by Marvin Kaye
“Oh, I trust you,” he said in a voice as cold as the wind. “I trust you not to be a damn fool. ...”
She was equally icy. “If that’s meant to be a warning, Fred, it’s totally inapplicable. You’d better get a cab.”
He stared at her hard, but she was a match for him, so he gave it up. I shivered at the biting wind and cursed the cabbies for their typical scarcity in bad weather; it took Grilis several minutes to flag one down. Dana waited, though she looked as impatient as I felt. At last, a taxi pulled up and splashed slush over the curb. Grilis cursed, put an arm around Dana, gave her one quick unaffectionate kiss, and got in the cab.
As soon as he was gone, Dana began to walk briskly in the direction of Thirty-fourth. I gave her a half-block lead, then began following. At least the rain had stopped, and in spite of the misting of my own breath before my eyes, I could see that she still had the promptbook with her.
At Thirty-fourth she turned east and I hastened to catch up, afraid I might lose her if she entered the subway. But she was walking along the south side of the street when I turned the corner, so I slowed again.
I followed her several blocks and realized she was heading for the G&G offices. That presented a problem. How was I going to get in? I pulled out my wallet and checked to see whether I had money to buy a night watchman, if necessary. There was enough, just barely, and I made a note to stop in the bank the next day, or I’d never make it through the weekend.
As I expected she would, Dana went into the G&G office building. First, she stood at the door for a while, and I guessed she had to ring up the night custodian. I gave her an extra five minutes after she disappeared, then strode up to the same entrance and put my finger on the bell.
After about a minute, a bald old man with a paunch like Santa Claus got out of a service elevator and peered suspiciously through the glass at me. I told him I was on my way up to the G&G suite, and he unlocked the door.
“Goddamn convention,” he grumbled. “Why didn’t you all come at the same time?”
“All?”
“All three of you.”
He told me to sign the night register, and I was glad to do so, for I wanted to find out who Dana was seeing so late. But I wasn’t enlightened by the name inscribed just above hers, “Sebastian Melmoth.” It was the alias Oscar Wilde had assumed when living in disgrace.
I apologized to the old man for the late arrival, and slipped him a five. It was a mistake. He became positively effusive, and it was all I could do to prevent him from escorting me personally to the door of G&G. It cost me another five to get rid of him.
Fortunately, G&G was far enough away from the elevators and his grateful voice didn’t carry. After he closed the gate on the night car and descended, I crept along the corridor as softly as possible. I saw light beneath the door where Dana was evidently meeting “Sebastian Melmoth.”
When I was a few feet away, I stopped. Slowly, quietly, I inched nearer to the door, hoping to hear something of the conversation within.
Suddenly, the knob turned. I pressed myself flat against the wall. A familiar voice rumbled indistinctly from the other side, and then the door opened. A man emerged from the office.
“Two more days, that’s all,” he said, ominously. “I’ll phone.”
He shut the door, turned, and saw me. For a fraction of a second, he did not move, and then a disarming grin spread over his face.
“Well, hello,” he said. “What on earth are you doing here at this time of night?”
“I might ask you the same thing.”
“Business.” Armand Mills chuckled. “Business that our dear producer is unaware of. But perhaps you heard us talking?”
I should have said something that could have been taken one way or the other, but I was off my guard. His manner was casual, guileless, and the fact that he’d probably slept in his clothes added to his unprepossessing manner. But it was all an act.
“I didn’t hear anything,” I confessed. “I just got here.”
“That,” said Mills, “is good to know.”
And he slammed a fist into my stomach. I doubled over and a second blow fell upon my unprotected neck. I scrambled aside even as I hit the floor, shook my head to clear it, and launched myself at him.
But Mills was already halfway down the corridor. I chased him, figuring he’d be stuck waiting for the elevator, but instead he ran through the fire exit and slammed the door shut behind.
I stopped outside the door and struggled to master my temper. I wanted to deck him, but there was no sense charging through the portal and giving him another opportunity for a rabbit punch. I carefully eased the door open.
There was no sound in the firewell and it was pitch black a few feet away from the landing. He might be lurking somewhere beneath, or he may have gone up to the next floor. Either way, it would be foolhardy to grope for him in the dark.
“All right, Mills,” I announced, “you can hide, if you want, but there are others who know what you know. ...” My voice echoed eerily up and down the stairwell, a lost entity searching the murky depths. “If you won’t talk to me, I’ll just have to ask ...” I deliberately paused. “But there’s no reason to tell you, is there? Unless you’re willing to discuss it with me. ...”
It was a calculated risk I didn’t want to set up either Evans or Dana, in case Mills was the murderer. But I was banking on his innocence, and I was keenly eager to dig his secrets loose.
I waited a long time, but it didn’t work. The stairwell remained silent.
I finally gave it up and returned to the corridor. I waited several minutes and at last heard his footsteps hurrying downward. He must have been perched on the landing just below me.
Dana was still in the office. I found her in the inner room, brows contracted, a preoccupied look on her face. She looked up, annoyed, perhaps expecting to see Mills once more. When she recognized me, sheer astonishment rearranged her features.
“What in God’s name do you want?” she demanded. “Don’t you have any idea how late it is? Fred’s not here.”
“I wanted to see you.”
“Oh. How did you know where I’d be?”
“I followed you.”
She regarded me with apprehension. “Are you mixed up in this, too?” she asked, voice tense.
“In what?”
Her eyes narrowed. Dana sized me up in a second, saw I didn’t know what she was talking about, and dismissed me as a threat. “I meant the murder, of course,” she replied unconvincingly. “Are you mixed up in it?”
“No more than Mills is,” I retorted. “What was he doing here?”
“I have no idea!” she said, dropping her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I caught him here, looking for something. If you hadn’t come along, I don’t know what he might have done, but I think he heard you coming and left.”
She was glib, I had to give her that, but it was manufactured from whole cloth. I didn’t call her a liar, but casually repeated what I’d heard Mills say about him phoning after two days. “What do you suppose he meant?” I wondered. It was a direct challenge, but she was up to it.
“He claimed he would come back to the show in two days,” Dana told me. “He was afraid I’d job in someone else to play Macbeth.”
I could have pursued it further, but she was too good. It made better sense to pass on the news of Mills’ visit to Betterman and let him harass her. Meanwhile, I had other business to attend to.
“Where is the prompt script?” I asked abruptly.
She stopped midway in the act of inspecting and correcting her makeup in a small compact mirror. She looked genuinely puzzled. “I’ve got it right here,” Dana said, indicating the book, which rested on a corner of the reception desk. “Why do you want to know?”
“I’d like to borrow it.”
“What on earth for?”
“Idle curiosity.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“All right, I’ll level. My employer thinks
it may contain information that will identify the Third Murderer.”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t. I’ve already looked.”
“I’d rather not take your word for it.”
“Well,” she retorted, somewhat huffily, “you’re just going to have to, aren’t you?”
I started to approach the desk.
“I can’t let you have it,” she said, alarmed, “I need it for tomorrow’s rehearsal
“I’ll bring it back by then.”
“But, Gene,” she objected, trying to sound as sincere and reasonable as could be, “it really would be an inconvenience.” She tried to charm me with her smile. “I only just took over the directorship, you know, and I have to study the script overnight.”
“If you won’t give it to me now,” I said, “I can always get Lou Betterman to subpoena it.”
“But there’s no need to,” she purred, acting as ingratiating as possible, “I’ll be glad to let you borrow it—tomorrow.”
I couldn’t take the chance of letting her mess up Godwin’s notes. There was no use in arguing with her or trying to persuade her further. Her mind was made up, but so was mine.
I brushed past her and picked up the promptbook. But I hardly got a grip on it when she yanked it away.
“Give me that, Dana.”
“No, I won’t!”
It was like one of those nasty children’s games where some treasured object is dangled just out of reach. But in this case, I had the advantage of weight and longer arms. One thing Dana did have, though, was nails, and she used them.
After a few minutes of roughhouse, we were both winded. She was backed in a corner, the promptbook clutched behind her.
“Are you going to leave me alone,” she panted, “or do I have to call the night watchman?”
That made me laugh. The picture of the fat custodian dashing to her rescue was absurd, and even Dana saw it and started to giggle. It was an effective diversion of adrenalin. We both gave up the fight.
“I’m afraid,” she said, “that we’ve been acting childish.” She approached, hands still behind her back, keeping the script as far away from me as possible. “Maybe,” she said in a lower tone of voice, “maybe if we behaved like adults, I might give you what you want.”
It was her impression of the siren act, but it wasn’t very convincing. She was resourceful in her approach, but she hadn’t yet mastered the projection of credibility.
Still, I took my cue from her. Switching strategies, I pretended to respond to the moment. I had to admit that what she lacked in histrionic technique, she more than made up for in the osculatory arts. I considered playing the scene without intermission, just to see how far she’d go, but when I recalled that she might have shot Godwin, it put a damper on my ardor.
She turned and stepped out of her skirt. I ran my hands along her back, unhooked her brassiere, and eased it off her arms. Then I grabbed her skirt and blouse, stuffed all three garments in one hand, snatched up the prompt script, and hurried out the door.
She screamed obscenities, but I doubted that she’d give chase in her condition.
When I got outside, I phoned the G&G number and told her where I’d stashed her clothes.
8
“WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED to you?” Hilary demanded as she opened the door to the Godwin apartment. “Were you in a fight?”
“Two,” I replied. “Here’s your promptbook.”
She took it from me, but there was a puzzled look on her face. “Is this why you look the way you do?” she asked, weighing the loose-leaf binder in her hand.
“Uh-huh. I had to follow Dana to the G&G offices and ‘persuade’ her to let me borrow it. At first, she didn’t want to.”
“So I see. And the other fight?”
“Can I come in first?”
“I suppose so.”
I stepped into the hallway of a dark-papered narrow suite of rooms, lined everywhere with cases and cases of books, scripts, record albums, and tapes. A light shone in the farthest chamber, which, as far as I could tell, had to be the living room.
“I’m sorry you went to all that trouble to bring me the prompt script.”
“You told me you needed it!”
“Yes,” Hilary admitted, “but Harry already got me what I wanted.”
“He what?” I exclaimed, surprised and annoyed. “He told me that—”
“I didn’t tell you anything,” a new voice protested, “you never let me finish.” I saw Harry standing on the living-room threshold.
“Well,” I said, “the ubiquitous Mr. Whelan.”
“We do seem to hang around the same places, don’t we?” he remarked significantly, grinning.
“Gene,” Hilary said quickly, “sit down. Tell me what you had to do to get this thing.” She dropped the promptbook on a coffee table in the living room. I followed her in as Harry went over to a liquor cabinet, asked my preference, and splashed brandy in a glass for me. I stretched out on a black-leather reclining lounge chair.
“Hope you don’t mind,” I addressed Hilary, “but I’m going to kick off my shoes. I’m beat.”
“Go ahead. But tell me—”
“Not so fast,” I broke in. “I want to hear why Harry told me he didn’t bring you the script earlier, when evidently he did.” I leaned back in the chair and sipped from the snifter.
The actor was shaking his head. “That’s not what I was trying to tell you, and that’s not what happened. I borrowed the script for fifteen minutes by telling Dana I had to double-check my last-act blocking. It’s not an unreasonable request, because of all those complicated battle scenes. I ran over to the nearest stationery store and ran part of the script through a copying machine. I made stats of the third act and the list of characters, because I figured those’d be the only things we’d need to find out the Third Murderer’s identity.”
Hilary indicated a thick pile of coarse paper resting on one of the bookshelves. “There it is, notes and all,” she said ruefully. “A lot of help it’s been.” She examined the original in her hand. “I suppose this won’t provide any further enlightenment.”
I asked her to show me the pertinent material in the promptbook, but first she repeated her request to hear about my day, so I gave her a capsule version, stressing the highlights of my talks with Stockton and Evans, the run-in with the fugitive Mills, and a slightly bowdlerized version of the commedia scene with Dana Wynn. As I was telling it, Hilary left the couch and perched next to me on the lounge seat. After I finished, she complimented me on showing initiative and persistence. I can count the times on my fingers when she’s praised my work, so I was pleased. She opened the promptbook and directed my attention to the first pages in it. I saw a list of the names of all the characters in Macbeth, each one followed by a symbol in the form of an initial or initials, and the name of the actor playing the part.
“I thought,” said Hilary, “that this would tell us straight off who the Third Murderer is, but Michael protected his little enigma in every possible way.”
I looked down the cast list to the entry for the Third Murderer, but there was no name after it, only the symbol “3M.” Hilary put her finger on the latter and tapped it.
“Every character naturally has his own symbol,” she said. “Macbeth is M; Duncan is D; Donalbain, Don, and so on.” She flipped to the portion of the promptbook dealing with Scene 33. The right-hand page contained the Shakespearean text; each line of dialogue and every stage direction was consecutively numbered in ink down the left-hand column, thus—
1 Enter three Murtherers
2 1. But who did bid thee join with us?
3 3. Macbeth.
4 2. He needs not our mistrust, since he delivers
5 Our Offices, and what we have to doe,
6 To the direction just
—and so on. The left-hand page facing the text was divided into three vertical columns. The outside one on the left was headed TECHNICAL at the top and consisted of pertinent sound a
nd lighting cues. For instance, after the line “Hearke, I hear Horses,” the script noted to “Fade in horse-hooves gradually, up to 5.” (The number doubtless referred to the volume level on the tape recorder.) I was mildly surprised at reading the direction; the night before I’d remembered thinking the sound man had been late on the cue, but apparently that was exactly what Godwin wanted.
The middle column of the left-hand page was labeled BLOCKING and consisted of diagrams of all the major traffic patterns. Here is where the symbols were used. On a schematic of an overhead view of the stage were drawn little lines, each affixed with the appropriate character legend. Every time a character was supposed to walk somewhere, dotted lines indicated the path he was to take and a second position was drawn at the termination of the movement with another symbol and a tiny “1” to show what the new position was. Thus, when Banquo was backstage ready to make his entrance in 33, a small line with a “B” next to it appeared on the blocking diagram in the backstage area. From the “B” a dotted line descended through the left door and ended just on the other side of it, where a second line and the symbol “B-1” specified where he was supposed to stop.
Hilary noted the set of character symbols in the blocking diagram. “Michael gave the Third Murderer a distinct symbol—3M—instead of using the one assigned to Macbeth or Ross or whoever he actually selected for the part. So this doesn’t help us at all.”
She was right: the only symbols employed in the scene were 1-M, 2-M, and 3-M for the murderers; B for Banquo, and F for Fleance.
“When exactly did Mike plan to have the Third Murderer reveal his identity?” I asked. “That ought to give us something to go on.”
Hilary shook her head. “It just points up the mystery. Here. ...” She indicated the following passage:
25 Banquo. It will be Rayne tonight
26 1. Let it come downe.
27 Banquo. O, Trecherie!
28 Flye good Fleance, flye, flye, flye,
29 Thou may’st revenge. O Slave! Dies.
I studied the final vertical column of the facing page, the one marked BLOCKING AND BUSINESS. It had several entries in it, each prefixed by an inked number corresponding to the appropriate line of text above. For instance, the entry for line 26 read: “1-M raises knife. 2-M does same after 1-M. 3-M grabs torch from F and dashes it to stage, extinguishing it. All converge in blackout. Confusion, oaths, curses, screams—then B’s line 27 rises above all.”
