To my surprise, he turned his back on me and began walking away along the marble floor, his footsteps clacking and echoing hollowly throughout the vast foyer.
My apprehension was at its height. I did not dare enter the room. Instead, I raised my fist and rapped softly. “Landry?” I said.
His voice came back to me, through the mahogany woodwork: “Come on in.”
All my fears fell away, and I turned the knob and walked into the room, then stopped dead.
There, lying atop a gold cushion, surrounded by black satin sheets that completely covered what might have been a desk, or else simply a table or stand designed for someone of his size and weight, was Landry: a single, movable trunk no more than two and a half feet long from the head to the abrupt cessation at the waist. The ears had been cropped away, so there were only openings on either side of the head, the eyes were slits that glowered sightlessly, and the trunk was dressed in a coat of gold lame.
“So,” Landry said, edging a cigarette out of an open pack lying before him with his teeth, and then likewise scratching a match and applying it to the cigarette until its end glowed redly, and then transferring the lighted cigarette to his mouth, “You follow the stocks, don’t you? Ought to keep your eye on C and B. That’s a growth industry.”
The Playhouse Murder
by Hal Charles
It was all make-believe — until Death wrote the script!
Elaine was nervous and bound to make a mistake, but I forced myself to stay seated and watch the scene develop.
“Oh, Father, Christina is dead before my very eyes.”
“Hush, Beatrice,” said the bearded man. “It is the way of nature. The weak are preyed upon by the strong.”
“But Christina was my favorite dove.”
At that moment a tall man wearing a cape appeared behind them. Perched on his shoulder was a huge hooded hawk.
She turned toward him suddenly. “Who are...”
“No, no, no,” screamed a voice from the darkness. “How many times do I have to tell you that your turn comes after the Duke speaks, not before.” A small figure in cut-off jeans and a t-shirt bounded onto the stage.
“I’m sorry,” Elaine said.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” mimicked the director. “All I’ve heard from you this last week of rehearsal is how sorry you are. This isn’t the senior play, missy! This show goes on in two nights, and I’m not going to let your missed cues and dropped lines embarrass me.”
Elaine began to cry. When I could see her tears were real, I couldn’t hold back any longer. “Wait a minute,” I shouted, “you can’t talk to her like that.”
The director glared up at me as I marched down an aisle. “And who may I ask is this, the local drama critic?”
“I’m Elaine’s father and...”
“Oh, Daddy,” she said with unmistakeable disgust, “you don’t understand. Mr. Fields is right. I do keep messing up.”
“Ah, our backwoods constable,” said the director on seeing my badge. “If you’re out to arrest somebody, I assure you the only crime here is your daughter’s acting.” He turned to the rest of the cast. “My leading lady is felled by an emergency appendectomy, and I’m stuck with a no-talent local.”
I was about to demonstrate the long arm of the law was more than a cliche when the caped figure with the hawk interrupted.
“Gentlemen, enough of this bickering. Larry, if you’d spend more time directing our last-minute fill-in and less on your daily constitutionals around the countryside, we’d be better off. I’ve learned to adjust to the obvious shortcomings of this production.” He looked condescendingly at the cast and crew. “I should think you could do as much. Now, if you’re through wasting my time...”
Roger Manchester seemed so different from the actor I had seen so many times in the movies. He had been up there for years with Gable, Flynn, and Cooper. When a new generation of leading men had come along, though, he showed up in more mature roles, on TV guest spots, and in the papers — always with a young starlet at some Hollywood party. He had always played the humble good guy, but in person he seemed the opposite. How had Seth Fuller, the owner of the playhouse, gotten an actor of Manchester’s stature to come to Clement County, Kentucky?
I apologized to Fields and the rest of the cast, then got in my car and headed for the office. I had made a mistake, but with Elaine I was used to that. Since her mother had died a few years ago, raising Elaine had become solely my responsibility, and I was usually a little overprotective. I had always been able to keep my temper in check, except when it came to my daughter.
Things at the office were slower than a checkers game on the courthouse steps. Sarah Fricker registered what had become a daily complaint — someone was peeping through her bedroom window. Given Sarah’s spinster looks, I could never figure out whether she was complaining or bragging. Then Mrs. Hanks over at the library stormed in during her lunch hour to tell me that another book on the Citizens United against Trash’s so-called “hit list” had disappeared. Over the last few months the Reverend Harlan Spiker and CUT had stirred up more trouble with their campaign than a hungry bear in a hornet’s nest. Later that afternoon Clem Riddle had me come out to his farm. Seems those no-count Bowser boys had been fooling around his cornfield. I’d watched Tod and Rod climb up the ladder from tying tin cans on alley-cat tails to hot-wiring cars. Who knows what they were up to this time? I’m not complaining, mind you. This town’s been like a family to me, helping me raise Elaine. I’ve never once regretted coming back to Woodhole after college and making my life here.
I found nothing at Clem’s. When I got back a little after dark Elaine still hadn’t returned from the playhouse, so I pulled some chicken and potato salad from the fridge and popped a beer open-. Bench had just ended the Reds’ seventh with a liner to short when I heard a car.
A minute later Elaine came into the kitchen followed by a tall man of about thirty wearing khaki pants and a blue shirt. Real Ivy League. She introduced him as Philip Reede, the man who had written the play she’d been so excited about since getting the part.
“Did you know, Daddy, that Philip, Mr. Reede, won a Tony last year for his very first play and The New York Times said he was ‘the prime candidate to become the next Eugene O’Neil.’ ”
“Some overnight success,” said Reede, accepting a can of beer. “The only reason they thought it was my first play was that nobody would read the ten I had written earlier.”
He filled the air with a hearty laugh.
“What brings a successful writer like you out to Clement County?” I asked.
“Seth Fuller did me a favor a few years back, and I owed him one. Besides, I wanted to try out Death of the Duchess on ordinary folks before opening it to the self-proclaimed sophisticated New York audience.”
“Elaine hasn’t told me much,” I said. “What’s the play about?”
“Have you ever read Robert Browning’s ‘My Last Duchess’?” he asked.
“Back in college, I think, but I don’t remember much about it.”
“Basically it’s about a Renaissance duke named Ferrara who has just lost his wife and is negotiating to secure his next duchess. The poem’s a psychological study of Ferrara. You see, for over a century since the poem was published, one question has troubled readers: what happened to the Duke’s last duchess?”
“And you play is going to tell us.” I popped open another beer. “Listen, I appreciate your bringing Elaine home. Even though Wood-hole’s no New York City, I still don’t like my daughter out there alone.”
“They’re not too far apart,” said Reede. “I saw two creeps in a blue pickup out at the playhouse tonight who look like they just crawled out from under a 42nd St. rock.”