Queens Full (3 page)

Ellery knocked.

Scutney's voice screamed, “I said
nobody!
”

“It's Ellery Queen.”

“Oh. Come in.”

The office was a little symphony in stainless steel. Scutney sat at his desk, left elbow anchored to blotter, left fist supporting cheek, eyes fixed on telephone. All Ellery could think of was Napoleon after the Battle of Waterloo contemplating what might have been.

Arch Dullman stood at the one window, chewing on a dead cigar. He did not turn around.

Ellery dropped into a chair. “Storm trouble?”

The bunny-nose twitched. “Benedict phoned from the airfield in Boston. All planes grounded.”

The window lit up as if an atom bomb had gone off. Dullman jumped back and Scutney shot to his feet. A crash jarred the theatrical photographs on the walls out of alignment. Immediately the heavens opened and the alley below the window became a river.

“This whole damn production is jinxed,” Dullman said, glancing at his watch. “They'll be starting to come in soon, Bluefield. We'll have to postpone.”

“And give them another chance to laugh at me?” The little Bluefield jaw enlarged. “We're holding that curtain.”

“How long do you think we can hold it? Benedict's plane mightn't be able to take off for hours.”

“The storm is traveling northwestward, Archer. Boston should clear any minute. It's only a half-hour flight.”

Dullman went out. Ellery heard him order the house lights switched on and the curtain closed. He did not come back.

The phone came to life at 8:25. Scutney pounced on it. “What did I tell you? He's on his way!”

Foster Benedict got to the Playhouse at eighteen minutes past nine. The rain had stopped, but the alley leading to the stage entrance was dotted with puddles and the actor had to hop and sidestep to avoid them. From his scowl, he took the puddles as a personal affront. Scutney and Dullman hopped and sidestepped along with him, both talking at once.

The company waiting expectantly in the stage entrance pressed back as Benedict approached. He strode past them without a glance, leaving an aroma of whisky and eau de cologne behind him. If he was drunk, Ellery could detect no evidence of it.

Rodge Fowler was stern-jawed. And Joan Truslow, Ellery noticed, looked as if she had just been slapped.

Foster Benedict glanced about. “You—Mr. Bluefish, is it? Where's my dressing room?”

“At the other side of the stage, Mr. Benedict,” Scutney puffed. “But there's no time—”

“They've been sitting out there for over an hour,” Dullman said. The booing and stamping of the audience had been audible in the alley.

“Ah.” The actor seated himself in the stage doorman's chair. “The voice of Wrightsburg.”

“Wrights
ville
,” Scutney said. “Mr. Benedict, really—”

“And these, I gather,” Benedict said, inspecting the silent cast, “are the so-called actors in this misbegotten exercise in theatrical folly?”

“Mr. Benedict,” Scutney said again, “
please!
”

Ellery had not seen Benedict for a long time. The face that had once been called the handsomest in the American theater looked like overhandled dough. Sacs bulged under the malicious eyes. The once taut throat was beginning to string. Only the rich and supple voice was the same.

“The little lady there,” the actor said, his stare settling on Joan. “An orchid in the cabbage patch. What does she play, Dullman? The heroine, I hope.”

“Yes, yes,” Dullman said. “But there's no time for introductions or anything, Benedict. You'll have to go on as you are for the first act—”

“My make-up box, Phil.” Benedict extended his arm and snapped his fingers, his eyes still on Joan. Her face was chalky. Ellery glanced at Roger's hands. They were fists.

“Phil Stone isn't here,” Dullman said. “Remember?”

“Oh, dear, I forgot my make-up. But does it really matter?”

“There's no time to make up, either! Manson's stuff is still in the star dressing room and you can use his when you dress between acts. Look, are you going on or aren't you?”

“Mr. Benedict.” Scutney was trembling. “I give you precisely thirty seconds to get out on that stage and take your position for the curtain. Or I prefer charges to Equity.”

The actor rose, smiling. “If I recall the stage business, dear heart, and believe me I do,” he said to Joan, “we'll have an enchanting opportunity to become better acquainted during the first act. Then perhaps a little champagne supper after the performance? All
right
, Bluefish!” he said crossly. “Just as I am, eh?” He shrugged. “Well, I've played the idiotic role every other way. It may be amusing at that.”

He stalked onstage.

“Places!” Dullman bellowed. Joan drifted away like a ghost in shock. The rest of the cast scurried. “Fowler. Fowler?”

Roger came to life.

“Where's that lights man of yours? Get with it, will you?” As Roger walked away, Dullman froze. “Is that Benedict out there making a
speech?
”

“In the too, too solid flesh,” Ellery said with awe, peeping from the wings. Benedict had stepped out on the apron and he was explaining with comical gestures and facial contortions why “this distinguished Wrongsville audience” was about to see the great Foster Benedict perform Act One of
The Death of Don Juan
—“the biggest egg ever laid by a turkey”—in street clothes and
sans
make-up. The audience was beginning to titter and clap.

Ellery turned at a gurgle behind him. Scutney's nose was twitching again.

“What is he
doing?
Who does he think he
is?
”

“Barrymore in
My Dear Children
, I guess.” Dullman was chewing away on his cigar. He seemed fascinated.

They could only watch helplessly while Benedict played the buffoon. His exit was a triumph of extemporization. He bowed gravely, assumed a ballet stance, and then, like Nijinsky in
The Spectre of the Rose
, he took off in a mighty leap for the wings.

ACT I. Scene 5.

Ellery, jammed in with Scutney Bluefield among the standees at the rear of the theater, watched the first act in total disbelief.

Benedict deliberately paraphrased speech after speech. The bewildered amateurs waiting for their cues forgot their lines. Then he would throw the correct cue, winking over the footlights. He capered, struck attitudes, invented business, addressed broad asides to the rocking audience. He transformed the old melodrama into a slapstick farce.

Ellery glanced down at Scutney. What he saw made him murmur hastily, “He's doing far more damage to himself than to you.”

But Scutney said, “It's me they're howling at,” in pink-eyed fury, and he groped his way through the lobby doors and disappeared.

The seduction scene was an interminable embarrassment. Once during the scene, in sheer self-defense, Joan did something that made Benedict yelp. But he immediately tossed an ad-lib to the audience that Ellery did not catch, and in the ensuing shriek of laughter returned to the attack. At the scene's conclusion Joan stumbled off the stage like a sleepwalker.

Ellery found that he was grinding his teeth.

The curtain came down at last. Ushers opened the fire-exit doors at both sides of the theater. People, wiping their eyes, pushed into the alleys. Ellery wriggled through the lobby to the street and lit a bitter-tasting cigaret. Long after the warning buzzer sounded, he lingered on the sidewalk.

Finally, he went in.

The house lights were still on. Surprised, Ellery glanced at his watch. Probably Benedict needed extra time to get into costume and make up for the second act. Or perhaps—the thought pleased him—Roger had punched him in the nose.

The house lights remained on. The audience began to shuffle, murmur, cough.

Ellery edged through the standees to the extreme left aisle and made for the stage door. It was deathly quiet backstage.

Scutney Bluefield's door was open, and Arch Dullman was stamping up and down the office in a cloud of angry smoke. He seized Ellery.

“Seen Bluefield anywhere?”

“No,” Ellery said. “What's wrong?”

“I don't give a damn who Benedict thinks he is,” Dullman said. “Even a sucker like Bluefield deserves a better shake. First that moldy hunk of ham turns the first act into a low-comedy vaudeville bit, now he won't answer his call! Queen, do me a favor and get him out of there.”

“Why me?”

“I don't trust myself. What's more, you tell him for me that if he doesn't play the rest of this show straight I'll personally bust that balloon he calls a head!”

Ellery's built-in alarm was jangling for all it was worth. “You'd better come with me.”

They hurried behind the upstage flat to the other side of the theater. Ellery rapped on the starred door. He rapped again. “Mr. Benedict?”

There was no answer.

“Mr. Benedict, you're holding up the curtain.”

Silence.

“Benedict?”

Ellery opened the door.

Foster Benedict, his back to the door, was in the chair at the dressing table, half lying among the wigs and make-up boxes.

He was partly dressed in a Don Juan costume. The shirt was of flowing white silk and just below the left shoulder blade, from the apex of a wet red ragged stain, the handle of a knife protruded.

ACT II. Scene 1.

“This character is clean off his chump,” Dullman said, jamming a fresh cigar between his teeth. “Imagine playing around with the trick knife and the goo at a time like this. How about acting your age, Benedict? In fact, how about acting?” He brushed past Ellery. “Come on, snap out of it.”

“Don't touch him,” Ellery said.

Dullman glared at him. “You're kidding.”

“No.”

Dullman's mouth opened and the cigar fell out. He stooped and fumbled for it.

Ellery leaned over the dressing table, keeping his hands to himself. The skin was a mud-yellow and the lips were already cyanotic. Benedict's eyes were open. As Ellery's face came within their focus they fluttered and rolled.

He saw now that the stain was spreading.

“Bluefield,” Dullman said. “My God, where's Bluefield? I've got to find Bluefield.”

“Never mind Bluefield. I saw a doctor I know in the audience, Dr. Farnham. Hurry, Dullman.”

Dullman turned blindly to the doorway. It was blocked by the cast and the stagehands. None of them appeared to understand what had happened. Joan Truslow had her hand to her mouth childishly, looking at the blood and the knife. As Dullman broke through he collided with Roger Fowler, coming fast.

“What's going on? Where's Joan?”

“Out of my way, damn you.” Dullman stumbled toward the stage.

Ellery shut the door and went quickly back to the dressing table. “Benedict, can you talk?”

The lips trembled a little. The jaws opened and closed and opened again, and a thick sound came out. It was just a sound, meaningless.

“Who knifed you?”

The jaws moved again. They were like the jaws of a fish newly yanked from the water. This time not even the thick sound came out.

“Benedict, do you hear me?” The eyes remained fixed. “If you understand what I'm saying, blink.”

The eyelids came down and went up.

“Rest a moment. You're going to be all right.” You're going to be dead, Ellery thought. Where the devil was Conklin Farnham? He won't be able to touch the knife, he thought.

The door burst open. Dr. Farnham hurried in. Dullman ran in after him and shut the door and leaned against it, breathing hard.

“Hello, Conk,” Ellery said. “All I want from him is a name.”

Dr. Farnham glanced at the knife wound and his mouth thinned out. He took Benedict's dangling arm without raising it and placed his fingertips on the artery. Then he felt the artery in the temple, examined the staring eyes.

“Call an ambulance.”

“And the police,” Ellery said.

Arch Dullman opened the door once more. The cast and the stagehands were still standing outside, all except Joan and Roger. Dullman said something to someone and shut the door again.

“Can't you at least stop the bleeding, Conk?”

“It's pretty much stopped by itself.”

And Ellery saw that the stain was no longer spreading. “I've got to talk to him. Is it all right?”

The doctor nodded. His lips formed the words
Any minute now
.

“Benedict,” Ellery said. “Use the eye signal again. Do you still hear me?”

Benedict blinked.

“Listen. You were sitting here making up. Someone opened your door and crossed the room. You could see who it was in the mirror. Who was it came at you with the knife?”

The bluing lips parted. The tongue fluttered; its sound was like a small bird's wings. Finally a grudging gurgle emerged. Dr. Farnham was feeling for the pulse again.

“He's going, Ellery.” This time he said the words aloud.

“You're dying, man,” Ellery cried. “Who knifed you?”

The struggle was an admirable thing. He was really trying to communicate. But then over the eyes slipped a substance through which they looked far and away. Without warning the dying man raised his head a full inch from the dressing table, and he held it there quite steadily. He made the fish mouth again.

But from it now, in a confiding whisper, came two words.

Then the head fell back to the table with a noise like wood. The actor seemed to clear his throat. His body stiffened in some last instinctive stubbornness and his breath emptied long and gently and he was altogether empty.

“He's dead,” Dr. Farnham said after a moment.

Dullman said in a queer voice, “What did he say?”

“He's dead,” Ellery said.

“I mean
him
. I didn't hear what he said from here.”