if I was afraid of a few risks?”

  So I shut up. The questions I had just asked Franz were the same questions I had asked Mom when she first spelled out her theory for me. And his answers were pretty much what she had predicted.