The Hamlet Trap (19 page)

“Let's leave it for tonight. Is it a decent hour for two middle-aged people to go to bed?” He held out his hand for her.

Half an hour later he exclaimed, “My God, where did you learn that?”

“I read a book once,” she answered.

“Thank God for literate women,” he said fervently.

TWENTY-TWO

Ginnie carried a model
into Ro's office and placed it on the table. It was the set for Sunshine's play: part of a living room on the right, cut-away flats of walls and a window, mountains in the background, and a cafe” table with a red-and-white-striped umbrella over it on the left. The rock they called a practical rock rose up steeply against the mountains. She backed away from the model and sighed.

“One down, four to go,” she said.

Ro walked around it and studied it intently. “It's good, honey. Better than the play deserves. You look awfully tired, though. Knock off for the weekend, will you?”

“I'd better not,” she said. “With any luck I can finish
Cuckoo's Nest
, and get a good start on
Witness
. And I have clay drying out for the fireplace for the
Inspector General
. They're coming along. Maybe I'll be able to finish them all before they arrest me.”

“For God's sake! No one's going to arrest you!”

She made a hopeless gesture. “Charlie says they're just waiting for the lab reports. They're trying to prove that dirt from the inside of my car came from the banks of the river. Maybe some did. I haven't cleaned it in months, and I go there sometimes. I could have tracked dirt back with me.”

“Ginnie, go up to Mount Ashland for the weekend. Do a little skiing, will you? Please. You have to get some rest, honey. Damn the models. William doesn't need them.”

“Gray ordered them. He needs them.”

“Well, I can fix that. You don't have to finish them. Take a day or two off. That's an order.”

She shrugged. “I'm better off working.”

There was a knock on the door. Ro snapped, “Come on in,” and Gray entered with Constance and Charlie.

“Another great reading,” Charlie said. “I don't understand how you can do it. Go from one play to another like that, as if each one is the only one on your mind.”

Gray had gone to the table and was kneeling before the model, not touching it. “Wonderful,” he said. “It's really fine, Ginnie. Just right. Good colors… Can you get those colors in fabrics?”

“I'm sure we can. William and I will go scouting Monday. Or he will.”

“I'm on the track of file cabinets we can rent,” Ro said. “I think there are six of them I can lay my hands on.”

Charlie and Constance exchanged glances and hung back listening. Ro, Ginnie, and Gray discussed the different sets, the problems they anticipated, when Ginnie would have the others done…

“Can you come back around three?” Gray asked Ginnie. “Valerie and I want to block off the sets for
The Threepenny Opera
. You could help.”

Valerie was the choreographer, and she, like all the others, seemed to be under Gray's direct orders.

Charlie had been watching closely, listening to how everyone responded to Gray, took his suggestions, which he supposed were really orders even if they didn't sound like it. It was impressive. Gray was impressive. He looked hungry, always dressed in jeans and plaid shirts, sweaters, boots. Too pale and haggard-looking. And very impressive.

Ginnie nodded. “I'll come back.”

Ro seemed about to speak, but clamped his lips together and looked at his watch.

“Oh, Mr. Cavanaugh,” Charlie said, “could you spare us just one minute? Alone,” he added, grinning at Ginnie and Gray. They both looked startled, then almost indignant.

“See you later,” Ginnie said, and quickly left the office. Gray hesitated only a moment longer, then also left with a vague wave to no one in particular.

“What I'd like,” Charlie said, drawing a sketch from his jacket pocket, “is for you to show me about where you think Gray Wilmot was sitting that night in the high-school auditorium. This is a generic high-school auditorium,” he said apologetically. “We're on our way over there in a few minutes, but meanwhile maybe this will do.” The auditorium he had drawn was idealized past the point of reality. There was a rectangle with a block labeled “stage” at one end, and a few curved lines at the other. “You see, I'm not sure where the doors are, the clock, anything.”

Ro examined it with a frown. “The whole end here is made up of doors,” he said finally. “I was about here, at the extreme left, and I guess Gray was at the far right. No clock. There's a clock in the hall outside the office. If there's one in the auditorium, it doesn't matter, since it's all dark anyway when they have a production.”

Charlie was looking at the drawing thoughtfully; at last he started to fold it again. “How did you know when Gray left? If it was dark, no clock…”

“I said before that I didn't know for sure,” Ro said patiently. “Just after nine, maybe five minutes, ten. I'm not sure. And I was bored with the play, not paying much attention by then. I was more interested in a ride than the play, I'm afraid.” He looked at his watch, pointedly this time.

“Mr. Cavanaugh, if they have you on the witness stand and ask if you can say with any certainty when Gray Wilmot left, what will you answer?” Charlie asked quietly, apparently engrossed in the meticulous folds of the sketch.

Ro hesitated, then said helplessly, “I don't know. I just know it was raining. And that started at ten before nine. It didn't seem important that night to check the time.”

Constance was studying the model Ginnie had delivered. “This is lovely,” she said. “So detailed. Right clown to fabrics. I suppose it's a great help to William Tessler when he starts actually building the sets.”

“He's good enough to get by without them,” Ro said. “But it's a help in knowing how much room people have to move around in. Gray can visualize all the action much better with models, I'm sure. I always could, I know. It helps the costumers, the lighting crew, everyone.”

“I had forgotten that you have been a director,” Constance said.

“And a painter, lighting technician, choreographer, prompter, actor…”He laughed. “In the early days everyone had to do everything now and then. They still make drama students do it all, just so they know what each job entails.”

“We won't keep you,” Charlie said then. “Thanks for your help. Actually, I was looking for Sunshine. Has she been around this morning?”

Ro's mouth tightened. “Probably. I haven't seen her, though. She's scared to death of me, I guess. And I like it that way.”

“Well, she's a strange woman,” Charlie said, “but sometimes people like her notice things. I don't have an idea of what she wants with us this time. If you do see her, will you tell her we're going away for the weekend? We'll catch up with her Monday or Tuesday.”

Ro shrugged. “She isn't likely to come to me for information, but I'll pass the word.” He opened the door to the hall, then looked at Charlie and Constance worriedly. “You're really going to take off for the weekend? Isn't there something you could be doing, some line you could be following?”

“Sorry,” Charlie said lightly. “I guess we're all waiting for the lab reports right now.”

Holding the doorknob, poised to leave, Ro asked, “What if they find the same kind of dirt that's in the riverbank in the samples from her car? Then what?”

“I expect they'll arrest her,” Charlie said. “As far as circumstantial evidence goes, that's pretty good. People have been arrested and found guilty on less.”

Ro's face was the color of putty. He closed his eyes briefly, then nodded. “I have to go,” he said in a heavy voice. “Do what you can for her. I think she needs a lawyer. Not Wedekind. God only knows who hired him and why. She needs her own lawyer. I'm making some calls this afternoon.”

Charlie looked at Constance. “Let's see if Sunshine is around anywhere, and if she isn't, let's go to the high school and have a look, and then off to Mount Ashland and skiing. Okay?”

Dejectedly Ro said, “I tried to get Ginnie to go skiing this weekend. Anything. She really needs to relax away from here. But she wouldn't.”

“Well, the play's the thing, the show must go on,” Charlie said. “I guess she got a good dose of that philosophy from her mother and from you.”

“Lucy was a pro,” he said. “The best Peter Pan I've ever seen. She had those long slender legs, like Ginnie's, and a young freshness in her attitude, the way she moved. …” He stopped walking with them and seemed to be looking through the floor to another time, some other place. Abruptly he started to move again. “We've never done
Peter Pan
since that one time,” he said. Never.

When they parted at the door, he waved absently to them and walked away in deep thought. Constance watched him, then turned to Charlie. “And where are we going for the weekend?”

“Home,” he said happily. “To the inn, I mean. First, to the high school.”

They drove to the school and entered the main door to the office, where they got permission to look at the auditorium. On the way Charlie eyed the lockers with distaste. There were students in the halls, opening, closing lockers, talking, watching the two outsiders with frank curiosity. “Best days of my life,” Charlie said, “were not spent in high school. That last year was pure torture. I wasn't sure I'd graduate right up to the last week. God, those lockers! Trying to get all your stuff in that tiny space! Knowing anything of value would be stolen the minute you left it.”

There were a few lockers without combination locks. He pulled one open, empty, and examined it, shaking his head.

Constance was thinking: What secrets were in those lockers? Pot, cigarettes, pilfered change or even bills, illicit makeup, not allowed at home, kept in secret in a locker with a combination lock. Pornographic pictures, books, love letters, stolen test answers…

“And here we are,” Charlie said, and pulled open a door to the auditorium. It was like high-school auditoriums all over the country, they both thought, not very good acoustics, probably, uncomfortable seats that were not raked enough for those in the back to see the stage well. There were four sets of double doors that could be opened but were now closed. And if Ro had sat over there, and Gray over there, Ro could have seen him leave, Constance thought; and there was no clock visible from the back of the room. It was on the back wall, out of sight of the audience unless they turned around to look at it.

They did not linger long. Back in the main hall, they both were startled suddenly by a loud bell and the instant swarm of students that seemed to materialize magically. Charlie took Constance's arm and pushed her toward the nearest exit, two double doors at the front of the building. The auditorium was at the end of the corridor and there were two more doors that led to the parking lot at the side of the building, but that way was blocked almost totally by students in a solid mass.

Charlie was whistling softly when they reached the Buick and got in. He put the key in the ignition, then looked at her. “There's not enough money in the world to pay me to go back to my good old high-school days,” he said. “I think every other year or so we should make a pilgrimage to a school just to keep the memory alive.”

“I liked high school,” she protested. “A lot of people do.”

He nodded. “And people like being sick with a cold, or having poison ivy, or freezing their buns at football games. I know. It takes some of us sane folks to keep you crazy folks from hurting yourselves. Let's go to Medford to shop.”

“I can't believe what you want isn't in Ashland,” she said tartly.

“But if you sneeze in Ashland, good old Dr. Jack comes bustling around before you've had a chance to throw away the Kleenex,” he said cheerfully and started to drive.

In Medford he bought an old electric typewriter. The K did not print and the B lost the upper curve of the letter, and the O was out of alignment. “Perfect,” he exclaimed to the incredulous shopkeeper. He did not haggle over the price. They went to a stationery store where he bought a ribbon and a ream of sixteen-pound paper that was grayish and slick.

“All through?” he asked her.

She sighed. “What are you up to?”

“I've had my creative impulses awakened,” he said earnestly. “I feel a great restlessness in me, an uneasy feeling of something that needs to be expressed. I have an irresistible urge to write.”

They had dinner in the inn that night and immediately afterward returned to their room, where Charlie had already worked for over an hour at the cranky typewriter. He went to the desk where sheets of paper were face down, and read them. There were only two.

“When do I get to read it?” Constance asked.

“Right now, if you want. I think I'm bogging down just a little bit with the plot.” He handed her the pages.

She suppressed a smile. They looked worse than Sunshine's, with X-ed out words, type-overs, misspellings. The spacing was atrocious, with hardly any margins, and the speakers' names typed in what seemed a random manner. Now and then they were even centered.

She glanced at him; he was watching her closely, feigning an aloof air. “I am a creative artist, not a typist,” he said. “You know?”

She grinned and read the beginning of his play. By the time she finished the second page she could no longer stifle her giggle, and once started, it turned into helpless laughter.

“It is not a comedy,” he said coldly.

“I know. It's just that… that…” Her laughter overcame her again and she put the pages down and staggered to the bedroom for tissue.

“You're hysterical,” he said when she returned. “After you pull yourself together, maybe you'll show me what's so funny.”

She nodded, wiping her eyes. She groped for the play and took several deep breaths, then read: “ ‘I will render you all asunder just like the butcher's knife rents the bread.'” She could not continue.

He took the play from her and studied it intently.