The War Against Miss Winter (25 page)

“What about the actor?” I asked. “Who was he?”

“I had a feeling you’d want to know about him.” Harriet whipped out a notepad and checked the name. “His name’s Alan Detmire.”

I almost tipped over my beer glass. Alan Detmire?! That name was in one of the articles in Nussbaum’s office. And I’d seen it somewhere else, too…

“Have you heard of him?” asked Jayne.

“And then some. Fielding and he are both immortalized on a plaque at People’s Theatre.”

Jayne shifted beside me. “That’s not the only space they shared. If the information in the directory’s right, Detmire’s been living with Fielding for the last ten years.”

T
HE NEXT MORNING
I
WAS
up and out by 9:00 and headed toward People’s Theatre for the first of a week’s worth of technical rehearsals. When I arrived, the lobby was empty but the auditorium was alive with the sound of hammers and other scene-building implements. Inside, half the cast was spread about the seats watching as a group of middle-aged carpenters—the only ones who hadn’t been drafted—struggled to connect a series of painted flats. My brain couldn’t take the noise, so I retreated into the lobby and settled on a bench with the latest issue of
Detective Comics
.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t focus on the continuing adventures of shamus Slam Bradley and his sidekick Shorty Morgan. I searched my coat pocket for something to mark my page with and found a wad of paper. I unfurled it before I realized what it was: the anti-Jewish flyer from the night before. I was about to tear it up when the subtitle caught my eye, “Why do you believe the lie of equality?”

In the newspapers, we were constantly bombarded with how there was the truth and then there was what the Axis nations told their people. Clearly their governments were smart enough to tell them lies that appealed to them, compelling them to accept horrific conditions and treatment because, ultimately, it would be for the good of their countries. By appealing to whatever their people valued most, these nations kept their soldiers fighting and their homefronts willing to sacrifice.

Believing in something could make you do just about anything. It could even convince you that a script was so dangerous you had to kill someone to make sure it didn’t fall into the wrong hands. The question was, how could it do that to more than one person when the information they were responding to was very different? Was someone deliber
ately misleading people about the play’s contents, or was something else afoot?

“Heavy reading?” Peter appeared beside me, wearing paint-splattered dungarees and the kind of shirt I imagined lumberjacks in Ontario donned for a day on the job.

I shoved the flyer into the pages of the comic book. “I like the brightly colored pictures. Don’t tell me you’re responsible for building the set as well as directing the play?”

He sat beside me and concentrated on rolling the cuffs of his too large shirt. “I’m assisting, though to hear the designer talk, I’m staging a coup.”

An electrician entered the lobby hauling a coil of cable. Before him he held an enormous spotlight, as if it were a lantern guiding his way.

“Can I ask you a question?” I said.

“Shoot.”

“Wasn’t Fielding against all this brouhaha?”

Peter watched as the electrician forced his way into the theater, the light banging against the heavy oak doors. “While Raymond was a brilliant writer, I think it’s unreasonable to demand we dispense with everything theatrical. What I’m doing will accentuate the play, not dominate it.”

Somehow I doubted Fielding would see it that way.

“Incidentally, Ruby isn’t available until this afternoon. I hope you don’t mind stepping in until she arrives.” I nodded my consent and his expression turned serious. “How did things go with your friends last night?”

I ran my hands over the cover of the comic book. “Fine.”

“Did you meet anyone?”

“Excuse me?”

He stood and stepped away from me. “It’s none of my business.”

That’s right—he thought we’d gone to a USO dance. “No—it’s all right. I didn’t meet anyone.”

He smiled at the floor. “I’m glad to hear that.”

Well, well, well—this was an interesting development. Could it be that
Peter was as insecure as I was? “I’m sorry I ran out on you last night. I didn’t want to.” I bit my lip and tried to decide if he’d be impressed or disgusted by my shenanigans. “We didn’t go to a dance. I didn’t want you to know what I was really up to.”

“Which was what?”

I winced as if I was readying myself for a hit. “I’ve been looking for that stupid play.”

He frowned and rejoined me on the bench. “Raymond Fielding’s play?”

“That’s the one.”

“That doesn’t sound so stupid to me.”

“Maybe stupid isn’t the right word. Anyway, I had a lead on where it might have ended up and my friends were kind enough to do a little investigating on my behalf. They decided they wanted to tell me in person what they’d found.”

“I appreciate your honesty. I was starting to take last night very personally.”

At least he knew how it felt.

“You said you thought you had a lead. Didn’t it pan out?”

“Yes and no.” It couldn’t hurt to ask Peter his thoughts on what was going on. At worst he’d think I was crazy. “You probably know more about Raymond Fielding than anyone, right?”

“That’s arguable. Why?”

I braced myself for the question I dreaded asking. “Do you think there’s a chance there’s more than one play?”

Peter chuckled. “I suppose anything’s possible, though it’s not the way it was presented to me.”

He was about to say more when Hilda rapped on the wall behind us. “Everyone is here and ready,” she announced. She lifted and lowered her eyebrows to question why we were the only two people in the lobby.

Peter stood and offered me his hand. “Shall we?” He hoisted me to my feet, which would’ve been quite chivalrous if I’d paid more attention to my balance and less to his touching me in Hilda’s presence. He released me once I’d gained my equilibrium and with a salute instructed
Hilda to lead the way into the auditorium.

Technical rehearsals are boring affairs for the actors and juggling acts for the director. Finally, after weeks of preparation, you’re at the stage where your unpolished gem is ready to receive the design elements that will elevate it from script to spectacle. The problem was, like most theaters, People’s introduced all of the pageantry simultaneously so that we had to contend with lights, set, sound, costumes, and props for the first time in a single rehearsal. All those weeks of perfecting character and motivation went out the door while we struggled with props that weren’t what we’d imagined, set pieces that were more cumbersome than planned, and clothes that restricted movements we’d come to believe were integral to our roles. Blinded by lights, deafened by music, disoriented by the presence of people in the auditorium after weeks of being used to our small clique, it felt very much as if all of our practice had been for naught.

Despite the inconvenience, from my perspective in the audience the introduction of lights, sound, and set were completely worthwhile. The cast may have appeared more bumbling than believable, but the technical elements legitimized what we were doing and why we had the nerve to charge people to attend it. This may have all seemed artifice to Raymond Fielding, but I could see where Peter was coming from. We needed this stuff to distinguish the everyday from the extraordinary.

While I was cheered by the process, Peter’s mood swiftly declined from frustrated to foul. A war was raging between him and the technical staff, and rather than appearing the kind, easygoing man I’d just spoken to, Peter was looking more and more tyrannical by the minute. The lights were wrong, the costumes hideous, and the set he’d helped construct was nothing like what they’d talked about. Clearly someone had undone all of his hard work the minute his back was turned. He strong-armed carpenters to get out of his way, stomped across the stage, and shifted platforms with such ease that I expected his shirt to burst open to reveal a physique Mr. Universe would’ve killed for. The only way I could stomach watching the display was by assuring myself that this was another one of Peter’s experiments designed to pit the
cast against him. I was fine with this read until he set his guns on me.

“Rosie, find your light. Move left—stage left.” I moved two steps to the left and looked downward for the pool of light I was supposed to find, but which was too dim for me to see. “Are you deaf? I said stage right.” I wasn’t and he hadn’t, but I obeyed anyway, well aware that no matter what I did it wouldn’t resemble what he believed he’d asked me to do. Indeed, it didn’t. Peter climbed onstage and moved me back to the position I’d been in to begin with. Above us an electrician altered the direction of a light, causing the clamp to grind into the pipe with a frightful moan. I prayed the klieg light would break free of its mount and land on Peter’s head.

I wasn’t the only one he behaved this way toward, but after the fifth reprimand I was no longer able
not
to take it personally. I alternated between wanting to cry and wanting to push the flats until they collapsed in a pile like dominoes. After four hours of this abuse, Peter announced we would break for lunch in the lobby; we had e
xactly
a half hour until we resumed rehearsal. As we collected our things and silently filed out of the theater, Ruby popped her head in and waved.

“Are you back for good?” I asked. A table of sandwich makings had been set up at one end of the lobby. She and I took our places at the end of the food line and kept our voices low so they couldn’t be heard above the buzz of other conversations.

“Why? Miss me?”

“You have no idea,” I muttered. “How was work?”

“Dull.” Ruby flipped her hair and a whiff of pine-scented cleaner filled the lobby. “I’m thinking about quitting. Eloise becomes more abusive by the minute. Plus, the job may no longer be necessary.”

“And why is that?”

“I have other opportunities on the horizon. I certainly had no intention of being a maid for the rest of my life.” I squirmed. Where would she turn up next: Henry Nussbaum’s house or in the employ of the mysterious Alan Detmire?

We ate cold cuts on rye and washed down what remained of our humility with Coca-Colas and small stale gingersnaps. The rest of the
afternoon was a virtual repeat of the morning’s tortures, with Ruby in the lead instead of me. At 5:00 rehearsal was complete and Peter momentarily assumed his human form to thank us for our patience and remind us that we’d run the entire show from top to bottom starting the following evening. I scooped up my belongings and followed the cast through the lobby and out onto the street.

“Calling it a night?” Peter stood framed in the theater entrance. He wore neither coat nor hat, which meant he’d followed me outside hoping to stop me.

“It’s been a long day,” I said. The wind picked up and my scarf flopped toward my chin.

“I was hoping we could continue our conversation.”

If he had been nicer to me that day, I would’ve leaped at the chance to spend some time with him. As it was…“Maybe another night. I’m bushed.”

He put his hand on my arm and moved closer. “Come on, Rosie, it’s early.” His doe eyes widened to full capacity; he was assuming whatever stance he usually took in order to make people yield to him. And it was working: no longer did I want to punish him for being both a difficult director and an incomprehensible man. I just wanted to sit with him in some quiet out-of-the-way place and talk until the sun came up.

Unfortunately, there were more important things for me to deal with than nursing my hurt feelings.

“Let’s do it another night,” I said. “I’ve reached the point where if I don’t head home now, I’m going to curl up and sleep on the lobby floor.” His face fell and I hated myself for continuing this bizarre dance of ours. I swallowed my sense of propriety and gave him a peck on the cheek. His frown reversed and he loosened his hold on me.

“Another night,” he repeated. And with that, I hailed a cab and headed toward Penn Station.

J
AYNE MET ME AT THE
station and we took the train back up to Fielding’s manse in Croton-on-Hudson. I had no idea if Alan Detmire still lived there, but I figured it was as good a place as any to start looking.

“How’s Lawrence?” I asked her on the trip out of town. Jayne had also come straight from rehearsal and neither of us was going to win any prizes for our moods.

“The same,” said Jayne. “Why?”

I told her about Ruby’s claim that she’d be leaving Eloise sooner rather than later.

“Well, if Ruby did find the play,” said Jayne, “Bentley’s doing a fabulous job of hiding it. He couldn’t have been less pleasant today if we skinned him alive.”

It was a long shot that Bentley was our man. He didn’t have a motive, beyond his fear of competition, and I found it hard to believe that a man with his ego would be concerned about another play’s success. But Bentley was a known quantity and accusing him was easier than imagining that Nussbaum or someone we hadn’t even met yet was behind everything.

“I’ve been thinking about Detmire,” I told Jayne. “The obit said Fielding had a servant. Remember? That’s who supposedly found him.”

“So you think Detmire was his butler?” Behind Jayne, cigarette ads geared up for battle:
CAMELS ARE FIRST WITH MEN IN THE SERVICE
but
LUCKY STRIKE GREEN HAS GONE TO WAR.

“Or at least posing as one. Ruby said Fielding was a nance, so maybe Detmire was his lover. That would explain why we haven’t heard much
about him.”

We arrived at the station and hired a hack. Once we arrived at Fielding’s, we followed the winding path to the front door. There was no car in the drive, but enough lights glowed behind the windows to let us know someone lingered inside. Halfway up the walk we heard a tinny radio crooning, “I’ll Be Seeing You.”

Jayne rang the bell and we both repeatedly cleared our throats as if we were orchestras tuning our instruments. A form distorted by the door’s glass panels loomed toward us. A voice assured us he was coming as fast as he could.

The door creaked open and a stooped man gazed at the two of us. “May I help you?” His was an accent that had faded, a remnant from a land he hadn’t lived in or visited for many years.

“We’re looking for Alan Detmire,” I said in my best Humphrey Bogart.

The man eyed us for a moment too long, then came to a silent decision. “I’m Alan Detmire. Won’t you come in?” He ushered us in with a hand that shook like a wind-up doll, then proceeded ahead of us. He had a funny way of walking, all stiff-legged, as though he were one of Hitler’s goose-stepping storm troopers. We passed through the familiar foyer and joined him in the library, where the portrait of Raymond Fielding by Raymond Fielding watched us from above a fire. Alan directed us to the sofa and we both sat with our knees pressed together and our feet flat on the rug. “Are you with the police?”

“No,” I said. Who was he fooling? Since when did the coppers hire a pair of dolls in uncomfortable shoes?

He nodded at this news and took slow, deliberate steps to the desk. “Care for a drink?”

“Sure,” I said. “We’ll both take some of that scotch.”

Alan made the drinks with the practiced hand of someone who’d held a cocktail shaker longer than a rattle. He delivered our drinks at the same maddeningly slow pace as he did everything else. I couldn’t decide if his speed was always this sluggish or if he’d downshifted as a way of irritating us. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“Mr. Detmire,” I said at last. “My name’s Rosie Winter and this is my friend Jayne Hamilton.” He didn’t say anything in response, so I plodded on. “You ever heard of Jim McCain?”

His brow creased and he shook his head. “Can’t say that I have.”

“How about Henry Nussbaum?”

He stroked his bare chin. “Forgive me, but I don’t recall why you said you’re here.”

“We didn’t.” I dipped a sip of courage. “We want to know about the play.”

“The play?” A satisfied smile spread across Detmire’s face. In a blink, it disappeared and his brows and mouth dipped downward. “Which play are you referring to?”

“Fielding’s magnum opus, the one full of so much dirt that everyone’s tripping over themselves trying to make sure it doesn’t get produced.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Alan paused and carefully selected his next words. “Raymond Fielding has no unproduced plays.”

“What about
In the Dark
?” I asked.

“That play is
about
to be produced, Miss Winter, so I don’t think it qualifies. Let us say that today Raymond Fielding has one unproduced play, but this weekend he shall have none.”

Was it possible he really didn’t know anything about the play? I couldn’t get over how deliberate he was, as though everything he said and did was for our edification. Part of it, no doubt, was retained from his days as an actor, constantly telegraphing to an audience too unsavvy to comprehend emotions at a distance. There was something hinky about him, though. I had the feeling we were engaged in some sort of game.

I turned my attention to the painting of Fielding by Fielding, then again set my sights on Detmire. Could I have met him before, possibly at the wake? I didn’t think so, but I couldn’t shake the feeling I’d encountered him previously. It was like running into a big-name star at the Stage Door Canteen. You were so used to seeing them with wigs, makeup, and distance that when you examined them unadorned they were practically unrecognizable.

I rose from the couch and approached him. “You’re Fake Fielding.”

“Pardon me?”

All he needed was a neat Vandyke beard and a smooth bald head. “That day, at Jim’s office, you’re the one who came in claiming to be Raymond Fielding. You’re the one who hired me.”

His smile grew larger, but he said nothing to dispute my claim.

“So there
is
a play. And you know about it.”

He crossed his arms and reclined against the desk. “Do I?”

“Of course you do. You have to unless…” My brain fell into the next thought faster than a barrel careening down Niagara Falls.

Jayne boarded my train and came to my side. “Unless this whole thing has been some sort of scam from the beginning.”

Alan’s smile died and he seemed to grow more massive, as though we’d been looking at an earlier, unfinished version of him until this time. “I can assure you there is a play. There always has been.”

Jayne stepped toward him. “Then where is it?”

He clucked his tongue and refilled his glass. “That is what we paid Mr. McCain and Miss Winter to find out.” He took a sip of the amber liquid, then held the glass up to the light. “Are people talking about it?”

I decided to throw the guy a bone. “Some people, sure.”

“Good, good.” Detmire lowered the glass and dipped his pinkie into the drink. “I suppose you two should be going now.”

I put my hands on my hips. “Every road led us here, so we’re not leaving until we know what’s going on. Where’s the play?”

Alan glanced at his watch and sighed. “At this moment, it’s hard to say. Uptown, perhaps. In a government office. Beneath an actress’s bed. In a rival playwright’s drawer. Or, maybe, right here in this room.”

“What’s your game?”

Detmire examined the nails of his free hand. “Game, Miss Winter? I’m not playing any game.”

“I don’t care what you call it. The fact is, you’re not being straight with us. Use all the double-talk you want. Jim, Raymond, and Edgar have all been murdered over this play, and instead of speaking in riddles, you should jump to the point and put us wise to where the damn thing is.”

He met my eyes and smiled. “I just did. You’re the one who’s looking for Chinese angles.”

That did it for me. I leaped toward him, determined to ring his neck until the color drained from his face. Before I could reach him, Jayne grabbed me from behind and pulled me away. “Let go of me, Jayne. He’s got this coming to him.” My arms flailed like windmills, trying to make contact with anyone or anything. I expected Jayne to go sailing over my head, but she held her ground and kept me planted.

“Easy, Rosie.”

“Don’t ‘easy’ me. This guy is conning us. And if he won’t tell me where the play is, we’re going to stage an impromptu production of
Salome
and put his head on a platter.”

Jayne looped her arms through mine and restrained me. “You do that and we’ll never find out what’s going on. Is that what you want?”

I turned toward her, but it was impossible to meet her face-to-face. “Who says he’s going to tell us what we want to hear?”

“I do,” said Detmire.

Jayne released me.

“Why don’t you both sit down?”

I didn’t oblige.

“Really, Miss Winter, it will be much more comfortable for you to do so. When I’m done saying what I have to say, you’re welcome to resume threatening me.” Detmire produced a silver cigarette case and offered us smokes. Jayne accepted for both of us, then steered me onto the sofa. “You found your way to me, which is impressive, but I must say I’m disappointed you’ve come to me looking for information rather than bearing it. I warned Raymond that he couldn’t expect everyone to have the intellectual prowess to get what he was trying to do. I suppose this was to be expected with two women on the trail.”

It would serve him right if I clocked him even if he told us what we’d come to hear.

“Get what?” asked Jayne.

“The play of course.” Detmire opened his arms wide enough to engulf the entire room. “I’ve told you where it is and yet you continue to
fail to see it.”

“Can you blame us?” asked Jayne. “You haven’t given us a lot to go on. The play’s here, it’s there, it’s everywhere. What is this, old MacDonald’s farm?”

I put my hand out and signaled for her to close her head. There it was: one idea meeting another until I finally understood what was going on. “All the world’s a stage and all men and women merely players,” I whispered.

Jayne nudged me with her elbow. “Now’s not the time to quote Shakespeare.”

I spun until I was facing Detmire head-on. “That’s what you said the day you visited me and I’m just now starting to understand why. We’re the play. That’s the crop, isn’t it? There is no play; there never was. But we—what we’re doing here, what everyone is doing as they search this thing out—that’s the theater Fielding was hoping to create: the ultimate play, without intrusion from author or director. He provided the conflict, we provided the characters, and now you’re sitting back to see how the whole thing plays out.”

Detmire smiled again, wider than the Cheshire cat. He began to applaud in that slow way people use to simultaneously praise an effort and belittle it. “Very good, Miss Winter. I’d be more impressed if you’d come to this conclusion without my hints, but I’ll give credit where credit is due.” What a guy. “Raymond was obsessed with defining theater. Everything he wrote came back to that central question: What is theater? If you addressed the audience, did it change? If you removed the set, did it change? What if it was no longer on a stage? What if the actors were real people? Everything he wrote took away more and more of the conventions we’d come to associate with the form until all that was left was drama and spectacle, and still people came to see it and called it art.”

Pity he didn’t explore this side of himself until after he wrote
In the Dark
.

“Eventually, he came to define theater as the artificial incitement of conflict. But he needed one more test to ensure this assessment was accurate. That’s what this is.”

“We’re the play?” asked Jayne. “How can that be?”

Detmire took a cleansing sip of liquor and cleared his throat. “He knew early on who his cast of characters would be, most of them anyway. You two were unnamed minor players. He created the idea of a play that revealed something about each of his main characters, something they hoped would never be made public. At first, the threat of confidential information getting out was a sufficient catalyst for the action, but Raymond grew worried the conflict wasn’t developing swiftly enough. He loved the form of the mystery since human curiosity is an extremely powerful motivation. So he introduced a new element: the play, which may have remained unproduced in Raymond’s hands, had been stolen by somebody with dangerous intentions. Raymond hired Jim to lend credibility to the idea that there was something to find and to further drive the cast by having someone poke into their histories. And when both Jim and Raymond were killed, I encouraged the show to go on, so to speak, by approaching Rosie and by hosting a wake that would keep the theater community talking about the missing script.”

I sat down; I had to. I couldn’t continue to stand in a world where a man mentioned two stiffs with the same regard given to recipe ingredients. “Why would you do that? Men were murdered. Why would you keep this ridiculous experiment going?”

The grin left Detmire and with it the sense of immorality I’d attributed to him. “Because I was asked to. My job was to record what happened, no matter what, and to keep it moving until it’s natural end. I promised Raymond. It’s impossible for you to understand the degree of dedication he had to this project. He believed it was the culmination of his life’s work, and if that meant he had to lose his life in the process, so be it.”

“That’s great,” I said. “That’s his life. What about Jim’s? What about Edgar Fielding’s? What about the next person some kook bumps off to keep a play that doesn’t exist from being produced?”

“Things have taken a course Raymond couldn’t have anticipated. It’s unfortunate, but it’s not his fault.”

I couldn’t keep it in anymore. Jim had been reduced to a wrong turn on a country road. A sob left me and a big, fat, betraying tear slid down my cheek. Jayne put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed.

“Naturally you’re angry,” said Detmire. “I was too. But I realized that great art elicits emotions. Instead of resenting that we’re experiencing them, we should be grateful for the pain.”

I shook free of Jayne’s touch. “This isn’t a play. This is life. Real men died.”

Jayne again put her arm on mine, more for restraint than comfort. Detmire put his hands in the air. “Be angry if you must, but don’t be angry at me. I am merely fulfilling a dear friend’s wish. As my honesty proves, I was never trying to deceive anyone. I’ve never lied throughout this project.” I started to protest and he pierced the air with his finger. “Not once. All anyone had to do was tell me what they believed was happening and I would’ve verified it for them.”