Polly Deacon Mysteries 4-Book Bundle

by H. Mel Malton

  As the group swept past me into the building, I noticed one or two of the Kosovars glancing briefly and longingly at my cigarette. Long ago, the Red Cross used to include cigarettes with the packages they sent prisoners of war, along with chocolate and wool socks. The military supplied “gaspers” to soldiers on the front lines; it was considered part of the survival gear. Since tobacco is considered Public Health Enemy Number One these days, it seemed highly unlikely that our Balkan guests were getting free smokes. We had supplied them with infinite wardrobes (I’d heard that literally tons of second-hand clothing had been donated to the refugee relief effort) and adequate food (I’d seen the donation boxes at the local Lo-Mart), but I had no idea whether they were being given any Canadian cash for sundries. Even if they were, I’d bet they’d feel horribly guilty spending it on cigarettes.

  One member of the audience-group hesitated at the door after the others had gone in, looking at me inquiringly. I had no idea know how to say “hello” in Albanian, so I smiled and proffered my smokes. He was about my age, I think, but a much older man dwelled behind his eyes. He took a cigarette from the package and carefully lit it with my disposable Bic, cupping the flame against a wind that wasn’t there.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “I hope you’ll like our play,” I said. I spoke slowly, in that cautious, too-loud speech one can’t help using after one has been told that the person to whom we are speaking may have trouble understanding.

  “You are from the theatre?” he said. “I thought so. I want to ask you something.” I immediately felt like a dink for assuming that his English was limited to “thank you”.

  He told me his name was Ari, and that he had come to Canada with his wife and daughter and his younger brother.

  “My brother worked in a theatre in Belgrade,” Ari said. “We heard there was a theatre in the next town, and Negjib, my brother, was excited. He thought he could get work there. It is bad for us not to work.”

  “I’ll bet it’s frustrating,” I said. “Well, you never know. There could be something for him. Tell him to come by.”

  “That is what I am asking you,” Ari said. “He went to visit your theatre six days ago. He has not come back. Have you seen him?”

  Thirty-Six

  DRAGON: It comes upon me suddenly, this need to belch forth flame / I’ve tried to stop, but instinct wins, and barbecue’s my game.

  -The Glass Flute, Scene ix

  “Did you call the police?” I said. The man’s eyes widened, and he shook his head.

  “We are afraid,” he said. “The police—not a good word for us.” He didn’t need to elaborate. I’d read about the police in Kosovo, and how some of them treated ethnic Albanians. Their distrust of our force would be heart-deep, no matter how compassionately the matter was handled.

  “Have you told anybody? The mayor?”

  “We hoped he would return. Negjib is young, he likes to go by himself sometimes and play tricks on us. My brother is an unusual person. He is maybe exploring.”

  “There are a lot of deep woods out here,” I said. “Exploring in bug season may not be a very good idea.”

  “He did say he wanted to visit your theatre. He knew it was in the next town. Are you sure you have not seen him?”

  “I’ll ask the rest of the cast and crew. We should go up, anyway. I have a show to do.” On the way I explained to Ari about the pyrotechnics in the show and suggested he pass the word around before the lights went out. “They’re pretty and not too loud,” I said, “but they might frighten some people if they were unexpected.”

  “Thank you for telling me. I will ask Uvo to make an announcement.” Uvo must be the guy the mayor had been talking to.

  Backstage, the cast was in a predictable state of hyper nervousness.

  “Where have you been?” Ruth asked. “Brad’s freaking out, and Meredith and Shane are ready to kill each other.”

  “Why?”

  “One of Brad’s costumes is missing, he says. Shane said it didn’t matter, because he only needs one per show—unless he was planning to sweat so much that he’d need the second one after the first number. Brad wasn’t amused, and Meredith called Shane an unprofessional jerk.”

  “That’s mild, for her.” I went over to the cast and apologized for my absence, explaining that I’d been out warning our audience about the flashpots. I didn’t tell them that some of our audience appeared to speak English after all. Why contribute to the pressure?

  “Polly, my backup costume is missing,” Brad said.

  “I know. Ruth told me. I expect it’s a laundry mix-up. We’ll find it. Don’t worry. As long as you’re covered for this performance.” I didn’t try to placate Shane and Meredith, because the tension back there was thick enough to chew on, and I guessed that any remark from me would precipitate a blow-up.

  “Ten minutes, please,” I said, and received a chorus of grunts from the cast. Out front, a man, presumably the one called Uvo, stood and spoke briefly to the audience in their language. His speech was beautiful to listen to, a kind of dark maroon, liquid cascade of words, remarkably vowel-free, like the pronouncements of some noble and ancient bird. There was a mild sensation from the gathered Kosovars and a murmur afterwards.

  “That would be the flashpot warning, I gather,” Ruth said. “Hope we don’t lose anybody.”

  “Better safe than sorry. Five minutes, please.”

  “I’d better go out front,” Ruth said. “Have a good show, you guys. Break a nail.”

  Juliet came back to wish us luck. “This is an important moment for Steamboat Theatre,” she said. “It’s a chance to cross borders and share our culture. Maybe we’ll get a European tour out of it.”

  “You want us to go to Yugoslavia?” Shane said. “Thanks a lot.”

  “Maybe not now, but you know what I mean,” Juliet said. “It’s called networking, dear. Have a good one.” Off she went, and Shane shook his head as she disappeared behind the side curtain.

  “Our employer is insane,” he said. “How ’bout it, guys? Shall we extend the tour and take a detour to the Balkans? We could set up in a bomb crater and do theatre in the round.”

  “You’re one sick puppy,” Brad said.

  “Two minutes, please. Have a good show, you guys, and don’t worry. It’ll be great,” I said.

  “Wait! Group hug,” Amber said.

  Once again, we did our weird, circle-shuffle thing. It calmed us all. Rituals, however fresh, will do that quite handily. I’d decided to watch from out front for the opening sequence before slipping backstage to prompt. The first public benefit performance of The Glass Flute was about to begin.

  I held the lights until the mayor finished his introductory speech. Staples was known to be long-winded and a little pompous. Perhaps that’s one of the things they teach you in mayor-school. He introduced Juliet and the chairman of the board and various other dignitaries. He welcomed the Kosovar audience and cracked a couple of little jokes that received no response at all, so either Kosovar humour was a little different from Gord Staples’s, or Ari and Uvo were the only ones who spoke English.

  The opening sequence of the Flute is quite lovely. After the lights went out, (which produced a couple of small whimpers from one or two children in the audience), Ruth played a bewitching lullaby. The UV lights were switched on in darkness when there was nothing on stage, so you didn’t notice them out front. Then the moon appeared, a huge, cheery, comical face, bright blue. It got a gasp and giggles from the children. I love it when something I’ve designed gets a good response. I suppressed a grin and settled down to watch the scene and take notes while I could. As the music changed, the moon was jostled, then bumped from the sky by an equally comical, large orange sun. Blades of grass poked up from the black velvet ground and whispered to each other, flowers bloomed from nowhere and entwined and a couple of cheeky birds did a dance across the sky. It was a morning scene that would translate into any language, any culture. Pure, innocent magic.
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  Using a series of progressively larger cardboard cutouts of Kevin and Mother’s house, which appeared, then disappeared behind black flags, the audience was treated to a puppetry-version of a close-up zoom. The outdoors scenery was whisked away, and we were inside Mother’s bedroom. The first dialogue scene started, and I slipped backstage.

  “Great opening,” I whispered to a hooded figure, who emerged from the playbox and deposited a black flag in the flag stand. The figure nodded, grabbed a fluorescent butterfly and went back on. Amber, then. She’d make the butterfly flit around the bedroom and eventually land on Mother’s head.

  Another hooded actor came out carrying the Mother puppet in the bed. Meredith. I took the pieces from her (they’re awkward) and received a muttered thanks.

  The scene went smoothly and we were on to the next. Someone came off with the bedroom window piece, saying “Shit, shit, shit” under his breath. Brad. The window sill had come apart, and he’d had to hold it together onstage. He dumped the prop and grabbed the Woodsman puppet and went back on.

  Shane came back, carrying the Kevin puppet. He had a sixty-second break before Kevin’s next entrance, and he took the opportunity to lift the front of his hood and take a swig from his water bottle. The water bottles, white plastic sports jugs with each actor’s initial painted in huge black letters on the sides so they could be seen backstage when you were wearing a hood, were their own responsibility. They were filled and set on a small table at the back of the stage. Shane sputtered after he drank.

  “Jesus!” he gasped, then rushed back onstage. As he passed me, I caught a distinct whiff of gin. Gin? At one-thirty in the afternoon during a performance? I checked the bottle marked “S”. Gin it was. If Shane had planted it himself, Meredith wasn’t far wrong when she called him an unprofessional jerk. Drinking before or during a show was absolutely and utterly taboo. I hid the bottle and fumed inwardly.

  Some time later, when all four cast members were on stage doing the Princess/Kevin/Woodsman/Cat scene, I detected a movement out of the corner of my eye. I looked over towards the side curtain and saw a small figure standing there in the dim blue backstage light. A child, with its hand in its mouth. I moved quickly over to it.

  “No, sweetheart. Go back. Not allowed.” Closer, I guessed it was a little girl, of about eight or nine, with huge dark eyes and a solemn expression. She answered in something that wasn’t English.

  “I know you don’t understand, but you shouldn’t be here,” I said, trying to guide her back through the stage door she had obviously slipped through. Why wasn’t she being supervised?

  She balked and repeated what she had said before, a little louder.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t understand,” I said. Then an adult appeared. It was Ari.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered and admonished the girl gently.

  “It doesn’t matter. But it’s not safe back here. Maybe she wants a bathroom.”

  “I will take her,” Ari said.

  “Negjib,” the girl said, distinctly. Ari replied in the negative and led her away, speaking softly to her. I imagined that her uncle Negjib, Ari’s brother who worked in the theatre back in Belgrade, had probably taken her backstage a time or two. That would explain how she figured out how to get back there. Perhaps she was stage-struck already. Neat.

  A hooded figure came offstage, and then another. Back and forth, the actors executed their moves. The show behind the scenes was as intricate and involved as the one the audience saw. There were times when the pace was so fast, the flurry of activity so complicated, that it looked as though there were six or seven actors instead of four.

  The first flashpot went off without a hitch. It was the small one that heralded the dropping of the serpent out of the tree in front of Kevin. There was a gasp from the audience, but no screams or crying. It was an admiring gasp, and I thanked Providence for giving me the chance to warn the audience. I also wondered if Juliet had been right, and I was underestimating the fortitude of our guests.

  The second flashpot went well too. That’s the one that the cat uses, to perform a magic trick. Lots of glitter, not a lot of bang.

  It was in the Dragon scene that things started to go wrong. Shane was late for his first entrance and Brad, playing the Dragon, got flustered. Ruth did a vamp on the keyboard, stalling for time. Amber, who was working the Princess puppet, came offstage in a flap, hissing “Where’s Shane, dammit?” Shane appeared from behind the wings on the other side, staggering a bit.

  “Feeling sick,” he muttered behind his hood. “Threw up over there.” He blundered onstage and the scene went on. Shane’s voice was slurred, and he wasn’t picking up his cues.

  “I thought I smelled booze on him,” Amber said bitterly. “I’ll kill him. He’s allergic to anything stronger than beer, and he knows it.” She shook the Princess puppet as if it were her fellow actor and stormed back onstage.

  I figured the puke, wherever Shane had left it, could wait until after the show. Maybe I’d suggest he clean it up himself. I whispered a puke alert to the hooded actor on the other side.

  Shane was late again on his second entrance. He was supposed to go off stage left and grab Kevin’s knapsack, then come back on, produce the flute and play a tune that would vanquish the Dragon, who would blow a final fiery blast and expire. I heard Ruth vamping with the music again, and heard Amber doing a creditable job of ad-libbing as the Princess, telling the Dragon that Kevin would be back any second. He wasn’t. I could also hear that Brad was panicking. His roars were getting high-pitched.

  Then the Dragon flashpot exploded. I could see the glare from backstage—it lit up the entire area—a great, blinding orange flash, accompanied by a noise that was far, far too loud. Then the screaming started.

  Thirty-Seven

  DRAGON: The legends about me? They’re all of them true / I’m grumpy and mean when there’s nothing to do.

  -The Glass Flute, Scene ix

  Hell happened for a little while. Brad, Meredith and Amber came roaring backstage, all of them shouting. Brad’s costume was smoking. The force of the mass exodus knocked the whole structure off-balance, and it fell with a creaking thump, tangling everybody in black velvet. Brad ripped off his hood (thank God everything was flame-proofed—he’d have been shish-kebab otherwise) and trampled on it, and we patted him down. Amber was emitting little, repetitive shrieks until Meredith, who had also ripped off her hood, grabbed her and hugged her hard to make her stop.

  With the playbox in a state of collapse, we had a clear view of the audience. Someone had pulled the fire alarm and the clang was deafening. Out in the hallways, the thunder of evacuating students could be heard. Several peeked in the doors before being shooed away. Most of the Kosovar guests had fled, someone had turned on the lights in the auditorium, and Juliet and Tobin were making for the stage.

  I grabbed a nearby extinguisher and aimed a cascade of white foamy stuff over the mass of black velvet curtains, some of which were smouldering. Ruth was onstage already.

  “Where’s Shane?” she asked.

  We found him, half buried under the stage left curtains. He was lying on his belly, legs splayed awkwardly, the Kevin puppet still clutched in his hand. An audio cable was tied tightly round his neck, and he wasn’t breathing.

  Ruth flipped him over, cut the cord with her Swiss Army knife and started CPR. Brad jumped in with artificial respiration, and I called 911 on my cellphone.

  “How much powder did you put in that damn flashpot?” Tobin said. “Someone could have been seriously injured.” I glanced significantly towards the floor, where Ruth and Brad were hard at work on Shane. They didn’t seem to be getting anywhere.

  “The show was going so well,” Juliet said. “Now it’s all ruined.”

  “Is Shane going to be all right?” Amber said.

  “Meredith, you didn’t by chance substitute gin for the water in Shane’s bottle, did you?” I said. “As a joke, I mean?”

  “Why the hell would I want t
o do that?” Meredith said. “I’m not an idiot.”

  “He’s allergic to alcohol,” Amber said.

  “He had a beer last night,” Meredith pointed out.

  “Anything more than beer and he gets really sick,” Amber said. “He wouldn’t drink gin on purpose.”

  “It wasn’t gin that throttled him with an audio cable,” I said.

  In spite of the fire alarm, some of the Kosovar audience members had come back into the auditorium and were milling around in groups, watching the stage area but haunting the rear exit. Many of the children appeared to be crying.

  The mayor came up to the apron of the stage and told us that he’d ordered the school buses to pick them up at the front of the school as soon as possible.

  “This has been traumatic,” Staples said severely. “We have to get them out of here.” Juliet hopped down to talk to him. I gathered this accident wasn’t going to do Steamboat Theatre much good, PR-wise. When the ambulance, fire department and police arrived, the Kosovars became very still and wary, like deer caught in the headlights, then most of them melted away. Someone finally turned off the alarm. The silence was deadly.

  The ambulance people weren’t able to revive Shane either, though they commended Ruth and Brad on their prompt action.

  “He died some time ago,” one of the paramedics said. “You guys didn’t have a chance.” Charming, I thought. Someone covered Shane with a blanket while Amber sobbed in Meredith’s arms. Brad’s left hand had been burned by the explosion and was tended to while Becker and Morrison (of course it would be them) asked questions. The firefighters, who had stormed in, wearing heavy gear and helmets, assessed the wet mass of curtains and foam and declared it safe, then tromped out again.

  “Was Mr. Amato attending the performance?” Becker asked.

  “No. He told me last night that your accusations had put him off theatre,” I said. “He was drinking a little. I doubt he’s anywhere now but in bed.”