A Question of Murder

by Jessica Fletcher

  “He could have quit,” I offered.

  “And lose a steady paycheck? Do you know what a steady paycheck means to actors, Jessica? We pay union scale, which isn’t a lot, but it’s better than waiting tables.” He smiled as he added, “Maybe you earn more being a waiter, but it ain’t showbiz. Anyway, Paul was like thousands of other actors in New York, scraping by, running from one audition to another, taking acting lessons from this or that guru, and refusing to admit that their talent is marginal and that their acting days are numbered. It’s especially true of guys like Paul. It was one thing when he was young and playing juvenile leads. He was probably pretty good at it, although the scuttlebutt is that his lousy attitude torpedoed his career in Hollywood.”

  “Victoria told me that Paul was older than he looked,” I said.

  “She’s right.”

  I thought for a moment before saying, “If I’m hearing you correctly, you think Catarina had a motive to kill Paul because of the way he treated her back in New York.”

  “It’s not out of the realm of possibility. I figure I should give you everything I know.”

  “Did you tell this to Detective Ladd?”

  “No. I just heard about their relationship. I didn’t know before.”

  “Do you think Catarina did it?”

  “Murder him? I don’t know. All I can tell you is that there have been times when I wanted to kill Paul Brody myself.”

  “His attitude?”

  “That, and the trouble he was threatening to cause me with the union.”

  “Over what?”

  “Rehearsals, not being paid overtime for ones that run a few minutes longer than the contract calls for.”

  “This may be a silly question, but why did you keep him in the cast? Surely there are plenty of other actors who could have played the role.”

  “I would have fired him in a minute,” Larry replied, “but Melinda had a soft spot for him, claimed he added something special to the cast. I didn’t see it and intended to get rid of him after this weekend. Looks like somebody else saved me the bother.”

  “Well,” I said, “the scorned woman has always had a viable motive for murder. But there would have to be a lot more evidence before pointing a finger at Catarina. Most women who are jilted don’t end up murdering their former lovers.”

  “You’re right, of course. But don’t the police always look first at those who had a motive to do a crime?”

  “Yes, and a spouse or significant other, as they call it, is always highest on the suspect list.”

  There was a tap on the door. Jeremy, the stagehand, looked into the room. “Hey, Larry, we’re moving some scenery back here,” he said. “Don’t open this door till we get it out of the hall, okay?”

  “Sure, sure. Knock again when you’re done.”

  “How long do you suppose they’ll be?” I asked.

  “Ten, fifteen minutes tops,” Larry said, “unless it gets wedged in again. We had a time of it yesterday.”

  I didn’t relish being cooped up with Larry in the wardrobe room if the scenery became unmanageable again. I looked past him to a pile of boxes and steamer trunks, behind which there appeared to be a door. “Where does that lead?” I asked.

  Larry turned. “I have no idea,” he said. “I never gave it any thought.”

  I got up, squeezed between the boxes and trunks, and tried to see through a dirty glass insert in the door’s upper half. Embedded in the glass was a mesh screen of the chicken wire variety. I reached down behind the boxes, wrapped my hand around the doorknob, and turned. It opened easily.

  “Do Detective Ladd and his officers know about this door?”

  “Never occurred to me to tell them,” he said.

  “Help me move these things out of the way,” I said as I pulled down the top box and handed it to him. A few minutes later the door was fully revealed. I pushed it open and stepped into a small room, no larger than ten feet square. Beyond it was a dark, narrow passageway. I squinted against the gloom and saw a spiral staircase at the far end.

  “Coming?” I asked Larry.

  “Where does it lead?” he asked.

  “We’re about to find out,” I said as I started walking, slowly and deliberately, touching the wall with my hand in case I tripped over something. I stopped halfway to the staircase and turned to see if Larry was behind me. He remained standing in the open doorway, obviously ambivalent about proceeding.

  I continued until I reached the foot of the stairs. Larry had now joined me. I started up, still taking cautious steps. The treads were extremely narrow, the risers taller than normal. My upward path came to an abrupt end at another door, this one leading to the outside. It, too, had glass with mesh embedded in it. I looked through it and saw only white—the snow continued to fall, adding to a large snowbank on a small terrace. The door had one of those horizontal bars you push to open. I glanced up and saw a sign: EMERGENCY EXIT-ALARMED.

  “Nothing here,” Larry said, a little out of breath from the climb.

  I placed my hand on the bar.

  “Better not open it,” he said. “We’ll have security coming down on us.”

  “The police should know about this exit to the outside,” I said. “The killer might have escaped through it.”

  “Don’t you think we would have heard the alarm, Jessica?”

  I pushed on the bar. No bells or whistles sounded. I leaned against the door in an attempt to open it. It gave only a few inches because of the mound of snow on the other side.

  “See anything?” Larry asked.

  “Just snow,” I said, pulling the door shut.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “It’s eerie.”

  “If the killer escaped through this door,” I said, “he or she would have left footprints in the snow. But any prints would have been well covered by now. Let’s find Detective Ladd and tell him about this exit. It probably doesn’t mean anything, but he should know.”

  As we turned to leave, two hotel security men appeared at the bottom of the stairs. “What are you doing up there?” one asked.

  “We were just curious,” I replied, leading Larry down to where they stood.

  “That door’s got a silent alarm,” one of the uniformed men said. “You shouldn’t have opened it.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “We didn’t mean to cause you any inconvenience.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t go around opening emergency doors. There’s a sign, you know.”

  “Yes, we saw it,” I said. “By the way, who usually uses this door?”

  “Nobody. It doesn’t go anywhere.”

  “It looks like it opens onto a small terrace,” I said. “I imagine it’s lovely in good weather, overlooking the grounds.”

  One of the guards snickered. “That’s where people say they see the earl,” he said. “Other places, too, but guests claim they’ve seen him late at night out there, looking over his property. Did you see him?”

  “With his head tucked underneath his arm,” added the other.

  “That’s an old song,” Larry said.

  “Yes, it is,” I said. “British.” I asked the guards, “By any chance, did the silent alarm go off last night?”

  “Doubt it,” said a guard. “Engineering just fixed it this morning. Out of commission for a week.”

  “Sorry to have brought you up here on a wild-goose chase,” I said. “We won’t do it again.”

  The guards walked away, and we prepared to return to the wardrobe room. I took a final glance around and saw, for the first time, what appeared to be a trapdoor in the ceiling outside the door.

  “Look at that,” I said.

  “Look at what?”

  “It looks like my attic door at home. I wonder where that leads.”

  “Probably nowhere of interest, Jessica.”

  “Give me a boost,” I said.

  “Ah, come on,” he said.

  I looked around and spotted an empty plastic milk crate. I pulled it over beneath
the trapdoor. “Give me your hand,” I said, placing one foot on it. Larry obliged. With his hand to steady me, I climbed onto the crate and reached up, barely able to reach a short piece of rope attached to the door. I pulled. It was hinged on one end, and opened with a creaking sound. “Darn!” I said.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I can’t get high enough to see what’s up there.”

  “You can come back another time.”

  I grasped his hand again and stepped down from the crate. The trapdoor, which had some sort of spring attached to it, slammed shut, sending down a cloud of dust.

  “Whew,” I said, fluffing my hair to get the dirt out of it.

  We returned to the dressing room, closed the door, and pushed the boxes and trunks against it again. Larry opened the door to the hall.

  “Looks like they got the scenery through,” he said. “Sorry to desert you, Jessica, but I have to run. I’m meeting with Egmon and his people.”

  “Thanks for coming with me,” I said.

  He gave me a funny smile. I followed him back to the stage, came down into the auditorium, and we walked together to the main lobby. “Do you always have a need to explore dark places, Jessica?” he asked.

  “Not always,” I said, “but too frequently for some people, I’m sure. My friend Seth Hazlitt—he’s a doctor back home in Cabot Cove—says I was born with an extra gene, a snoop gene.”

  Larry laughed and said, “I’d say your doctor friend has it right. See you at lunch.”

  I started to walk away, but he called my name.

  “Yes?”

  “The detective says that you’d bumped into Paul inside a doorway the first night you were here?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You said he was down there smoking a cigarette.”

  “Right again.”

  “That’s funny. Paul said he’d quit.”

  “Lots of smokers find it difficult to stay off cigarettes. He probably didn’t want you to know he’d started again.”

  “I would have given him a hard time, that’s for sure. When he first got off cigs, he was a fanatic about it, drove some of the smokers in the cast and crew nuts with his preaching. Frankly, he was a pain in the neck on the subject.”

  “I didn’t actually see him smoke, but when I opened the door, I saw him grind out a butt with his shoe.”

  Larry shook his head. “Doesn’t surprise me that Paul was a hypocrite about it. He was a hypocrite about a lot of things.”

  “Oh, Larry,” I said, “you were going to give me a copy of the script.”

  “Right.” He reached into a small briefcase with a shoulder strap that he seemed never to be without, pulled out a copy, and handed it to me.

  “Thanks. Did you know that Paul Brody used to come here with his mother and father when he and his brother were kids?”

  “No. Where did you hear that?”

  “One of the staff told me. Anyway, thanks for the script. Forget about my saying that Paul was smoking when I first met him. I must have been mistaken.”

  But somehow I felt I hadn’t made a mistake. I remembered coming in from the cold and being surprised that he was right there, and I could have sworn he had a cigarette in his hand.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Many writers of murder mysteries focus on a

  specific city or region. What places did (or do) the

  following writers regularly use as settings for

  their books? Lawrence Block, Raymond Chandler,

  Tony Hillerman, and Ralph McInerny.

  Although my stomach was reminding me that lunch was now being served, I decided to go up to the third floor to check out the three VIP suites. Georgie claimed she’d seen the slain actor’s ghost emerge from one of them during the night, which was highly unlikely but worth following up on. I now knew that Mr. and Mrs. Pomerantz occupied one of the suites, and that the flamboyant redheaded woman, whose last name was Carlisle, had another. Who was in the third?

  I took the stairs rather than the elevator, a pretty good climb that got the blood flowing. I’m used to daily walks back home in Cabot Cove, and was feeling the lack of exercise. Inactivity makes my body, as well as my mind, feel sluggish.

  The hallway leading past the guest rooms on the third floor was dimly lit, like the rest of the corridors in Mohawk House except those downstairs in the public areas. The boards beneath the carpeting creaked as I traversed them. They had shifted over the years, creating a roller-coaster effect that had caused the carpet’s seams to pull apart in places. As I rounded a corner, I heard two women speaking in Spanish, obviously exchanging a funny story, judging from their laughter. They stopped the moment they saw me.

  “Hello,” I said. “Buenos díías.”

  “Sí. Hello, madam,” one said.

  “I think I might be lost,” I said. “Is this where the special rooms for important people are?”

  They looked at each other before one seemed to understand my question. “Sí, Sen˜ora,” she said. “The big rooms, many rooms, two or three.”

  “Ah, yes, suites,” I said. “I was looking for—I was looking for a friend of mine who has one of these rooms. Ms. Carlisle?”

  They stared at me.

  “She’s, ah—she’s very tall—grande—with rojo hair.”

  Now their laughter returned. One covered her mouth with her hand and looked away.

  “Is she in this room?” I asked, pointing to one of three doors.

  “No, no, madam. Aquíí.” She pointed to another.

  “Oh. And Mr. and Mrs. Pomerantz?”

  “Sí, Sen˜or y Sen˜ora Pomerantz.” She indicated their door.

  “Who is in this room?” I asked, pointing to the third door. “A young man?”

  The one who seemed to speak the best English shook her head. “No one is in there, madam. It is empty.”

  “I see. Well, thank you. Gracias.”

  “De nada.”

  I was about to leave when I noticed a fourth door in the area, much smaller than the doors on the guest suites, and without a number.

  “What door is that?” I asked, pointing to it.

  They shrugged.

  I went to it and tried the knob. It was locked.

  “Do you have a key for it?” I asked, indicating with my hand what I wanted.

  “No, Sen˜ora.”

  I thanked them again and walked back toward the staircase. Obviously, Ms. Carlisle’s reputation wasn’t lost on the staff. The two maids evidently viewed her as a comic character. Hopefully, she was nicer to them than she seemed to be to the hotel’s guests. But then I reminded myself that she was part of Larry and Melinda Savoy’s entourage, according to the desk clerk. It was hard to imagine someone who wasn’t playing a part being that overtly theatrical and obnoxious in real life. The question was, where and when would she contribute to the play’s denouement?

  It also crossed my mind as I made my way to the dining room that since she occupied one of the three suites on the third floor, she might be able to shed some light on what Georgie Wick claimed to have seen. Was there another young person in that part of the hotel who looked like Paul Brody? It wouldn’t take much of a resemblance for another young man to be mistaken for the slain actor, not in the middle of the night in a poorly lighted hallway.

  I looked for Ms. Carlisle as I progressed through the dining room to the table reserved for authors but didn’t see her. Georgie Wick and Harold Boynton were already there when I arrived, each with an empty glass in front of them. Boynton got to his feet and extended his hand. I took it. He kissed my hand, which I could have done without.

  I’d no sooner taken my chair when John Chasseur arrived and sat next to me.

  “Your wife still not feeling well?” I asked.

  “No, she’s not. She’s having room service.” He spotted our waitress, Jody, and said in a loud voice, “Hey, sweetheart, where’s my martini?” She made a face and quickly disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.
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br />   “So, Mrs. Fletcher, what has our resident super-sleuth come up with?” Chasseur asked.

  “Not a thing,” I said. “You seemed to be on to something this morning. Did you get a chance to tell Detective Ladd about it?”

  “Yeah, but it was a waste of time. Talking to him is like talking to a rock. Trust me, with him doing the investigating, the murder will never get solved.”

  I ignored his comment and asked what it was that he’d shared with the detective.

  He laughed and shook his index finger at me. “Not on your life,” he said. “You’re on your own, lady. We’ll see who puts the pieces together at the end of the weekend. In the meantime, let’s eat, drink, and be merry.” He looked again for Jody. “Dumb kid,” he said.

  Boynton, Georgie, and I listened to Chasseur’s comments without reaction. Jody returned and took our orders, which included drinks for everyone but me.

  “I see you’ve made friends with the tall redheaded lady,” I said to Boynton.

  He gave me a knowing grin. “Lovely lady, if I may say so,” he said, “and interesting. Well traveled, extremely worldly. My kind of woman.”

  “Is she part of the cast?” I asked. “I heard that she is.”

  “Rather doubt it,” said Boynton. “She’s too refined to be in the theater.”

  Jody arrived with the others’ drinks. Fortified with his martini, and evidently not satisfied with the current topic of conversation, Chasseur said, “Seen any ghosts lately, Georgie?”

  She started to respond, but he interrupted her and turned to me. “Miss GSB Wick tells me she’s been seeing ghostly images at night.” To Georgie: “Right?”

  “I don’t appreciate your making fun of me,” Georgie said, draining her drink.

  “Ah, come on, Georgie, it isn’t everybody who’s capable of seeing dead men strolling the halls at midnight. What did he look like? Bloody? Big hole in his chest? Did he sing to you? Dance? Do a buck-and-wing?”