by Parnell Hall
Praise for Parnell Hall’s mystery ACTOR
“A real romp. Hilarious. Wins our vote for Best Performance by an Actor on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.”
—Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review
“If you enjoy the backstage backgrounds of writers like Ngaio Marsh and Simon Brett, and if the prospect of an unashamedly old-fashioned whodunit with no apparent concern beyond reader pleasure is attractive, this is your book.”
—Jon. L. Breen, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
“Easily one of the best backstage murder mysteries I have read.”
—Mystery Review
“The standing ovation is well deserved.”
—Publishers Weekly
ACTOR
Parnell Hall
Copyright © 1993, 2010 by Parnell Hall
Published by Parnell Hall, eBook edition, 2010.
Published in paperback by Mysterious Press Books, Warner Books, Inc., 1994.
ISBN-10: 0-446-40364-4
Originally published in hardcover by The Mysterious Press, 1993.
ISBN-10: 0-89296-520-7
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the author, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review in a newspaper, magazine, or electronic publication; nor may any part of this book be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.
ISBN (Kindle): 978-1-936441-00-6
ISBN (ePub): 978-1-936441-01-3
Cover design by Michael Fusco Design | michaelfuscodesign.com
For Jim and Franny
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Books by Parnell Hall
1.
I GOT A PART!
Please excuse the exclamation point. I know I’m not the first actor in the world who ever got a part. But, you see, it’s been a long time. A real long time. It’s been so long I don’t even think of myself as a failed actor anymore. That was in another country and the wench is dead. I hardly even think of myself as a failed writer anymore, though that career’s more recent. No, much as I hate to admit it, lately I’ve come to think of myself as a successful private detective. Successful in that I make a living at it. Which is something I never did with my acting or writing careers. But I’ve been a private eye long enough now to call it a profession, which is ironic, since it was originally a job-job, something to do to tide me over between the acting and writing.
One might ask, if I’m a writer and a private eye, why don’t I write about it? I would, except I don’t carry a gun or have fistfights or car chases or anything like that: in short, anything that sells. What I do is investigate accident cases for the law firm of Rosenberg and Stone. While Richard Rosenberg is one of New York City’s top negligence lawyers, working for him consists largely of interviewing people with broken arms and legs and taking pictures of cracks in the sidewalk. I can just imagine the look of joy on a publisher’s face if I brought in a manuscript about that.
At any rate, as I was saying, I felt my acting career was behind me. Way behind me. Like about twenty years. But at one time it had been my passion. I’d studied acting at Goddard, and when I graduated, a bunch of us theater majors actually got together and opened a summer theater. It was Mickey Rooney time. We got an old barn and we ripped out the stalls and we built a proscenium arch and a thrust stage and a bank of risers and we filled it up with seats on the theory that, if you build it, they will come.
They did, but not in sufficient numbers to keep us going. We lasted one season and lost our shirts. But it was great. Really great. We did Moliere and Chekhov and Shaw and Shakespeare and Harold Pinter. And we got good reviews in the local papers and support from the community and encouragement from the college in the tangible form of the loan of lighting equipment, and nonetheless, the whole thing went down the tubes.
Which was the way it had to be. Because a summer theater of that type simply cannot survive. I worked it out after the season, after it all went bust, and figured out that even if we sold out every seat for every performance—which we certainly didn’t—it still would have left us with a deficit of three thousand dollars. Our actual deficit was closer to ten. Twenty years ago that was money. And so, the grand and glorious Vermont Theater Company declared bankruptcy, that magical I-was-only-kidding-let’s-pretend-it-never-happened sort of thing that I don’t quite comprehend, but that failed companies are somehow able to do, and all us actors faded away and vanished in the mist.
As I say, that was in another lifetime, and I had not acted in years and years. Still, I had had a taste. And deep down inside me was the dream, the dream every actor who has ever acted has, the dream of that magical moment, the dream of that Hollywood—Horatio Alger-Cinderella-rags-to-riches story. And through it all, somehow, some way, a part of me knew that, despite everything, someday lightning would strike. I would be summoned, told the star of the show was sick and I, and only I, could step in and save the play. I fully expected that to happen.
So you can’t imagine how surprised I was when it did.
It was early in the morning and I had just stopped by my office to pick up the mail and check the answering machine when the phone rang. I figured it was Wendy or Janet, one of Richard Rosenberg’s secretaries, calling to give me a case. Either that or my wife because, aside from them, who would call? So I was surprised to hear a man s voice.
“Stanley Hastings?”
“Yes.”
“This is Herbert Drake.”
I blinked. My mind raced and I felt a rush of panic.
I must explain. I have a very poor memory for names and faces. Not the best trait for a private detective, but there you are. And working for Rosenberg and Stone, I’ve handled literally hundreds of cases. In the course of which I’ve worked with other lawyers, investigators and even police officers. Which of them would be calling me in my office for god knows what reason I could not fathom. And I really hate embarrassing myself and other people by my inexplicable and inexcusable inability to remember just who the hell they are.
Herbert Drake? The name was familiar. Alarmingly familiar. Clearly someone I should remember.
As I thought all that the pause lengthened.
Then the person on the other end of the line chuckled. A high-pitched half giggle, half chuckle.
With a rush, I got it. “Herbie Drake?” I said, incredulously.
The chuckle deepened. “The one and onl
y.”
“From Goddard?”
“I said the one and only. You know any other Herbie Drakes?”
“Good lord,” I said, my mind reeling. “How did you find me?”
He found me through the alumni newsletter, which all Goddard graduates of course received, and which a few years back had reported I was a private eye working in New York City. Don’t get me wrong—I had not sent that tidbit in to be published. On the one hand, I’m not the type to brag. On the other hand, I’m not that proud of what I do. But some other college grad had reported the fact, the newsletter had published it, and Herbie Drake had called Manhattan information and damned if I wasn’t the only Stanley Hastings listed. He’d called me at home this morning, just missed me; my wife Alice had given him the number of the office and he’d called me there.
What he had to say took my head off. Because, unlike me, Herbie Drake was still in the business. He’d stuck it out, lo these many years, first as an actor, then as a director, now as a producer. And damned if he didn’t have a part he wanted me to step into.
No, it wasn’t Broadway. Or even off-Broadway, or regional theater, either. No, it was only summer stock, at a small playhouse in Connecticut, and not for the whole season, either, only for a week. But it was an actual, legitimate part.
The play was Arms and the Man. The part was Captain Bluntschli, the chocolate cream soldier, who is the lead, in fact the title character, the “Man” in Arms and the Man. It was a part I knew well. A part I’d played in that old barn in Vermont twenty odd years ago.
It was the classic situation. There they were, just days away from opening, and the actor playing Captain Bluntschli had taken ill. There was no chance of him recovering, either. The poor man had had a heart attack and dropped dead. Very sad indeed for his family and relatives, but a tragedy and a half for struggling producer Herbie Drake.
And I was the salvation, the savior, the answer. And, boy, did that make me feel good. Never mind the fact that I’m not being chosen for my talent, I’m being chosen for the fact that I’ve done the part before, I’m a quick study and there is no time. That didn’t matter one bit. All that mattered was that I’d been asked.
I said yes. I didn’t say I had to talk it over with my wife. I didn’t say I had to think about it and get back to you. I didn’t even say how much does it pay? I just said yes.
You have to understand, under any other circumstances I would have said all those other things. But not this time. This time there was nothing to think about. Much as I need it, the money didn’t matter. And, much as I respect Alice’s opinion and consult her about all things that affect the family, I knew there was absolutely nothing she could say that could change my mind.
I had gotten The Call.
2.
HERBERT DRAKE MET ME AT the bus stop at five-thirty that afternoon. It was an hour and a half bus ride from New York, and I put the time to good use going over my part. Which was quite an emotional experience. Just learning lines again would have been enough of a kick. But as it happened, when I pawed through the bookshelves, which in our apartment are wide enough and crowded enough to be stacked two-deep with paperbacks, the copy of Arms and the Man I eventually found turned out to be the actual script I had used for the Vermont Theater Company production some twenty years ago. I could tell by the faded but still quite legible stage directions I had penciled in for the production—Enter SR for stage right, and X-DL for cross down left—and the flood of memories those ancient pencil marks released were somewhat overwhelming.
Maybe that’s what made the lines so hard to learn.
I wanted to get a jump on the part, and it had occurred to me, wouldn’t Herbie be impressed if I had the whole first act memorized by the time I got there? But it wasn’t happening. I had an index card, and I was sliding it down the page, reading the cue but covering up the next line, a technique I’d always used for memorizing scripts, but the lines would not come. Or when they did, they’d come out twisted. I’d either trip over my own tongue and have to stop, or get the line out, then slide the card and see I’d paraphrased and done it wrong.
This bothered me at first. It bothered me a lot. That’s what got me thinking it must be all the emotional baggage that was fucking things up, that was messing with my head and garbling the lines.
It couldn’t just be that I was getting old.
Be that as it may, I stuck with the script for the better part of an hour, and while I couldn’t say the lines became chiseled indelibly in my brain, they at least became familiar. Which, I realized, wasn’t that big an accomplishment, being familiar from the start.
It was somewhere in there I began to get a bad case of the jitters. Jesus Christ, who the hell did Herbie think I was, and where the hell did he get the nerve to ask me to step into apart on two days’ notice, for god’s sake? A major part, and the lead to boot. Sure I’d done it before, but twenty years is twenty years, and I bet there isn’t a person alive with a memory like that. I mean, why me? Why couldn’t he get someone else?
It occurred to me that Herbie Drake had been in our original production. I hadn’t remembered before, which shows how self-centered I am—up till then I’d only been thinking about me. But Herbie had done the play too. He hadn’t played Captain Bluntschli, of course, but he’d played Major Sergius Saranoff, which is another leading role. So he was quite familiar with the play. And he’d directed this production as well as produced it, so he was recently familiar with it and probably knew all the lines already. So why didn’t he step in and play Captain Bluntschli, for Christ’s sake?
That question answered itself when Herbie met the bus. As Major Sergius Saranoff the dashing young cavalry officer and suitor for the lovely Raina Petkoff’s hand, Herbie Drake had cut quite the figure of a handsome young man.
That was twenty years ago.
Now, I’m sure our perceptions of time vary I’m sure I don’t see myself as old as others see me. Still, I would have to count myself as relatively young-looking for my age. My hair, though gray, is still abundant. When I overindulge on ice cream I tend toward a pot belly, but my overall body type is still slender.
The years had not been as kind to Herbie Drake.
I was looking out the window for Herb as the bus pulled up in front of the depot, which wasn’t really a depot at all, just a bus stop in front of the local drugstore. There were only two people in the bus stop, a woman so thin she could have passed for Olive Oyl in the “Popeye comic strip, and a bald, paunchy, double-chinned businessman with horn-rimmed glasses.
Great, I thought. He isn’t even here.
He was, of course. The bald, paunchy, double-chinned businessman was him.
Fortunately, Herbie rushed up and grabbed my hand, which spared me the embarrassment of walking right by him. I tried to hide my dismay, but I couldn’t help thinking, good lord, do I look as bad to him as he does to me?
My second thought, totally irrelevant and out of the blue, and probably a result of my mind having been blown, was, good lord, why would a man so fat marry a woman so thin?
That question answered itself immediately as Herbert introduced the woman as Amanda Feinstein. He did so with some ceremony and emphasis, as if I should know who that was. I didn’t, of course, but I smiled as if I did and took the proffered hand, which I wasn’t sure if I should shake or kiss. Instead I held it and tried not to stare.
Which was hard. The woman was even thinner than I’d thought and in a flash reminded me of the X-rays, the high-society women of Bonfire of the Vanities, who starve themselves until they’re almost transparent. This was a perception which, unlike most of mine, turned out not to be that far off.
“Mr. Hastings,” Amanda Feinstein said. “I can’t thank you enough for saving our show.”
She punctuated the statement with a smile. It was not a warm smile, however. It was at best mechanical, at worst condescending.
Herbie’s smile was broader. He clapped me on the back, said, “We’re both very grateful, St
anley I should explain. Ms. Feinstein and I are co-producers.”
I’m often accused of being a sexist pig, and, I must concede, sometimes rightfully so. Well, if you’re keeping count, chalk up another one.
I resented the Ms. I resented it because I’m a social cripple, terrified of introductions and shy about asking questions, and I need all the help I can get, particularly in dealing with a high powered type like Amanda Feinstein. And, sexist or not, it would have been a kindness to me to be told without asking whether I was dealing with a Miss or a Mrs. Not that I cared one way or the other, you understand. I just didn’t want to make a faux pas, or breach some rule of etiquette, the existence of which I was not even aware, by making the wrong presumption. If you can’t understand that, you’re either not as neurotic as I am or you’re the macho type that eats high-society women for breakfast.
Or you’re a woman. In which case, confess, you’re secretly gloating at the sexist pig’s discomfiture, aren’t you?
All this happened within seconds, you understand, and while Herbie and Amanda were guiding me to the car. With the Ms. Amanda Feinstein-high-society-co-producer bit, I had half expected a Mercedes, if not a limo. But the car turned out to be a Ford station wagon. Herbie threw my suitcase in the back, said, “Get in.”
I held the front door for Amanda, but she said, “You ride up front, Herbie needs to talk to you,” and climbed into the back. I revised my estimate of her. A practical, no-nonsense, high-society co-producer.
I got in the front seat next to Herbie and he pulled out.
“Not like it’s a long ride,” Herbie said, picking up off Amanda’s previous comment.
“Oh?” I said. “Where’s the playhouse?”
“About a quarter of a mile.”
“Is that in town or out?”
He shrugged. “Take your pick. There’s no stores around it, just houses. But it’s zoned commercial. That’s all that matters.”
“Was that a problem?” I asked.
“What?”
“Getting it zoned commercial?”
“No, no,” Herbie said. “It’s an old theater. Over sixty years.”
“How long have you had it?”
