Chapter Twelve

There were fingerprints on the riser—too many. Eddie’s, of course, and probably the prints of the stagehand who’d set up the platforms and the carpenter who’d built them. Spraggue photographed them all, feeling vaguely silly. Now he’d have to fingerprint the entire cast. And he was certain the joker had used gloves. Everyone used gloves. He inspected the nails, driven in clean and straight. Could tiny Georgina swing the necessary blow? The wire itself, Karen identified easily; right off a roll in the electrician’s booth. Kept on an open shelf in an unlocked room. Available to all.

Spraggue shook his head, disgusted. “You’d better go get some lunch while there’s still time,” he said to Karen.

“What about you?”

“Not hungry.”

“Did the joker leave you another note?”

“Can’t find one.”

“I’ll bring you back a sandwich,” she said.

Spraggue went to pay a condolence call on Caroline Ambrose. Her dressing-room door was partially open.

Caroline was alone, standing in front of her full-length mirror. She preened, testing one famous expression after another. Her smile faded and her fingers gently massaged her temples, her forehead, desperately smoothing age-wrinkled skin.

The face reflected in the glass was a classic. Caroline Ambrose had huge violet eyes under arching brows, porcelain skin, delicate bones, a cloud of dark hair, and a sweet triangular smile. Cloying, Spraggue corrected himself, not sweet. A self-conscious smile designed to evade laugh lines. Appraising eyes that constantly searched, for approval, for weakness, for gain.

Caroline mascaraed her long lashes, replenished her scarlet lipstick, patted more color into her cheeks. She made Spraggue long for the uncompromising face of Karen Snow, not beautiful, but real. He much preferred the intelligence in Karen’s eyes to the fake docility in Caroline’s.

Spraggue rapped at the open door. Caroline was still engrossed in her reflection.

She turned, offered him a three-quarter profile and a madonna smile. It was one of her best. She was often photographed that way.

“May I come in, Miss Ambrose?” Spraggue said with what he hoped was the right touch of deference for a request from a second lead to a star.

Her triangular smile widened speculatively. She patted a place on the bench close beside her and beamed as he sat down.

“Call me Caroline, Michael. Please.”

“Caroline.” He said her name lightly, approvingly. “I hope my knock didn’t frighten you.”

“Oh, no.”

“Good. After what you’ve been through—”

“Just frightful, isn’t it?” She shivered, then smiled at her pretense. “The things actors have to put up with.”

“You, especially.”

Caroline flushed with pleasure. “So you, at least, have noticed. There is such envy in the theater.”

“You seem to take it very calmly. If you had gone a few more steps down that staircase—”

She put a hand on his arm. “Please, don’t even say that. I’m not calm, not at all.” She allowed a lip to quiver. “Really, I shouldn’t have been left here alone.”

So John Langford had deserted her. For Emma? “I’m sorry,” Spraggue said.

“I’m being foolish, I know.” Caroline smiled bravely. “But I can’t dwell on such things. It might affect my performance.”

It certainly wasn’t affecting her performance at the moment, Spraggue thought.

“These things have happened to me before, you know.”

“Trip wires?”

“No, no. But my dressing room has been broken into twice—and I have had setbacks in my career. Jealous people who’ve taken advantage—”

“Do you know who set that wire?”

“Why, no, Michael. I feel it. I’m very sensitive to these things. I feel who my enemies are. I always have enemies.”

“Have you discussed your suspicions with Darien?”

“Arthur? He never listens to me. He believes in the goodness of humanity at large, particularly the female gender. It’s one of the truly delightful things about him.”

“You’ve known him a long time.”

“We do go back a ways. But then,” she smiled archly, “I understand you know Arthur from your past as well.”

Terrific. Just what he needed: a discussion of his own past. Lesson number two: get the man to talk about himself. Even without a script, Caroline sounded programmed. He said nothing. Let her think he was hard of hearing.

After a moment’s pause, she chattered on. “Arthur and I have been friends forever, really. I am so grateful to him. It’s the old story: he took me under his wing from my first New York show, and we’ve never really lost touch. I depend on him so much. He and Spider and I were the three musketeers for a while. You could never find one of us without the other two.”

“Spider?”

“Dennis, Dennis Boland. I shouldn’t call him Spider. He hates it, really. An old childhood nickname. Sometimes they can be so hard to lose.”

Spraggue murmured agreement.

“Haven’t you met him? A dear man. He’s the house manager here. So devoted to Arthur—and to me.”

With a start Spraggue realized that it was his line, that he was expected to say something like “That shouldn’t be too difficult,” to take part in the flirtatious little skit Caroline Ambrose was constructing.

He picked up his cue, somewhat tardily. Caroline beamed. He had passed the test. From now on, he would be Michael Spraggue, that charming young actor. He bit his lip.

“It’s rather a sad tale,” she rattled on. “Spider—Dennis—comes from a very cruel background, very poor. He and Arthur were boyhood friends in New York. They lost touch. It’s so easy to lose touch. Arthur always had that genius, you know. Scholarships, Eastern colleges. And then when he was a successful New York director, he went to a party. And there was Spider, his best friend from the hard times. I don’t think they’ve been separated since.” She sighed deeply. Every word had been spoken as if rehearsed many times before, each gesture, every graceful turn of the head choreographed. The sigh completed the tale. It was again his cue. Spraggue searched for the expected line.

“And you became Spider’s friend, too.”

She opened her violet eyes wide. “But of course. He is a darling man. I was married to Domingo, my third husband, then. Domingo de Renza.”

She paused. Spraggue nodded encouragement. De Renza, huh? Emma hadn’t exaggerated about the wealth of Caroline’s ex.

“Domingo took a great liking to Spider.” Caroline laughed, a carefully calibrated trill. “He visited us at the plantation, almost lived with us.” With a graceful arm movement, she indicated a lush mass of spotted and streaked violet and yellow blooms. “Domingo still sends me flowers, you know. Every day. And Spider arranges them for me. He adores orchids, and he knows how much it pleases me to have them done really well.”

“How kind of him,” Spraggue said, feeling that he’d become enmeshed in a drawing-room comedy, seeking vainly to return to the question of who she thought had arranged the trip wire. Not that her opinion would hold much water. She lived in fantasyland.

“I love coming down to the dressing room each morning to find something delicate and exotic. Domingo understood that part of me so well.” She detached one violet spray from the arrangement and held it against her cheek. “I rarely wear them, but just knowing they’re available picks up my spirits. That’s why I think she took them that day.”

“She?”

“Emma, darling. That is what we’re talking about, isn’t it? Who set up the trip wire. Perhaps I shall wear some of my orchids to Arthur’s party.”

“When did Emma take your flowers?”

“Let me see. Not long ago. Last Monday, I think it was. Naturally, she denied it. But I knew. I always know. She wants everything I have. She already has that lovely role and now—” Caroline caught herself. She had been frowning. She checked her image in the mirror to make sure no wrinkles remained. “Arthur must have told you about his party. Tomorrow night. Right here in the theater—”

“What about dress rehearsal?”

“Check your schedule, darling. The technical people will be doing some dreary run-through onstage, but the front-of-the-house areas will be devoted to the party. Black tie, just like the galas old what’s-his-name, that man who killed himself here—”

“Phelps.”

“That’s it. Arthur’s so keen on the idea. Just like old Phelps used to throw. All the actors, members of the press, plenty of photographers.…”

Darien had mentioned it. The chance to meet the backers of the show.

“I suppose you already know most of the people really involved in producing the show. As the star—”

Nothing he might have said could make her happier. Her eyes lit up.

“Well, I do know some of the more influential backers—”

“Any of them coming up from New York? Or is Arthur keeping this a local venture?”

“Why, darling”—she batted her eyelashes—“I really couldn’t say. Jamie Blakeley could be considered local. He has pieds à terre in so many cities. He practically insisted on my being in the show. He’s the one who gave me my little dog.”

Spraggue filed the name away. Blakeley. Aunt Mary would know him and he would know the other backers. Caroline chattered on, leaving him no chance for escape.

A huge party at the theater. Actors, director, press. Terrific. What an opportunity for the joker.

Spraggue heard wary footsteps behind him. Caroline halted in midsentence and gushed: “Oh, Dennis, darling, I was just telling Michael all about you and how much you do for the company and here you come right on cue. Michael Spraggue, meet Dennis Boland.”

The fat man smiled, but the smile wasn’t pleasant. “We’ve met,” he said. Spraggue was forcibly reminded of the despised childhood name, Spider. The house manager looked like a great bloated spider hanging in the corner of the room.

“How nice,” Caroline said blankly. “Mr. Spraggue’s been asking me absolutely penetrating questions about the company ghost. I think he’s been hiding his true vocation from us.”

Neither of the men responded.

“And you did my flowers so exquisitely this morning, Dennis. It’s too sweet of you.”

The fat man oiled his way over to Caroline’s dressing table and took her hand in his. With surprising grace, he bent and kissed it.

“It’s nothing, Caroline, nothing in the world,” he murmured. Spraggue sat up straighter. He had heard that voice before. In the wings that morning, yes. But somewhere else.…

Caroline smiled graciously. The performance would have been perfect, except for the tiny red mark that remained on her wrist when Spider let her hand slip away.

Spraggue stood. “I’ll leave you two,” he said. “It’s a busy day for me.”

“I’m sure it is,” Boland said.

Spraggue left them there, a frozen tableau, and walked down the hallway, lost in the memory of an unctuous voice. Then he had it. One line: “I just hope you know what you’re doing,” spoken behind Darien’s closed office door.