by Vicki Delany
As Sir Henry Baskerville was exclaiming over his missing boot, I flinched as an elbow got me in my left arm. I glanced at the man beside me. He was holding his hands up in front of his face, as though he were watching the action through a camera.
Curious.
I followed the play closely, but my mind divided itself into two, and I considered Leo Blackstone. I don’t know much about theater, but I’d have thought if he was investing in this production, he’d also be concerned about the other two plays; instead, he expressed no interest in them. I’d had a glance at the program book and read the list of sponsors of the season. I hadn’t seen his name, and no one was listed as anonymous.
A burst of light and noise startled me out of contemplation. The curtain had fallen for the intermission, and people were rising from their seats.
Leo stood up, and I jumped to my feet. I bit back a grimace as my Ralph Lauren heels reminded me not to do that. “Can I buy you a drink?” I asked.
“Never say no to that,” he replied.
Being at the front of the theater, it took a long time for us to get to the back and the bar. The line was three deep when we arrived.
Ryan spotted me and began to come my way. I gave him a tiny shake of the head, and he turned around abruptly.
“Visiting from California, are you?” I said to my new best friend.
“Yup.”
“I’ve never been to California. I hear it’s lovely.”
“Yup.”
“Is the weather as nice as they say? Two white wines, please.” I handed over my money, and the bartender poured our drinks.
“Sometimes.” Leo couldn’t have sounded more bored with my company if he’d tried.
I pretended I hadn’t noticed. “What brings you to Cape Cod?”
“I’m interested in this play. Thanks for the drink, Ms. . . . uh . . .” He turned and walked off. Other than grab him by the arm and whirl him around, I couldn’t think of a way to get him to talk to me.
Leslie swept down on me. Her eyes glowed. “Isn’t it marvelous? They’ve done a fabulous job, don’t you agree, Gemma?”
“It’s fine.” I wanted to speak to some of the cast and crew members, but I knew they wouldn’t exactly welcome me backstage in the middle of the play. Instead, I sipped my wine. Leslie left in search of more responsive conversation.
“What are you up to?” Ryan asked me.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Who was that guy you were talking to?”
“I’m not entirely sure. But I intend to find out.”
“Gemma, I know that look. All too well.”
“What look?”
Jayne joined us before Ryan could answer. “Eddie sent me a note.” Her blue eyes sparked with the same intensity as her mother’s, and she was almost dancing on her tiptoes with excitement. “Inviting me to join him backstage after the performance for a small party. Isn’t that fun? Do you want to come?”
“Come where?” I asked.
“For a drink backstage. I’m sure Ryan’s welcome too.”
“I don’t know yet,” I said. I put my drink down and wandered off.
“Did you find that a bit strange?” I heard Jayne say to Ryan.
“I find many things Gemma does a bit strange,” he replied. “Which is why,” he might have added in a very low voice, “I love her.”
* * *
The play continued. They’d done a good job of recreating the mood of the moor with dry ice and careful lighting. As Holmes and Watson cried to each other through the mist, on one side of me, I felt Leslie shiver in delight, while on the other, Leo continued framing the stage with his hands. The tormented howl of the great spectral hound needed some work, I thought. It sounded more like Moriarty when his food bowl isn’t filled fast enough. I closed my eyes and thought back over the events of the previous weeks.
“It is a formidable difficulty, and I fear that you ask too much when you expect me to solve it,” Sherlock said, pressing tobacco into his pipe and relaxing in his chair once again in 221B Baker Street. “The past and present are within the field of my inquiry, but what a man may do in the future is a hard question to answer. Come, Watson, might I trouble you to be ready in half an hour, and we can stop at Marcini’s for a little dinner.”
The curtain fell, and the audience broke into thunderous applause.
“Bravo!” someone shouted from the back.
The curtain rose, and the company stood before us, bowing deeply. Grinning, the minor actors stepped forward, and then they swept back for Ralph Carlyle, Tanya Morrison, and Harry O’Leary. Eddie took Renee’s hand and led her to the front of the stage. He bowed, and she curtsied.
“You didn’t care for it,” Leo said to me.
“What? Oh, no, I thought it was an excellent production.” I remembered to start clapping. “I was thinking of something else. Would it matter to you if I didn’t like it?”
“It would. But everyone else seems to have enjoyed it. Very much, I’d say.” I glanced down the row. Rebecca Stanton was beaming.
Pat Allworth was “reluctantly” dragged out of the wings. It was the first time I’d seen her this evening. She wore a knee-length black dress under a sequined black jacket, and the shoes with metal stars on the bottom of the heels were on her feet. She bowed, and then Eddie lifted her hand and kissed it. The audience continued applauding. Many people, Leslie and Jayne among them, were on their feet.
Pat’s eyes swept the front row. They passed over me and came to rest on the man beside me. He gave her a thumbs-up, and she broke into a huge smile.
I turned to him. “Are you going to do it?”
He looked startled. “What do you know about it?”
I smiled.
“Guess it won’t be a secret for much longer. I’m convinced.” He got to his feet, and I did also.
I spoke over my shoulder to Leslie. “You and Jayne go on ahead, I’ll catch up.”
At the end of our row, Leo turned right and headed backstage. I turned left. I needed to find Ryan. Jayne and Leslie, followed by Rebecca, slipped past me and also went right.
The crowd poured into the aisle, and I made no progress. I was stuck in a traffic jam. I saw Ryan at the back of the theater. He was standing, but his mother was still seated. She waved her arms about, and he smiled down at her as he listened. I tried to catch his attention, but he didn’t look my way. I pulled out my phone, switched it on, and waited impatiently while it booted up. Then I sent a text: Urgent. I need you backstage ASAP.
Ryan reached into his pocket. We were supposed to turn our phones off during the play, but he had his on vibrate in case he got a call from work.
He read the screen and looked toward the front of the barn, searching for me. I waved my arms over my head until he caught my eye, and I jerked my thumb over my shoulder toward the stage.
Ryan leaned over and said something to his mother.
I turned and fought my way upstream, against the crowd. “Excuse me, excuse me. Forgot something. Pardon me. Hi, Mrs. Herrington. Yes, loved it. Excuse me. Sorry, was that your foot?”
At last I broke free of the elegantly dressed masses and found a small set of steps leading to a door at the side of the stage and slipped through it. I emerged into the sitting room of 221B Baker Street. The curtain was down, and the cast and crew and their guests had gathered on the stage. The table on wheels that had earlier held evidence of Holmes’s science experiments had been converted into a bar cart. Champagne flutes, silver ice buckets, and foil-topped bottles. The wine, I couldn’t help but notice, was at the cheaper end of the scale, and the glasses were plastic. Tanya Morrison, still dressed in long skirt and apron as Mrs. Hudson, was pouring drinks.
Everyone was laughing and babbling in excitement. They were obviously pleased at how it had gone.
Eddie had his arm draped around Jayne’s shoulders. On the far side of the stage, next to the mantel, Renee pretended not to notice. Alone of all the company, she was not smiling.
A glass was pr
essed into my hand. “Congratulations,” I said to Eddie. “It seems to have been quite the success.”
He tossed his head and laughed. He was still dressed and made up as the Great Detective, but that one movement brought him crashing back to twenty-first-century Massachusetts. “It must have been quite something in the old days,” he said in his laid-back California drawl, “when everyone had to wait up all night until the morning papers brought out their reviews. Pat’s checked Twitter, and people are already raving about the play. What did you think of my accent, Gemma? I worked hard on it.”
Jayne edged slightly away. “I’m going to make sure my mom gets a drink.”
“She looks fine to me,” Eddie said, but Jayne left us.
“Your accent? Passable,” I said. “Excuse me.” Ryan hadn’t yet appeared. I sent another text: Stay in the shadows until needed. I slipped my phone into my bag without waiting for a reply. I held onto my glass but did not take a sip.
Fortunately, no one seemed in a hurry to leave. The cast and crew were delighted with their evening’s work and spent a lot of time congratulating each other. The wine might have been of lesser quality, but it was free, so they were happy. The wardrobe mistress approached Renee, now laughing with excessive enthusiasm at something Ralph had said, and pulled a needle and thread out of her shirt. She ordered Renee to stand still and then dropped to her knees and began stitching a ragged hem.
The side curtain moved and Ryan stepped onto the stage, followed by Grant, Donald, Gerald, and Andy. I hadn’t asked Ryan to bring an entourage.
Ryan stayed in the wings as I’d asked, but the other men headed toward me. “What’s up, Gemma?” Grant asked. “Donald saw Ryan heading this way, and he told me to come along.”
“I don’t want us to get scattered,” Donald said. “I thought we were all going to dinner. Are we having drinks here first?”
Andy saw Jayne standing next to her mother. A smile crossed his face, and he went to join them.
“No one invited me to this party,” Gerald said, “but I thought I’d come anyway. Someone has to remind everyone that this was Sir Nigel’s night, and he is sorely missed.”
“The drama’s not over yet.” I marched across the stage, my heels echoing off the boards. When I reached Rebecca, Pat, Leo, and the group around them, I lifted my glass in a toast. “A triumph.”
“A triumph!” voices called.
“I wouldn’t go quite that far,” Rebecca said. “It was good, I’ll admit, but Sir Nigel would have provided the gravitas we needed.”
“I don’t think everyone agrees. You don’t, do you, sir?” I asked Leo.
“Nigel was a . . . competent actor in his day. But unfortunately, his day was long past.”
“Now, see here,” Gerald protested. As if, before receiving his inheritance, he wouldn’t have said, and probably had, the same thing.
“Drunken old letch,” Renee said. “We’re better off without him.”
“Don’t move,” the wardrobe mistress warned her, “or I’ll sew your dress to your leg.”
“With Nigel in the role, the movie wouldn’t have gone ahead, would it?” I was talking to the small circle of Pat, Rebecca, and Leo, but I projected my voice to the far reaches of the stage. If there is one thing a stage is good for, it’s acoustics.
“What movie?” Rebecca said.
“No, it wouldn’t,” Leo answered. “Who are you, and what do you know about that anyway? Has someone been talking?”
“Everyone’s been talking,” I said. “Rumor travels, and it travels fast. As for who I am, consider me an interested party. The police closed the investigation into Nigel’s death, assuming that he had taken his own life . . .”
A murmur spread across the stage. People exchanged curious glances. “The police said it was an accident,” Harry said.
“Because they weren’t positive it wasn’t suicide, although that’s what they believed, and out of respect for the man’s memory,” I said. “But I’m increasingly becoming aware that neither accident nor suicide was the case.”
“Suicide,” Harry said. “That’s news to me, but I can’t say I’m all that surprised.”
“Of course it was, Gemma,” Leslie said. “We all agreed. I told Detective Ashburton . . . I told him Nigel was upset when we talked after the tea. I left him alone at the cliff edge, drunk and sad and lost.”
“You left him there, Leslie,” I said, “but he wasn’t alone for long.” I looked around the space making sure I had everyone’s attention.
I did. “Mr. Blackstone here wants to make a movie out of this production.”
Notably Pat, Renee, and Eddie didn’t look at all surprised. Ralph Carlyle, who’d played Dr. Watson, clapped his hands; the stage crew shrugged; the wardrobe mistress struggled to her feet with a grunt; and Tanya Morrison said, “Count me out. My film days are long over.” Rebecca said, “I don’t see what that has to do with me.”
“Nothing, as it happens. Except that Leo and his backers aren’t about to pour money into a production featuring a washed-up old actor, no matter what his past fame. Therefore, I have to ask who knew about the movie deal and who had the most to benefit from it.”
“I hope you’re not suggesting,” Eddie said, “that I killed Nigel to get his role. I don’t know anything about this movie you’re talking about. No one takes a second-rate summer stock play, no matter how good, and turns it into a movie. And as much as we might all want to pretend it isn’t, this festival is second-rate.”
Rebecca glared at him, but she said nothing.
“There’s not much in the world of popular entertainment hotter these days than Sherlock Holmes,” I said. “Movies, TV. Books and more books, as no one knows better than I. Even coloring books, tea sets, and embroidery thimbles.”
“What of it?” Eddie said. “It’s all been done before.”
“So it has. Therefore, a fresh interpretation is needed. Tell us about your vision, Leo.”
“Might as well,” he said. “I was going to make the announcement tonight anyway. I and my partners intend to bring a stage version of The Hound of the Baskervilles to the big screen. Not any version, but this version. Staged as it is, in front of an audience, only slightly adapted for the camera.”
Renee squealed. Eddie said, “That’s fabulous.”
“As Ms. . . . uh . . .”
“Doyle,” I said.
“As Ms. Doyle pointed out,” Leo said, “people can’t get enough of Sherlock. There’s no point in trying to make another modernized version, not to compete with the likes of Robert Downey Jr. or Benedict Cumberbatch.”
“I prefer Elementary, myself,” the wardrobe mistress said. “I suppose you’ll be needing adjustments to the costumes for close-ups. I hope you’re planning to compensate me for my extra work.”
“That discussion can be held for another time,” Leo said. “The Hound is probably the best known Holmes story—”
“Best known, arguably, but definitely not the best,” Donald said. “Nothing can compare with the drama of the climactic scene of The Speckled Band when Holmes—”
“Thank you, Donald,” I said. “Another discussion for another time. Please continue, Leo.”
“Therefore, my partners and I thought we’d simply return to the source. A fully authentic rendition of the original story, in the intimate and unusual setting of live theater. When I heard that Pat Allworth was putting on such a production, I told her what we were considering. All in confidence, of course.” He turned to Pat. “I assume you broke that confidence and spoke to Ms. . . . uh . . .”
“Doyle,” I said. “Pat never said a word to me.”
“How did you find out then?”
“As I heard Sherlock Holmes himself say this very evening, ‘The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.’ I observed.” I looked around the room. Everyone was staring at me. From the shadows, Ryan made a circle in the air with his right hand in a hurry-it-up gesture. “Which brings us to th
e main point. Nigel Bellingham would not have suited this movie, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Totally,” Leo said.
“Therefore, he had to be gotten rid of. One way or another.”
Everyone began talking at once.
Gerald’s voice rose above the clamor. “Are you saying, Gemma, that someone killed . . . murdered . . . Sir Nigel?”
“I am.”
More clamor.
“That’s preposterous,” Pat said.
“Who do you think you are to make an accusation like that?” Rebecca said. “The police closed the case. It was an accident. A tragic accident.”
“I don’t want to hear this.” Leo took off his cap and rubbed at the thinning hair on the top of his head. “I don’t need these sort of rumors before we’ve even signed the contracts.”
Renee headed for the bar cart.
“Nevertheless,” I said, “hear it you will. Rebecca, it was important to you that Nigel be in the play, wasn’t it?”
“As I keep telling everyone, yes, it was. I saw him perform in The Hound ten or fifteen years ago in London, and he was simply amazing. He was a great actor. A legend. I’d met him many years ago, when I was working in New York and took the liberty of writing to him and asking if he’d grace our little festival. He would have made us the talk of Massachusetts, if not the entire east coast.”
“Ten or fifteen years ago, he was a lot younger in more than years. You must have been disappointed when you saw what he’d become.”
Rebecca’s back stiffened. “I’ll admit he hadn’t aged well. But I instructed him to buckle up and rise to the challenge.”
“I’m afraid you can’t simply instruct an alcoholic not to be so. I assume you were paying him out of your own pocket.”
She glanced around the stage. “What of it?”
“It’s your money to spend, but others in the company didn’t agree with your casting decisions. Pat hired Eddie to play Sherlock, not Nigel.”
“Eddie was the understudy,” Rebecca said. “Pat knew I intended Nigel to have the role. I’ll admit that she objected at first, but she came around. For the good of the festival.”
“For the good of your image, Rebecca, but that’s beside the point. Look at Ralph there,” I pointed. The actor glanced around himself in confusion. “He’s far too young to be Watson to Nigel’s Sherlock. No, Pat might have made agreeable noises, but she never intended for Nigel to take the part.”
