The actress’s hands flew to her throat. “But I told you, I had spilled a pot of facial powder.”
“Precisely so. Gervaise Graham’s Satinette. A very distinctive shade. And so the catalyst of the crime now becomes the instrument of its solution.”
“How do you mean, Gillette?” I asked.
Gillette moved off to stand before the fireplace — or rather the canvas and wood strutting that had been arranged to resemble a fireplace. The actor spent a moment contemplating the plaster coals that rested upon a balsa grating. “Detective work,” he intoned, “is founded upon the observation of trifles. When Miss Fenton overturned that facial powder, she set in motion a chain of events that yielded a clue — a clue as transparent as that of a weaver’s tooth or a compositor’s thumb — and one that made it patently obvious who took the missing stone.”
“Gillette!” cried Mr. Frohman. “No more theatrics! Who took Miss Fenton’s sapphire?”
“The thief is here among us,” he declared, his voice rising to a vibrant timbre. “And the traces of Satinette facial powder are clearly visible upon — Wait! Stop him!”
All at once, the theater erupted into pandemonium as young Henry Quinn, who had been watching from his accustomed place in the wings, suddenly darted forward and raced toward the rear exit.
“Stop him!” Gillette called to a pair of burly stagehands. “Hendricks! O’Donnell! Don’t let him pass!”
The fleeing boy veered away from the stagehands, upsetting a flimsy side table in his flight, and made headlong for the forward edge of the stage. Gathering speed, he attempted to vault over the orchestra pit, and would very likely have cleared the chasm but for the fact that his ill-fitting trousers suddenly slipped to his ankles, entangling his legs and causing him to land in an awkward heap at the base of the pit.
“He’s out cold, Mr. Gillette,” came a voice from the pit. “Nasty bruise on his head.”
“Very good, Hendricks. If you would be so good as to carry him into the lobby, we shall decide what to do with him later.”
Miss Fenton pressed a linen handkerchief to her face as the unconscious figure was carried past. “I don’t understand, Mr. Gillette. Henry took my sapphire? He’s just a boy! I can’t believe he would do such a thing!”
“Strange to say, I believe Quinn’s intentions were relatively benign,” said Gillette. “He presumed, when he came across the stone on your dressing table, that it was nothing more than a piece of costume jewelry. It was only later, after the alarm had been raised, that he realized its value. At that point, he became frightened and could not think of a means to return it without confessing his guilt.”
“But what would a boy do with such a valuable stone?” Frohman asked.
“I have no idea,” said Gillette. “Indeed, I do not believe that he had any interest whatsoever in the sapphire.”
“No interest?” I said. “What other reason could he have had for taking it?”
“For the pin.”
“What?”
Gillette gave a rueful smile. “You are all wearing costumes that are several sizes too large. Our rehearsals have been slowed for want of sewing pins to hold up the men’s trousers and pin back the ladies’ frocks. I myself dispatched Quinn to find a fastener for Mr. Lyndal.”
“The essence of theater,” I said, shaking my head with wonder.
“Pardon me, Lyndal?”
“As you were saying earlier. An actor must consider even the smallest object from every possible angle. We all assumed that the brooch had been taken for its valuable stone. Only you would have thought to consider it from the back as well as the front.” I paused. “Well done, Gillette.”
The actor gave a slight bow as the company burst into spontaneous applause. “That is most kind,” he said, “but now, ladies and gentlemen, if there are no further distractions, I should like to continue with our rehearsal. Act one, scene four, I believe...”
It was several hours later when I knocked at the door to Gillette’s dressing room. He bade me enter and made me welcome with a glass of excellent port. We settled ourselves on a pair of makeup stools and sat for a few moments in a companionable silence.
“I understand that Miss Fenton has elected not to pursue the matter of Quinn’s theft with the authorities,” I said after a time.
“I thought not,” Gillette said. “I doubt if her gentleman friend would appreciate seeing the matter aired in the press. However, we will not be able to keep young Quinn with the company. He has been dismissed. Frohman has been in touch with another young man I once considered for the role. Charles Chapman.”
“Chaplin, I believe.”
“That’s it. I’m sure he’ll pick it up soon enough.”
“No doubt.”
I took a sip of port. “Gillette,” I said, “there is something about the affair that troubles me.”
He smiled and reached for a pipe. “I thought there might be,” he said.
“You claimed to have spotted Quinn’s guilt by the traces of face powder on his costume.”
“Indeed.”
I lifted my arm. “There are traces of Miss Fenton’s powder here on my sleeve as well. No doubt I acquired them when I was searching for the missing stone in the dressing area — after the theft had been discovered.”
“No doubt,” said Gillette.
“The others undoubtedly picked up traces of powder as well.”
“That is likely.”
“So Quinn himself might well have acquired his telltale dusting of powder after the theft had occurred, in which case it would not have been incriminating at all.”
Gillette regarded me with keen amusement. “Perhaps I noticed the powder on Quinn’s sleeve before we searched the dressing area,” he offered.
“Did you?”
He sighed. “No.”
“Then you were bluffing? That fine speech about the observation of trifles was nothing more than vain posturing?”
“It lured a confession out of Quinn, my friend, so it was not entirely in vain.”
“But you had no idea who the guilty party was! Not until the moment he lost his nerve and ran!”
Gillette leaned back and sent a series of billowy smoke rings toward the ceiling. “That is so,” he admitted, “but then, as I have been at some pains to remind you, I am not Sherlock Holmes.”
Hannah Tinti
Home Sweet Home
From Epoch
Pat and Clyde were murdered on pot roast night. The doorbell rang just as Pat was setting the butter and margarine (Clyde was watching his cholesterol) on the table. She was thinking about James Dean. She had loved him desperately as a teenager, seen his movies dozens of times, written his name across her notebooks, carefully taped pictures of him to the inside of her locker so that she would have the pleasure of seeing his tortured, sullen face from East of Eden as she exchanged her French and English textbooks for science and math. When she graduated from high school she took down the photos and pasted them to the inside cover of her yearbook, which she perused longingly several times over the summer and brought with her to the University of Massachusetts, where it sat, unopened, alongside her thesaurus and abridged collegiate dictionary until she met Clyde, received her M.R.S. degree, and packed her things to move into their two-bedroom ranch house on Bridge Street.
Before she put the meat in the oven that afternoon, Pat had made herself a cup of tea and turned on the television. Channel 38 was showing Rebel Without a Cause, and as the light slowly began to rise through the screen of their old Zenith she saw James Dean on the steps of the planetarium, clutching at the mismatched socks of a dead Sal Mineo and crying. She put down her tea, slid her warm fingertips inside the V-neck of her dress, and held her left breast. Her heart was suddenly pounding, her nipple hard and erect against the palm of her hand. It was like seeing an old lover, like remembering a piece of herself that no longer existed. She watched the credits roll and glanced outside to see her husband mowing the lawn. He had a worried expression on his face and his socks pulled up to his knees.