The Fourth Wall (16 page)

“Yes, all of them.”

“Who else?”

What a question. “Lots of people. Maybe a hundred. John and Vivian and Leo, for starters. The company changed from year to year—Sylvia Markey was with us for the first year only. Vivian came in—when?”

“The second year,” Vivian Frank said. “I came for
The Voysey Inheritance
and then stayed until we folded.”

Lieutenant Goodlow pressed his lips together and thought a moment. “I want to pursue this further. Those of you who were not members of the Manhattan Repertory Company may go now, and thank you for coming.”

There was a scraping of chairs and shuffling of feet as people got up to leave; Gene Ramsay was the first one off the stage. I heard the wardrobe mistress complaining about having to come all the way from the Bronx “for nothing.”

When they were gone, John Reddick, Ian Cavanaugh, Vivian Frank, Leo Gunn, and I were left. We looked at the Lieutenant expectantly.

“You say there were maybe a hundred people associated with this company,” he said to me. “How can we find out who they all were? What happened to the company's records?”

“We donated them to Yale's theater library.”

“Including payroll records?”

I said yes. “If you want a complete list of everyone who ever worked with Manhattan Rep, that's the place to look. But Lieutenant, what are you looking for? Potential victims? Surely no one would set out to … to attack an entire repertory company.”

“Seems unlikely, I admit. But when you're dealing with a psychopathic personality, you can't take anything for granted. Maybe the murderer thinks he
is
capable of tracking down a hundred different people and doing whatever it is he intends to do. Every murderer thinks he's God.”

“But why now? After all this time?”

“Maybe it isn't just now. Maybe he's been working his poison all along. It's possible that this is just the first time he's found so many of you together. You may have unintentionally made his job easier for him.”

There was an uncomfortable stirring.

“And possibly,” Lieutenant Goodlow continued, “the complete list of Manhattan Repertory members might contain the name of our murderer.”

Which was a none-too-subtle way of reminding us that none of
us
was free from suspicion.

“Now for the big question,” said the Lieutenant. “I want you to tell me why this is happening. What did Manhattan Repertory do to provoke such bitter hatred?”

We all stared at him blankly.

“The murderer has a motive,” Lieutenant Goodlow insisted. “It might seem twisted and unreal to the rest of us, but to the murderer it makes sense. Did you antagonize anybody? Actors who got turned down for roles, for instance?”

John Reddick laughed shortly. “Hundreds of them. There are only so many roles to go around. But actors expect this. You'd do better to look at the would-be playwrights who got turned down. Writers don't bounce back from rejection as well as actors do. Sorry, Abby, but it's true.”

“The names of the actors and playwrights who were rejected—are they in the records you donated to Yale?”

John nodded. “We kept file cards of all auditions and for all scripts submitted. They're all there.”

Ian Cavanaugh looked incredulous. “Are you really going to try to trace all those people? And then interview them? That could take forever.”

“Can't say yet,” said Lieutenant Goodlow. “It's a long shot at best. Just one more question and I'll let you go for now. Who organized Manhattan Repertory? Whose idea was it?”

“Abby's and mine and another director's,” said John. “The other director was Preston Scott. He died a few years ago—heart attack.”

The Lieutenant thanked us for our help and said he'd be talking to us all again later.

2

Perspective goes a little haywire when it finally sinks in on you that you are personally acquainted with a murderer. You can't even say
good morning
without thinking
is it you?
My instinct was to shrink away, to sink back into that same womblike withdrawal that had been my earlier response to being threatened. That was no good. So I invented errands for myself, anything to get myself out of the house.

Hugh Odell, God bless him, came back to
Foxfire
. He responded to expressions of sympathy mechanically, almost formally. Hugh wasn't normally a remote person, but Rosemary's murder had set him apart. He looked at the stage set with an expression that said
I know I've seen all this before, but I can't quite remember where
. His first return performance was greeted by a standing ovation from the audience, which Hugh accepted with that same
is-this-happening-to-me
look that he wore off stage. He still had a lot of healing to do. But he did come back.

Casting for the touring company was complete. With Hugh's return to the original production, Phil Carter would be going on the tour. Griselda Gold started teaching the tour cast their blocking to save John Reddick a little time when he was ready to take over. I sat in on some of these rehearsals, but of course it was too early to get an idea of what the finished performance would look like.

Androcles in Church
opened officially—and I loved it. It was witty and upbeat and had some unconventional things to say about the positive aspects of institutionalizing beliefs. That part, at least, was
very
counter-Shavian. I got the impression that Anthony Gordon, the playwright, didn't always believe what he was saying; but here was a writer so in love with language and so sure of his gifts that he was willing to indulge in a bit of sophistry now and then for the sake of creating an interesting scene. The play meandered a bit, but eventually got to where it was going. And the journey itself was sheer delight.

A few days after the opening I got a call from Vivian Frank. “What did you think of
Androcles?
” she asked.

“I liked it. Young Mr. Gordon has a real talent.”

“I heard it was talky.”

“Well, so is
Hamlet
.”

“I doubt if I'll get to see it,” said Vivian. “It's sure to close before
Foxfire
does. Unless I take a night off—and I'll be damned if I'll pay Gene Ramsay ten thousand dollars so I can go see
Androcles in Church
. By the way, Abby, do you know what it cost Hugh Odell for all those performances he missed? Nothing! Not one red cent.”

“Good God, Vivian, the man's wife was murdered!” I said, shocked.

“Not one red cent,” she repeated, unhearing. “But if
I
miss a performance—ten thousand dollars down the drain.”

I didn't know what to say. “Well, Vivian, you did have a choice of contracts.”

“Oh, come off it, Abby!” she scoffed. “Would you take a fifty per cent cut in pay just to avoid a penalty clause?”

She had a point. But she made me uneasy. “You sound as if you want Hugh to be penalized.”

“Oh, of course not. Don't be silly,” she said airily. “But it does seem grossly unfair.”

“Maybe you can renegotiate your contract, if you're not happy with it. Gene Ramsay—”

“Got to go now, Abby. 'Bye.” And she hung up.

What an odd conversation. I didn't know what to make of it.

John Reddick started rehearsing the tour company. The actors already knew all their lines and their blocking, so the rehearsals were conducted at high pitch from the very first day. John, however, was not happy with the casting. He was careful never to say a word in front of the actors; but every time he got Gene Ramsay or Griselda Gold or me alone, he grumbled incessantly. Phil Carter was the only one in the cast he was satisfied with; he complained especially about our choice of leading lady. We thought it best not to tell him how that particular choice had been made.

It was during this period that I made a decision I hoped I wouldn't regret later. I decided to grant permission for Brian Simpson to produce
Double Play
, my one-acts, at his theater in San Francisco. Simpson did not feel obligated to stick closely to an announced program of plays any more than he felt obligated to follow the scripts he produced, so he wanted to substitute the one-acts for a Russian drama he'd originally scheduled.

During a series of phone calls before we made the deal, I'd made it clear to Simpson that I didn't always agree with his interpretations of the plays he put on. He countered by inviting me to attend the planning sessions. I accepted. That way I could perhaps exercise some restraint over Simpson's wilder fancies and see that the production at least headed in the same general direction I'd intended when I wrote the plays. Of course, Simpson could still change things around completely after I left San Francisco—but I felt I had a better chance for control that way than if I came in toward the end and faced a
fait accompli
.

Something else was bothering me. Sylvia Markey. That unhealthy situation with Jake still persisted, as far as I could tell. I'd gone once more to the big apartment building on Central Park South but couldn't get past the doorman. It was none of my business, of course—but what if the woman needed help? What if she
wanted
help, but was so completely cut off from the world she had no way of asking for it? I needed to talk this over with someone, someone who knew Jake and Sylvia well. But who? The first one who came to mind was John Reddick, but John wasn't exactly the kind of man you consult with a problem like that. He'd either dismiss the whole thing out of hand or else hire an army and charge the apartment building. In the end I did nothing.

Sunday evening I was working the Double-Crostic in the
Times
when the phone rang.

It was John. “Abby, is your television working?”

“I don't know, I guess so. I haven't watched for a while. Why?”

“I just now turned mine on and it went hiss-pop-crackle and then died. D'you mind if I come watch yours?”

“Come ahead. What's on?”

“Did you forget? Tonight is Ian's episode of ‘Murphy's Law.'”

Oops
. “Afraid I did—I'm glad you called.” I almost asked him why he wasn't watching with his girl (Rachel?), but stopped myself. His business.

John arrived during the opening credits. The first scene of “Murphy's Law” was a buddy episode establishing the camaraderie that was growing between New York's finest and the title character (for some reason on loan from the LAPD for tonight). At least that's what I think it was about; the actors' speech was so slurred I wasn't completely sure what was going on.

“I can't understand them,” I complained. “They all talk like Tiny.”

“One of the rules of television and movie acting,” John said dryly. “It says the best way to achieve realism is to treat ninety per cent of your lines as throwaways and mumble the other ten.”

Ian Cavanaugh's bad-guy character was introduced, and Ian's clipped, precise speech was a welcome relief from the vowelless mouthings of the cops. We were shown several brief scenes in which Ian first ordered and then witnessed the killing of another bad guy. There was a good shot of Ian as he stood on the waterfront, his eyes hooded and the corners of his mouth slightly raised as he watched the body being dumped into the East River. Then back to the cops and another male-bonding scene, which was interrupted by the news that a body had been fished out of the river. Commercial.

The rest of the show proceeded along annoyingly predictable lines. The show had originally been devised to illustrate the “law” that if anything could go wrong, it would. But some network executive had decided that was too negative an approach, so the format was revised to allow Murphy the cop to triumph over all wrongdoers fifteen seconds before the closing credits. Murphy was shown to be highly respected by both his superiors and his peers, for no reason whatsoever that I could see. He blundered his way through the investigation, bullying people who couldn't fight back, slamming people against the wall as an alternative to thinking. It was ridiculous.

“Shut up, Abby,” said John pleasantly. I'd been muttering out loud, I guess.

Eventually the good guy won. Ian was killed in a waterfront shootout and fell—guess where?—into the East River. That's called irony.

“That,” I said soberly, “was the most depressing thing I've seen in a long time.”

“Yeah, it was pretty bad,” agreed John. “But still, it's better than those snicker-sex comedies that are so popular.”

“The
commercials
are better than the snicker-sex comedies,” I said. “Do you think it's true that television programming proceeds on the assumption that it's impossible to underestimate the intelligence of the American viewing public?”

John laughed. “Abby, you're the only playwright I know who gives a hoot about TV. Why get upset about it? Who cares? Television doesn't even bother pretending to be interested in artistic values any more. It's bad and it's going to stay bad. Accept it.”

“I know. But I don't see how anyone can look on the daily waste of such great potential and not be disturbed.”

We argued amiably for a while longer, and then John announced he was going to spend the night in a steam bath. “I feel as if every muscle in my body has been tied into knots,” he said.

He looked tired. The tour company of
Foxfire
had two more days of rehearsal in New York before moving to Cleveland, where they opened Thursday night. John would make the trip with the cast and stay with them through a few performances.

“What are you going to do when you finish in Cleveland?” I asked.

“Take a vacation. God knows I need one. I've got two productions running in New York and one ready to go on the road. I've never had more than one play going at a time before, so I'm feeling rather pleased with myself. I'm also feeling exhausted.”