Audition for Murder

by P. M. Carlson

  He paused, finger raised for emphasis. “Now that makes Laertes mad. When Hamlet turns away to wipe his weary brow”—Nick followed directions—”Laertes lunges from behind.” Rob jabbed Nick in the arm. Nick, hurt astonishment on his face, whirled, and for an instant Ellen thought it was a real fight as the two grappled, rolling down the aisle. But a second later they were on their feet again, crouched elegantly to fence, pencils at the ready, and Rob was saying calmly, “Notice now that I have the blue Woolworth’s pencil, and Nick, clever thing that he is, has come up with the poisoned one from Eberhard Faber. Now all he has to do is jab me again and I’m done for.” Nick poked at him. “Now we both die.”

  “Our specialty,” said Nick. The brown eyes, twinkling, met Rob’s, and suddenly they both began groaning hilariously, reeling about, and eventually subsided, twitching, in the aisle. Ellen, gasping with laughter like everyone else, collapsed into a seat. Rob, lying picturesquely dead with his head down the slope of the aisle, pale hair light as flame against the dark red carpet, opened his bright blue eyes and looked up to see Brian, who had come back in and was standing at his head.

  “Well, what do you think?” asked Rob innocently, without moving. “Shall we do it that way?”

  Brian’s mouth twitched. “I had hoped that by hiring professionals we’d get someone with more ability than my six-year-old,” he said dryly. Rob laughed and rolled neatly to a sitting position. Nick was already standing up again, smiling. Brian went on, “If you’re talking about the motivation, we may go that way. I agree that it’s probably better to have Laertes do the deed in a fit of anger. Hamlet too, for that matter.” Rob nodded. “But nothing is really set, of course, until we work it through. Our Laertes will have a lot to say about it.”

  David, excited and earnest, said, “I think I can work with that. He has a hot-headed side.”

  Nick said, “Some of the hot-headedness may be a calculated effect. More political than real.”

  “True.” Brian glanced at him appreciatively. “Please, let’s not make any decisions on motivation until we’ve had a chance to go through it together. It’s a complicated play.”

  “Sorry, boss.” Rob stood up, grinning unrepentantly, and dusted himself off. “It’s just that we growing boys need our exercise.”

  “Yeah, I hate these cut rehearsals too,” agreed Brian.

  “Sacré merde de Dieu!”

  The urgent exclamation rang into the auditorium as the shadows on the stage swayed slightly. Recognizing her roommate’s voice, Ellen sprang down the aisle, followed by Nick and Jim. As they ran up the steps to the forestage, the voice continued, still shaken, “Cheyenne! What kind of mental defectives do you have in this outfit? Is Cheyenne there?”

  “Yeah,” he said from the wings. He walked out onstage, squinting up at the flies.

  “Would you tell those idiot amateurs on the Blithe Spirit crew that even sandbags should not be flown without counterweights?”

  Ellen shaded her eyes, but still could not see Maggie. Cheyenne too seemed puzzled. “What’s the problem?”

  “Well, maybe if someone would give me a hand, I could talk about it more calmly.’’

  Nick gave an exclamation and leaped for the ladder that led up to the flies. Ellen saw her then, too. She was dangling upside down off the edge of a catwalk, knees wrapped around the horizontal pipe that supported some of the lighting instruments, the baggy sweatshirt rucked around her shoulders. She clutched a big sandbag to her chest.

  “God!” said Rob, and started for the ladder too.

  Ellen, not quite as worried as the others, watched Nick throw himself flat on the narrow catwalk with amazing precision. He reached down.

  “Here, give me the damn sandbag first. Can you hold on another second?”

  “Sure. Here you go.” Maggie transferred the heavy bag to him carefully, and he maneuvered it onto the catwalk. He reached back, ready to help her up, but she had already pulled herself up to perch on the edge of the catwalk. Rob arrived behind Nick. Maggie brushed aside a curl that had fallen across her eyes and regarded them with mock awe. “Goodness! What a stellar rescue committee! Aren’t you breaking Equity rules? To say nothing of the stagehands’ union.”

  Nick glanced down at Lisette below, then, briefly, at Maggie. “So we are,” he said good-naturedly, and added to Rob, “I think the wench is telling us to leave.”

  “Too late again,” said Rob sadly. He squeezed aside to let Nick by, then, poised even on a catwalk, held out a courtly hand to Maggie. “If you won’t let me rescue you, dear lady, may I at least escort you down?”

  “Kind sir, you are confusing me with the ingenue again.” The two pairs of blue eyes, equally mocking, equally speculative, locked for a moment. Then Maggie smiled, stood up gracefully on the narrow walk, and extended her hand.

  Ellen, who suddenly felt as though she were intruding, went to join Nick and Lisette in the wings. Shakily, Lisette was saying, “I just about cashed it in, Nicky. That thing was right over my head.”

  He frowned. “Over your head?”

  “We came in from the scene shop door back there. And suddenly Maggie said, ‘Wait a minute’ and went up that ladder.” She pointed to the rear ladder that led up past two levels of catwalks to the grid at the ceiling. “Well, I thought I’d go on back to my seat, but I was looking up to see what she was doing. And suddenly right over my head that sandbag started to fall.”

  “You mean she knocked it off?”

  “No. She wasn’t close. It just started to fall. I was looking up, so maybe I would have ducked in time.”

  “She wasn’t close? Then how did she catch it?”

  “I don’t know. She just swooped out of nowhere and grabbed it. For a second I thought she’d fall on me too. But she didn’t.”

  Nick still looked puzzled. Ellen explained, “She’s a gymnast. Loves the bars.”

  He smiled. “Perfect training for lighting personnel.”

  “Yeah. We ought to make it a prerequisite.”

  “Good idea.” He frowned up at the catwalk again. “But that was pretty careless of someone, all the same. This is the main path from the scene shop. Everyone has to walk right under it. Someone could have been hurt.”

  “Right,” said Ellen.

  “Was that a flying harness it was fastened to?”

  “Yes. They’re using the harness for the spirit entrances in Blithe Spirit.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “Yeah, I’ve always wanted to try it. A childish whim. Anyway, when they finish with the harness they hook on the sandbag and pull it up out of the way until the next actress needs it.”

  Lisette shuddered. “God! What if she’d put it on without the counterweight?”

  Ellen didn’t much want to think about that. She said, “Well, I’m sure it won’t happen again.” She nodded to the pin rail, where Rob and Maggie stood inspecting the ropes and talking to Cheyenne. The designer’s sharp eyes peered up toward the catwalk, then he began fastening the missing counterweight to one of the ropes. “Cheyenne doesn’t say much,” Ellen explained, “but when the oracle does speak, the earth shakes.”

  “I know,” said Nick quietly. He turned back to Lisette. “Come on, Blossom. Let’s go sit down.”

  Ellen accompanied them. As they descended the steps into the auditorium, a glimmer of chrome caught her attention in the shadows next to the stair. She reached down. It was a briefcase with a shiny catch.

  “That’s strange!” said Lisette. “How did it get there?”

  “Is it yours?”

  “I thought I left mine on the seat.” Lisette opened the case and looked through it. “Yes, there’s my script, and all those forms to fill out for the Hargate personnel department.”

  Then she frowned, and Nick asked, “Something missing?”

  “My résumé pictures. I usually have about a dozen in here. They’re all gone.”

  “Strange,” said Nick. “You must have a fan club already. Is anything else missing?”


  “No. Nothing. Thanks for finding it, Ellen!” They went back to their seats.

  Ellen plunked herself down in her own place. Jim came into the row behind her and sat, leaning forward, elbows on the back of the seat next to her. She could feel his warmth on her cheek.

  “Is Maggie all right?” he asked.

  “Never better.” Ellen shifted away from him a little. “She’s soaring into battle. Ready to take on Apollo himself.” She jerked her head toward Rob, who was striding energetically up the aisle.

  “I rather like Apollo, actually. The others too.”

  “Yeah, it’s not as bad as I thought. Looks like we’re all going to be boys together.”

  He grinned, and for an instant she was afraid he would ruffle her hair, the way he used to, but he didn’t. Instead he said, “We’ll learn a lot this term.”

  “I don’t even want to think about it!” Which was true. If the cut rehearsal, that acme of boredom, could be this lively, she hated to contemplate the real ones.

  Brian banged on the brass rail that held the curtain around the orchestra pit. “Quiet, gang! An important announcement before we start. Next Saturday afternoon, five o’clock, the entire cast and crew is invited to Dean Wagner’s for a welcoming reception. We really do appreciate everything the dean has done to make this show a reality, so I hope you’ll all come thank him. In your Sunday best.” The undergraduates groaned, and he added sternly, “The apparel oft proclaims the man! Oh, one other thing. Claudius, Polonius, Ghost-Fortinbras, and First Player are all scheduled to wear beards. Grow your own if you want. But please, please don’t start until after the dean’s party.” Everyone laughed. “Okay, gang. Back to work. Act Three, Scene One.”

  The tedium began again.

  Late that night, back at the dorm, Maggie poured milk into two mugs of instant coffee and handed one to Ellen. “There you are,” she said grandly. “Café au lait maison du jour.”

  “Oo-la-la. How fancy.” Ellen was sitting cross-legged on her bed in a checked nightgown, long brown hair combed over one shoulder. She cradled the mug in her hands, appreciating the warmth. It had been a full day, concluding with an evening of unpacking and making lists of things to do on upcoming, equally busy days. She watched her roommate deploy her angular frame across the other bed and asked, “What exactly is a soubrette, Maggie? I thought it was usually a maid.”

  “Yes.” Maggie smiled. “But not just any maid. She’s the clever, flirtatious maid, the one who thinks up schemes and keeps the plot moving.”

  Ellen nodded knowingly. “Ah, I see. The one who arranges to have a pool of stage light instead of work lights, so she can make a big entrance.”

  “That’s the one.” Maggie’s grin widened. “Maggie ex machina. Actually, a couple of the work lights were burnt out and I was just using the others temporarily while I changed them. But then you and Jim started arranging chairs in a circle, and Chester Morgan came in and headed right for the light, and I thought, why not? Let’s see what professionals do with this setup. Lights and audience, what else does an actor need? And they all used it.”

  “Except Nick.”

  “Oh, he was part of Lisette’s entrance. His job was to make her seem protected, but not threatening to anybody’s private life. Which he did.”

  “But that’s probably the truth,” protested Ellen. “She’s not here to rock the boat. She’s here to do a job.”

  “Of course it’s the truth! Who says a big entrance has to be a lie? I’d say all of our entrances told the truth.”

  “Theatre people.” Ellen shook her head. “Overgrown children, all of you.”

  “This overgrown child is in math, not theatre. Anyway, you love it too. I saw you looking at Jim.”

  “Oh, God, Maggie. What am I going to do?”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I want to be friends. Period.”

  “In an ideal world? If you could arrange things any way you wanted?”

  “The world is not ideal!” said Ellen vehemently.

  Maggie drew her knees up to her chin. “Yeah. Can’t argue with that.” She was looking at the bookends on her desk, little copies of Notre Dame Cathedral.

  “Alain?” asked Ellen sympathetically. “But that was years ago.”

  “Over, but not forgotten.”

  “I thought it tore you apart.”

  “Yeah, you don’t know the half of it. But you can’t choose what to forget. Anyway, I’d do it again.”

  “I sure wouldn’t. I’m keeping away from trouble.”

  Maggie inspected Ellen kindly. “That’s what makes you a good stage manager. You avoid fluster at all costs.”

  “Oh, quit patronizing me. I’m not the juvenile in this room.”

  “Yeah, you’re positively stuffy,” agreed Maggie cheerfully. “So why are you still hanging around the theatre?”

  There was no good answer. Jim? No, she had become fascinated by backstage work long before he had joined the graduate program. And it had to be admitted, the work in the theatre was the source of most of the fluster in her life.

  “Stupidity, I guess,” she said. “Maybe the feeling that the whole project would vaporize without me.”

  “It might at that. Poor Lisette almost got vaporized.”

  “That was strange.”

  “It was. It really was.” Maggie frowned. “I still don’t understand it. I saw that the harness was hanging too low, and went up to look. And it was okay, just low, until the very instant she got under it. Weird.”

  “You must have bumped it somehow.” Ellen got up and took Maggie’s empty mug and her own to the sink in the corner.

  “Maybe. I didn’t think so. Anyway, the real problem was with the dummy who removed that counterweight. Paul said it was probably the Blithe Spirit crew. They’ve been rigging things.”

  “Yeah. This place is crawling with dummies. Some of them make big entrances from the catwalks. Hey, did I tell you someone stole Lisette’s photos?”

  “Her photos?”

  “Took her briefcase, stole about a dozen resume pictures, and dumped the case by the steps.”

  “Poor O’Connors. Probably thought they were coming to a low-crime district.” Maggie frowned. “That’s sort of disturbing.”

  “Oh, not necessarily. She’s so gorgeous, it’s probably just some smitten sophomore. There are a lot more disturbing things than that around.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Ellen plunked the clean mugs onto the desk and crawled into bed. “All those new personalities. Especially Rob. Don’t you find Rob a bit disturbing?”

  “Rob?” Maggie was surprised. “Why?”

  “Well, I told you how he ran over Judy’s feelings today.”

  “Yeah. But he won’t do it again.” Maggie stretched out on her bed and pulled up the cover.

  “What do you mean? Why wouldn’t he if he felt like it?”

  “Too easy a mark. I think he was just testing. He’s not out to hurt anybody. He just wants to have a few mental wrestling matches with people. Unlike you, he enjoys a little fluster. And he’s probably a little lonely.”

  “You think you’re a mind reader? How do you know all that?” Yawning, Ellen pulled the chain on the desk lamp and the room went black.

  “Because I’m like that too.”

  Ellen jerked the light back on and sat straight up to look at her roommate with alarm. “Oh, Maggie, watch out. Watch out,” she said earnestly.

  Maggie, stretched out on the bed, didn’t move. “Simmer down,” she said. “There’s nothing to worry about. I’m too bony, he said so himself. Anyway, he’ll have a sweetie or two waiting in New York. All we have to do here is keep him from getting bored for a few weeks. And that,” she said firmly, “should be fun.”

  Four

  There was a scorpion on Lisette’s soft smiling lip.

  Involuntarily, Nick checked an instant, his hands on the shoulders of her coat in the dean’s front closet. Her photograph was pinne
d to the lining of her coat, and the grisly little creature glued to it was arched for attack in all the glossy realism of the expensive novelty shop. Party laffs. Pretending to fumble for his own topcoat, Nick unpinned the photo, folded it, and slipped it and its unpleasant cargo into his own inner pocket. Then he put on his social smile and turned back to the others.

  Dean Wagner had followed them into the front hall and now stood smiling at Lisette. Clearly she had made another conquest. David Wagner had welcomed them to the reception with shy enthusiasm, but it was his father who had appropriated Lisette almost immediately, clucking at her insistence on ginger ale at the bar but then escorting her proudly from one departmental chairman to another like a trophy. In fact, all of them had had their little triumphs. Rob had charmed Mrs. Wagner and her friends, then had fascinated the drama students with accounts of the earlier production of Hamlet he had been in. Old Chester Morgan had joined a small circle of older faculty to trade stories about theatre in the Depression. Even Nick had dusted off his academic skills for a pleasurable discussion of Victorian theatre with the head of the English department. Nick the egghead. It had been fun.

  Yes, he thought with surprise, Hargate was fun. It had been a long time since he’d thought of himself as having fun. Life in New York was busy, filled with joys and disappointments, the tension of auditions and sporadic poverty, the glorious highs of performance and the grinding dullness of temporary jobs, the alternating worry and hope about Lisette. He had learned to enjoy the good parts and cope with the bad. He knew he wouldn’t trade with anyone else. But it wasn’t exactly fun.