Lullaby of Murder (5 page)

The actress Ellen Duprey Phillips died yesterday in a leap or fall from the roof of the Hotel Canada on East 58th Street. Mrs. Phillips, wife of the publicist J. P. Phillips, had been in ill health for some time.

Julie looked up the story in the other newspapers. The variation was only in additional credits to what had been at best a thin theatrical career. She sat a moment thinking of the next source, staring out at the heavily overcast sky. It was a bleak, chilly day and she felt as though she was getting a cold. What was her purpose in this research? To work up something Tony wouldn’t run anyway? Trying to provoke him further?

No. It was the feeling of an unfinished story that pressed upon her. The incidence of the two suicides added a certain poignancy. She tried another tack and got out two weeks of microfilm copies of the
New York Daily
from the date of Mrs. Phillips’ death forward. She read seven
Tony Alexander Says
…columns before coming on this item:

SMALL SAD WORLD: the hotel from which Ellen Duprey Phillips leaped eighteen stories to her death is the residence of Patti Royce, the child star
of Autumn Tears.
Mrs. Phillips’ widower, Jay, is publicity rep for the play.

Small sad world. Julie jotted down the words, the source and the date in her notebook; too many times she had had to double back in her research for something she had thought she would never need again. She wanted to know now what Mrs. Phillips was doing in the Hotel Canada, and if or how her presence there connected with Patti Royce, and if that connection was what Tony was hinting at in the column. She also wanted to know where it fell in the chronology of Jay’s dislike for Tony.

She went back to the shop and called Celebrity Service for the name of Patti Royce’s agent. She then called Ted Macken at Creative Talent, Inc. and asked if he would set up an interview for her with Patti Royce. She identified herself only as with the
New York Daily
and gave her shop number. He promised to get back to her before five.

As she thought about it during the afternoon, Julie felt she had a good angle for a column item in Patti Royce: not the Phillips business—that would be something she might query in passing—but in the story of a child star who had fallen out of sight and was trying to make it back ten years later in daytime television.

When the agent hadn’t called back by five o’clock, Julie phoned again. He was in conference. She left her number again. At half-past five she tried again to reach him; he had left the office for the day. No message. What in hell did he think? That she was still an unemployed actress?

T
HE GALWAY BAY BAR
and Grill, on Second Avenue in the Eighties, was named after a horse, Julie discovered, not the inside of an Irish peninsula. There was a male, gaslight atmosphere to the place, dark wood, brass fixtures, walls teeming with photographs and prints of horses and riders, the hunt, and slobbery-looking hound dogs. The smells were of damp wool, beer and tobacco, and among the clamor of voices, a soprano note rarely sounded. Mrs. Ryan had phoned for a reservation in Julie’s name, and when it was called she nudged Julie forward.

The older woman settled herself opposite Julie in the booth and gave her shoulders a rolling shrug like a pigeon in out of the rain. “As you notice,” she said, “I got out my fall hat.”

“Beautiful,” Julie murmured.

“It’s not beautiful at all, but it’s what I have.” She removed the hat. “You’d better have a whiskey if you’re getting the sniffles.”

“I don’t know what I’m getting,” Julie said. She ordered a vodka and orange juice on the side. No orange juice at the Galway Bay. Tonic.

Mrs. Ryan ordered a bottle of lager. And a whiskey on the side. “As a precaution, dear.”

She laughed politely at Julie’s account of the Butts interview. Which suggested that it was not as amusing as Julie had thought. “And you know,” Mrs. Ryan said, “people did feel different in those days. Nobody
wanted
to be on the WPA… What an odd name, Butts. And yet I have a feeling it’s Irish.”

“Tony wasn’t amused at all. I could lose my job over what I wrote. Or over something.”

Mrs. Ryan made a noise that didn’t sound much like sympathy. Then: “You know, women were laid off in those days to make more jobs for the men.” If Julie lost her job it wasn’t going to be a major tragedy: she had Geoffrey Hayes to support her.

During the service of their dinner—by a waiter with starched cuffs shooting out from the sleeves of his shiny black jacket—Julie mused on what it would be like to be simply Mrs. Geoffrey Hayes and sit on the boards of certain charities, arrange theater benefits, and have other ladies in to tea so that the living room would be kept in operation even while Jeff was away.

“Lamb chops are such a luxury,” Mrs. Ryan said.

Julie agreed but didn’t say so.

“Julie, did you tell me that Mr. Phillips had lost his theater accounts?”

“Did I?” That was what she thought Mrs. Ryan was talking about when she spoke of the terrible thing that had happened to him.

“I thought you did, but not a word of it has come out in the papers.”

“I noticed,” Julie said. “We shouldn’t listen to rumors.”

MRS. RYAN
asked the immaculate young man at the reception desk of Murray’s where Mr. Phillips was “laid out.” He looked shocked and accompanied them to the elevator.

A priest was saying the rosary. Mrs. Ryan eased herself down among those on their knees and groped in her purse for her beads. Julie stood as did most of the mourners in a respectful silence. Knees were pretty much out in the modern church. The large room was not crowded: fifty or so people, including those in an alcove talking softly among themselves. Michael Dorfman was there. Two older women in black knelt near the priest alongside the casket. They would be Jay’s two unmarried sisters: they looked as though they belonged in another country and another time. The casket was blanketed with red roses. The rich chant of the priest’s voice repeating the prayers over and over turned Julie’s mind to her own vagrant father, supposedly an Irish diplomat. Whatever its source, depression swept in on her like a fog.
“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
…
”

She helped Mrs. Ryan to her feet.

“I’ll say a word to the family,” Mrs. Ryan said.

Julie edged her way toward the ante-room where the producer, Dorfman, and a couple of other members of the theater hierarchy were biding time. He looked at Julie, not sure whether he knew her or not. A dark, stocky man in middle age with thinning hair and eyes that bulged, he acted nervy and played with a cigarette. No one else was smoking, but Julie spotted an ashtray and took it to him. “I’m Julie Hayes,” she said.

“Ah, yes.” The name didn’t mean a thing to him.

“I think I was one of the last people to talk with Jay—just a few hours before he died.”

“It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?” Dorfman murmured. He was still trying to place her.

“He told me you’d fired him from all your shows.”

“Rubbish. The man was paranoid. It’s a drinker’s problem.”

“Which never seemed to get in the way of his work.”

“What’s your point, Miss Hayes?”

“No point especially, except that I don’t see why he’d tell me he was fired if it weren’t so.”

“Any reason for him to tell you, if it were so?”

“Ha!” a small laugh when she wanted to squirm. “One thing for sure, Mr. Dorfman, something had gone wrong for him.”

“He was drinking, and it’s true, I was getting to be the only man on the street who would hire him. Now I must go, if you’ll excuse me…” He thrust the ashtray back into Julie’s hands and pocketed the unlit cigarette.

Kate Wylie, a second-string reviewer for the
Daily
arrived and headed straight for him. She managed a quick “Hi” to Julie. Then: “Mr. Dorfman, I saw the run-through this afternoon. Trish Tompkins is going to be terrific, better even than Abby.”

“I hope you’re right. She went in tonight.” He looked at his watch. “Can I give you a lift?”

Wylie, who had just arrived, departed, pausing however to sign the visitor’s book before catching up with Dorfman. Julie got rid of the ashtray. She thought about who Abby could be, and then realized that of course, Abby Hill was playing the title role in
Little Dorrit,
the year’s hit musical. Except that she wasn’t if Trish Tompkins went in that night.

Mrs. Ryan was deep in conversation with the two ladies in black, all of them settled on gilded chairs. A cluster of older actors were reminiscing about the grand days of summer theater in some remote little town where you were the season’s greatest attraction. Someone mentioned the Albion Playhouse where he’d worked with Jay as stage manager. The very mention of it sent them into laughter they were hard put to muffle. Dorfman looked round at them from where he waited for the elevator and said, “Hello, boys.”

There was not much love in the looks they sent after him, those boys of seventy or so.

“This is my friend, Julie,” Mrs. Ryan said when Julie approached the three women. “Miss Eileen Phillips and Miss Mary Jean Phillips.” The sisters were even older than Mrs. Ryan and certainly older than Jay had been. Both were Irish plump, their faces made up as with a dusting of flour and with very little lipstick; their blue eyes were watery and bloodshot. Each gave Julie a gloved hand.

“I’m sorry about Jay,” Julie said. “He was one of my favorite people.”

“That’s what everybody says—the most popular man on Broadway,” Miss Eileen said. “Which of his plays were you in, dear?”

Julie smiled regretfully. “I’m in the same end of the business as Jay.” She decided not to mention Tony Alexander to them.

But Mary Ryan volunteered: “She’s an assistant to Tony Alexander, the
New York Daily
columnist. You know,
Tony Alexander Says
…?”

“Isn’t that nice,” Miss Mary Jean said, her lips tight against her teeth.

Even Mrs. Ryan felt the chill. “Julie, I’m having a Mass said for Jay from both of us.” A soothing mix of religion and politics. “Are you wanting to go now?”

“I think I should.”

“Then you go along yourself, dear. Jack Carroll lives at the Willoughby…” She nodded toward the reminiscing actors. “We can go down home together. It won’t be the first time.”

Julie touched the hands of the Phillips women and murmured, “I am sorry.”

Mrs. Ryan got to her feet. “I’ll walk out to the elevator with you.” When they reached it she explained, “I wanted to tell you something out of their hearing. They were saying how their brother was always doing free publicity for this or that charity or for some friend who couldn’t make it on his own. Did you know he was doing all the publicity for your dance marathon?”

“No,” Julie said. “I didn’t know that.”

“Well, then. I’ve earned my supper, haven’t I?”

JULIE BUTTONED
her raincoat up to the throat and fastened the hood under her chin. It was raining harder than when they had come and a chilly wind had arisen. There were very few people on Second Avenue and it probably wasn’t wise to walk, but she did it all the same, staying close to the curb. It was not the first time she had tried to walk herself out of trouble, even out of being sick which she considered a state of mind as much as of body. The shop windows behind their iron grilles put her in mind of a scene in the late, late show classic,
The Lost Weekend,
in which the alcoholic writer tries to pawn his typewriter on Yom Kippur. She found herself wondering if her father drank. Always, when her mood down-shifted, she thought about the father she had never known except in a handsome photograph. Dead or alive? She often wondered if she would ever know. And did nothing about trying to find out. The little she had of him might vanish altogether, the bit about his being an Irish diplomat. She sometimes thought her mother had made that up: it would not be the first lie her mother had told her. Nor the last. The last was about how she was going away for a few weeks to get her health back. Instead she had died. Julie and Jeff had not been married long then. Julie had always thought her mother was in love with Jeff, until psychiatry taught her that the only real love in her life was Julie. She might have been able to cry tears of love instead of anger at her funeral if she had understood. Maybe not. It might have turned her off even more.

Her feet were soaking and she was down in the Forties when she admitted to herself where she wanted to go and that she was walking up her courage. She had the office keys in her purse and she wanted to look up several names in Tony’s celebrity “bank”; Patti Royce, Abby Hill, Phillips—Jay and/or Ellen Duprey—and now especially Morton Butts.

On Forty-second Street her spirits lifted. The lights were brighter, the traffic heavier, and the glassy new hotels near the newspaper plant made that part of town seem its taxi center. What a contrast to Forty-second Street west. Her shoes squished and squeaked on the marble floor as she crossed the lobby to sign the night registry. She had marked down the hour, nine fifty, when her eye caught Tony’s heavy scrawl near the top of the page. He had signed in at eight forty and was still up there unless he had skipped signing out. She had no intention of finding out.

She took a cab home and, honoring a long-standing promise to Jeff, asked the driver to wait until she got inside the house. She gave him an extra dollar tip.

“Hey, doll, how about you keep the dollar and I’ll come upstairs with you?”

She took a hot bath, got into bed and turned on the television. When the phone rang at eleven thirty she didn’t answer. It rang twice, and then silence. The answering service was on the job. It rang again at one fifteen, waking her from the sleep she had fallen into without having turned off the television. She caught up the phone, her instant thought that something might have happened to Jeff.

“Mrs. Hayes? This is Detective Lieutenant David Marks. I’m sorry to disturb you, but I’d like to see you at your office as soon as you can get here, please. I’ll have a police car pick you up.”