Chapter Nine
At first Spraggue wasn’t sure he’d get along with Karen Snow.
He was five minutes late for their private, Saturday-night session, preoccupied. Even though the joker hadn’t disrupted the day’s rehearsal, Spraggue was just about ready to go along with the handwriting on Eddie’s wall: cancel the show. At least until he’d traced every actor’s performing history vis-à-vis Macbeth. Karen was waiting, clearly impatient. She wore the same dark slacks and T-shirt she’d had on all day. He wondered if she ever took a break, if she’d eaten lunch or dinner.
“Sorry,” he said, taking the six steps up from the auditorium to the stage in two bounds.
“I didn’t have anything better to do,” she answered drily, setting aside her clipboard and getting to her feet.
“I know how busy you must be—” Spraggue added apologetically.
“And that’s why you’re late,” she finished for him.
Spraggue shrugged. He wasn’t about to grovel twice for a few lousy minutes. The stage manager had a glint in her dark eyes, but whether it signified suppressed humor or anger he couldn’t tell. The woman’s impassive face gave little away.
She pushed him through his scenes like a football coach bent on impressing a raw recruit. She was no actress, but she gave his cues intelligently in a warm, low voice. She knew her stuff; she had crosses and counters timed to the second, especially those that coincided with technical effects.
After an hour and a half, she granted him a five-minute break, adding a grudging “Not bad” and a thin secretive smile that Spraggue decided he’d like to see more of.
He glanced sorrowfully at the straight-backed prop chairs and stretched out on the hard stage floor, regretting the line-memorization binge that had cost him most of the previous night’s sleep. Karen kept on working. Spraggue listened to her footsteps off in the wings, counted the clicks and bangs as she moved things about. She mumbled to herself and checked off items on her ever-present clipboard.
Spraggue stared up at the roof of the stage some three stories overhead. The sensation was of lying in a fireplace, gazing up the shaft of the chimney. A vast chimney: sixty, seventy feet wide, thirty feet long. At the very top, he could barely see the crisscrossed metal of the gridiron. The space just below the grid was crowded; lighting bars crammed with instruments and cables alternated with chunks of scenery. Eight suspension battens divided the space, each batten a long iron pipe running the width of the stage. Tied to each pipe, faintly rustling in the air currents, a part of the set hung down. Spraggue identified a rocky tower from Castle Dracula, a glimmering chandelier from Dr. Seward’s sitting room.
“Watch out!” Spraggue gasped, and sat up even as he spoke. The crystal chandelier had descended a good five feet before stopping with a jerk that set its beads jangling.
“Sorry.” Karen’s voice was muffled by the yards of drapery that separated the wings from the stage. “Just checking the counterweights.”
“Isn’t there some customary warning cry before you dump the lamp on my body? ‘Fore’ or something?”
Karen’s laugh floated through the curtains. “We say ‘Heads’ in the theater. Short for ‘Heads up.’ Remember?”
“Yeah,” Spraggue said. “Good posture is so important right before you get smacked in the face.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it. If one of these ropes breaks, you won’t even have a chance to yell.”
“Comforting.”
“Don’t fret.” Karen emerged from the wings and sprawled next to Spraggue on the floor. “The rope is two-thousand-pound test-weight stuff. Not cheap. This theater has one of the best counterweight systems I’ve ever seen.”
“Then why did the chandelier slip?”
“Improperly weighted. I released the rope clamp. If the weight on the carriage—”
“The carriage?”
“That thing backstage that looks like stacks of bullion in a bank vault. The weight on the carriage is supposed to equal the weight suspended from the batten. If it does, then no movement. The chandelier was a little underbalanced, that’s all.”
Spraggue lay back on the wooden floor. “I think,” he said, “that it might be a lot more fun to watch a performance from here. You could see all the lights glow and dim. The scenery would come closer, then fly away.”
Karen leaned back on one elbow. “I’ve always preferred to watch the technical stuff. When I was a kid my mom kept taking me to the ballet, hoping I’d beg for dancing lessons. I couldn’t take my eyes off the lights. Came home with a crick in my neck.”
Spraggue wondered how anyone could put in such long hours and seem so alert. He half-expected to see dark circles under her eyes, but the skin was as pale and clear there as elsewhere. No makeup, either.
He let the companionable silence deepen before breaking it with a carefully casual question. “You know a lot about this theater?”
“Old theaters are my love.”
“Tell me about this one.”
She pointed. “That’s where Sam Phelps died. Hanged himself from the fourth pipe. Properly weighted, too. There was some scaffolding on the stage. He climbed up, fastened the noose, and kicked the scaffolding down. It was a Saturday night. He hung there until Monday morning.”
“You think he haunts the place?”
“He’s supposed to put in an appearance every opening night,” she said. “Seriously, no. All theaters have legends attached to them. Show people are superstitious. ‘Break a leg’ instead of ‘good luck.’ No whistling in the dressing rooms.…”
“Never quote Macbeth.”
“Right.”
Spraggue hesitated. “Was Macbeth ever performed here? Do you know?”
“Once. It wasn’t successful.”
“Never is. I’ve heard more Macbeth horror stories—car crashes the night before opening; chicken-pox epidemics; box-office flops.”
“Macbeth was Samuel Phelps’s last production in this theater. A disaster, critically and financially. He killed himself closing night.”
“How did you know that?”
She smiled faintly. “I do my homework. I found an old book on Boston theaters down at Goodspeed’s. If you’re curious, I’ll lend it to you.”
“I’m curious.”
“It’s downstairs.” She got to her feet with a swift economy of movement.
Spraggue stood up. “I’ll walk with you.”
“After we get the book, we’ll run your scenes again,” Karen warned. “Then we’ll call it a night. Okay?”
“Fine. How about ice-cream cones at Brigham’s afterward?”
“No, thanks,” she said stiffly.
“A drink, then? It’s Saturday night in the real world.”
“Just another work night for me.”
“Sorry.”
They stepped over a tangle of backstage cables and made their way out the double doors into the gloomy hall. Sconces, fashioned to look like Elizabethan torches, cast dim shadows on the gray stone floor.
“You keep the book in one of the dressing rooms?” Spraggue asked. Eddie’s? he wondered.
“In the green room. I thought some of the actors might be interested.”
Downstairs, the green room was the first door on the left. The name was traditional rather than descriptive. The green room, the actors’ gathering place, was dingy battleship gray, highlighted with battered gold chintz-covered chairs and a sofa.
They found the book in one of the cupboards over the corner sink. Spraggue reached for it.
“Eddie says you saved his life,” Karen said abruptly.
“Actors. They exaggerate.”
“Not Eddie. It’s funny; I thought I was immune to actors, but I like Eddie. Thanks for helping him.”
That thin secretive smile again. Spraggue found himself hoping her immunity didn’t extend to all actors. And hoping she didn’t like Eddie Lafferty too much.
She interrupted his thoughts. “Do you know who did it?”
“Huh?”
“Spraggue, I know about you. I know you’re not here just to act—”
“That obvious?” he asked.
The color in her cheeks deepened and she looked away. “To me, yes. I’m the one who had to get rid of the regular understudy so Darien could bring you in. I’m the stage manager. It’s my job to know everything that goes on in this company.”
“Congratulations. You do your job well.”
“I’d rather have information than compliments. Why you? Why does Darien think you can find the joker?”
Spraggue sighed. “Once upon a time I was a private detective. Believe it or not.”
“And you gave it up to play games onstage.”
“I started out as an actor. RADA. Rep. Some Off-Broadway.…”
“Movies. You were good.”
“Thanks.”
“And?”
“I discovered I wasn’t all that fond of actors. I developed a dislike for agents. The whole business turned me off. I’m basically nosy; I was always getting involved in stuff I had no business getting involved in. So one day I shocked my family and friends and applied for a private investigator’s license.”
“You didn’t like it?”
“It got a little too real for me. Hurt people stayed hurt.” She nodded. “No curtain calls.”
“Right.”
“Did you find out anything at Eddie’s?”
“No.”
Her dark eyes peered into his. “Cautious. That’s good, I suppose. Still, if you need any help, remember I’m always around.”
Spraggue doubted he’d have any trouble remembering. “Do any of the others know why I’m here?” he asked.
“The actors?” Karen grimaced scornfully. “I doubt it. If Langford knew, he’d get appointed your deputy or take over altogether. He’s our number-one busybody. The others spend every waking moment in total self-absorption.”
“Still,” Spraggue said, “they seem to have plenty of time to dwell on each other. John and Emma, Greg and Emma, John and Caroline Ambrose—”
“That’s not affection; that’s just reflected ego.”
Spraggue grinned and recalled the unopened book in his hand. He checked the index quickly, riffled through the yellowed pages until he found the small section on the Fens Theater. The stage manager read over his shoulder, comfortably close.
One quarter of the first page was devoted to a faded photograph. Beady dark eyes glared from a pale wrinkled face. Hawk-nosed and thin, the lower half of his face obscured by a graying beard, Samuel Borgmann Phelps had been a striking man.
Spraggue stared at the picture, a faint memory clutching at his mind. “He looks—” he began.
At that moment, they heard the noise overhead.
“What’s that?” Karen’s voice sank to a whisper.
“Cleaners?”
“No.”
“Stay here.” Spraggue started for the door.
“No. I know this theater better than you.”
“Please. It’s not chauvinism, just a safety precaution. Be my backup.”
She nodded. “I’ll give you five minutes.”
“Fine. Then bring something to hit somebody with.”
“Okay.”
“But not me.”
“Do you have a gun?” she whispered.
“Never touch them.”
“Here, take a flashlight. You might need it.”
Spraggue turned at the door and disappeared.
At the foot of the stairs, he halted and slipped his feet out of too-new loafers. The wooden stairway was creaky enough without shoes. He kept to one side, testing carefully with his weight as he progressed. The noise upstairs continued, a regular metallic banging coming from over the wood shop. Spraggue reviewed the plan of the theater in his head. The stage was over the shop. Heavy metallic thuds. Just the sort of noise Karen had made as she added and subtracted the bricklike counterweights from the carriage.
Spraggue doubled his pace. If someone were playing with the weights, he’d have to catch him in the act. He’d have to find out which of the heavy iron pipes looming over the stage was dangerously underbalanced. Have to find out before any of the actors worked onstage again.
Double doors to the stage straight ahead. Spraggue’s hand touched the light switch, darkened the hall. He twisted the knob silently and pushed open the right-hand door.
He could see nothing at first, the blackness was so profound. The clanging continued. The briefly opened door had gone unnoticed.
Spraggue stood in the stage-left wings, fifty feet away from the counterweight system at stage right. Fifty feet of black silence crammed with cables, steps, platforms, miscellaneous noise traps. He pressed against the back wall of the stage, started moving—cautiously, silently—toward stage right, testing the path with a stockinged foot before each step. He hardly breathed.
He was twenty feet away, when it happened. His feet came to a boundary, a barrier. It felt like a pile of lights, different sizes and shapes. He couldn’t stretch across it, couldn’t find the inches of bare floor to stand on. If he moved against them, the lights would roll, careen into one another. The joker would flee.
Spraggue tensed. Only twenty feet away, the noise from the counterweights was still rhythmic. He lowered himself to his knees, hands scrabbling on the floor for the proper utensil. His outstretched right arm touched a C-clamp. It would have to do.
He feinted once, then tossed the C-clamp center stage. As soon as it hit, hard and loud, Spraggue turned the flash light beam full on the stage-right wings. He faced the joker.
For the first motionless seconds, Spraggue thought he must be hallucinating. A nightmare apparition stood before him. A vampire: caped, gloved, hooded in black. No face, no features, only darkness. The figure shrank from the light, as if the flash-beam were some holy relic. The shape moved. Only then did Spraggue see the startled eyes.
The figure darted for the rightmost edge of the grand drape. Spraggue went after it, clambering over platforms and steps—
Afterward, he remembered the sounds very clearly. The click that must have been the rope clamp giving way, the whine of rushing ropes, the tremendous clang as the iron suspension batten, suddenly unweighted, hit the gridiron, snapped the cable, and fell. Cold air rushed by his face; the stage floor shook beneath him. He reached up, slightly ahead, and felt the thick iron bar resting at an angle, not fifteen inches from his head.
The sudden silence was piercing. Then gray dust, untouched for almost half a century, filtered down from the fly gallery and settled over the stage like choking dirty snow.