IT WASN’T EVIDENCE. Perhaps it wasn’t anything stronger than the antipathy I felt for this whole assignment. I looked round at the others.
Uncle No’ccount’s eyes were downcast. Whatever he thought, he was going to keep it to himself. Crystal’s attention was centred on Lou-Ann – probably she had paid no attention to Maw Cooney’s last words, only to the fact that they were the last, and the effect this would have on Lou-Ann.
Lou-Ann was sobbing loudly. The constable was frowning with impersonal, rueful concern – it meant nothing to him. Obviously, he assumed that any lady who had been pushed under a moving vehicle was entitled to a little leeway in referring to her pusher. He didn’t realize she travelled around with a home-grown matched set of bastards. He thought it was just any old bastard she was referring to.
Then Sam found us. Approaching hesitantly, he took in the situation at a glance, and wasted no time. ‘Baby! Sweetheart!’ He swept Lou-Ann into his arms. ‘Baby!’
And that was something else I should have known. Or noticed. His wild enthusiasm for her abilities, his unconcern for the problems of Perkins & Tate, his cold loathing for the Client. Yes, there’s nothing like a little hindsight after the penny has dropped.
‘There, there, baby,’ he crooned, his arms around her, his cheek against hers, rocking her gently.
It stirred the Client to action. He grabbed for Lou-Ann’s wrist and tugged her away from Sam. She came unresisting, not even noticing what was happening. Her gawkiness, the awkward impression she gave of being all knees and elbows, was gone now, dissolved in grief.
The Client lifted her, and she lay back, fluid, in his arms, like some Art Nouveau poster updated in modern dress. He looked down at her, his eyes cold behind the mask of concern on his face.
‘Ain’t nothing more we can do here,’ he said. ‘We’re going back to the hotel.’
‘Maw –’ she struggled feebly.
‘Nothing to do with us, now,’ he said. ‘We’ll leave Sam and Doug to take care of things here – that’s what we pay them for.’
He had to get that in. Sam’s face tightened. It didn’t matter to me. I felt strongly that I’d much rather be the Client’s employee than his friend – or his wife. It was the nastiest afterthought I’d had in a long time, and it didn’t bear close examination.
The Client swung towards the exit, carrying Lou-Ann. ‘Come on,’ he snapped over his shoulder. Crystal hesitated a moment, then followed them out.
Uncle No’ccount looked after them thoughtfully, then closed ranks with Sam and me. This is a terrible thing,’ he said. ‘What do we do now?’
It was a very good question. Too bad I didn’t have a very good answer – or any answer at all. Fortunately, the ball wasn’t in my court this time.
‘There’ll be an inquest,’ the young constable said. ‘We’ll let you know. Just routine in a traffic accident. The chap stopped, after all. Not as though it were really his fault. He had the green light. There was a crowd of people waiting at the kerb. She just shot out in front of him before he could brake. People pushing, jostling, impatient –’ He shrugged.
That summed it up nicely. Crowds at the kerb – probably most of them foreigners – an American woman who wasn’t used to the traffic being on the left, a moment’s carelessness, uncertain footing, perhaps jostling from behind – and another tourist bit the dust. The police were used to it.
Especially in the West End. In the height of the tourist season. Tourists were increasingly essential to the economy. They were also, as reflected in the young constable’s face, a bloody nuisance. They trailed around asking stupid questions, they complained about perfectly good service, they fell over their own feet and broke vital bones, they stepped in front of buses, they turned on gas fires and forgot to light them, they had heart attacks, they had premature babies. And, sometimes, they murdered each other.
But there was no evidence.
I looked at Sam, at Uncle No’ccount, at the constable. Their faces were grave and shuttered, each preoccupied with what this death would involve for him personally. For the constable, the police routine which would end in a verdict of misadventure. For Sam, the red tape, the temperament, the transatlantic telephone calls, the explanations – perhaps, even, some of the heartbreak – standing by, watching Lou-Ann suffer, without the right to comfort her.
For Uncle No’ccount – I glanced at him again, realizing how very little I knew about him. Not even whether my earlier suspicions, born of the Cousins’ sly remarks, about his feelings for Maw Cooney were true. His hair was disturbed, as though at some moment he had swept his hand through it to remove a hat he hadn’t been wearing. Slowly, in his own world, he brought the harmonica to his Ups and began to play. It was a dirge, a soft mourning wail for everything that had been and that could never be. As a tribute, it was as good as sending a bouquet – and a lot more personal.
‘Please! I can’t have you disturbing the other patients!’ A nurse came whirling around the edge of the screens, facing us fiercely, prepared to do battle for the living – as she must. Maw Cooney was beyond her help.
‘I’m sorry, ma’am.’ Uncle No’ccount lowered the harmonica, seemingly still in the daze of his own private world. ‘I didn’t mean to disturb nobody. I just didn’t rightly think.’
‘Come on,’ Sam said abruptly. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
Back at the hotel, Sam led us directly to Lou-Ann’s room. The door was ajar and I would have hesitated about entering, largely because I hate to face a woman in tears, but Sam barged ahead. More slowly, Uncle No’ccount and I followed.
Sam had halted, just inside the door. An open suitcase was on one of the twin beds, partly packed. The room already had a bare and impersonal feeling. I noticed a vaguely familiar look to some of the clothing spread on the bed beside the suitcase – the garments had belonged to Maw Cooney. There was nothing in the room to mark Lou-Ann’s passage.
The bathroom door opened, and Crystal came out, carrying a toothbrush, sponge bag, and oddments of cosmetics. She halted upon seeing us, curiously defensive. ‘Well, it’s got to be done,’ she said. ‘Better sooner than later – and there’s nobody else to do it. I mean, you can’t expect poor Lou-Ann to.’
Sam seemed ready to argue the point. ‘Where is Lou-Ann?’ he demanded.
‘She’s gone.’ More defensive than ever, Crystal refused to meet his eyes. ‘Bart’s moved her in with him. They’re up in his suite now.’
Sam turned white. Over his head, Crystal and Uncle No’ccount exchanged glances. So, Sam’s feelings were common knowledge to the Troupe. I was the only mug who hadn’t known – but then, I had walked in in the middle of the film.
‘I reckon you can go up, if’n you want,’ Crystal said. ‘I don’t expect they’ll mind.’
Sam turned on his heel and raced out. Crystal and Uncle No’ccount communed silently for another moment. Uncertain of where my post ought to be, I lingered.
‘Is there anything I can do?’ I asked. Why do you always feel like the third head on a two-headed calf at moments like these?
‘I reckon not.’ Crystal smiled faintly. ‘Thank you, though. I take your offer mighty kindly. I know Lou-Ann will, too.’
That seemed to be my dismissal. As well as my marching orders. If I read it correctly, I was expected to go upstairs and make the same useless offer of assistance to Lou-Ann. There never was anything one could do – unless, perhaps, just being there was doing enough.
I was aware, as I went out, that Uncle No’ccount had moved forward to start folding some of the garments on the bed and lay them gently in the suitcase . . .
Sam opened the door. He hadn’t regained any colour, and he didn’t seem very pleased to see me. ‘I thought you were the doctor,’ he said, stepping back to let me in.
The Client was lounging against the window, looking down, but his heart wasn’t in it. Lou-Ann was nowhere in sight.
‘Where is she?’ I asked.
‘I put her to bed.’ The Client moved away from his vantage point. ‘She was pretty cut-up – and she’s got a show to do tonight. Sam, here, phoned down for a doctor for her. I suppose it can’t do her any harm. You want to see her? Reckon that can’t do no harm, neither.’
‘No, I won’t disturb her,’ I said. ‘I just came along to see if there was anything I could do.’
‘Not much nobody can do – time like this.’ The Client moved restlessly towards the window again, but abandoned the idea after a brief glance out.
‘You’ll be able to help me,’ Sam said. There’ll be all kinds of red tape over this. You’ll know what to do.’
I refrained from pointing out that Perkins & Tate clients weren’t in the habit of dying on them. ‘You’ll probably have to do something about the American Embassy, for a start,’ I suggested helpfully. ‘I think they’re supposed to be notified in cases like this.’
‘Cases like what?’ The Client whirled on me, looking ready to fight.
‘Sudden death,’ I said. ‘One of their Nationals dying in a foreign country. I think it comes under their jurisdiction. They might be able to help with the red tape, too.’
‘Oh, yuh.’ Losing interest, he turned away. His restless pacing carried him past the window again and again, the view failed to hold him.
There was a knock at the door. Casually, while Sam was leading the doctor through to see Lou-Ann, I strolled over to the window myself and checked. It was a lot more interesting for me than it was for Bart. So far as he was concerned, there were just a couple of middle-aged ladies waiting at the bus stop – they must have been getting on for twenty-two.
‘She hasn’t been able to sleep, she can’t even stop crying.’ Sam came back into the room with the bulletin, as though it might be of interest to someone. It left Bart even more indifferent than the scene beneath the window. Then he seemed to notice that Sam was expecting some reaction.
‘That’s sure too bad.’ Almost visibly, he pulled himself together. ‘Poor kid.’
‘I can see it’s just breaking your heart.’ Sam eyed him with distaste.
A nasty light flared in Bart’s eyes, then dimmed as the doctor came out of Lou-Ann’s room. The doctor was heading towards Sam, but Bart intercepted him.
‘How is she, Doc?’ He did it well. He was humble, anxious, unmistakably the worried husband.
I wondered if the act would have impressed me if I hadn’t disliked him so thoroughly. His shoulders were slumped forward, his mouth drooped, pulling his face into the proper lines of unhappiness, but his eyes were watchful and calculating. Even so, it would have registered with the right impact in a photo.
The doctor responded to it immediately. Bart took his arm and drew him over to a corner as he started to answer. We were left outside the consultation. But we weren’t going to let him get away with that. Sam and I exchanged glances, then bore down on them. Sam wanted to hear about Lou-Ann – and I had my own reasons for wanting to know what was being said in that corner.
‘...great shock, naturally,’ the doctor was saying.
Bart nodded, the impatience only visible to those who knew him. ‘But you’ve given her something?’ he insisted.
‘Yes, you needn’t worry. She’ll sleep –’
‘Sleep!’ Bart interrupted. ‘She can’t go to sleep now! Didn’t nobody tell you who we are? We’ve got a show to give tonight. If’n you want her to sleep, then you give her some pills to take later on. But she’s got to be awake for the performance. We got a Public to think of. Don’t you know “The Show Must Go On”?’
The doctor backed away from the vehemence of Bart’s protest. A certain reserve shuttered his face as he began to get the picture. ‘I think –’
‘It’s all right, Bart,’ Lou-Ann stood in the doorway. ‘I remembered about the show. I didn’t take the pills he gave me. I can go on tonight.’
‘Good girl!’ Bart crossed to put his arms around her, a split second before Sam could reach her. She clung to him shakily. ‘I knowed you was a Trouper. But –’ he glared at Sam – ‘that doc shoulda been briefed not to give you nothing that might slow you down.’
‘She shouldn’t go on,’ Sam said stubbornly. ‘She should take those pills and go to bed. The show can go on without her for a couple of nights.’
‘Is that so?’ Bart grinned wolfishly. ‘I thought you was the one who figured she was so good the show could go on without anybody but her. You’re sure changing your tune fast.’
‘These are special circumstances, and she shouldn’t –’
‘I’ll go on, Bart.’ Lou-Ann seemed in a daze, but she was still fighting. ‘I’ll make them laugh tonight, Bart. Honest, I will.’
‘Sure, you will, kid.’ He hugged her, enjoying Sam’s face as he did so. ‘You’ll be great.’
She was terrible, of course. She flung herself around like a demented rag doll – except that she was flesh-and-blood, and her timing was off. She seemed likely to do herself a permanent injury, rather than make the audience laugh.
The audience felt it, too. They heard the heavy thud as she hit the floor without breaking her fall properly. It upset them, without their knowing why, and they resented it. There had been no publicity yet – so they didn’t know they were seeing a Gallant Little Trouper. They just thought it was a bad performance. And the feeling was getting through to Lou-Ann on stage, driving her to more drastic mugging, more frantic gymnastics.
Sam was suffering with – and for – her. ‘She ought to take it easier.’ He clutched my arm during a particularly dicey pratfall. ‘She’ll never make it through the week, if she goes on at this rate. I don’t give a damn what Bart says – after tonight, she’s out of the show until she pulls herself together.’
‘Okay, but who’ll bell the cat?’ I murmured. Bart had come onstage now, standing in the background like a great black panther, brooding on the scene. As the amplifiers throbbed out the familiar beat, he stepped into the spotlight.
‘Homesteader, Homesteader,
‘Ridin’ alone ...’
The audience went wild. Wilder than usual. After the embarrassment of the always corny, but now inept, comedy routine, the dark magnetic figure singing the hit song of the moment provided release and exhilaration. I doubted that he would allow Lou-Ann to take any time off, now that she was so bad. The worse the others were, the better he looked by comparison – and he knew it. You could call the Client a lot of things – but not one of them was fool’.
‘She’s got to knock off and go home now.’ Sam leaned forward in his seat, straining to look into the wings, where Lou-Ann’s small slight figure slumped against the wall in dejection. ‘Come on, I’m going to take her home.’
We were in aisle seats, but we had to fight our way through a crowd of standees to get to the door leading backstage. I was aware of the Client’s cold eyes following our progress from the stage. People didn’t walk out when he was singing – especially not his Road Manager and his PRO. We’d pay for this defection later.
We hadn’t quite reached Lou-Ann when the Client ended his number and held up his hand to quell the audience. ‘Now, folks,’ he said, ‘I’d like a big hand for a real little Trouper. Y’all don’t know what it cost her to come out here tonight and give you a show.’ He gestured to Lou-Ann and she moved forward on to the stage.
Sam tried to stop her, but she brushed past him. Any time, anywhere, any actress will climb over a mountain of corpses to take an extra bow – and Lou-Ann wasn’t going to be done out of this one.
‘Yessir.’ Bart put his arm around her, displaying her to the audience like a prize specimen. ‘This brave little lady came here tonight, even though her heart was sure-enough breaking, just so as not to disappoint all you lovely people. You see, her poor darling mother – beloved of us all, I might add – died today. In a traffic accident.’
There it was again – one of the things I had learned to dread in the States. The appalling American habit – elevated into a virtue by the ‘jest plain folks, hell, jest plain honest folks’ type – of hauling out their bleeding guts and holding them aloft for attention and admiration.
By rights, the audience should have shrunk from it.
But your reticent Englishman feels that reticence should apply only to himself – he doesn’t worry overmuch about what you want to give away. And it was certainly adding something to the show tonight. Just ask any typical member of an audience about the most memorable performance he ever saw. Some of them will choose Olivier or Gielgud, but nine out of ten – being jest plain honest folks – will plump for the night the juvenile lead fell into the orchestra pit, fracturing his femur, dislocating three vertebrae, lacerating his skull, and had to be carried off, streaming with blood.
They applauded with wild enthusiasm, and Lou-Ann took her bows proudly. Bart still had his arm around her, as though he were never going to let her go again. Certainly he wasn’t going to let her back out of any performance while he could get this reaction from an audience. They milked the applause for all it was worth, then Bart held up his hand again.
‘I’d like all of you to know that I’m working on a new song now that’s going to be a tribute to Maw, and tell all about how she cheered us on through the dark days we’ve had, and how much she meant to us all. But until I get that finished, I’d like to sort of “make do” with somebody else’s song, which kinda fits the occasion.’
The Cousins had evidently been briefed ahead. They picked up the downbeat and gave him an intro. Perhaps I was the only one offstage who noticed that Uncle No’ccount had lowered his harmonica, bowed his head, and dissociated himself from the proceedings. For a moment, I wondered whether he might not know the tune, then I realized that even I knew the tune. In that case, Uncle No’ccount had more taste than I had ever given him credit for.
The song was that great old tearjerker, ‘In The Baggage Car Ahead’. All about the grave litte girl who is sitting all alone in the train steaming southwards towards her home and, when a kindly stranger asks her where her mother is, the child replies, ‘In The Baggage Car Ahead’.
I had never seen anyone do it before, but Sam was actually gnashing his teeth. He snarled out several words, any one of which his own dear mother would have flattened him with the back of her hand for. ‘I’ll kill that bastard,’ he grated. ‘I’ll kill him.’
But the Client wasn’t the type to be killed. He was a predator, not a victim. Sam must know that. Just as he must know that, with a solid English success under Bart’s belt, he must go on building Bart for the Agency. His personal feelings didn’t come under any heading on the Agency’s Balance Sheet, so they weren’t worth considering. Not even by Sam. That was the worst of it – the bright New American Dream held no place for emotions. It measured success by the bankroll, the ratings, the wall-to-wall broads and broadloom. The golden eggs were beginning to roll now, so the Goose was sacrosanct. Nobody would kill him – they’d kill themselves first, trying to quash indictments, wall-papering over murky stains from the past, and turning a blind eye to the future. Our Boy Bart had it made now.
The song ended, and Bart took his bow. Lou-Ann, tears streaming down her face, took a bow, too. I felt sick. But what else could you expect? Maw Cooney had brought her up to curry favour with an audience at any price. All Lou-Ann knew was that applause said that they were loving her. For the wrong reasons – but they were loving her. She bowed again.
‘Come on,’ I said to Sam. ‘I’ll buy you a drink.’