Actor

by Parnell Hall

  I was happy for the praise and skeptical of the invitation. I suspected Chief Bob of being a postgraduate of the Columbo school of investigation—he had latched onto me as the most likely suspect and would therefore be constantly popping up to solicit my opinion of the crime, until such time as I either managed to incriminate myself or confessed. It occurred to me that, since I hadn’t committed the crime, this could take quite a while.

  Anyway, since the review wouldn’t be out for hours, I set off to meet Chief Bob.

  There was not, as I’d expected, anything quaint about the police station. It was a perfectly substantial, white stone building, granted not that large, but simple, functional, solid and somehow reassuring.

  Inside I found the uniformed cop who couldn’t spell actor sitting at a desk. He didn’t have to ask who I was, just told me Chief Bob was waiting for me and pointed to a door in the back. I was on my way in before I realized he had actually said, “Chief Bob.” It was the one light touch in an otherwise formal setting.

  I went in and found Chief Bob sorting through a mound of papers piled up on his desk.

  “I’m boiling it down,” he said. “Too unwieldy. What am I going to do with this? Witness statements, evidence, everything concerning the case. I’m trying to make some order of it.” He motioned me to a chair. “You can help.”

  “How?” I said, sitting down.

  “I’ll bounce ideas off you, you tell me right or wrong. Let me know if I got my facts jumbled up.”

  “You learn anything from seeing the play?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Absolutely. I know who came in when in Act Three, and I know where they came in and where they went out. It’s all in here,” he said, pointing to the pile. “And in here.” He pointed to his head. He indicated the papers, shook his head, chuckled. “I would think we got enough data here to figure anything out.”

  “Too bad you don’t have a computer,” I said.

  It was a facetious remark, but Chief Bob took it seriously. “We do,” he said. “Only I’d have to type all the data in, and once it was there, what would I do with it? There’s no program for it, you see. Make a fortune if I could come up with one. What would you call it, Cop Write? No, too close to copyright. Murder Write? Too close to “Murder, She Wrote.” Suspect Hunt? Sounds like a Nintendo game. No, I’m afraid we have to do it the old-fashioned way, which is why I need your help.”

  I pointed to the pile of papers on the desk. “With that?”

  He shook his head. “No. Let’s start with something simpler.” He picked up a book from his desk.

  “What’s that?” I said.

  He held it up and I recognized the Arms and the Man script.

  “Where’d you get that?” I said.

  “Peter Constantine.”

  “Who?”

  “The actor who plays the servant Nicola. You don’t know his name?”

  “I’m poor with names.”

  “Right,” he said. He frowned, as if reevaluating his assessment of me as a private detective. “Anyway, it’s his. I borrowed it from him because I needed one to study. And because I wanted to see what he’d written in it.”

  “And?” I said.

  “And it’s just as he said. Where he goes out, he’s penciled in ‘Exit DL.’ I looked at it closely and I can’t see any erasures. Frankly, I don’t think there are any. He certainly exited down left last night. If that was any change from dress rehearsal, I’d think someone would have noticed.

  “He also entered down left, by the way. Which is still a factor since we haven’t pinned down the last time Goobie Wheatly was alive.”

  “I think I can help you there,” I said.

  “I was hoping you could. What have you got?”

  “I can remember for sure four times when he prompted me.”

  “All in the first half of the act?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Damn.”

  “I know, but the facts are the facts. Want me to give you the lines?”

  “Please.”

  We went over the lines I’d been prompted on, Chief Bob stopping to locate each one and mark it in the script.

  “Okay,” he said. “So the last one you know for sure is, ‘It doesn’t matter, I suppose it’s only a photograph. How can he tell who it was intended for? Tell him he put it there himself.’”

  “That’s it.”

  “That is referring to the picture she left in the coat pocket, the one she wrote ‘to her Chocolate Cream Soldier’ on?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And are you sure it was Goobie Wheatly who gave you the line?”

  “Pretty sure. Like I said, he has his own style. That’s a long line, and he didn’t just read it to me, like ninety-nine prompters out of a hundred would have. He threw a key phrase.”

  “Can you remember what?”

  “Sure. He threw me ‘doesn’t matter.’ And that’s significant.”

  Chief Bob frowned. “Why?”

  “The line begins. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ He left off the word ‘it.’“

  “So what?”

  “It was the right thing to do. The key words are ‘doesn’t matter.’ The word ‘it’ is unnecessary. He throws, ‘doesn’t matter,’ and I supply the ‘it.’ I come right in with, ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Plus the word ‘it’ has a hard t sound. If he throws the three words, “It doesn’t matter,” there’s much more chance the audience hears it than if he leaves the word ‘it’ out.”

  Chief Bob frowned. “You’re kidding.”

  “Not at all. Plus, the word ‘it’ tells me nothing, so when I hear it I don’t start my line. I can’t till I hear the words ‘doesn’t matter.’ So, aside from being heard, the word ‘it’ actually creates a hole in the dialogue.”

  “My word.”

  “I know, but it’s true.”

  “How could Goobie think all that out? I mean, in time to do it?”

  “He couldn’t, of course. I had all night to think about it and analyze it and that’s what I came up with. And I think it’s right. As a prompter, Goobie was instinctively brilliant. I think he did everything I just told you absolutely correctly out of instinct. I don’t think anyone could have possibly duplicated that, and that’s why I’m sure it was him.”

  I can’t say Chief Bob looked terribly convinced. But at least for the time being he seemed willing to concede the point.

  “All right,” he said. “Say that was Goobie Wheatly. Could he have prompted you at any time after that?”

  “He could, but I don’t think so. I go out a page later. I’ve looked at every line after that, and I think I knew them all. I certainly don t remember getting stuck on any of them.”

  “Then you probably didn’t.” Chief Bob referred to the script. “So, the last line he gave you was when just you and Margie were onstage?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You exit a page later; but not before the entrance of ...” He ran his finger down a page in the script. “ ... Louka. Nellie Knight.”

  “Right. She comes in bringing me a letter I read it and exit.”

  “Exactly. Leaving the two women onstage. They play a short scene, then Margie exits. Stage right, like you.” He looked at me. “You didn’t see her?”

  I frowned, thought a moment. “It’s possible, I just don’t remember. I’m sitting on the top step, facing away from the stage, going over my lines. It’s possible she went by me and down the stairs. That would make sense, because she’s off for quite a while; she could want to go back to her dressing room.”

  “But you don’t recall if she did?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “If she had gone down the stairs, would you remember her coming back up?”

  “I don’t, but I wouldn’t necessarily, because I go onstage before her. So I could have gone onstage before she came back up.”

  “But you’re not sure?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad.”

  “I’m giving
it to you the best I can.”

  “I understand that. Why should you remember? You were concerned with your lines, and it wasn’t important. How were you to know someone was going to wind up dead?” He shrugged. “Still ...”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. “It would be nice.”

  “Well, let’s get on with it,” he said. “Whatever you do remember helps. So Margie came off stage right and either did or did not go downstairs. If she didn’t, that leaves her in the stage-right wings to kill Goobie Wheatly.”

  “Why? Why would she do that?”

  “Why would anyone do that? The fact is, somebody did. Right now we’re not doing motive, we’re doing opportunity. If she didn’t go downstairs, she’s in the wings, she had the opportunity. Okay, that’s her. Let’s see what happened next. Onstage, Louka is playing a scene with Nicola. That’s Nellie Knight and Peter Constantine. Peter entered down left, by the way, penciled into his script nice and proper.

  “Anyway, they play the scene until they’re interrupted by the entrance of Sergius Saranoff—Avery Allington—who comes in from up right.” He cocked his head at me. “Did you happen to see him?”

  “I don’t remember,” I said. “I saw him in performance, but in dress rehearsal ... again, I’m sitting there on the stairs reading my lines.”

  “Well, did he come up the stairs and walk by you?”

  “I have no recollection. It’s entirely possible. Any number of people could have come up the stairs and walked by me and I wouldn’t have even known it. In Avery Allington’s case, I have no recollection whatever.”

  “Which is too bad. But, he did enter from up right. Which means at some point in time he was in the stage-right wings.”

  “Obviously.”

  “It would be nice if we could establish how long he was there.”

  I took a breath. “You’re making me feel like I’m not doing my job. Maybe I’m not. But I’m doing the best I can, and believe me it isn’t easy.”

  Chief Bob held up his hand. “Hey, I never said it was. Believe me, no one’s blaming you. And I’m certainly not drawing any inferences from your lack of knowledge. You know, like you would know who’d gone up and down the stairs if you’d actually been sitting there and weren’t downstage killing Goobie Wheatly with a switchblade knife at the time. You don’t hear me saying that.”

  “I just did.”

  “Certainly not. I was just telling you what I’m not saying. No reason to take offense at that. Now, then, where were we? Ah, yes. Avery Allington enters the stage. From upstage right, presumably after having an opportunity, though we do not know how long, of having killed Goobie Wheatly first. He comes onstage and finds both the servants, Louka and Nicola. Nicola exits one line later. Again, down left.

  “Now then, Avery Allington and Nellie Knight play that scene until your entrance. As I recall, you claim you’re sitting there on the stairs going over your script and you hear your cue line. You spring up and run onstage. Is that right?”

  “That’s what happened.”

  “Up until your entrance you were sitting at the top of the stairs?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Because of the window in the set, looking out over the garden, there is no crossover from stage left to stage right in Act Three, is there?”

  “No, of course not. The audience can see all the way back to the cyc.”

  “So anybody exiting stage left who wanted to get to stage right would have to go down the stairs, through the greenroom and up the stage-right stairs, is that right?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “So this Peter Constantine, who keeps coming on and off stage left, for him to have killed Goobie Wheatly he would have had to go downstairs through the basement and up the stage-right stairs, presumably passing you at the top.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Unless he waited till your entrance. See what I mean?” Chief Bob said. “He could have gone down the stage-left stairs, through the greenroom to the stage-right stairs and waited at the bottom for you to get up and go onstage. Then he could have crept up the stairs, killed Goobie Wheatly and gone back down the stairs the way he came.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Except ...”

  Chief Bob actually clapped his hands together, a big smile on his face. “Yes, yes,” he said. “Except for Louka. Miss Nellie Knight. Who exits upstage right immediately after your entrance. If Peter Constantine had come up the stage-right stairs he’d have run into her. And since he wasn’t supposed to be there, since his entrances were all from the other side of the stage, his presence would be unusual enough to make her wonder. Or at least to remember it. Which, according to her statement, she doesn’t.”

  “Unless they were in it together,” I said.

  Chief Bob put up his hands. “Oh, please,” he said. “Do not let this be an Agatha Christie plot where everyone in the cast had a reason for hating the man and they all did it.”

  “No chance of that,” I said dryly.

  “Oh, present company excluded, of course,” he said. “Anyway, let’s hold any conspiracy theories in abeyance. For now, take it that Nellie Knight’s presence inhibits Peter Constantine’s opportunities for murder. So where does that leave us?”

  “I’m onstage with Avery Allington, to be joined shortly by Margie. Followed by Nellie Knight. Then Major Petkoff. Then the woman playing Catherine. Then what’s-his-name, Peter Constantine. All except him entering up right. And, aside from him, they all stay onstage until the end of the act.”

  “Except for you, of course.”

  “Right.”

  “And since you were not prompted during that time, there is no one who can testify that Goobie Wheatly was alive.”

  “What about Ridley?”

  “Huh?”

  “Ridley. The electrician. The apprentice running lights.”

  “What about him?”

  “Goobie Wheatly was on the headset. So was Ridley. So anything he said, anything that happened, Ridley should have heard. I mean, hell, Ridley should have heard him being killed.”

  Chief Bob nodded. “Yeah, but he didn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  Chief Bob cocked his head at me. “You know what a six-cue show is?”

  As it happened, I did. “Sure,” I said. “A show with no light cues. Just up at the beginning of the act and down at the end. Most shows are three acts, so that makes six cues.”

  “Right,” Chief Bob said. “Now Arms and the Man isn’t. Act One’s at night and there’s a lot of cues, lights on, lights off, striking a match, candles and all that. But Acts Two and Three are just up and down. There’s no internal cues. So Act Three, after he turns the lights on, this apprentice’s got nothing to do till the end of the act, so he takes off his headset.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah. Now he doesn’t say he takes his headset off, I just conclude he does. From seeing what kind of kid he is, and from the fact he claims he heard nothing. Nothing at all. And if he’d been wearing his headset, he’d have heard Goobie Wheatly prompt you.”

  “Yeah, unless Goobie Wheatly took his headset off.”

  “He was found with it on.”

  “True.”

  “Which looks like he was wearing it the whole time. Unless he had just put it on because it was the end of the act.”

  “I don’t think I like that theory.”

  “I didn’t think you would. Anyway, if he was wearing his headset and this kid Ridley didn’t hear you being prompted, then he wasn’t wearing his.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Anyway, there we are. So we got a schedule to pin down. We know the last time Goobie Wheatly was alive. From your line, ‘doesn’t matter.’ From that point on, we know who came and went till the end of the act. Somewhere in there, someone killed him.” Chief Bob shrugged. “We just gotta figure out who.”

  I sighed. “Yeah.”

  “So,” he said. “You got any insights to offer?”

  “I don’t k
now. Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course.”

  I jerked my thumb. “The officer at the desk. What’s his name?”

  “Felix.”

  “Right. Felix. The night of the murder he came out and told you about the crime scene. You remember? He said we had a stabbing with the murder weapon in place and the actor was not on the scene?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “Funny choice of words. In a play, you know. The word actor, I mean. So I asked him why he said actor, and he said that’s what cops said when it wasn’t a shooting. Call the guy the actor. So I asked him how he spelled it, he said a-c-t-e-r.”

  Chief Bob did not seem inclined to comment, but when I paused and waited for a reaction, he said, “So he’s not a Harvard man. So what?”

  “Do cops really do that? Call the guy the actor?”

  “I suppose we do.”

  “How do you spell it? If you had to type up a report, I mean. How would you spell actor?”

  Chief Bob looked at me a moment. “I don’t know that I’ve ever done that. If I did, I would spell it a-c-t-o-r. Just like you would. What’s your point?”

  I had none. I just wanted to know. It had been driving me crazy ever since I heard it. It was a confusion of cause and effect. Somehow I had the crazy idea that if I could unlock the riddle contained in that statement, if I could figure out how cops really spelled actor, that I could solve the crime.

  Rationally, I knew that didn’t make sense. I still couldn’t help asking.

  I tried to explain this to Chief Bob, but I think all I did was elevate myself five or six notches on his suspect list. He certainly seemed to be favoring me with a look one usually reserved for the criminally insane.

  “That’s very interesting,” he said. “And not to pooh-pooh that particular idea, but do you have anything else you’d care to ask me?”

  “Actually, yes.”

  “What’s that? How do you spell cop?”

  “No. When does the paper come out?”

  21.

  IT WAS STILL ON THE front page. But the headline today was NO LEADS IN PLAYHOUSE MURDER

  I wouldn’t want you to think me hardhearted, but I’d had enough with Goobie Wheatly’s death. I didn’t read the front-page story. I turned to the back for the review.