by Linda Barnes
Footsteps pounded up the stairs, raced down the hall. The missing actor appeared, out of breath, disgruntled and alone. If Emma had been with him, she’d remained below.
“Places!” Karen called, relieved.
“Arthur!” Langford approached the director. “Look, can’t you do the damned ending without me? I have absolutely no desire to suffocate in that damp cramped box any longer than necessary.”
“John—”
“I’m quite serious, Arthur. I abhor lying in my coffin for twenty eternal minutes only to be stabbed without uttering a single word.”
“You can’t speak in the scene, John. It’s still daylight.”
“And”—Langford pretended not to hear the interruption—“I despise the knife. A vampire should be staked, a wooden stake through the heart. Even a child knows that the only way to kill a vampire—”
“In the book, John,” Arthur said slowly, “Dracula is killed with a Bowie knife.”
“Oh, the book, the book! It’s not the Bible, is it? In the book, as I recall, Dracula is killed by a character the playwright has not even chosen to include in this adaptation! So much for the book!”
Darien closed his eyes, spoke with effort. “In the theater, John, it is bad form to repeat the same effect twice. Understand? The first time the audience is entranced; the second time they look for the strings. We’ve already killed Lucy by the stake. You have to die by the knife.”
Spraggue waited impatiently in the stage-right wings. Karen paced.
“I think our great British actor suffers from secret claustrophobia,” she said. “The way he rants about that coffin!”
“He’s not going to get much sympathy from this crowd,” said Spraggue. “How does he die?”
“Your standard collapsing-knife trick. Gallons of chicken blood. A fatal scream. Dematerialization. Wouldn’t be a bad effect if John would deign to rehearse it.”
“Let’s go!” shouted Darien, turning away from the still-speaking Langford.
“Places!” Karen called wearily, eyebrows imploring heaven. “Three-five. Places!”
The first half of the scene went rapidly, playing much stronger than usual. Spraggue attributed the change to a new alliance, a warmth between Lady Caroline and Greg Hudson; the bond of rejected lovers.
Things bogged down at the fight.
“Stop,” Darien called sadly.” Walk through it! Slow motion! Anything! I have to see what’s screwing it up!”
Greg Hudson gritted his teeth. He knew, Spraggue knew, Grayling knew: Caroline Ambrose was the disaster. She insisted on attacking the vampire killers in the “Victorian Womanly” manner, beating her fists ineffectually against Hudson’s chest. Time after time, Hudson, the fight expert, ran them through the scene, trying to make Caroline less laughable. Spraggue marveled at his patience.
Caroline was better at throwing fits, thank God. She shrieked convincingly as Van Helsing and Harker carried her writhing body downstage, away from the vampire’s lair. But she always blew the slap.
Spraggue got to hit Caroline. Director of an asylum, his character knew how to deal with hysteria. He drew back his hand, swung it around quick and hard. Caroline jerked her head away. The blow missed her chin.
“Caroline,” Hudson wailed. “No! No! You have to take it! Turn with the slap. It won’t hurt! He’ll get you right below the cheekbone. Good sound. No danger. If you flinch like that, he could dislocate your jaw!”
“I’m sorry, Greg.” Caroline fluttered her violet eyelashes. “I just got so scared!”
“It can’t hurt if you’re ready for it. Watch.” Hudson turned to Spraggue. “Hit me. Just like you tried to hit Caroline.” The report was terrific. “See? Believe me, no pain. Now try it with Caroline, Spraggue. Slow motion first.”
At half-speed she was fine. When the blow hit her cheek, she turned with it.
“Perfect!” said Hudson warmly. “You have to feel it coming. The responsibility for a great slap is on the receiver, not the sender. Stand up to it, Caroline! Take it! Trust him. Spraggue won’t hurt you, unless you do something unexpected.”
Caroline smiled up at Spraggue tremulously.
“Take it again,” ordered Hudson.
Spraggue hit out. Caroline didn’t move, didn’t flinch, didn’t even try to turn with the slap. The force of the blow knocked her head to one side. An angry red spot flared on her cheek. She stared defiantly at Hudson.
“Good sound!” yelled Darien from below. “Keep going!”
Hudson shook his head grimly. Caroline went back to her position. She never lifted a hand to rub her stinging cheek.
Spraggue felt used, half angry at himself for hurting her, half longing to sock her again. So maybe she’d done something that deserved punishment. Maybe she was some kind of masochist. She damn well couldn’t count on him to hold the whip.
He played out the rest of the scene in a trance, barely surfacing to wonder why the collapsible knife seemed so familiar. But it only tickled at his subconscious.
Chapter Sixteen
At lunch break he wangled Georgina’s address and phone number out of Karen: a cheap Combat Zone hotel. Call her? No. If she were home, he’d prefer ad lib dialogue. He was getting fed up with rehearsed responses.
He stuck Karen’s book on Boston theater under his arm, flagged a passing cab on Mass Ave.
Room 541. The sweating man at the desk gave him a leer. I know what you came for, brother, he seemed to say.
“Should I phone,” the clerk said with a gap-toothed smirk, “or is the lady expecting you?”
“She’s expecting me,” Spraggue said.
The clerk made a scribbled note on a blotter. Probably kept track of visitors. In this hotel, they’d be likely to change hourly. Maybe there was a surcharge for each one.
Spraggue headed across discolored carpet to the stairs. Each flight was narrower than the last. And smelled worse. He took a deep breath on the fourth-floor landing and held it until he reached room 541.
She answered his knock quickly, with a frightened “Who’s there?”
“Michael Spraggue.”
“Oh. Uh. Just a minute.”
She smiled as she opened the door, then stepped quickly out into the hall, pulling the door shut behind her.
“I didn’t miss a scene, did I?” she asked nervously, retying the sash on her light blue robe.
“No. May I come in?”
Panic flickered briefly in her gray eyes. “Why don’t you take me out for a drink, instead.” The flirty offer was well-delivered, but her eyes gave her away. Was she dumb enough to keep the joker costume in plain view?
“I’d rather see your room,” Spraggue said. “You can show me where you found that doll.”
“They don’t like us to have men in the—”
“Here, Georgie? Come off it.”
“I left my key inside. I’m locked out.”
Spraggue fiddled in his wallet for a credit card. “You’re in luck. I’m a specialist in such things. I’ll break in.”
“No.”
“I suppose they have a master key downstairs, if you’d rather.”
She pulled a key from a pocket of her robe. “I guess you’d better come in,” she said reluctantly.
Georgina’s tiny refuge was dark. Heavy curtains shaded the window on the left. The opposite wall had a window too, so grimy that little light eked its way in. The room overlooked a bare brick wall scarcely a foot away.
“What do you want?” The smile was still there, now stubbornly set. She made no move to turn on the light.
Spraggue reached for the switch. She tried to stop him, grabbed his hand. The one naked bulb glared.
His sudden intake of breath was quiet, but in the still room it echoed.
Georgina’s cell was a museum, crammed with the memorabilia of life, several lives, in the theater. Aged, lacy fans framed the puny mirror: Renaissance fans, Victorian ladies’ fans, burlesque queens’ fans. Posters, programs, ticket stubs turned the walls
into vast collages. The meager furnishings were piled haphazardly in a corner, all replaced with trunks, the proverbial theatrical trunks, plastered with destination stickers.
One trunk had the unmistakable look of a shrine. An old red shawl was draped across it, anchored by photographs. On either side of the pictures, long tapering white candles in antique brass holders.
The largest photo, the one carefully placed at the center, was a copy of the one on the dressing-room wall: Mr. Samuel Borgmann Phelps.
Wordlessly, Spraggue handed Georgina the book he’d brought along, opened to the picture of the long-dead director. She studied the page, closed the volume carefully, and sat on the edge of the iron cot the hotel called a bed.
“You didn’t want anyone else to succeed there,” Spraggue said softly. “Samuel Phelps lost his money and his life in the Fens Theater. His son George followed in his footsteps. Is your father still alive?”
She shook her head.
“Your mother?”
She turned toward the shrine; her eyes fastened on a picture of a frail blond woman, no older than Georgina was now—a woman in costume, all in white, flowers in her hair. Ophelia?
Georgina shook her head again.
Spraggue continued: “So all you had was the theater—Phelps’s dream and Phelps’s folly. All but abandoned.”
“The theater was a school,” Georgina whispered. Spraggue had to lean close to hear her. Her lips barely moved.
“That’s right,” he said encouragingly.
“They were going to name it for my grandfather—”
“But instead they sold it,” Spraggue said roughly. “And Arthur Darien decided to direct in your theater.”
“Yes.”
“And you resented it.”
“No.”
“And you wanted him out of your theater.”
“No!”
“You want everyone out of your theater. Leave it for Samuel’s ghost, for your father’s ghost. So you started playing tricks.”
“I didn’t.”
“And the Macbeth messages. Phelps’s last play was Macbeth. You knew that. You even gave me a hint. Maybe you wanted to get caught. Before you really hurt someone.”
“This is insane, Michael. Look at me!”
Spraggue sat on the cot next to her. He sighed. “When I look at you, I don’t believe it. I can’t see you lugging a bucket of sow’s blood through the theater—”
“Sow’s blood?”
“The stuff that was supposed to fall on Emma. I had it analyzed. Another Macbeth reference. Remember? One of the ingredients in the Act Four stew? ‘Pour in sow’s blood, that hath eaten her nine farrow.…’”
Georgina made a face.
“I can’t see you in that black vampire suit,” Spraggue said. “Too small.”
“Heels,” she suggested bitterly.
“I suppose. But there was no noise, no clatter—”
She let out her breath. “Then there is some evidence in my favor? You don’t believe I’m the joker?”
“You tell me, Georgina.”
She stood facing the brick wall, staring out the eyeless window. “I am Phelps’s granddaughter. My name is Georgina Phelps. I took Gina Phillips as my stage name.”
“Why?”
“For luck. Phelps hasn’t been too lucky in the theater.” She tried to laugh. “I’m not the joker, Michael. You’ve got to believe me.”
“But the coincidence!” Spraggue began.
“Damn coincidence. There was no coincidence! I auditioned for this company. I want to act. And I have to work in the Fens Theater. Just once. To prove I can. To prove it won’t get me the way it got my father and grandfather. One successful run in the Fens and I’ll feel the curse is broken—”
“You seem to have brought it along with you,” Spraggue said flatly.
“I don’t believe in the supernatural.”
“Neither do I.”
“I was one of the first people attacked by the joker.”
“I doubt our joker has been foolish enough to neglect to play a trick or two on himself, Georgina.”
She ran both hands through her pale hair. “What can I do to make you believe me? Watch me every minute! Isolate me!”
“That’ll be up to Darien.”
“You can’t tell him, Michael!” The color left her face so completely, Spraggue thought she would faint.
“I have to.”
“He’ll fire me. Michael, I’m a bit part. I don’t matter to him. He won’t care if I’m guilty or not. I’m bad luck; I’m one of the Phelps disasters. He’ll talk, Michael. Think of what a damn good story it’ll make. I’ll never work again.”
Spraggue rested his hand on her shoulder. She shuddered at the touch.
“Please,” she said. “Just a chance. I’ll do whatever you say. You can stay with me every minute. Lock me in a closet except for rehearsals—”
“Darien ought to know.”
“Even if I’m not the joker? “She licked her dry lips, swallowed audibly. “Of course, if you believe my grandfather’s ghost is causing all the commotion, enraged by my presence in his theater, then firing me would stop the whole mess.”
“Do you have a phone?”
“Down the hall.”
The phone call took only two minutes. Georgina looked up as he entered the room again.
“I’ll wait outside while you get dressed and pack a bag,” he said. “You’re staying with my aunt until I find out whether you’re lying.”
“You didn’t call Darien,” she said incredulously. “You didn’t call him and you didn’t call the police.”
“No.”
She stood on tiptoes and lightly kissed his chin. He felt as if he’d been licked by a wag-tailed puppy.
“Pack a bag,” he said sternly. “I’ll put you in a taxi.”
“But you won’t tell.…”
“Not yet, Georgie. Not yet.”
Chapter Seventeen
Spraggue walked the mile and a half back to the theater. Breathe in for four counts, hold for eight, breathe out for eight. Two blocks of that and his head felt clear again.
Georgina: guilty or innocent? Guilty: hell of a motive; concealment of her background; secrecy about the decapitated doll. No. That wouldn’t play. If Georgina had planned the doll bit, she’d have shouted her injury from the rooftops … unless she was subtler than he thought. Innocent: he wanted her to be.
If someone else—X, the joker—had broken into Georgie’s place, he’d be a fool not to use the material it offered. So the joker could have planned on making Georgie a scapegoat, knowing her background from the silent witness of her room. Even the poster was there, a standout: Samuel Borgmann Phelps presents Macbeth.
Georgina could have planted the doll herself. Maybe there had been no doll, just a story to match Deirdre’s. But then, couldn’t that be said of all the other pranks? Was anyone in the clear?
The trick that had brought him in: Frank Hodges’s Bloody Mary banquet, for instance. Frank could have had a secret penchant for drinking blood. Or he could have tipped back his regular vodka-and-tomato-juice and put on a performance for Darien. Had to remember he was dealing with actors. Why would Frank fake it? To get out of the show. Why? To be able to harass the cast more freely. Obstacle: Frank was safely in New York. Or was he? Spraggue had dialed a New York number, heard a voice on the phone, no more. Frank’s motive? A blank; none known.
What about the other jokes? The tricks seemed to group themselves effortlessly. The decapitated dolls, the sculpted, bloody head of Gregory Hudson, the blood bath. None of the victims injured in any way. Victim and perpetrator could be one and the same in every case. The bucket of blood, hung up for Emma. Delayed action, so the redheaded seductress could have set it herself, stepped deftly aside at the last moment, screamed effectively. The trip wire. Again, set up beforehand. For Caroline—or Emma. By Caroline or Emma. Neither could be eliminated.
Eddie’s case—slightly different. Eddie had m
ade actual contact with the joker. Ruled him out, right? Wrong. The entire episode could be fabrication. What evidence did Eddie have to back up his claims? The writing on’ the walls, the wrecked apartment created by Eddie himself? The balancing act on the chair, the rope burns—would the joker go so far as to inflict wounds on himself? If he were crazy enough, or committed enough. Spraggue saw no reason to doubt either possibility.
That left the actors who had not been annoyed by X—yet: John Langford and Gustave Grayling. If the tricks were being performed in the same order as Dracula’s attacks on his victims, wouldn’t that tend to cast suspicion on the leading man? Spraggue smiled as he recalled the great actor’s “psychological” insights. Either the man was an idiot.…
No. Not stupid. A fine actor, and that took intelligence—an instinctive, narrow brilliance, an imitative gift. Spraggue had known extraordinary actors who were hardly safe outside the theater, but he would never have called them stupid.
An illusionist; that’s who he was up against, a master of disguise and misdirection. Both he and Eddie had actually seen the joker, the mysterious X. What could either say about him?
Eye color.… Why hadn’t he concentrated on that with the joker only twenty feet away? Eye color, height, weight: those were the things the police wanted to know first in any description, the immutables. How immutable in an actor?
Then there were the nonactors: Darien and Dennis Boland, the Spider. And Karen. Spraggue quickened his step.
He overtook the Boylston Street pedestrians, the brightly dressed summer tourists and the harried lunch-break shoppers. Envied the hand-holding couples at the sidewalk cafés. Passed the Copley Square fountain, the library, the Prudential Center. Rounded the corner at Mass Ave, pressed on. No time for lunch. No time for—
He heard running steps behind him, turned, and almost collided with Eddie Lafferty.
“Geez, you walk fast!” The company’s madman was breathing hard. Beads of perspiration dotted his forehead, dripped onto his round, hornrimmed glasses. “Darien was looking for you right before break.”
