Murder at Ebbets Field

by Troy Soos

  I sprung up, confident that I’d scored the go-ahead run. But as I trotted in to join my cheering teammates in the dugout, I didn’t hear any call by Bill Klem. I turned my head. Klem was standing with his arms crossed behind his back, bobbing up and down on his toes. No call.

  Oh, jeez. I must have missed the plate when I slid. I hustled to the farthest end of the bench and took a seat trying to look inconspicuous. If Sutherland threw the next pitch, my run would count. I just had to hope—

  “He missed the plate!” Wilbert Robinson screamed from the Brooklyn dugout.

  Damn!

  All he had to do was step on the plate, but instead Virgil Ewing spun toward the Giants’ dugout, and lumbered to the end of the bench nearest him. With the ball in his bare right hand, he started working his way up the line of players, tagging each one.

  Hell, I wasn’t going to just sit and wait to be tagged out. I jumped up and sprinted past him. He lunged and missed me. But I still had to touch home plate.

  Sutherland broke in from the mound to cover the plate. Ewing tossed the ball to him. I skidded to a stop, and headed back toward Ewing.

  Hah! It worked. I caught Sutherland off guard—instead of stepping on the plate, he flipped the ball back to Ewing. I was now in a rundown between home plate and the dugout.

  I changed direction again.

  Sutherland realized his mistake and waved his glove, screaming, “Throw it! Throw it!”

  Ewing yelled back, “I’ll get the sonofabitch myself!” Not a smart thing to yell. Did he think I couldn’t hear him?

  Knowing there would be no more throws, I sprinted headlong for home, with the sound of Ewing’s shin guards rattling behind me as he gave futile chase. I stepped full in the middle of the plate, and Bill Klem called, “Safe!”

  I trotted triumphantly back to the Giants’ dugout. A rundown between home plate and the dugout—only in Brooklyn.

  From the bench, I watched contentedly as Ewing and Sutherland started quarrelling, then shoving, then throwing punches. This time they weren’t faking it.

  My run did hold up for the win, deferring for at least another day elimination from the pennant race. The victory did nothing to endear me to the Dodger partisans at the Vitagraph studio, and their greetings when I arrived were decidedly cool.

  Except for Margie’s. Her greeting was a long kiss and a tight hug. Then a few more kisses. She made it hard to keep my mind on what I had to do today.

  “Are they still planning to finish the picture today?” I asked her. The studio had been set up like the inside of a castle, and the actors and actresses were all wearing the costumes of knights and ladies.

  She nodded. “They only have one more scene to film. Mr. Carlyle had them shoot it exactly like a stage play. In sequence and with every line spoken.”

  “But it’s a movie. Nobody will be able to hear them.”

  “That’s the way he wants it. He says nobody is going to meddle with his Hamlet. You’d think he wrote it instead of Shakespeare.”

  “Elmer Garvin is going along with him?”

  “He doesn’t know what else to do. I think Mr. Garvin’s relieved, really. None of the long movies he was trying to make worked out. Now he just has to keep a camera rolling while Mr. Carlyle takes care of the rest.”

  “Where is Carlyle?”

  “In the dressing room, I think.”

  “Okay,” I sighed. “Let me talk to him.”

  She let me go, after another hug.

  Arthur V. Carlyle was alone in the men’s dressing room. He stood before a mirror, adjusting and smoothing his costume. He was dressed all in black—tights that weren’t flattering to his knobby knees, a loose woolen shirt, and a velvet cape attached with a gold clasp. Gold was the only other color he wore—heavy chains hung around his neck, and a tight gold belt girded his waist. A small dagger was tucked in the front of the belt, and a dueling sword hung from its side. His hair had been dyed so that not a trace of gray showed. He looked as he had on the poster I’d seen in the Somerville Theater.

  “Mr. Carlyle,” I said.

  He turned slowly to face me. “Ah, Mr. Rawlings.”

  I dug into my jacket pocket and pulled out a rolled up handkerchief. I took a step toward Carlyle as I unfolded the cloth. Then I held up the small syringe that had been wrapped in it. “This what you were looking for when you broke into my apartment?” I asked.

  Carlyle chuckled. “My boy, I did no such thing. I suspect it was a Mr. William Murray of the Public Examiner who did that. He seems to have something of a vendetta against you, by the way. Come to think of it, I do seem to recall speaking to him on the telephone a few days ago. And I might have mentioned to him that you had something hidden in your residence that would incriminate you in Miss Hampton’s death . . . and that you were out of town in the event somebody wanted to uncover this evidence.” He added with a disapproving sniff, “Apparently, Mr. Murray is not a very capable burglar.”

  Apparently, he wasn’t much of a music fan either. If Murray had cranked up my Victrola, he would have heard a strange rattling sound.

  “Margie told you the deal,” I said. “And you agreed to it.”

  “Did you expect me to concede without a fight?”

  “It’s over. You know it’s over. Accept it. I will stick to my offer: I won’t tell the police until the picture is finished. Then you turn yourself in.”

  In a flash, his sword was unsheathed and its tip pressed against my Adam’s apple. “And if I choose not to accept your offer?” he taunted. The swiftness of his move was more shocking to me than the result.

  I backed away, but he stayed with me, walking forward and keeping the pressure on my throat. The prop sword wasn’t razor-sharp, but it had enough of a point that it was a hair away from puncturing my throat.

  Stay calm, stay calm, I told myself. My impulse was to knock the sword aside and tackle him. But that could force his hand, and I would be impaled. The thing to do was remain composed and firm. If I showed a belief that there was no chance of him killing me, maybe he’d get that feeling, too. “Margie and I aren’t the only ones who know,” I mumbled, trying to speak without moving my larynx. “Look at the syringe. There’s no needle on it. It’s already being tested for arsenic.” Actually, the needle was still stuck in the sound chamber of my Victrola where it had broken off.

  Carlyle didn’t remove his eyes from mine, but I saw some hesitancy in them and the pressure of the sword eased slightly.

  He stood back from me, his arm holding the sword straight out. Why hadn’t he gone for the dagger? It looked far more deadly than the sword.

  Hah! I was right about him. He didn’t have what it took to kill close up and personal. With growing confidence, I said, “This isn’t your style, Mr. Carlyle. Leaving poison for somebody to drink or tying a string around a spotlight and pulling it or switching bottles for somebody else to hit me on the head. That’s the way you do things.”

  “I didn’t switch the bottles,” Carlyle said quietly. “Somebody was just careless with them. I am not careless.”

  I took that as an admission to the other attempts. “No, you’re not. You planned things very carefully. Especially William Daley’s murder. That was nicely done.”

  Carlyle acknowledged the compliment with a nod and a smile. I was back on plan, using the best weapon I had against him: his own ego.

  “You arranged to be in a play,” I went on, “during the first part of the world baseball tour. It gave you an alibi. The problem was the theater crowds were too good, even though your performances were so bad—”

  His eyes blazed. “Only because I wanted them to be bad. I was playing the role of a bad actor.”

  “Understood,” I acknowledged. “So you claimed laryngitis to get out of the contract . . . because you had to get on a boat to England. In time to take the Lusitania back to the United States with William Daley. You disguised yourself as a waiter?”

  “A steward. And it’s a ship, not a boat.”

/>   “And you poisoned William Daley because he cheated you out of your money.”

  “It wasn’t the money. It was my dream. He almost scuttled my dream of recording Hamlet on film.”

  Carlyle’s hand trembled slightly and the blade of the sword wobbled. Then he dropped his arm and lowered his head. “You’re right,” he admitted. “I’m not much of a murderer. I can’t kill you.” He tensed as if expecting me to attack him; I still held back. Then he lifted his head again. “I am an actor,” he said with deep pride. “Allow me to perform my final scene, and I shall confess to the police.”

  As he moved to the door, I stopped him with a hand on his arm. “One more question. Why try to kill Virgil Ewing? That was you, too, wasn’t it?”

  Carlyle said matter-of-factly, “Yes, that one was rather easy. I played a locker room attendant—”

  “It’s called a clubhouse man.”

  He smiled. “Yes, well, I simply went in with a stack of towels. An old theater trick: directing the audience’s attention where you want it. If you’re bringing somebody something they want, they look at it, not at the person who’s carrying it.”

  “Like if you bring them a bottle of champagne.”

  “Exactly.” And another smile crossed his face.

  “But why Ewing? How does he fit in?”

  “The same principle: misdirection. You were getting a little too inquisitive. I thought if Mr. Ewing was to be killed, you would direct your attention to Mr. Sutherland or one of Miss Hampton’s other suitors.”

  “An innocent twelve-year-old boy died just because you wanted to throw me off your track.”

  “Yes. So?”

  The deal’s off.

  I swung my fist up, then held back. I had to let Carlyle go ahead with his scene. I still needed him to confess.

  I opened the dressing room door and through clenched teeth said, “After you, Mr. Carlyle.”

  The actors and actresses, wearing garish makeup and elaborate costumes that were no doubt designed by Carlyle, were all in position. Elmer Garvin barked, “Start camera!” and the cameraman cranked away.

  Arthur Carlyle stood center stage and began his dialogue, “Come, for the third, Laertes ...” He spoke loudly, as if forcing the film to record his voice as well. He spoke strange words that made no sense to me, and I thought there were advantages to pictures being silent.

  I stopped listening to the words and just watched the action, eager for the conclusion. Margie stood next to me, our hands locked together.

  There was a sword fight between Carlyle and another character, the two of them swapped weapons, people started stabbing each other. All this to the accompaniment of the actors’ loud jabbering. It looked like everyone was dead, so I figured it must be just about over.

  Arthur Carlyle lifted a golden goblet to his lips and drank. “O, I die, Horatio . . .” He fell to the floor and began writhing overdramatically.

  “What the hell is he doing?” I whispered to Margie.

  “It’s the death scene,” she answered.

  He was dragging it out, talking and talking as his body twitched in exaggerated convulsions. “So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less . . .”

  Finally, he stopped talking and lay still.

  “Is it over?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Margie said. “That’s the end.”

  But the camera kept rolling, and another actor bent over Carlyle’s body reciting, “Now cracks a noble . . .”

  I turned to Margie. “You said—” I was taken aback by the peculiar smile on her face.

  “Goodnight, sweet prince,” boomed from the stage. “And flights of—Hey! He’s not breathing!”

  After Arthur V. Carlyle’s body was carried out of the studio, and the police had gotten statements from everyone present, Margie and I ducked out into the parking lot.

  I pulled her between a milk truck and a fire engine and whispered, “What did you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” she insisted. “Mr. Carlyle probably decided there was no reason to live. His film was completed and he was facing the electric chair. So he used his death scene for a dramatic exit.”

  “I didn’t expect that. I had no idea he would commit suicide. Now he can’t confess.”

  “Does it matter?” she asked.

  “What do you mean ‘does it matter’? We don’t have enough evidence to prove to the police that Carlyle killed anyone.”

  “But if he’s dead, what difference does it make? He murdered other people, now he killed himself. Doesn’t that work out even?” There was a logic there, but I wasn’t sure what it was, and I wasn’t sure I agreed with it.

  Maybe if Margie and I both testified about what Carlyle had told us, we could still go to the police. “When you talked to him,” I asked her, “what did he say? Did he admit anything to you?”

  “Yes. He was very open about it. He seemed proud of what he’d done, almost gloating.”

  “What exactly did he say?”

  Margie shook her head. “No. First you tell me how you knew about him and why you didn’t tell me before.”

  “I didn’t want to tell you until I was sure. And when I was sure, I thought it would be safer for you not to tell you everything. The less you knew, the less incentive Carlyle would have to kill you.”

  “Oh, okay,” she said, but I could tell she disagreed with my reasoning. “So, how did you know he killed Libby?”

  It was embarrassingly simple. “I saw him do it. I just didn’t know it until that pie-throwing movie a couple of weeks ago.”

  “When you got kaboshed with the bottle.”

  “Yeah. Turned out that really was an accident. Anyway, Arthur Carlyle was dressed as a waiter, and I recognized him. He was the waiter at the Sea Dip Hotel, the one I tried to get some champagne from, he ignored me and brought it to where Florence Hampton and Esther Kelly were sitting. That’s how he poisoned her. Lucky for Esther that she really wasn’t drinking.”

  “But he came to the party late.”

  I remembered the word Carlyle used. “Misdirection. If you remember, he made a big fuss when he arrived. That way nobody would suspect he had been there earlier, in another costume.”

  “And he used the same costume two weeks ago?”

  I nodded. “Garvin told me that he had standard disguises for each role he played. He probably couldn’t change the way he did things. I think he took some precaution though. He put those glasses on me so I could hardly see anything through them. It was his bad luck that I had to lift them up just to find my way around. So I saw him. And I knew.”

  “Wow,” was all Margie said.

  “Okay, your turn. What happened when you talked to Carlyle?”

  “Well, I told him what you said. That we knew he killed Libby and William Daley and that he tried to kill you. But if he turned himself in, we wouldn’t say anything until his movie was finished. He didn’t believe me at first, so I told him to check his makeup box and see if his needle was there. How did you know about the needle?”

  “When we were filming at Steeplechase Park and everybody was getting ready with their costumes and everything, Carlyle was at his makeup kit on the back of a truck. But he was directing that day, so what did he need makeup for? I didn’t remember that until I woke up in the dressing room after the bottle knocked me out. I knew that a needle had been used to put arsenic in the champagne we took to the beach, so I checked his box and there it was.”

  “Oh. Well, that convinced him. Mr. Carlyle admitted to me that he poisoned Libby at the party. He said he followed her when she left. She was terribly sick but still alive he said. He stripped off her clothes and dropped her off the pier to drown. He thought people would assume she’d gone swimming with Virgil Ewing.”

  “See, Ewing asked her to go swimming before Carlyle made his grand entrance. He had to be there earlier. Maybe we do have enough to go to the police after all. Did he say anything else?”

  “No. I did mention something else to him, thoug
h. I told him about a rat I’d seen in the ladies’ dressing room once.”

  “What?”

  “It was a big gray rat, and he must have eaten some poison. He was rolling and twitching. I told Mr. Carlyle it was the most spectacular death you could imagine, much more dramatic than any actor I’d ever seen. And I told him I thought they used strychnine in rat poison.” She smiled innocently. “Do you think the police would be interested in any of that?”

  Probably, I thought. What I said was, “You’re right. Carlyle’s dead. What difference does it make?”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I knocked gently on the door of Karl Landfors’s Greenwich Village apartment. In all the time I knew him, I’d never been here before.

  “Come in, it’s all ready,” he yelled through the door.

  What was ready? I hadn’t told him I was coming. I swung my equipment bag onto my shoulder and pushed through the unlocked door.

  Landfors’s cramped apartment looked just like his office, with bookcases and file cabinets the principal furnishings. Books, papers, and maps overflowed the shelves and drawers; they were strewn about the rest of the furniture and spilled over onto the floor. Two spindly logs smoldered in a small brick fireplace to ward off the chill of the cool autumn morning. Landfors was seated at a desk next to it, with his back to the door.

  “Karl, it’s me,” I said, stepping around a steamer trunk just inside the door.

  He swiveled around in his chair to face me. “Mickey! I thought you were the porter.”

  “What porter?”

  “For the trunk.”

  “Oh. No. I came to—I brought you something.” I reached into my bag and pulled out a round metal can. I placed it on his desk. “It’s Arthur Carlyle’s last scene . . . where he dies. This is the only print.” I pulled out another can. “And this is the negative.”

  Landfors looked bewildered. “How did you get these?” he asked.

  “A friend got them for me.”

  “Who?”

  “Oh, somebody who knows the layout of the Vitagraph studio and is agile enough to get in through a window at night.”