Murder Has Its Points (16 page)

Plays must rehearse somewhere. The Excelsior was a hulk, but it still had a stage of sorts. Electricity could be turned on when needed, and if ancient wiring started fire, those within could always run and the reluctant owners of the building could chortle. The insurance company might sigh, but with resignation, since it had long since got its own back.

From the sidewalk, the theater looked as dead as the empty sockets of its sign. Bill Weigand looked at it and felt doubt; wondered whether, conceivably, Livingston Birdwood had directed him up a blind alley. It was a cobweb of a thought, and he brushed it away and went into the lobby. Plaster had fallen off the lobby ceiling and not been brushed up. There was no one in the lobby. There was no sound except that of his shoes gritting on plaster dust. It was getting on in the day. Perhaps they had packed up and gone home.

The doors from lobby to orchestra were closed against him, flatly, offering no handholds. Gone away and sealed the place up after them? No—a single door with a knob on it. Bill turned the knob and pulled and the door opened, and he went in. They had not packed up and gone home.

The auditorium was not really large. The Excelsior had been built for “intimate” productions, which had turned out to be intimate to the point of disappearance. But now it looked like a dark cavern—a dark and extremely cold cavern. Bill buttoned his topcoat and resisted the inclination to turn its collar up.

The stage seemed far away, and the center aisle sloped toward it. Over the stage a single bright bulb dangled from a cord, threw down harsh light. In seats nearest the stage half a dozen people sat, dark blobs against the light. Under the hanging light, a man sat on a wooden chair, beside a wooden table, his right leg resting on another wooden chair. Toward the rear of the stage, and to the left as Weigand faced it, a woman in a mink coat stood with her back to him and faced a brick wall.

The man, seen in profile—he was looking at the woman in the mink coat—was young and handsome and dark-haired. A smaller man, whose hair was also dark but was noticeably scant, walked from a canvas flat leaning against a wall (the flat was marked “Laura Darling Scene 2”) toward the man in the chair. The walking man said, “Yackety yackety yackety it was you who began it.”

The handsome man wheeled quickly to face the newcomer.

“Not I, Sybil,” he said, and laughed lightly. “I—”

“Damn it all, Blaine,” the smaller man said. “How often do I have to tell you? It's hot as hell. It's got all of you, the heat has. Also, damn it to hell, you've got to start wearing it. Otherwise, you'll be skipping all over the damn place when we open.”

“I'm sorry,” the handsome man said.

Nobody had paid any attention to Bill Weigand. He sat down in an aisle seat. A broken spring pronged him. He moved to the next seat.

“Blaine.” Blaine Smythe. Back in the cast, apparently. Which was mildly interesting, and certainly convenient.

The woman in the mink coat turned. She was pretty, with the highly visible face of an actor.

“Lars,” she said. “I still think there ought to be drums. Thump-thump, thump-thump. They're natives, aren't they? I'm looking out this window because I hear the drums—boom-boom-boom,
boom
. I'm scared out of my wits because of the damn drums.”

“No drums,” Lars—Lars Simon, he would be—said, His tone was weary. “These natives haven't invented drums, darling. Also, they're sneaking up through the jungle. Slither, slither, slither. That's what you hear, darling. Not boom, boom.”

“The audience can't hear slither,” the girl in mink said. “But it's your play, darling. Slither, slither. God, it's cold in here.”

“Button up your overcoat,” Lars Simon said, with no sympathy in his voice. “All right. Sybil comes in left.” He went back to the flat and then walked away from it, as he had before. “Yackety yackety yackety it was you who began it.”

Blaine Smythe seemed to stiffen when he heard the voice. This time he turned slowly, twisting his body but leaving his right leg extended on the chair.

“Not I, Sybil,” he said. And laughed lightly. “I—”

The woman in the mink coat turned from the “window.” She turned abruptly.

“If not you,” she said, “who? That's the question, isn't it, George? Who? If not you—”

“Too fast, darling,” Lars Simon said. “Look, darling. The three of you have been cooped up in here for two days, and they're coming through the jungle.”

“Slither slither,” the girl said.

“You're very funny, darling,” Lars said. “You've got on each other's nerves. O.K. But it's hot as hell and you're tired. Beat down. Do it tired, darling. Do it hot.”

“With my teeth chattering,” the girl said. “Ing gives us a barn to work in and—”

Lars looked at her.

“All right, darling,” the girl said. “Cue me, Blaine.” She turned and faced the brick wall. Damn it all, Bill Weigand thought, she looks precisely as if she
were
looking out a window. Even under all that coat.

“O.K.,” Lars said. “From Sybil's entrance. Yackety yackety yackety it was you who began it.”

Blaine Smythe turned even more slowly in his chair. As he turned, he used one hand to lift his right leg a little. He spoke as he turned. “Not I, Sybil. I—”

The young woman turned. Now there was a kind of slump in her slender body, weariness in her slower movement; weariness, yet with hysteria under the weariness, in her voice as she spoke. “If not you,” she said, “who? That's the question, isn't it, George? Who—”

She broke. In quite another voice, she said, “Listen, Lars. It's your play. But do you really want me to say ‘if not you' again? When it's slowed down this way? To me, darling, it doesn't hold.”

Lars Simon said, “Hmmm,” thoughtfully and then, “Could be you've got—read it again, darling.”

Darling read it again.

Lars nodded. “All right,” he said. “Stop with the second ‘who.' Only, lean on it a little. Let's take it again. Sybil comes in and yackety yackety yackety—”

They took it again. The girl “leaned” just perceptibly on the second “who.”

“O.K.,” Lars said. “Faith's cue is the second ‘who,' then.”

He looked at his watch. “All right, children,” he said. “We've got that in the works. No use trying to set the rest without Faith. Joe?” From some place a man's voice said, “Yeah.” “Light this crypt up, will you, Joe?” A few lights came on—two where a cluster once had been; half a dozen dimly outlining the arch. “All right, children,” Lars said. “Ten o'clock tomorrow.” He came across a runway built over the orchestra pit and down steps. Bill Weigand got up and walked down the center aisle. “And Blaine,” Lars Simon said; turning back to the handsome man still sitting by the table. “Tomorrow you bring it along, O.K.? And wear it?”

“Sure,” Blaine Smythe said, and stood up. And as he stood, Bill Weigand saw, for the first time, that a rifle was lying across the wooden table. It had been shielded, before, by Blaine Smythe's body.

Smythe moved quickly, with grace, across the stage to the runway. The half dozen dark blobs stood up from their seats and became two women, one middle-aged, the other hardly more than a girl, and four men, one of them a remarkably tall and obviously muscular Negro. “And Tommy,” Lars said, “do you mind putting on the choppers, tomorrow? So you can learn to talk with them. And not, buddy, look so goddamn Harvard?”

The tall Negro laughed. He had a low, musical laugh.

“You Amherst boys,” he said. He talked Harvard, Weigand thought. “All right, Lars. Tomorrow, ferocious native with pointed teeth. Trouble is, Lars, I bite myself. But—O.K.”

Bill Weigand had almost joined the group before anyone seemed to notice him. Then they all turned and looked at him. There was nothing impolite in the way they looked at him. But they looked at an alien.

His identification of himself did not change that, but Blaine Smythe raised his eyebrows, and Lars Simon said, “My God. Who goes willingly?”

Bill Weigand looked as amused as he could manage. He mentioned routine.

“All right,” Lars said, “I shot my mouth off. Said he was a pain in the neck and—oh my God, I told somebody he ought to drop dead. I can hear myself. He ought to drop dead, I said. And dead he dropped.”

He held out his hands, wrists close enough together. Bill Weigand did not try to look amused. Lars Simon looked at him a moment. “I'm sorry, Captain,” he said, in quite another voice. “It isn't funny, is it?”

“No,” Bill said. “It's not very funny, Mr. Simon. But it is routine. A couple of questions for you. A couple for—it is Mr. Smythe, isn't it?”

“That's right,” Smythe said. He looked at the watch on his wrist. “I have got a date,” he said. “Will it take long?”

There was no reason why it should take long. And certainly no reason why the others should wait. The others looked rather as if they'd like to. “Run along, children,” Lars Simon said, very much as if he talked to children. They went up the aisle. At the head of it, the young woman in mink stopped and called back. “You really mean
ten
, darling?” she called. “You're damned right, darling,” Lars Simon told her up the length of the aisle. “And Tommy. Don't forget the choppers.”

“Grrr,” Tommy said. He did two steps of what appeared to be a tribal dance.

The three sat in orchestra seats, Simon and Blaine Smythe in one row with a vacant seat between them, Bill Weigand in the row in front, twisted (somewhat uncomfortably) so that he could look at them.

The first was simplest, as it always was. Smythe had, he sad, left the cocktail party shortly after the brawl between Willings and Payne. He had gone to his apartment, which was in the Murray Hill area. He had stayed in it until about seven-thirty, when he had picked up a friend and gone to dinner. “Same friend I've got a date with now,” he said, and looked at his watch again. Weigand looked at his own. It showed twenty minutes after four. He said, again, that he'd try not to keep Mr. Smythe long. “Girl friend,” Smythe said, without being asked. “They don't like to be kept waiting, Captain.”

When it was his turn, Lars Simon was not so quick, nor did he seem so assured. He said that he had still been at the party—what was left of the party. He had not known Payne had been shot until, apparently, about fifteen minutes after it happened. When he had gone out, the police were already there. Somebody had told him Payne was dead, and he had gone home. Home was in Brooklyn Heights.

Probably, while still at the party, he had been with people who would remember that he was with them?

“They'd thinned out, damn it,” Simon said. “There was a girl who wants to write plays. There's always somebody who wants to write plays. Wanted to talk about writing plays, for God's sake. I don't know who she was. I don't know when it was. Most of the time I was sitting at a table in a corner having a scotch and writing.”

Weigand repeated the last word, his inflection rising.

“Not on paper,” Simon said. “In here.” He hit his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Second act. Payne had made a hell of a pitch about one scene and I finally said, ‘What the hell?' But I still didn't like it and I was trying to work it out so it would make sense and still get by with him. He was a bastard to work with and—” He stopped. He said, “Hell,” with considerable simplicity.

“A problem,” Weigand said, “which no longer arises, does it?”

“Sure,” Lars Simon said. “That's why I killed him, Captain. Terribly sincere artist, that's me. Guy gets in the way of my great art and—poof! No more guy.”

“Lars,” Blaine Smythe said, and sounded solicitous. “Why be any more of a damn fool than you have to be?”

“He wants motive,” Lars Simon said. “I'm the obliging sort. Sincere and obliging. That's me.”

“It was that made you say he ought to drop dead?” Bill asked.

“Things like that,” Lars said. “All right, he got in my hair.” He rubbed his hand hard against his thinning hair, apparently by way of emphasis. “And brother, if I'd killed everybody who got in my hair since I started in this racket—” He spread thin, expressive hands.

“Right,” Bill said. “You didn't kill Payne. He annoyed you, but you didn't kill him. You don't know the name of this girl who wants to write plays?”

“No.”

“By the way—that rifle.” Bill Weigand gestured toward the stage. “It's a working gun?”

“With blanks. It's a prop. Natives closing in on these three, who are all that are left—only they're not, but now it looks that way—and all they've got is this popgun. Natives got the hunting rifles and—” Very evidently he stumbled on sudden realization. “Payne was shot with a rifle?” he said, and no levity was left in his tone.

“A twenty-two,” Bill said. He nodded, this time, toward the stage.

“Yes,” Lars said. “It's a twenty-two. And so far as I know it just kicks around here between rehearsals. Joe sees it's on hand when we want—
Joe!
”

A man came from behind a flat, stage right. He said, “Yeah?”

“That damn gun,” Lars said, and pointed. “Where do we keep it?”

“With the other props when we get the other props,” Joe said. “Which reminds me. About that—”

“Where, Joe?”

“Where it is now, unless we're setting it different. Then—hell, it just gets leaned against a wall, out of the way.”

Lars Simon looked at Weigand.

“You've got ammunition for it?” Bill asked, across the orchestra pit.

“Blanks. What the hell?”

Bill said he didn't know what the hell. He told Lars Simon that, for a day or so, they'd have to get along without the rifle. Lars did not seem surprised. He said that, all right, they'd use a broomstick and go “bang!”