Murder & Sullivan Read online

  “Not bad,” John said when the curtains closed for the intermission and the pit began its slow descent. “A little under-rehearsed, but not bad at all.”

  “I suppose so.” Joan felt relieved that it hadn’t been worse.

  “Your enthusiasm is underwhelming.”

  “She’s not nearly the singer Ellen is.”

  “No, but she makes up for it.” He chuckled. “Did you see her face when she was telling Rose Maybud how she’d stamp out her rival?”

  “All too well,” Joan said drily, and John leaned away as if she’d swung at him.

  “I take it you know the lady?”

  “Just a little better than I want to.” She’d had no intention of saying such a thing to John, but it had slipped out of her. She hoped he would let it pass without comment, and he did.

  “It should be downhill from here on,” he said instead. He wiped his viola strings with his sleeve and then brushed without effect at the four thin stripes of white rosin on the black tux.

  “Yes, her part in the second act is easier,” Joan said.

  “I was thinking of Pete. He sang the bulk of his part last night, so he won’t have to go it cold tonight.”

  “You know him?” It was Joan’s turn to ask.

  “He directs our church choir, and my kids had him for music in school. He’s a good Joe with a terrific voice. I don’t know why he didn’t go further as a singer.”

  Joan thought back, but after the shock of last night, she couldn’t remember anything about Pete Wylie’s singing except that he had come through when it mattered.

  The pit hit bottom, and someone opened the doors.

  “I don’t remember his voice at all,” she confessed. “I’ll listen better tonight.” She stood up. “I need to get out of here for a few minutes.”

  John waved her out.

  “Enjoy yourself—I’m not battling that crowd.”

  He had a point, she thought, but she made her way to the dressing room and parked her viola in its case while she went into the rest room. She waited in line to use the toilet, wash her hands, and wipe her face and neck with a damp paper towel. For a few moments, at least, she’d feel cooler. She left her arms alone, though—they were holding up better than she’d thought possible after lifting all those monster books. Playing night after night had to be helping her endurance, but she didn’t want to chill the tired muscles.

  She had tossed the towel into the trash and was about to open the rest room door when Catherine slammed into it. Her fiery hair stood out in wild contrast to the sober black costume she was already wearing for Act Two. Joan just escaped being hit.

  “Does anybody have a comb? I can’t find mine!”

  “I think I do.” Joan dug into her black shoulder bag of emergency supplies. She found a clean comb sturdy enough to do the job. “Here. You can return it later—I have to get back.”

  “Thanks.” Catherine attacked her unruly mop without so much as looking at the face of her rescuer. One comb down the drain, Joan thought. Turning her back on Catherine, she went out into the dressing room, picked up her viola, and hurried back to the pit.

  John Hocking took one look at her face and grimaced.

  “Is it that bad?” she asked.

  “That’s what I was going to ask you,” he said. “What happened?”

  “Nothing, really. I shouldn’t let her get to me.” She couldn’t bring herself to tell him.

  “Who?”

  “Never mind.” He’d probably guess, but she couldn’t help that.

  I ought to be bigger than that. If it had been anyone else, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it.

  Un-huh, her inner voice said. But it wasn’t anyone else.

  So what’s that supposed to mean? I begrudge Catherine a pocket comb?

  No. You mind one more in a long series of insults, all because of Fred.

  This has nothing to do with Fred, or me. She didn’t even see me.

  Didn’t she, though? You sure she didn’t look straight through you? If she hadn’t needed that comb so badly, she never would have accepted it from you. Maybe it irked her to have to.

  Joan smiled at the thought, and John smiled back.

  “Atta girl,” he said. Now she knew she definitely couldn’t tell him what she’d been thinking. Could she tell Fred? I could, but I won’t, she decided, and turned her attention to checking her strings against the oboe’s A before the second act.

  This time the ghosts marched as they should. Hearing Pete Wylie sing “When the Night Wind Howls,” Joan finally remembered how much she had indeed liked his voice the night before. Full, strong, and well-trained, it was perfect for the role. As she had then, she wondered now why he hadn’t been cast as Sir Roderic in the first place. David couldn’t compete with Pete’s professionalism, and yet he’d won the part.

  But Dr. Cutts and Catherine stole the show as the reformed Sir Despard and the scarcely tamed Margaret. Her hair slicked back under a severe bonnet, Margaret thanked him passionately: “Master, all this I owe to you! See, I am no longer wild and untidy. My hair is combed. My face is washed. My boots fit!”

  The hair you owe to me, Joan thought darkly, but she laughed with the audience when Catherine, unlike Ellen, substituted Ellettsville, the one-stoplight town near Bloomington, for Gilbert’s Basingstoke as a signal that Margaret needed to quiet down. Dr. Cutts didn’t miss a beat when he responded in kind—he had to be in on that one. And the contrast between Margaret’s newly demure deportment and occasional wild shenanigans was funnier than anything Ellen had done. Catherine has a real gift for comedy, Joan thought. Who would have guessed it?

  After the performance, when she picked up her case and climbed the stairs to the stage door, she was not surprised to see Pete and Catherine surrounded by well-wishers. She was surprised, though, to see Fred standing off to one side. He spotted her, too, and came over.

  “Good show tonight,” he said, as if that were his only reason for being there, but she was sure he was listening to what was being said around them.

  “You just dropped by?”

  “Wouldn’t have missed it.” He gave her what Mad Margaret had demonstrated as an Italian glance. Joan couldn’t help wondering whether it was for her benefit or Catherine’s, and then kicked herself for not simply enjoying it.

  “I heard it was sold out,” she said.

  “Not backstage.”

  Oh. “You going home?”

  “I’ll hang around awhile yet, maybe ask a couple of questions.”

  “You’re no closer than you were, are you?”

  Fred looked suddenly tired.

  “No. Looks as if we’ll have to reinterview a whole mess of people we’ve already talked to. Thank God I don’t have to interview Catherine. She was downstairs during the second act last night.”

  “Catherine? Why would Catherine murder David?”

  “She’s over there telling people she’d kill for a chance to sing a part like that. Pete’s not saying any such thing, but he had opportunity.”

  “Oh, Fred. Nobody would really kill over something like that.”

  “You wouldn’t think so.”

  Joan went home wondering.

  19

  Oh, the man who can rule a theatrical crew,

  Each member a genius (and some of them two),

  And manage to humour them, little and great,

  Can govern this tuppenny State!

  —ERNEST, The Grand Duke

  Fred watched Joan go until he lost sight of her in the crush at the stage door, where Catherine, flushed with success, was displaying the sparkle that had once attracted him to her. Still in costume, the cast members were congratulating each other and shaking hands with members of the audience. He left them to it.

  Backstage again, he flipped open his notebook and peered at the list of names he’d had people searching the court records for: Duane Biggy, Steve Dolan, Christopher Eads, Edward Kleinholtz, Walter Rice, Virgil Shoals, Anthony Ucello, Peter W
ylie, and Zachariah Yoder. By now he knew that Biggy and Ucello were college professors, Dolan a student, Eads a farmer/woodcutter/hunter who lived on the edge of economic survival, Kleinholtz an engineer at Oliver’s electronics manufacturing firm, Rice an Oliver fireman and housepainter, Shoals a builder, Yoder a carpenter who worked for him, and Wylie a high school music teacher and church choir director. Dolan, Eads, Rice, and Wylie were natives of Alcorn County. All the rest had lived in the county at least as long as Fred.

  Each of these men had been backstage tonight before or during the first part of the second act. Fred deleted the lighting man from the list when Ketcham pointed out that the control booth was high up in the back of the auditorium. Shoals had opened and closed the curtain and helped with sets, as had several chorus members and ghosts, but they were now enjoying themselves instead of striking the set for Act Two. Fred had asked Duane Biggy to leave it up, and so he stood alone in the cool dimness behind the picture frames, the jubilant voices by the stage door muted.

  Only Dolan and Kleinholtz, as Robin and old Adam, had been onstage before Amy Putnam had seen her father’s head on his chest after she entered with Biggy, Esther Ooley, and the bridesmaids. Fred had eliminated the chorus and Ooley on that basis.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have, he thought now. Maybe one of them got Putnam on the way in. Besides, after Ooley’s little melodrama last night, I ought to have included all the others who were supposed to be downstairs. Maybe one of them sneaked up during the performance.

  Don’t get sidetracked, he told himself. Nobody came up here early tonight when I was watching. Start with the obvious.

  The ghosts had been up in their frames for most of the time in question, but it was likely that before that they’d been moving around behind them and climbing into position at the time Putnam was attacked. He’d made a quick map tonight. From backstage, Wylie had stood at the far left, substituting for Putnam. Then Eads, Yoder, Rice, and finally Ucello, who was nearest to the stairs. On Friday Wylie had been on the other side of Eads, but tonight they’d left one of the frames back by the wall, omitting Wylie’s ghost altogether, so that he could sing Sir Roderic. These were the only cast members who had not entered from stage left, where Putnam’s frame had been on Friday. Ucello and Yoder, however, had crossed behind him to pick up swords from the prop box before taking their places.

  The other cast members had passed behind all the ghosts and gone by the clothes rack and prop box. Any of them might have stabbed Putnam on the way in, and then spotted the dagger in the prop box and stabbed him again. The more Fred thought about it, the more likely it seemed that Joan was right. Whether or not it was premeditated, the second stabbing had been to make the police focus on an obvious weapon and let the killer carry off the one that had struck the killing blow. It had certainly had that effect. All of which got him nowhere.

  “Can I help you, Lieutenant?” Duane Biggy asked at his elbow, still in his sailor suit, pigtailed wig, and makeup.

  The question that was nagging at Fred insisted on coming out.

  “How sure are you that no one downstairs came up early last night—say, before or during the first scene?”

  “I’m sure.” Biggy didn’t hesitate. “I stood at the top of the stairs and watched them like a hawk until I signaled Esther and the bridesmaids to go on. No one could have got past me. After that, I can’t be sure, because I was onstage, too. But it’s the young girls I was most concerned about—they giggle, and the audience can’t help hearing.” Hearing more laughter from the stage door, Fred could believe it.

  “So if one person wanted to come up—an older woman, say, or a man in a later scene—you might allow it?”

  Biggy shook his pigtail emphatically.

  “You can’t keep discipline that way, Lieutenant. No, I make no exceptions.”

  “And you’re sure nobody distracted you last night?”

  “I don’t distract easily. I’ve been doing this a long time. Besides, there was nothing else going on. Only Virgil Shoals and I were backstage, and he was on the far right, opening and closing the curtain. I listened to Steve and Ed sing, but I didn’t budge from that stairway, believe me.”

  Fred was inclined to believe him. “How about before that? What happened before the curtain opened, when there was no need for silence?”

  “I came over here early, but you’re right, I was watching the ghosts climb into their frames. If they needed help, I was there to give it. Or Virgil and Zach could have helped—they built the things. But it went smoothly last night. The usual horsing around, that’s all.”

  “What kind of horsing around?”

  “Oh, you know, people giving David a hard time about falling asleep, that sort of thing. Zach and Tony had a little sword fight. I had to stop it before they tripped or tore a costume or something.”

  “Uh-huh. And then what did they do?”

  “Then Tony went up here.” He patted the nearest frame.

  “And Zach?”

  “Same thing, I guess—over there.” He pointed to the next one down the row.

  “You didn’t actually see Zach do it?”

  “No. He might have been helping someone else get settled on those armrests first.” Putnam? No one would suspect Zach Yoder of anything if he climbed Putnam’s steps, not even if he touched him.

  “Were these frames individually designed for the height of the men in them?”

  “You’ll have to ask Zach. He built the supports.”

  “Can you remember who was joking with Putnam?”

  “Not really.”

  “Tony?”

  “Noooo.” Biggy drew the word out slowly. “No, he was still over here by the stairs.”

  “Zach?”

  “I don’t know. The way the portrait gallery curves at both ends, you can’t see David’s frame from here.”

  It was true. Less obvious from the middle of the stage, where Fred had been standing, but he should have spotted it sooner.

  “Do me a favor, would you?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Go stand behind that frame.”

  Biggy nodded, and walked along the wall to the far side. Fred went to the top of the stairs.

  “Here?” Biggy called.

  Fred could still see him and the prop box.

  “Maybe. Am I where you were last night?”

  “Looks about right.”

  “Okay. Now walk up to the frame until your toes are touching it.”

  Biggy took two steps and disappeared.

  “Okay. Now would you climb up to the top step, please, but don’t go all the way in.” Still invisible. Fred started down the row of frames toward him. By the time he reached the second one, he could see Biggy looking back at him. So Biggy couldn’t have seen Putnam’s murder, if he was where he said he was. The other ghosts couldn’t either, if they were already in their frames. Nor could Shoals, if he was waiting at stage right to open the curtain. That left Dolan and Kleinholtz, waiting at stage left to begin the first scene. They’d claimed not to have seen anything last night. They could probably alibi each other, though. Might as well get it over with.

  “Thanks,” he told Biggy. “I’d like to talk to Shoals, Dolan, and Kleinholtz, if they’re still here.”

  “I’ll get them. You still need the set?”

  “No, go ahead. One more thing—are the frames always in the same position?”

  “Sure. At least, they have been since we settled an argument about whether to put the ghosts in chronological order or the way the original stage directions read. Chronology won out—never mind how it looks onstage.” Fred gathered that Biggy had lost that argument.

  “How sure can you be that they’re in exactly the same spot?”

  “Plenty. See the tape?” Looking down where Biggy pointed, he saw that the back steps of each frame were lined up against short strips of dark tape, almost invisible on the stage floor.

  “I see. Can you send Shoals back first?”

  “Sure thin
g.”

  While he waited, Fred curved the ends of the portrait gallery on his sketchy map. It wasn’t accurate, but it would remind him. With luck, the lines of sight would be documented in the police photos of the crime scene. If necessary, they could recreate the scene from the tapes on the floor.

  “Lieutenant?” Blue-eyed, with straight blond hair falling across his forehead, the slight man in dark jeans could have been a brother to Chris Eads.

  “Mr. Shoals?” The man nodded. “Thanks for coming back.”

  “No problem. What can I do for you?”

  “I’m just sorting out a few things. I understand you built these sets.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Take you long?”

  “I had one of my men do most of it.”

  “That would be Zach Yoder?”

  “That’s right.”

  “He a pretty good worker?”

  “Most days.” Shoals wasn’t going out on any limb for Yoder. No wonder, from what Joan had said.

  “I hear you had a little dust-up about Judge Putnam’s falling asleep on the supports Yoder built.”

  “He fixed it.” Shoals was closemouthed now, defensive.

  “And you’re here now during performances to make sure there aren’t any other problems.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Good of you to take so much time.”

  Shoals expanded a little. “I like to give back to the community when I can.”

  “I understand you also take care of the curtain.”

  “Might as well.”

  “Uh-huh. So you’d see a lot of what goes on backstage during the performance.”

  “Not really.” Shoals studied his toes.

  “Oh?”

  “I generally sit in that chair over there and rest my eyes.”

  “How do you know when it’s time to pull the curtain?”

  “I listen.”

  It made sense. “And did you hear anything out of the ordinary last night?”

  “I heard Pete Wylie sing David Putnam’s part, and let me tell you, I wasn’t happy about it.”