by Rick Copp
“They’re absolutely gorgeous!” He made a big display of sucking air through his nose and savoring the melodious odor. And then, with a hand over his heart, he bowed to me. “Thank you, dear, dear boy.”
He put his hands on his hips and jerked his pelvis outward, daring me to take a gander. But I still refused. I kept eye contact with him.
“Well, I know it’s only a few minutes before curtain. I don’t want to disturb you. You probably need some alone time to get ready and centered and all of that.”
“Oh no, I don’t need to be alone. In fact, I’m entertaining.” He leaned in close to me again. “One of the many male acting students from the Royal Academy that I’ve taken under my wing. I’m sure you understand,” he said with a wink.
“Oh, yes. Perfectly,” I said, desperate for an escape.
“In fact, right now we’re doing a few warm-up exercises. Would you care to join us?”
“No, not me, but thank you. I’m warmed up already.”
“You certainly are, Jarrod. In fact, you’re very hot.”
I let out a fey giggle that I felt ashamed about. But this guy was making me extremely nervous.
“Are you certain you don’t want to join the party? My boy has abs you could set a table on.”
Flustered, I shook my head. “I have to get these flowers to Claire.”
Sir Anthony perused my selection. “Traditional red roses. Very wise. I was afraid you might slip up and try to deliver her something of a peach color.”
“I’d never make that mistake,” I said, grinning, before whipping around and heading off down the hall. I could feel Sir Anthony’s eyes undress me from behind before his guest distracted him and he disappeared back inside his dressing room.
When I arrived at Claire’s room, I could hear a commotion inside. Instead of knocking, I pressed my ear to the door. I heard someone groaning. No. Not groaning. Moaning. Someone was moaning. No, wait. Two people. Two people were moaning. It wasn’t going to take Sam Spade to figure this one out. Claire and Liam were engaged in their own brand of warm-up exercises. I smirked to myself and set the roses down. If anything, I was discreet. I turned around and started back to my dressing room when I stopped suddenly. Standing in the wings watching patrons file into the theater and take their seats was a fully clothed and agitated Liam Killoran. His face was all red. Thoughts of having to deliver even just one sentence in front of a live audience was causing the novice actor to break out into hives.
He was perspiring and sucking on a cigarette, even though smoking was banned in the theater. As I passed him, I said softly, “Don’t worry. You’ll be great.”
He eyed me with contempt. “Fuck off.” He practically spit the words at me.
I should have told him the love of his life was doing just that in her dressing room with someone else, but a cooler head prevailed. In the interest of company harmony I would keep that little secret to myself. I simply shrugged and moved on.
I had to wonder, though. Who was Claire sleeping with besides Liam? I must admit I felt a tiny pang of jealousy. I thought I was the only one besides her Irish lover that Claire had designs on. But she was a celebrated star, oozing charm and confidence. She could have anyone she wanted. I took a quick inventory. Kenneth and Wallace were nowhere to be seen. I had heard Akshay inside his dressing room. And Sir Anthony, well, let’s say he was easy to rule out as a suspect. Of course, it could have been just about anyone. The young, delicious stagehand that Sir Anthony had been torturing with his undivided attention. Or the married lighting guy whose eyes sparkled every time Claire smiled his way. Claire had been around long enough to know it was imperative to make the guy in charge of lighting your new best friend. He is without question the ultimate authority on how you look.
The mystery of Claire’s moaning man would have to wait. Holly, the frizzy-haired young female theater intern from Oxford, raced past me, frantically speaking into her walkie-talkie.
“Two minutes to curtain,” she said as she rounded the corner. It was show time. And the nerves in my belly decided to let me know that I was about to pass out from fright.
I was done with make-up by the time Claire swept onto the stage to thunderous applause. The play had been a bit sluggish up to that point, with only Dame Sylvia wringing a few polite laughs from the expectant audience. But Claire’s entrance breathed life into the proceedings, and it was infectious. It raised the cast to a higher level. They had no choice. They had to keep up with powerhouse Claire or risk disappearing into the scenery. By the time I made my entrance well into the first act, the audience was enthralled with the entire show. There was polite applause from the few fans that remembered me, but even the modest audience reaction was enough to cause Akshay to visibly flinch with scorn.
After a shaky start, I got my bearings and managed to infuse the seedy character of Damien the valet with just enough sleaze and sarcasm to win instant admiration from my detractors. I was getting laughs. Big ones. This one performance was going to make this difficult ordeal completely worth it. I was on a roll. By the time I reached my big confrontation scene with Sir Anthony, I had hit my stride. I was having a ball. The audience was with me. The lines were slipping off my tongue as if I were coming up with them off the cuff. Everyone, even Claire, was caught off guard. This was going to be the most memorable night of my life. But unfortunately it would not be due to my crowd-pleasing performance.
I died right on cue in the third act, from multiple stab wounds administered by a heartless killer, just like in Creeps. But this seemed a far more highbrow death. When the lights went down between scenes, I quietly stood up and slipped offstage. The stagehand assisted me in removing my bloodstained shirt. He handed me a fresh pullover, and I slipped it on as I stood in the wings and watched Claire’s dramatic final scene. This was the linchpin moment of the piece. Claire’s character has solved the murder and unmasked the killer, who turns out to be Akshay’s character. Claire stabs him with the same knife he used to kill my character, Damien. Akshay, the shameless ham, took almost a full minute to die. But Claire ultimately triumphs and the ruthless killer is finally vanquished. Just as the audience has been lulled into a sense of security, believing that the murderer has finally been dispatched, Claire, the last character left standing, opens a door to exit. The lights dimmed, marking the end of the play. The audience sighed with relief. But then, at that moment, a gunshot rang out. The audience screamed. And Claire, clutching her stomach, blood seeping through her fingers, sank to the floor. It was Wallace’s surprise ending. The killer had vowed to do away with Claire and rigged up a shotgun that would fire off a round the minute anyone tried to leave the room. Claire had forgotten that one detail. His vow to murder her even if he had to reach out from the afterlife. It was a chilling end. Not for the faint of heart. And Claire pulled it off beautifully.
The curtain came down. There was a brief moment of silence and then an eruption of applause. We all gathered in the center of the stage and joined hands. I was between Akshay and Dame Sylvia. I was supposed to be between Claire and Dame Sylvia. That was how Kenneth had staged the curtain call. Akshay glared at me, and then grabbed my hand as the curtain rose. I looked around. Where was Claire? And that’s when I saw her. She was still lying on the stage in a pool of fake blood. And she wasn’t moving. The audience laughed uproariously at first. They thought it was one more ghoulish trick from the fiendish mind of the playwright. Until they noticed the cast onstage staring at Claire’s lifeless body in disbelief. The laughter died slowly and then disappeared altogether.
I took a step toward her. “Claire?”
I knew the moment I saw her dull, glassy eyes staring up at me. Claire Richards was dead.
Chapter 6
Kenneth, who had been watching the performance from the back of the theater, ran up to the booth and ordered his two technical assistants to lower the curtain. The audience was confused as to why Claire didn’t get up to make her curtain call, but nevertheless filed out of the theater
, completely oblivious to the shocking and horrible truth.
An ambulance arrived within minutes. But despite the best efforts of the paramedics to revive her, Claire Richards was declared dead. We were all asked to return to our dressing rooms until the police could question everyone. Although the cause of death was still to be determined, the police wanted to at least conduct a preliminary round of questioning in the event that they might have a homicide on their hands.
As I sat alone waiting for them to get to me, I choked back tears. I just couldn’t believe it. My theatrical hero, my drinking buddy, my staunchest ally, Claire Richards was dead. The thought of it was devastating. My head swirled with theories as to what happened. Claire Richards was perfectly healthy before the show, full of energy and vigor and ready to conquer the London critics. And by the end of the play, she was a corpse. This didn’t make any sense.
The prop gun had been checked and did indeed fire blanks. So Claire did not die of a bullet wound. Maybe it was a heart attack or stroke. She was a big drinker, just like her bitter rival Dame Sylvia. But because Claire’s death was so mysterious and I am, after all, an admitted conspiracy theorist, I instantly jumped to the conclusion that foul play had to somehow be involved. She certainly didn’t lack enemies with a motive. Almost everyone in the company despised her. Her Irish bully lover, Liam, could have discovered the same secret dalliance I had stumbled upon earlier when I tried delivering flowers to her dressing room and exacted his own brand of revenge. Then there was our director, Kenneth. Claire had pretty much emasculated the guy throughout the entire rehearsal process, which might have pushed him to a point where he decided to strike back. Minx the understudy, of course, had very clear reasons to want Claire out of the way. The stage-diva rivalry between Claire and Dame Sylvia might have finally reached an ugly head. Neither Akshay nor Sir Anthony displayed any overt hostilities toward Claire, but that didn’t prove their innocence.
I had all night to mull over the possibilities because the police questioned me last. It was six-thirty the following morning and I was fighting to keep my eyes open. The severe detective inspector, a blond woman in her fifties who had no time for any smiles or pleasantries, sat me down in my dressing room and hovered over me in a blatant attempt to intimidate me into cooperating fully and spilling everything I knew.
“I’m Detective Inspector Sally Bowles,” she said.
“You’re kidding me,” I said, followed by a quick burst of laughter.
Her eyes narrowed. The joke was lost on her at first. “Yes,” she said.
“Like Liza Minelli’s character in Cabaret?”
She sighed. “Yes.”
Bowles gave a withering glance to her partner, a pudgy man in his mid-forties too small for his suit, who stood steadfast at the door to the dressing room in the event I might try to bolt. He nodded and then jotted something on a notepad. I presumed he was writing, “Suspect is gayer than a picnic basket.”
“I suppose you get that a lot,” I said.
“Only in certain circles,” she said and then abruptly turned her back to me and said something to her partner that I couldn’t hear. He grunted and wrote some more on his pad.
“Could you describe your relationship with Ms. Richards?” Sally said, her back still to me.
“Good. Very good,” I said. “We got along quite well.”
“How well? Did you share intimate relations?”
I let out another quick burst of laughter. “I’m gay.”
One more nod to her pudgy partner. Suspicions confirmed. She locked eyes with me. “You still didn’t answer my question.”
“No. I did not sleep with her.”
“Someone claims you did.”
I shook my head, irritated. “That would be Liam. He assumed we were. But nothing ever happened between us. Ever.”
“He said he walked in on the two of you having sex.”
“He’s wrong.”
“He said you were on top of her, your shirt was open, and you were kissing.”
“She was on top of me. But she was the one who ripped my shirt open, and yes, she was kissing me. But I was trying to pull away. Claire said she wanted to make love, and I explicitly told her I was gay. That didn’t seem to deter her and that’s when Liam walked in.”
Sally wasn’t satisfied. She frowned as she stared at me, trying to read my eyes to see if they flickered from her gaze, a sure sign I was lying. They didn’t.
“Are you saying Claire’s death wasn’t from natural causes?” I asked Bowles.
“We don’t know yet,” she said.
Bowles decided to batter me with more questions. An hour’s worth, in fact. Questions about my career, my life with Charlie, my history with Wallace and Katrina, my relationships with Kenneth and the rest of the cast. She had me recount the timeline of activities leading up to the performance. I didn’t hold anything back. I confessed all the backstage minidramas that went on during the rehearsal process. Sally listened with rapt attention as if engrossed in the latest episode of England’s classic soap opera Coronation Street.
She was thorough and determined, and by the end of the questioning, I had a newfound respect for Detective Inspector Sally Bowles. She reminded me of the glorious Helen Mirren, who played a kick-ass, flawed but brilliant detective in the Prime Suspect detective series. Cold, distant, but fabulously British. As we wrapped up, I could sense she was slowly beginning to warm up to me. She even smiled slightly as she shook my hand and thanked me for my cooperation.
“So, do you think Claire was murdered?” I said.
“Like I said, we don’t know at this point,” Sally said. “Autopsy’s going to be conducted tomorrow. We’ll have more information then. We just wanted to talk to everyone while the events are still fresh in everyone’s mind. Just in case.”
If this had been anyone else, the police would have undoubtedly waited for the autopsy results before interrupting their suppers and dashing over to talk to everyone. But this was Claire Richards. A national treasure. They were doing their homework early.
Sally nodded to her partner and they were halfway out the door when it dawned on me that I had forgotten the juiciest detail of all.
“There is one thing I think you should know,” I said.
Sally spun back around, her interest piqued.
“I believe Claire was sleeping with someone else connected to the play.”
“Who?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t see him. But I heard them going at it when I stopped by her dressing room before the performance. I assumed it was Liam, but then I saw him hanging around backstage right after that. So it couldn’t have been him in there with her.”
She made a note of it, thanked me again, and then left.
At last I was free to go. All I could think about was finding my way back to the Savoy and crashing into bed for some much-needed sleep. Kenneth had announced that the show would go dark for the following few nights until all the facts surrounding Claire’s mysterious death could be sorted out.
As I wandered through Covent Garden towards the Strand, still distraught over Claire’s untimely passing, I stopped at a newsstand. The morning editions were out. I snapped up copies of all of them, grabbed some Starbucks coffee, and hustled back to my room to see what the critics had said about the world-premiere performance of Wallace Goodwin’s Murder Can Be Civilized.
The first headline read, “Murder May Be Civilized but Sitting Through This Play Is Most Certainly Not.” It got worse. “The Only Murder in This Disaster Worth Championing Is the Audience Offing the Playwright.” None of us escaped the wrath of the critics. I was described as “relying on my situation-comedy bag of tricks to muddle my way through.” Maybe Kenneth had been right. Sir Anthony was blasted for being the most effeminate military figure this side of Gomer Pyle. Akshay was described as startlingly sexy but hopelessly stiff. And in the most ironic review of the batch, one critic cried, “Claire Richards, though bursting with talent, alas died unconvincingly in t
he final moments of the play.” Boy, would that reviewer feel stupid when word got out.
Only Dame Sylvia escaped the knives of the critics unscathed. No one dared to touch her. Whatever she did was breathtaking, spellbinding, riveting, and always a tour de force. One critic damned the play but praised Dame Sylvia for being a real trouper for putting up with it all. The production was a cataclysmic failure. I was actually starting to believe during the performance that we had a hit on our hands. How could I have been so wrong? But the real issue was not how long we were going to squeak by before audience apathy shut us down. The big question was what the hell were we going to do now? Our leading lady was dead. Would Minx take over? Would the producers just cut their losses and get out?
Although the morning papers didn’t have time to print the announcement of Claire’s death, the Internet and television news programs were all abuzz. Clips of all of Claire’s movies were played on every breakfast chatter show. Big stars like Michael Caine and Anthony Hopkins were roused from their beds and forced to show us their stunned though still-sleepy reactions.
I sat on the bed in my room at the Savoy and watched the coverage as if I hadn’t actually been there, as if I was a mere spectator like the rest of the world. Hours went by when I should have been resting. But I couldn’t tear my eyes off the television.
My phone rang, shaking me free of my TV news overdose. It had to be Charlie. He must have just heard the news. I picked up the receiver.
“Charlie?”
I heard a man’s wailing voice. He was sobbing, obviously wracked with grief. I was still hoping it was Charlie and that he was calling to beg and plead with me to come home. He missed me more than he ever imagined he would and didn’t want so much distance to ever separate us again. But sadly, it wasn’t Charlie.
“Jarrod, this is so awful, so incomprehensible.”
It was Wallace Goodwin.
“I know. I’m just kind of numb over the whole thing.”
“How could this happen?” He broke down, sobbing.