by Bruce Barber
seconds; she was doing so now, and as she did, the lamplight over their booth caught it. The ring flashed briefly and brilliantly, and Keyes thought of stars, of sequins. Then he noticed that the ring had suffered some extensive damage to the stone; it was almost cracked in half.
“...and if Wales hadn’t been such a – ”
Sandra spoke then, cutting O’Reilly off in mid-sentence; she was one of the few people in the company brave or foolhardy enough to do such a thing.
“Please, Seamus,” she said. “You know how I hate listening to notes at the end of the show. He’s dead. There’s nothing anyone can do. Let’s talk about something else, something real...” She took a small sip of her wine. “I got my contract offer today, for next year. It’s insulting, really. Perhaps it’s time for me to move on. It’s been far too long since I worked in Europe.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t be too hasty,” O’Reilly began. “Our Byron project...”
Keyes excused himself to use the washroom. One of the aspects of theatre life, as least in Stratford, which he had particularly hated, was the fact that whenever two actors met, the conversation almost always turned to money, or how badly they were being treated, or both. It seemed that it held true even now, with Death prominent in the wings.
Raw-edged blues followed him through the pub:
Gotta keep movin’, gotta keep movin’ –
There’s a hellhound on my trail...
Keyes saw George Brocken standing next to the bar, cradling a cup of steaming black coffee in both hands, his gaze shifting here and there around the room he had helped design as a favour to the owner; his expression indicated that he was perhaps criticizing his own taste, wondering where he had erred. Keyes nodded to him, although he really only knew him through his work. Grace Lockhardt stood beside him – Brocken was known to spend time with those who had most
hands-on dealings with his creations: the cutters, the dyers, and the dressers. Grace was staring in the direction of the booth Keyes had just quit.
Keyes passed by Betty, who was somewhat unsteadily putting on her raincoat.
“Claude!” she said, “I’m glad I ran into you – do you have your house keys with you? I locked mine in the basement this morning and haven’t had time to deal with retrieving them.”
Shaking his head, Keyes handed them over. In the process, one of Keyes’ fingers picked up a minute silver highlight, which Betty commented upon:
“New fashion statement, Claude?”
“No,” he replied. “Just new mysteries. See you later, Betty.”
“Well, you’ve certainly gotten enigmatic since yesterday,” she said to Keyes’ back.
Keyes mumbled, “So I have,” in agreement to this observation as he entered the men’s room. Hobart Porliss was just leaving his post at a urinal.
“Keyes,” he said, and nodded.
“Porliss,” Keyes nodded in return, and that was the extent of their exchange. Though the two men had worked together as actors years before, they were not particularly well-acquainted, and their shared experience with Wales’ corpse had not altered the relationship; if anything, it gave them more reason than ever to avoid one another’s company. Porliss was not known for his love of writers. Too often he had been attacked by them; too often they had got in the way of his vision of how things ought to be done. Even Shakespeare got in his way sometimes, as Keyes had noticed during this current production of Macbeth. Keyes, for his part, had heard Porliss gossiping about him at a party once. Porliss had called him a “turncoat” for leaving the stage to become a writer. It bothered Keyes that he too felt this about his defection, on certain days at least.
On the way back, he noticed a top hat sitting upside down on the bar.
“What’s that for?” he asked Bruno.
“The hat?” Bruno said, putting aside the glass he was polishing. “We’re having a pool.”
“What sort of a pool?” Keyes asked obligingly.
“For Wales’ murderer. The police don’t have a clue – literally. Lots of motives, and lots of suspects. Practically everybody who knew the guy is a suspect. But there’s no evidence against anybody.”
“I still don’t get it.”
Bruno grinned. “We’re going to let Lady Luck tell us who did it, or Dame Fortune as O’Reilly calls it – I got the idea from him.”
He pushed a small pad of notepaper across the bar toward Keyes.
“Put your name down,” he said, “and fold the paper twice. Then put it in the hat.”
“l didn’t kill Wales,” Keyes said. He was feeling uneasy all of a sudden.
“I didn’t say you did,” Bruno continued. “But the idea is to see what Lady Luck says.”
“That’s crazy.”
“So don’t play. Everyone else who comes in here is playing, but if you don’t want to, then don’t. It’ll look funny, though.”
Keyes frowned and glanced into the hat. It was filled almost to the brim with little pieces of paper folded twice. Bruno held out a ballpoint pen to him.
“Oh, what the hell,” Keyes said, as he took the pen.
“My sentiments exactly,” Bruno said.
Keyes wrote his name on the paper, folded it as he had been instructed, and tossed it in the hat.
“Not a nom de plume, I hope,” Bruno said.
“The real McCoy,” Keyes assured him. “I’m happy to see you’re not overcome with grief, anyway.”
Bruno gave an expressive shrug of his thin shoulders. “The conceited little fucker ruined three dartboards with his Jim Bowie routine, and almost drilled a couple of customers... call me heartless, call me a cold fish – or just call me Bruno.”
Keyes turned to leave.
“Wait a minute,” Bruno called after him. Keyes looked back. The bartender had another hat in his hand. This time it was a sombrero of the sort that tourists bring home from trips to Mexico or other places south of the U.S. border.
“What’s that for?”
“It’s for the money,” Bruno said. “You owe me a dollar.”
“A dollar! What for?”
“After Lady Luck has fingered the murderer, we’re going to present him with the money we collect.”
“Or her,” Keyes added.
“Right. Or her.”
“But what for? As a prize for getting rid of Wales? That’s not funny.”
Bruno shook his head. “You said it, not me. The money is to help with the defence – legal fees are really murder!”
Keyes couldn’t help laughing. He fished a loonie out of his pocket and laid it on the bar. He liked spending loonies. He even liked giving them away. The dollar coin with the Northern Loon on it seemed to him a genial invention, perhaps the most genial of all Canadian inventions, and was rumoured to be an endangered species, perhaps to be supplanted by etchings of the Parliament buildings.
“You hustled me, Bruno.”
“Not me,” Bruno said. “Lady Luck, maybe, or Dame Fortune, but never me.”
Without seeming to look at it, Bruno scooped up the coin and dropped it into the sombrero. As it joined its fellows, Keyes’ loonie made the merry clink that loonies are wont to make.
Upon returning to his companions, before they saw him, Keyes overheard O’Reilly finishing what sounded like a major pronouncement:
“ – and you would have been far better off with Claude, or even with me, for that matter!”
Sandra made no reply, but Keyes saw that she was twisting the phony, broken ring a trifle more vigorously.
Suddenly, the limited floor space beside the table was filled, as if by magic, by a quartet of blue-haired ladies in identical tailored suits; each had a small name tag on her lapel, and each clutched a program in her tiny hand. They were staring at Seamus O’Reilly with something like lust in their eyes.
“Mr. O’Reilly,” said one of them nervously, “we don’t want to intrude, but we’re from Illinois and we come here every year, and... well, we’ve been big fans of yours for just ages...”
; O’Reilly flashed Keyes a “succour me!” look, which Keyes ignored with a large grin.
“Let’s go over to the bar,” Keyes said. “Seamus will be busy for a while.”
Sandra nodded. “And that waitress takes forever.”
“Look at this crowd,” Keyes said in Julia’s defence. “She’s doing her best.”
It was not Sandra’s way to be generous to waitresses, or younger women, for that matter, unless they could be counted among her admirers.
“Hello, Bruno, darling,” Sandra said, taking the only free stool at the bar. Keyes hovered close behind her.
“Sandra!” Bruno exclaimed as enthusiastically as if she had just appeared on the set of I Puritani wearing a crimson dress. And then, in a flat voice: “Hello again, Claude.”
“Oh, what shall I drink, Bruno?” Sandra wondered.
“Name it, Sandra, and I’ll do whatever it takes to provide.”
Sandra thought for a moment. “What are you having, Claude?”
“I’ll stay with beer.”
“Too dreary. Bruno, mix me a Stinger. I need something to clear my head.”
“A Stinger ought to do the trick,” Bruno said.
He turned away to his work, and as soon as he did, Sandra’s mood changed. She became suddenly pensive and completely unaware of Keyes’ continuing attention.
Bruno turned again, and caught Sandra brooding.
“Hey, where did you go?” he asked.
Sandra brightened immediately. “Me? Oh... well, if you must know, I was in Venice. Do you remember, Claude?”
“Of course,” Keyes said shortly. Their trip to Venice had begun as the dream of love for which Venice is famous, and ended in a shouting match in which Sandra did the lioness’ share of