The Fourth Wall (15 page)

1

It's always easy to look back and see what a good con job you've done on yourself. Everything had been going so well. I had wanted to think there'd be no more trouble, so I had thought it.

But it wasn't just trouble now. Now it was murder. You can't stay detached when someone you know has been murdered. You can't deal with it objectively. But worst of all, you can't ever relax. That fourth wall is down for good.

It's a commonplace, how we've all grown calluses under the constant bombardment of stories of the violence we live with. And we entertain ourselves with fictionalized murder that's little more than a joke. Turn on your television any night and watch somebody get murdered: it's a comic book treatment, trivialized and unreal.

I found out how very real it is. A silly girl who'd meant nothing to me in life assumed monumental importance in death. The first time I saw Hugh Odell after Rosemary died, all I could do was keep touching him. I couldn't say a thing: the wordsmith had no words. And all the time I was touching him, Hugh kept bobbing his head and saying
yes, yes
. We understood each other—it was just too big to talk about.

But Hugh had to talk about it, and he had to keep on talking. I guess it's true that the spouse is the first one the police suspect. I don't know what went on in the various interrogations Hugh was subjected to, but on top of the shock of Rosemary's death it was all more than he could handle. He began to shake and stammer and in general had trouble functioning. So it wasn't surprising that he forgot to take his medicine and had an asthma attack bad enough to put him in the hospital.

Life went on, kind of. Phil Carter was playing Hugh's role now. We'd hired a backup actor to understudy Hugh and Ian Cavanaugh if Hugh returned to the play or to take Phil Carter's place in the touring company if he didn't. Gene Ramsay surprised everyone by stepping in and making arrangements for the burial of Rosemary's body when Hugh became incapacitated. When Rosemary's family arrived from Iowa, they found everything taken care of for them. Rosemary Odell was laid to rest with ceremony but without her husband's presence.

Normally you could expect a performer whose wife or husband had died to return to work within a reasonable period of time—for something to do, something to concentrate on, if for no other reason. And the professionalism accumulated in thirty years on the stage, as in Hugh's case, would dictate as quick a return as possible. But there was nothing at all normal about the present circumstances. Very few actors come home to find their wives' throats have been cut. And Hugh hadn't been a normal husband. He'd been obsessed with Rosemary—uxorious, possessive, sick in love. I honestly didn't know if he could recover from losing her, especially losing her the way he did. It was a real possibility that we might never see Hugh Odell in
Foxfire
again.

A new man came into my life, into all our lives: Lieutenant Richard Goodlow, Homicide Division, NYPD. He called the entire
Foxfire
company together in the theater on the Thursday morning following Rosemary's murder. He had us seated on the stage—a move that bothered me a little. The Lieutenant had interviewed each of us individually, and bringing us here together on the
Foxfire
set struck me as being a trifle, well, theatrical.

Lieutenant Goodlow was a big man, big and square-shouldered and authoritative-looking. He wore black-rimmed glasses of a kind I hadn't seen for a few years. In his fifties, he showed none of the world-weariness I half-expected in a high-ranking police officer. But he looked as if he didn't smile much.

The Lieutenant looked us over carefully, as if taking roll. The cast and understudies and both crews were there, front-of-house and backstage. Gene Ramsay, John Reddick, and Griselda Gold were there. Hugh Odell was still in the hospital. John Reddick was fidgeting;
Androcles in Church
was having its first tryout performance before an invited audience that evening.

Lieutenant Goodlow noticed and said, “I'll make this as brief as possible. I asked you all here at the same time because together you may be able to save us some time. I want you to put your heads together and see what you can come up with.”

He started pacing around the stage. “Our investigation of the murder of Rosemary Odell has two aspects. The first assumes that her death has nothing at all to do with this company. That part need not concern you. The other aspect assumes that it has everything to do with this company, and that does concern you.”

“Rosemary wasn't a member of the company,” said Gene Ramsay. “She was only related by marriage, you might say.”

“I'm aware of that,” said the Lieutenant, “but there are all sorts of possibilities. She spent a lot of time backstage, waiting in her husband's dressing room. She might have seen something, something she wasn't meant to see. We must investigate the possibility that her death is somehow related to this play.”

Lieutenant Goodlow stopped pacing and sat down at a little table Carla Banner had set up for him. He pulled out a notebook and thumbed through it. “All right. Beginning last November, we've had a series of incidents that constitute attacks on five different persons.”

“Five?” someone asked.

“A couple on the list may be doubtful,” the Lieutenant said, “but I'll explain that as we go along. First, Sylvia Markey. Her apartment was vandalized twice and her cat was killed and dismembered. These are spite acts, pure and simple. Their only purpose was to make Sylvia Markey unhappy.” I perked up; that was exactly what I'd said to Sergeant Piperson and had been brushed off for my efforts.

“Second, Loren Keith,” Lieutenant Goodlow continued. “Keith was blinded when someone threw carbolic acid in his face in the parking lot of a food store in Los Angeles. This is one of the doubtfuls. Keith did not work on
Foxfire
. His blinding is connected with the next incident by the presence of carbolic acid, but that's all. But we'll leave him on the list for the time being.

“Third, Ian Cavanaugh. A tin of cold cream to which carbolic acid had been added was taken from Cavanaugh's dressing table by Sylvia Markey with the tragic results we all know. There are two possible interpretations of this. The first is that Cavanaugh himself put the carbolic in the cold cream for purposes known only to himself and was keeping it in his dressing table for later use.”

Ian turned ghost-white. Before he could say anything, Lieutenant Goodlow went on, “The other possibility—and the more likely one—is that someone else placed the cold cream there for the intended purpose of disfiguring Cavanaugh. Either way, it was sheer chance that Sylvia Markey was the one to use the cold cream.

“Fourth, Abigail James.” Lieutenant Goodlow read his notes. “It's the opinion of the investigating officer, Sergeant Piperson, that the destruction of the
Foxfire
set was carried out for the purpose of closing the play. Which would make the playwright the most prominent although not the only victim.” The Lieutenant paused. “This is quite possible,” he said tactfully, “but it's also possible that wrecking the set was an act of undifferentiated hatred, a generalized kind of hitting out at everyone and everything connected with the play. However, we'll also leave Abigail James's name on the list for the time being.

“Fifth, Rosemary Odell. At one o'clock last Saturday, give or take fifteen minutes either way, someone entered the Odell apartment on East Thirty-seventh Street and cut Rosemary Odell's throat. Mrs. Odell either let the murderer in or he had keys—there was no sign of a forced entry. Mrs. Odell was not sexually violated and nothing was taken from the apartment, so it appears the murder was not incidental to another act. Whoever entered that apartment at one o'clock did so for the express purpose of killing Rosemary Odell. No weapon was found on the premises.”

Lieutenant Goodlow cleared his throat. “Here, of course, is the big change. Up to now, everything that's been done has had a vindictive, hurtful quality to it—
but it's always stopped short of total destruction
. Sylvia Markey's career is over, but not her life. Same for Loren Keith. The stage set was wrecked, but the play reopened. But if all these acts were committed by the same person, that person has now crossed some kind of boundary. Damage is no longer enough.
If
the murder of Rosemary Odell is part of the same series of acts.

“This is where I need your help. Think of these five names together—Markey, Keith, Cavanaugh, James, Rosemary Odell. What's the connection among them? What do these five people have in common? Please don't say ‘theater'—that's too general to be of help. Give me something specific. What's the connection?”

We all looked at each other helplessly. Finally John Reddick said, “None that I can see. I don't think Rosemary Odell and Loren Keith even knew each other, did they, Abby?”

I shook my head. “I'm fairly certain they didn't.”

“She never worked in the theater, did she?” asked Lieutenant Goodlow.

“She was a schoolgirl,” Gene Ramsay snapped. “A senior at Hunter College when Hugh met her. The only people she knew were other schoolgirls. She didn't know anybody, she hadn't been anywhere, she hadn't done anything.”

We all looked at him in surprise.

“Odell brought her around to meet me before they were married,” Ramsay said. “I tried to talk him out of it. I've seen plenty of middle-aged men buy themselves young girls, but for the life of me I couldn't see why Hugh wanted
that
girl. But he was determined to marry her.”

“So you're saying it's unlikely she ever met Loren Keith?” asked the Lieutenant.

“I'm saying it's next to impossible. She was the most unaware young woman I'd ever met. If it didn't happen right under her nose, it didn't happen. And Keith lived in a different world from hers.”

“So did Hugh Odell.”

“But Odell sought
her
out. One of her relatives asked one of his relatives to ask Hugh to check and make sure the little girl was all right in the wicked big city.”

Lieutenant Goodlow made a note in his book. There was some squirming on the stage; people were getting restless. “Bear with me just a while longer,” said the Lieutenant. “This next part is important. I'm going to offer a hypothesis. Every one of these incidents has the same smell to it. They all reek of vengeance. They all appear to be aimed at
getting even
for something.”

I caught my breath; now we were getting to it.

Lieutenant Goodlow spelled it out for us. “Suppose we have a manor woman—capable of committing murder, but who thinks murder isn't punishment enough for whatever wrong was done him, or whatever wrong he thinks was done. Suppose our murderer reasons something like this: When you're dead, you don't feel anything. You don't suffer. If you don't suffer, you escape punishment. Therefore, murdering people you want to get even with doesn't really punish them at all. In a way, it releases them from pain. How much more satisfying to keep them alive and make sure they pay for what they did. By suffering.

“So how do you go about making your enemies suffer? Well, one way is to destroy or damage something that's important to them. Deprive them of what they need or think they need. Chop a hole out of their lives—but let them go on living to know what it is they've lost.

“Now let's look at our list of victims again, but this time with one change. What did the murderer intend each of them to lose? Sylvia Markey—personal belongings, an animal she loved, maybe something else later on. Loren Keith—his sight. Ian Cavanaugh—his face. Abigail James—a stage set, which could be seen as a physical embodiment of her work. And now for our one change.
Hugh
Odell—who lost his wife. A wife on whom he doted openly and perhaps excessively.”

There was a stunned silence. Then Ian Cavanaugh spoke up. “Lieutenant, what are you saying? That Rosemary Odell was killed only because she … because she was important to Hugh?”

Lieutenant Goodlow leaned back in his chair. “That's it exactly. Look at it from the murderer's point of view. If you wanted to hurt Hugh Odell, hurt him bad—what's the worst thing you could do to him?”

I exchanged an uneasy glance with John Reddick.

“Kill Rosemary,” said Gene Ramsay, horrified. “I think you're right. Good God in heaven.”

Everyone started talking at once. I lowered my head into my hands.
Good God in heaven indeed. What kind of monster were we dealing with here? What kind of subhuman creature could take the life of an innocent young woman just to hurt her husband?

“Ms James?” said the Lieutenant. “Are you all right?”

I sat up. “Yes. Just trying to absorb the shock.”

He nodded and turned back to his notebook. “Now I want you all to think of this altered list of victims. Think carefully, please. Markey, Keith, Cavanaugh, James, and Hugh Odell. What's the connection?”

“Oh, Lord,” said John, “they've all worked together—we
all
have, many times, on many plays.”

“Manhattan Rep,” said Leo Gunn unexpectedly. “All five of them were with Manhattan Rep.”

Of course. Manhattan Rep. But
—“But that was years ago, Leo,” I said. “Why would all this be happening now?”

“What's Manhattan Rep?” Lieutenant Goodlow asked.

“The Manhattan Repertory Company. But it closed its doors five years ago.”

“Tell me about it.”

I told him about it. I told him we presented a mixture of old and new plays in rotation, four productions a year. I told him box-office receipts alone were not enough to support such a venture, and that the foundation funds had dried up after three years.

Lieutenant Goodlow looked from me to Ian Cavanaugh back to me again. “And Sylvia Markey, Loren Keith, and Hugh Odell were all in this company with you and Cavanaugh?”