The Perfect Ghost

by Linda Barnes

  Talked to Gary and he’s still real good at keeping his mouth shut. He was there, he had access to the lockup key, and he knew the wreck was in there. There’s no tape in the wreck now, and if Gary took it, I’d say there’s not much chance we’ll find out about it.

  I might have him come down the station, see if that makes his tongue any looser, but I’d hate to get him fired over something might not be his fault. D’Arcy says he’s a real good mechanic.

  Verizon records came in: Nothing out of the ordinary except a call to a legal firm in New York. Followed up and got to talk to Amory Russell, that lawyer guy everybody quotes, but turns out he’s a friend of Blake’s. I wonder about that tape.

  Russell Snow, Detective Grade One

  Dennis Port Police Department

  One Arrow Point Way

  Dennis Port, MA 02639

  CHAPTER

  forty-six

  Fire extinguishers bloomed like scarlet flowers on the kitchen counter at the Big House and in the foyer of the Red House, which was filling rapidly with actors and stagehands, gaining in population nightly. Backstage at the Amphitheater, rows of extinguishers sat next to trunks filled with Hamlet props, plastic sacks of stage blood, and baskets of silk flowers. NO SMOKING signs took on a new prominence. Riggers were careful to move at least fifty feet from the stage before lighting up, gathering behind a sheltering dune and hurriedly snuffing out butts when the stage manager approached.

  The sun warmed the stone benches in the bowl-shaped auditorium, where I huddled in the spot designated Seat P-17, a forty-eight-dollar ticket in season. Carpenters, riggers, and most stagehands were banned from the Amphitheater today. The actors had come hither, hardly “the best actors in all the world,” but a cast of Garrett’s choosing. The major stars were not yet present. The younger of the two potential Hamlets had joyfully accepted the role, but was tied up on the set of his TV show till the beginning of next week. Queen Gertrude was finishing the run of an Oscar Wilde in Stratford, Ontario, but Polonius had arrived last night, joining us for a jovial dinner during which he’d prattled on in the same manner as his character, pontificating on wine and food and Shakespeare, doing everything but launching into “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”

  Later, in bed, Garrett and I giggled and debated whether the man was still auditioning or had ventured so far inside the school of Method Acting that he couldn’t control his Polonius-like tendencies offstage. Garrett seemed splendidly untroubled, undisturbed by Caroline’s visit or Snow’s interrogation, undeterred by the absence of his Hamlet. With his film background, he assured me, he was used to shooting scenes out of order on a variety of sets, filming all the scenes set in one particular location, then all the scenes in another, sacrificing linear flow for considerations of time and money.

  This morning he’d overseen swordfight choreography, critiquing slow-motion thrusts and feints, gradually increasing their speed till the sharp clang of metal blades rang crisply in my ears. Then he’d worked briefly with Fortinbras’s army, marching them down the aisles of the bowl. Under his guidance, twelve eager-to-please locals cast flip-flops aside, threw shoulders back, and paraded as though on royal review.

  On to Act III, scene 3. A room in the Castle. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, well-cast, neither twins nor brothers, but alike as bookends in height and girth, detailed the plan to escort mad Hamlet safely overseas to England. Puffed with self-importance, Polonius scurried onstage and revealed his intent to hide behind the arras. I’d forgotten how many of Hamlet’s scenes involved eavesdropping.

  I was engaged in that same activity, eavesdropping myself, since Garrett kept a closed set. When I’d mentioned auditing a rehearsal, he’d curtly replied that since he was working, I should also work. And I should have; I agreed. I would have been hard at work, writing, except that my mind was clouded with fire, obsessed with images of fire extinguishers and smoky pictures of burning buildings.

  O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven;

  It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,

  A brother’s murder!

  The rhythmic pulse of Shakespeare’s verse delivered by a master raked my attention to the stage. Compared to this, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, even Polonius, had tossed off their lines like waiters relaying orders to the kitchen staff.

  What if this cursed hand

  Were thicker than itself with brother’s blood,

  Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens

  To wash it white as snow?

  Garrett wasn’t filling in for Claudius the same way his PA was filling in for Hamlet, droning speeches to help the lighting tech number his cues. My God, Garrett was going to play Claudius; the role as he’d envisioned it, Claudius the King Slayer, a strong and determined foil for a strong and active Hamlet, was too alluring for the actor to resist. He’d already conceded that he might take on the part of the Ghost. I’d heard him do the Ghost at a table-reading, pitching his voice sepulchrally high. The Perfect Ghost, I’d named him, and we’d laughed because I, too, was a ghost. A matched pair, we could share the spirit role, I as his ghost writer, he as the Ghost of Hamlet’s father. Shakespeare himself is said to have played the Ghost.

  Burbage to Burton to Branagh, theatrical history is studded with stellar Hamlets. There are fewer renowned Claudiuses, but Claudius is often double-cast as the Ghost since they never appear onstage together and the eerily lit Ghost wears full armor. Garrett Malcolm playing Claudius would generate as much buzz as the TV-star Hamlet. Draw a crowd. And he hadn’t told me. Another secret, another fact he’d failed to mention.

  The guilt-ridden King dropped to his knees mid-sentence to pray for his blackened soul. The ragtag army, slumped in the first row, ceased their whispering and shuffling. The stage manager sank onto a bench transfixed. Kalver, onstage as Hamlet’s stand-in, froze in place and listened, cues and script forgotten.

  My words fly up my thoughts remain below:

  Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

  At the soliloquy’s end, the silence grew, expanding like a bubble till one of the soldiers broke it with a flutter of applause. Others took up the cue and a wave of approval and admiration surged from the wings as well as the seats. Garrett Malcolm, actor, briefly reveled in the acclaim, but Garrett Malcolm, director, swiftly regained control and summoned the stage manager.

  “Henry, get this down,” he said. “And Darren, take notes. Where’s the pyro guy? He ought to be here. Tell him I want fire during this speech, small flames at the base of the column first, like a grate, but with a hint of hell, an echo of what we’ll see during the Ghost scenes. He can use the flame projector, focus it in tight. I don’t want anything gimmicky, no flash powder, no flame pots. I want flickering and slowly growing flames, a projection on the column, but low, as though it were a fireplace. The flames of hell glimmering through the whole damn speech.”

  He glanced at the house as though searching for the pyro guy, and I willed myself invisible, molded my body to the hard stone bench, so unyielding compared to the velvet seats in Garrett’s private screening room. It was the contrast that made me recall what I’d seen so vividly—the contrast, and the talk of fire and flames.

  I’d discovered the screening room in the basement during one of my perambulations, a recently renovated space with three rows of six chairs, each so comfortable I’d been afraid I might inadvertently catnap. I’d secured Garrett’s permission to watch French Kiss and Twisted Silk, review two of his early acting roles. I wanted to make sure I nailed every detail, dotted every “i”—that’s what I’d told him, but you’d have said I was procrastinating, Teddy, snatching at any pretense to delay, indulging my desire to remain enshrined as biographer, guest, and lover.

  I’d watched scenes from the two films in quick succession, admiring Garrett’s boyish face and agile body. He’d had facility and charm, but little depth. He’d grown heavier as a man, weightier as an ac
tor; the seeds of Claudius might have been planted in the teenager, but they’d been dormant. I’d fed the disc of Blue Flame, the first Ben Justice film, into the maw of the machine even though I knew the film by heart.

  Onstage, Garrett gestured at the stage manager and lectured the now-present and attentive pyrotechnics expert. They lowered a rail and adjusted a Klieg light. But all I saw were scenes from Blue Flame.

  Hooded terrorists scaled a wall at a military installation, detonated a blast, burst through a doorway. Face blackened, Ben Justice elbowed his way across an obstacle course. Terrorists broke into the safe room. Justice biked the spindly bridge, legs churning faster than a Tour de France contender. Credits flashed over the opening action montage, and the body of the film began with fire, the first of a series of small-town fires of apparently accidental origin.

  The direction was bold and assured and the action flowed seamlessly, the terrorist scenes moving with the clockwork precision of a good caper film. Ben Justice was a measured, nuanced presence. Brooklyn Pierce, young as he was, under Garrett’s direction, told us everything we needed to know with a flicker of his eyes. Suspension of disbelief had settled over me like a wooly blanket, descending naturally despite the number of times I’d watched the film. Dramatic scenes rang vivid and true. Comic scenes defused the tension just when it grew too taut to bear.

  After the ending, after the final credit and the music, I’d watched the second arson scene again, in slow motion, recalling Sylvie Duchaine’s interview, her praise of Garrett’s filmmaking skill, his grasp of detail, his expertise in starting fires.

  Onstage, Garrett spoke to the pyro expert. “Work closely with sound on this. I want tight coordination. I want the sound strong, but not overpowering. The crackle of flames has to lap at the edges of Claudius’s speech. Okay?”

  The idea for a new chapter sprang into my brain as I considered his use of fire and conflagration, not just in Blue Flame, but in other films, and coupled it with his delight in the pyrotechnic possibilities of this new Hamlet. The man reveled in fire, with its antithetical powers of purification and destruction, used it to underline the thematic concerns of his work.

  His fascination with fire could have been born during that early fire on the estate, the one the PA had mentioned. Garrett might not want to concentrate on his early years, but early years affect us out of all proportion, no matter what success might follow. I wondered if his cousin James Foley had been living at Cranberry Hill during the fire and, if he had, whether he’d talk about it. I yanked the ever-present three-by-five card out of my back pocket and started making notes, focusing on that early fire, until the memory of McKenna’s photograph interfered, blocking my vision, and making me ponder the fire at the clinic instead.

  CHAPTER

  forty-seven

  The Dennis Port Police Station hadn’t changed, but it no longer emitted the genial aura of a general store. Its gray-shingled exterior was stern rather than warm under a glowering sky. I mounted the steps with trepidation to be greeted in the lobby by a no-nonsense officer who guided me to a different room than the small office in which I’d previously met with Detective Snow. There I waited, simmering like a kettle on a hot stove.

  Aside from the rectangular table, the room was furnished with seven mismatched chairs. Along the outside wall, three casement windows were hung with dusty blinds. Two gray interior walls were completely bare and a third featured a large, unframed mirror and a clock that ticked off eighteen slow minutes before Detective Snow shoved open the door and made a show of apologizing for his lateness. By that time, my hands were damp.

  Detective Snow was regaining his health, that was clear. He hadn’t gained weight; if anything, he’d grown leaner. But his manner was different, sharper, keener; he was like a hound on the scent. With the return of his vitality he’d become a stronger presence, his most recent phone call a summons rather than a suggestion.

  He sat on the opposite side of the coffee-stained conference table. He spoke slowly but firmly. He intended to interview me. Formally. On the record. He touched a button and a tape recorder hummed faintly, the scratchy sound as irritating as a rash. If I hadn’t been terrified, I might have appreciated the irony.

  “How well did you know Garrett Malcolm before you began writing this book?”

  I cleared my throat. “I didn’t know him at all. I knew of him, I knew about him, but we’d never met.”

  Snow said nothing and I said nothing. If this were a Garrett Malcolm film, this was where he’d cut to a room behind the mirror, show the other detectives eating and cursing as they evaluated my reactions.

  “And you’ve been staying at Cranberry Hill for how long?”

  “He’s very kindly allowing me the use of a guest room until I finish working on the manuscript.” I kept my eyes on the wooden veneer of the table.

  “Did Malcolm know Blake before they started the book?”

  “Not as far as I know. They may have met. I think Mister Malcolm requested T. E. Blakemore.”

  “By Blakemore, you mean Mister Blake?”

  “I meant both of us; we’re—we were a team.” Now that I’d imagined the mirror as two-way glass, I couldn’t get rid of the sensation of being watched, studied like a moth under a microscope.

  “But you’d never met Mister Malcolm before.” I should never have said “Mister,” given Garrett the respectful, distant title. Snow was using it to bait me, emphasizing the word.

  “That’s what I said.”

  We regarded each other in wary silence. The recorder whirred, and I imagined its counter ticking off the seconds while I wondered whether the detective had even considered ordering Garrett Malcolm to the station for questioning before making his pilgrimage to Cranberry Hill.

  “Where were you the night your—what? teammate, coauthor—died?”

  The question caught me off guard: I was prepared to feint and parry concerning my relationship with Garrett. How I wished I could tell Snow I’d been in bed with Garrett Malcolm the night you died, clear both of us in one fell swoop, wipe the suspicion off his narrow face and replace it with a new and different emotion. I wondered whether he’d believe me if I claimed the famous director as my lover.

  “I was at home,” I said, “in Boston.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t see anyone who might vouch for you? A neighbor?”

  “No.”

  Silence. During which I inhaled and exhaled and considered what I’d ask if this were my interview, if Snow were the subject of my next book.

  “Is there anything unflattering in this book you’re writing, anything Malcolm might object to?”

  “No.”

  “What about your research? Did Blake uncover anything unpleasant? I know he spoke to a man named Glenn McKenna—”

  “McKenna approached him, not the other way around.”

  “With?”

  “Gossip, nothing but gossip, as far as I know.”

  “And what about James Foley?”

  “He’s Malcolm’s cousin.”

  “They don’t get along. So why would Blake want to talk to him?”

  “He and Malcolm were close as children. We interview as many sources as possible. It’s standard operating procedure.”

  In the ensuing silence, I consciously relaxed my fingers, knuckle by knuckle, and prepared for the next onslaught

  “Did you take care of Blake’s car?”

  “What do you mean by ‘take care of ’?”

  “Take it in for service, gas it up, drive it?”

  “No.”

  “But you do that for Melody Farragut?”

  “Melody? Yes. I take care of her van.”

  “And why would your roommate contact us and mention your access to her vehicle?”

  “She’s not my roommate.”

  “Your neighbor. Why would she call me?”

  “Did she?”

  “The question is why.”

  I pictur
ed uniformed men behind the mirror taking notes and muttering as I considered my reply. “Has there been press coverage in Boston? In The Globe or The Herald, that she might have seen?”

  When he said nothing, I summoned a smile. “I would assume jealousy or boredom, a little bit of a desire to be a drama queen.”

  “Do you happen to recall the odometer reading on her van? From the last time you had it serviced?”

  “I hope you’re joking.”

  “When was the last time you used her van?”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember. Either the mileage or the last time I did the grocery shopping. She might remember, because she’s the one who always gives me the key. Did she mention that?”

  “How would you characterize your partner’s relationship with Garrett Malcolm?”

  “I never saw them together.”

  “Did Blake talk about Malcolm?”

  “He talked to him, with him, interviewed him, asked him questions, the way you’re asking me questions. I transcribed the tapes and worked from there.”

  “Would you say they had a cordial relationship?”

  “Absolutely. Very warm. Cordial, certainly.”

  “Thank you.”

  That was it? Awkwardly, I gathered my belongings, my purse and umbrella, pondering questions he’d left unasked, debating questions I wanted to pose.

  “Garrett Malcolm is a wonderful man. He has been incredibly kind to me and I can’t imagine him being any less kind to Teddy.”

  “Thank you,” he said again, gravely.

  “You didn’t find that tape I was looking for?”

  “No. I asked around. I thought one of the guys works over at the garage might have seen it, but no.”

  “Have you ruled out the possibility of an accident?”

  “We haven’t ruled out anything.”