Murder on Location (25 page)

“David Hayes.”

“Shouldn't take more than ten minutes to fetch the boxes. Meanwhile, why don't you get us both a coffee? Not the stuff they sell downstairs. Go to Stewart's on James Street. They make the best coffee around. I've tried them all.”

When I got back, Ella has cleaned a place for me at one of the bleached maple wood tables that fanned out from her desk. Monty's papers looked more like Monty's effects. When your whole life is put together, you hope it will amount to more than two cardboard boxes. I pried
the lids off the boxes and then off the coffee. I saw Ella watching me, so I didn't mix business with pleasure. Then, when the cup was empty—she was right about Stewart's—I began to pull things out of box number one.

There were a lot of books, mostly books of plays with pencil lines drawn through many passages. Sometimes Monty had used different coloured pencils to keep track of two or more versions of the same play going at the same time. Occasionally there would be slips of paper with a part written in for a narrator.

Under the books, I found scrapbooks with clippings of reviews from all his productions. There were photographs included: a cast picture in colour with twenty people smiling with identical pink eyes from the camera flash, pictures of Monty presenting awards or accepting them. Some of the photographs were familiar. I was even in a couple of them, holding a spear, well to the back. Under the first scrapbook was another and another. There, during the Second World War, was Monty in uniform, shaking hands with John Masefield, the poet laureate. He'd never said anything about it.

Then came a series of small diaries. There was one for each year for twenty-eight years, the last one left incomplete on his death. In this, another hand—it must have been his sister's—had written on a blank page at the end of several weeks of blank pages, that Monty had died on this date. Four pages later, the time and date of the funeral were noted. I started to flip backwards in that last year looking for familiar names. He had commented on
Ned's drinking, the stinginess of the city council's donations toward a summer of Shakespeare in the park, and the difficulty of finding good local scripts.

This wasn't any good, this flipping backwards. It wasn't a magazine. So I reached for the first of the diaries and slowly worked my way through nearly thirty years of twisted dreams and frustrated ambition in the life of Grantham. At once Monty's writing voice seem stronger. There were fewer moans and complaints. He seemed to be full of life's juices and having a good time. Occasionally his sister butted in and put an end to a promising affair. Lucia was a demon for the straight and narrow. Here she was attending every rehearsal for
Salomé
and not paying much attention to
Stalag 17
. No women in that. There she put an end to a flirtation with Pamela McKeon, and later with Monica Bett, both of whom had shown real promise. She didn't object to men showing promise, though:

APRIL
2.
Young man tried to impress me with a piece of “original writing.” Familiar echoes. Turned out to be Salinger dressed up so it would fool no one. I had a talk with him. I told him that I recognized the original in his pastiche. He brazened it out, saying that it was experimental. I've never met anyone so ambitious. He's hungry for fame the way I've never been. His name is Neil Furlong, works as a garage mechanic, and comes
from Port Richmond. He can read and write, barely. Elspeth has stopped writing to me
…

That was in the early 1960s. A month later he wrote:

MAY
16.
Neil has some excellent ideas, but most of them come from comics or movies. His deceptions are so childish they are charming. And when I catch him out, he pouts as though I had been the deceiver. I've given him a reading list and have tried to tell him about singular verbs and plural subjects. What is at the bottom of this naked ambition?

Later still:

JUNE
20.
I've decided to let Neil act as my stage manager for
The Shrew.
Since he is always around it would be folly not to make use of him. I'm quite flattered when I hear him repeat one of my sayings … His father was in court this week for beating up his mother
…

The entries went on and on like that. Neil appeared to be working out well. That first awkward plagiarism was forgotten. Neil turned Monty into a one-man university. A move from Port Richmond to Niagara Falls was noted along with a change from mechanic to public relations man at the railroad. Toward the end of the decade Furlong
was absent for long periods, then back for an intense week or two connected with a play or revue. Then silence until the beginning of the seventies:

DECEMBER
23.
A card from Neil in Toronto. Very friendly! Does he imagine we don't have TV here in Grantham? His play was very well received by the critics, and I don't see him making any statements about his debt to
Angel on My Rooftop.
I've talked to Lucia about it, and she wants me to speak to Hollis
.

DECEMBER
24.
Drink with Hollis in the back office. He told me to forget the play. He sketched for me the costs involved in bringing a suit of this kind to court. I hope Neil has a merry Christmas. Imagine the cheek of sending me a card! I always said he was an extraordinary fellow
.

From then on—still in the early seventies—Furlong was mentioned only in passing. In 1975 Monty noted that his most recent TV play was based on well-known facts of a case involving people from the Falls. Later he noted that he had a play due to open on Broadway.

OCTOBER
25, 1976 …
He's taken the thing straight from Thomas Heywood!

I flipped over the pages more rapidly. Billie Mason's name came up under her maiden name. Again Lucia steps in. Again Monty dives into another theatrical production. I was tempted to linger over his accounts of meetings with Monica Bett, Elspeth Trail and the others, but decided to save them for a rainy day. It was five years ago when he first recorded meeting David Hayes:

2
MAY
.
Tall young man came in to watch rehearsal and afterward asked for work as anything from stagehand to extra. Educated fellow by the sound of him. Name of Hayes
.

19
MAY
.
David Hayes is working out well as ASM, unlike Jack Ringer, who prefers the sessions in the Harding House after rehearsals. David caught me in a blunder: I'd shortened a scene so that now Jessica will not be able to make the costume change. I've had to put the cut lines back. He suggested interchanging act iii, scene iii and iv. That way we will have a main scene separated by two in front of the curtains
…

30
MAY
.
Long talk with David. He promised to show me some stories he wrote at university. I told him to try writing a play
.

12
JUNE
.
Finished the last of David's stories. Nice touches to all of them, but he hasn't been able to
push them beyond nine pages, so development and characterization suffer. Says he's got a play in the works. Monica Bett is expecting!
…

9
AUGUST
.
After the show, David handed me a manuscript and rushed away. I spent all night reading it. It's a very accomplished comedy. He has a genius for laughter
.

12
AUGUST
.
David has sent the play to Neil Furlong! He knew that I had helped him start off, but nothing of my problems with him. I'll write to Neil to explain who David is. He is well-enough established, so he can afford to be kind to a beginner
.

3
OCTOBER
.
The worst has happened. Never, never, never, never, never, did I believe anyone could be so utterly low. Last month Neil phoned me to tell David that he had talked NBC into doing his play. He explained how he had worked on it himself to transform it to fit the format of a series, so the network would buy. I gave him David's number. I wanted no further role in this. Last night David came over and announced that this was to be a “learning assignment”: he would be paid a small amount, but would receive no credit. It was
Angel
all over again. Why are we condemned to repeat our mistakes? I'll write to Neil, try to appeal to his better instincts, but I fear he is beyond reasoning
.

Then we were in Monty's last year. David was obviously on his conscience. Every mention of Hayes was tinged with sadness, every mention of Furlong laced with disgust. But there was no hatred. He was like a sprinter talking about a non-starter. There was no resentment in his tone. David's ability somehow made him the winner no matter what had been stolen from him. Monty's was a strange kind of pride and I respected him for it. But as I walked out of the Special Collections Room and toward the burnt-orange stairway to the main reference section, I wondered how David Hayes had taken all this. Had he been as passive about it as Monty?

In the Reference Section, I looked up the Zodiac and was told to “
See
Astrology.” I found a book and spent half an hour reading up on the Sun signs. They were all there, except Pistachio.

TWENTY-TWO

From the lobby of the Library, with its bubbling fountain and babbling brook, I telephoned Martha Tracy. The line was busy. I hoped that it was Martha on the phone and not Billie. I wasted a handful of change trying to locate Savas. I left a message with Pete Staziak, another sergeant in the department and an old high-school friend. “Tell Chris that I think I can see daylight and green fields in the Niagara Falls business. Suggest to him that he keep an eye on Furlong. I think he has some explaining to do.” Pete said he'd pass the word, but didn't promise results. I shook the phone and told him I was a taxpayer and he laughed me off the line.

While I was standing there with little to show for my investments, and before the water music got to me, I put a few coins to work and dialled Captain Loomis in Lewiston to see whether he'd stumbled across anything interesting. When I asked him that, he said he'd leave the interpretation up to me. “Let's see,” he said, and I could hear the crackle of paper over the wire, “it was a 1959 two-door Ford, registered owner Joseph Furlong of Port Richmond. Ontario plates and …”

“That made the car ten years old at the time of the accident.”

“Yeah, according to this the body was rusted out. It wasn't worth much even before it hit the tree.”

“Witnesses?”

“Two. Peter and Eva Wheeler of Rochester were passing and say they saw the car, travelling at high speed, fail to slow down at a sharp curve. The car went into it at top speed, jumping the curb, went through the guard-rail and into a fat oak tree. That tree's claimed about a dozen fatalities in as many years.”

“Did they check the brakes after they got the wreck back to the garage?”

“Sure. But it was impossible to tell whether the brake fluid line separated as the car went through the guard-rail or before. The bottom of the car was scraped clean by the metal railing.”

“So, you were looking for mischief, were you?”

“It didn't smell of roses, I'll tell you that. Did you know the girl was pregnant?” That caught me like a punch in the mid-section.

“No, I didn't. That's in the post-mortem?”

“Yeah. The girl wasn't married. Under-age, you know. She was living at home with her father. We figured that she couldn't face going on or being found out, so …”

“She did herself in in a borrowed car?”

“That's about the size of it.”

“How pregnant was she?”

“The fetus was about three, three and a half months old.”

“Did anybody tell her father?”

“No. We didn't think that would make any difference. Bad enough the girl was dead. No need to break her old man's heart a second time.”

“Right. Well, thanks a lot for your help. I'll give your regards to Chris Savas when I see him.”

“Thanks, but to tell the truth, I've never met the guy. So long.”

I tried Martha Tracy's number again.

“Cooperman, where have you been?”

“Two hours ago I was drinking coffee in your kitchen. Ask Billie.”

“Ask her yourself, if you know where to find her.”

“Isn't she there?”

“I walk in with groceries enough to last all week and discover your friend gone.”

“Martha, are you sure? Maybe she went out for cigarettes or to get some clean clothes. Let's not panic.”

“She left a note that said thanks for everything. Shall we panic after all, or does your twisted little mind have another idea?”

“It means trouble, Martha. I'll be talking to you.”

“Somebody better. I'm not running a theatrical boarding house, you know.” On my way down the stairs, I thought of six ways to wring Billie Mason's lovely neck.

The Falls had continued to warm up while I was away and the wind had come around to the south. I left the Olds in a lot behind the Colonel John and made it to the lobby without running into the mob or the syndicate. I bought a paper, feeling actually warm outside for January. The cops were growing everywhere again for some reason. I felt like I'd missed a chapter in a serial. I found a constable near the reception area and asked him if he'd seen the sergeant. He said he'd been called away suddenly on another case, but he'd left word for me to wait for him here. All the way from Grantham I'd been having a meeting with myself at a high level. It was time to talk to Savas.