Audition for Murder

by P. M. Carlson

  “Yes.” She pondered a minute as they turned the corner to cross the union lawn. “What Rob said makes it sound like suicide, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes. I never would have thought that,” said Jim.

  “Same here. But there was that note on the mirror.”

  “Yes.”

  “Poor Nick. I wish I could help.”

  “Rob’s probably the best person right now, Ellen. His oldest friend around here. We’ll see Nick tomorrow.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  Jim walked her back and kissed her gently and watched her start up the stairs. Ellen felt a little guilty that she had not yet told him her new worry. But she had to talk to Maggie first.

  Because the car keys in her bag were gone. And her car, which had been parked near the theatre door, was gone too. The key ring held only a note: “Thanks. Don’t tell a soul. M.”

  She was awakened from a restless nap at six-thirty. The blasted phone was ringing. Why didn’t Maggie get it? Maggie! She jerked upright, alert all at once, and snatched up the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Winfield. Sorry to do this to you when you’re hung over.” Cheerful voice.

  “Oh, my God, Maggie! Where are you?”

  “What’s happened, Ellen?” The cheerfulness was gone, instantly.

  “It’s Lisette. She’s dead, Maggie.”

  “Oh, Christ.” There was a fractional pause. “Nick. How’s Nick?”

  “I haven’t seen him. Rob is with him, I think.”

  “Good. Oh, Christ, Ellen, I thought she’d be okay. Oh, Christ. Poor Nick. Did they find Laura?”

  “Laura was in her dorm. They’re sure.”

  “Then how did she die? An accident?”

  “I don’t know exactly. There was a hypodermic, and a suicide note.”

  “A suicide note. She wrote it?”

  “Nick seems to think so.”

  “Goddamn it, Ellen. Poor Nick.”

  “Maggie, where are you? The police want to talk to you.”

  “To me?”

  “To everybody. Not you especially. Except that you spent more time with Nick and Lisette than most of us.”

  “Yeah, okay. I’ll be back later, Ellen. Probably not till the middle of the afternoon.”

  “Where the hell are you?”

  ‘”About two hours’ drive,” she said evasively. “Your damn cylinder head gasket gave out and nobody in this burg, population seventeen, sells the right kind. I’m going to have to wait for someone named Willy to go to … um ... to go get one and bring it back.”

  “Sheesh. Where are you?”

  “Take my word for it, Ellen. You don’t want to know.”

  “I do too. So does Rob.”

  “Rob?”

  “Yeah. Left you an urgent note.”

  “Read it to me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “And quick. I don’t have the coins to keep feeding this phone forever.”

  Ellen took Rob’s slip of paper from Maggie’s pillow and removed the tape. “It says, quote: Soubrette, dash. Horrible unbelievable news. I’m with Nick. Apparently it happened while we were at Joe’s, right after the show. Please see me before you talk to anyone. Love, dash, ton danois. Unquote.”

  “God,” said Maggie. “Joe’s.”

  “What?”

  “It seems a million years ago. Listen, Ellen. If the police ask, tell them I’ll be back tonight sometime. Okay? I’m having car trouble. You don’t know where. And I think my time is up now.”

  “Wait, Maggie. How can I get in touch with you?”

  The line was dead.

  “Damn stupid bitch,” said Ellen, in despair.

  Sixteen

  Nick, numb, was picking up her makeup jars and packing them into her little case. The dressing room was still disordered, with jars scattered across the dressing table, some still open, papers and clippings scattered, the bouquet of Ophelia’s flowers still on the table, clothes tossed on hooks or in corners. The police had photographed and measured and dusted everything, and then had given him permission to clear it out. They had taken the syringe and the mirror with her note. He decided to start with the makeup. He focused carefully on each little pot to make sure it was hers and not Grace’s, or one of the court ladies’, and to make sure that the question trembling under the surface of his consciousness did not erupt. Later he would deal with it, if he could. Now he must not think about it.

  Rob had come over last night, a few minutes after the officers took him home—and he had been a source of strength. Nick hadn’t wanted to talk or think. Rob, understanding, had just been there, an undemanding warm background. He had made coffee, and eventually suggested that Nick might want to lie down and rest. He himself dozed on the living room sofa, alert whenever Nick stirred during that horrible blank night. The next morning Nick awoke from a thin agonized sleep to the smell of bacon and coffee, and dutifully ate what Rob gave him. He washed and dressed as Rob instructed him. On some level he knew he had to keep functioning, although it seemed pointless, and he was grateful that someone was there to remind him.

  After breakfast, Rob gently directed his attention to all the things that had to be done—calling Lisette’s mother, a funeral director, their agent George, and their other New York friends. Nick talked to them, and made the decisions he had to make. Soon his friends began to come by. Ellen and Jim, Brian and Deborah, Grace and Jon, Jase and Chester and David and Judy. Even Dean Wagner stopped by, and a surprising number of students from the show or his classes. They helped pack up Lisette’s things, quietly and efficiently. He was grateful and spoke to them about unimportant things with the surface of his attention. Somewhere inside, though, something horrible was growing, and the guardians of his mind were closing things off, warning him not to examine his feelings too closely. I have that within which passeth show. Don’t think. Don’t feel. Do things, and wait.

  Rob stayed all morning. Sergeant Hawes came in right after lunch to tell Nick it was all right to remove Lisette’s things from the theatre. Then he cleared his throat apologetically and said, “Mr. O’Connor, I thought I should tell you, Miss Eisner was in the presence of two other people from dinnertime till we arrived.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “We checked very carefully. And also, we didn’t find any fingerprints on the hypodermic syringe except for Mrs. O’Connor’s.”

  “I see,” said Nick. He was glad Rob hadn’t left yet for class. Rob responded to his mute appeal.

  “Nick, Sergeant Hawes thinks it was suicide. Just say yes or no, do you know of any reason he should continue investigating?”

  “No,” said Nick after a moment, and snapped the doors shut on his thoughts again.

  “Fine,” said Sergeant Hawes. “We’ll just get in touch with these last two witnesses, for completeness, and wrap it up, then. Thank you both. We appreciate your cooperation.”

  By midafternoon Nick had told Grace and Deborah that he wanted to be alone for a while. Brian would be arriving at ten to stay overnight with Nick; Rob had consented more for Brian’s sake than his own or Nick’s. Nick had walked around, then had taken Lisette’s case to the theatre. As suppertime approached, the building was nearly abandoned. It was soothing to have a job to do, to take his mind off everything.

  “May I come in?”

  He found that he was not startled; his reactions were numb too. “Sure,” he said. He looked up dully as Maggie came in.

  “Can I help, Nick?”

  “I’m probably the only one who knows which ones are hers.”

  “Yeah.” She pushed a couple of pots within his reach. He continued sorting. There were a couple that might belong to either Grace or Lisette. He started a third collection for these ambiguous jars. Maggie said, “I know you don’t want to talk. I’ll try to be quick.”

  “It’s okay.” He made an effort and looked at her again. “I’m switched off now. I think I want to stay that way.”

  “I
need an explanation of something,” she said apologetically.

  “I’ll try.”

  “Okay.” She moved past him to the little slot window and looked out. The last rays of sun streaked horizontally across the gym and through the window, rimming her profile with light.

  “The police are still asking questions,” she said. “You told them it wasn’t suicide.”

  “That was my first reaction. Not now.” He felt the anger and shame surging up within him and took command again. He looked fiercely at a jar of cold cream, decided it was Grace’s, and smacked it firmly down on her side of the table.

  “If it wasn’t,” she continued implacably, “we’re all of us in trouble.”

  “It’s got to be true, damn it! The prints on the goddamn syringe. And I saw the goddamn note. But…” No. Stop. Stay away from that. The wise young eyes were watching.

  She said, unshocked, “You’re angry at her. She left you and didn’t give you a chance to try.”

  The unspeakable, spoken.

  Nick stared, horrified, and then forced the thought away. It couldn’t be. “No,” he said, unconvincingly, guiltily. Her hand, comforting, touched his shoulder. She changed the subject.

  “I just got back an hour ago and Ellen told me everything. She says most of you were with her in the greenroom. But Lisette, David, Paul, Rob, and I were not.”

  A safer topic. “That’s right,” he said. “We were waiting for the rest of you. Eventually Grace and Judy went on ahead to meet Jon, and we were going to follow in a few minutes. Then Cheyenne came back, and then I asked Ellen to see if Lisette was ready—” Stop. No further. He rubbed his head. “I want to stay switched off. Please.”

  Her hands rested gently on the back of a folding chair. “I’m being brutal,” she said. “But I have to know something.”

  He didn’t look up. He wanted her to go away.

  “You see, Rob asked me to say I was with him,” she explained.

  “You weren’t?”

  “No.”

  So that was the problem. His mind left his own agonies and inspected this distraction gratefully. He was a little exasperated with Rob.

  “He shouldn’t ask you to do that.”

  “I know. But I wonder why.”

  “Rob prefers taking the easy way out. And, well, you weren’t there either, he might view it as a favor to you. I mean, when the police were interested.”

  “That could be. I’d like to think that, of course. But still… Forgive me, Nick, but I know that Lisette threatened once to tell about Rob. I don’t understand how he could be hurt.”

  “Well, he couldn’t really be hurt in the city, you’re right.” Nick stopped sorting and tried to concentrate on explaining, his dull eyes fixed on the capable young hands resting lightly on the back of the chair next to him. “It’s really neither advantage nor disadvantage to his career these days. But he was concerned about disrupting the show. The department. I mean, this is an educational institution, and this project was aimed at the alumni. They’re pretty conservative, not very broad-minded about homosexuality. And especially—”

  He broke off. The hands he was watching had clenched involuntarily on the chair back, knuckles thrusting white under the skin.

  “Maggie, you didn’t know!” Astonishment scoured him of all other feeling. He jumped up and turned her face gently from the window to him. For an instant he glimpsed in the depths of the blue eyes the collapse and wreckage of half-formed young hopes and dreams. Then the eyes closed for a moment, and opened again cool and cynical.

  “It’s all right,” she said, pushing his hand away. Her voice was almost steady. “Naive college girl learns about life in the real world. That’s what you pros are here to teach us, right?”

  “That bastard!” A rush of anger followed his surprise. “He told me you knew!”

  “I should have guessed, maybe. It explains a lot of things. An awful lot of things.” She was still gripping the chair, but he saw that the mind behind the veiled eyes was working again. “It’s David, isn’t it? The dean’s son, for chrissake.”

  “That bastard!” Nick sat down again and looked at her helplessly.

  “Who also wasn’t there in the greenroom,” she continued, ignoring him. “And Rob wants me to say I was with him.” She closed her eyes again and drew a long breath. “I ought to hang out a shingle. M. Ryan, professional smokescreen. Scandals hushed. Deans misled. Morals charges averted.”

  “He said he had told you,” Nick repeated miserably.

  “Well, he hadn’t. Au contraire.” One corner of her mouth twitched. “It wasn’t just a sin of omission, if you’re interested. He overcame his revulsion a couple of times, you know? Fooled me completely. Better performance than Hamlet. And then—oh, Christ, that’s why he said he had the clap! Damn him!”

  “The clap?” Nick repeated stupidly.

  “He said he thought he’d been cured but the retest was positive. Sent me off to get shot full of penicillin. For nothing! And of course he was deeply repentant. So responsible he wouldn’t do more than cuddle until his cure was confirmed. Of course it never was.”

  She glanced at him bleakly and fished down the neck of her shirt to pull up a thin gold chain. From it dangled a ring with a single small diamond. “He told me not to wear this until school was out. He said—get this—he was afraid the dean would not approve.” She jerked at it violently, breaking the chain, and thrust it at Nick. “Return it, would you?”

  “If I’d only known…” But she had already pushed past him toward the door, blinking a little. He asked, “Where are you going?”

  She didn’t answer. He heard her light, rapid footsteps on the stairs. Through the little window that looked out over the parking lot, he watched her run across to the darkened gym. In the twilight he could see the lights go on.

  He was furious, and helpless. But at least it was okay to be furious about this.

  He finished packing the case, looking out the window occasionally at the lighted gym windows. He didn’t think very much except every now and then, angrily, of Rob. In an odd way he was grateful to be angry; he needed a focus outside of his own ugly feelings. That poor kid. He was going to talk to Rob.

  When he came out and headed for his car, the gym lights were still on. Disturbed, he went into the building and peered through the little window in the door of the brightly lit gym.

  She was on the bars, all alone, twisting and pulling and swinging from one to the other, effort obvious in the power and skill required by the moves she was executing. He could see her arms trembling with exertion. After a moment, concerned, he went out to the phone booth and called Ellen. “I can’t tell you the problem,” he apologized, “but she needs a friend.” Ellen promised to come right away.

  Then he started home. Thank God Brian would be there soon to protect him from his thoughts. His foul and shameful thoughts. With a brand-new foul and shameful thought that had just now bubbled to the surface.

  If she hadn’t been with Rob, where had she been?

  Rob burst in on him before eight the next morning, frantic, just seconds after Brian left. He must have been watching. Nick, who had remembered to put on pajamas but hadn’t slept, of course, opened to the pounding and looked at him. Rob’s blond hair tumbled around his anxious face. His eyes were pleading.

  “Nick, you’ve got to help! She’s found out. I mean, I guess you don’t know. But you’ve got to help us.”

  “Come on in, Rob. We’d better talk.” Nick could hear the coldness in his own voice. He wanted to ram his fist into that handsome deceitful face.

  He closed the door and watched Rob cross to the end of the sofa, gathering his thoughts, and turn back finally, still standing.

  “Nick, I wouldn’t bother you now, honest, but you’re the only one…”

  Nick didn’t help, just looked at him flatly.

  “You know about David.” There was a trace of uncertainty in the pleasant, worried voice.

  “Yeah, I’d guess
ed.”

  “Maybe you didn’t know—I mean, he was the dean’s son, we had to be careful. For him, for the sake of the show.”

  “You needed a smokescreen.”

  “Nick, for God’s sake!” Rob turned away again, hands grasping the back of the sofa. They were both still standing. “Okay, look. I don’t expect sympathy. It’s a mess. But Nick, she attacked David this morning.”

  “Good for her.”

  “Come on! She hurt him! He’s got bruises all over! She forced him to admit everything.”

  “He blabbed, huh?”

  “Look, Nick, it doesn’t matter what we say, really. We were nowhere near the…um…other thing. But we can’t let people know we were together. And now she knows.”

  “Afraid you’ll lose your reputation?”

  “Nick, no.” Puzzled by Nick’s hostility, he pushed back his tousled hair. “If it were just us, we could just head for the city. No problem. But it’s all the other people who could get hurt too. David can’t tell his family. And you know it would ruin everything Brian’s been working for. And the other thing is the cops. You’ve never seen cops with the likes of us, probably. Especially provincial cops. I’ve got to save David from that.” He paused, looking at Nick’s hard face. “What’s wrong, Nick? Why so antagonistic? You never seemed like a straight prig. You never gave a damn before.”

  “Still don’t.”

  “Well, then, what?”

  “It’s the way you used Maggie. Like an old Kleenex.”

  “I know.” Rob accepted it. “It was wrong. But I had to. Don’t you see?”

  “Don’t you see? You think only fags have feelings?”

  “Of course not.” Sorry and lonely, he met Nick’s eyes. “Look, you’ll probably hate me for this too. But I really did think about marrying her. She’s got that spirit, that odd sense of humor—you know what I mean. You’ve got it too. And I thought, she’s damn understanding, maybe she’d go along. We had a lot of fun.”

  “Nirvana according to Rob Jenner,” said Nick viciously. “Entertained by little Maggie’s sense of humor all day, and by little Davy’s asshole all night.”