Audition for Murder Read online

  So it was when Nick arrived. Two young men wearing storm coats were sitting on rickety folding chairs. The loft’s long radiators were all ice-cold.

  “Mr. O’Connor?” One of the men jumped up immediately, muscular, decisive, blue-eyed.

  “Yes.” Nick handed him his photo-resume.

  “Brian Wright.” He shook Nick’s hand. “I’ll be directing this project. This is my colleague, Cheyenne Brown.” He indicated the other man, who was rocking back in his folding chair, wearing a sheepskin jacket and cowboy boots. He had a thin mustache. “Cheyenne’s our designer. He’s worked here in the city professionally too; you might know his stuff. Anyway, this project is his idea as much as mine.”

  “Glad to meet you both.”

  “I—well, before we get into anything, I’d like to hear you read Claudius,” said Brian.

  “Fine.”

  “The scene in Act Four after you’ve explained to Laertes that Hamlet killed his father. I’ll read Laertes for you.”

  “Okay.” Nick glanced at the scene in his book. He had reread the play that weekend with Lisette, back from the detoxification center.

  Brian took a young man’s stance, one hand toying with the hilt of a nonexistent sword. “Go ahead.”

  Nick’s body, even in corduroys, became regal. The weight of ermine replaced the storm coat on his shoulders. Only the pleasant, flexible voice revealed the strain and urgency that Claudius felt in appealing to Laertes. They read through the scene, Brian a skeptical Laertes slowly won over by Nick’s coaxing King. “Fine, fine!” said Brian at last, breaking out of his role. He seemed pleased. “Let’s do the prayer scene.”

  Nick paused a moment to shift his mind and body from royal persuasiveness to royal shame. He dropped to his knees to read the scene, searching for the misery of a soul that cannot repent. “O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven!” When he had finished, Brian glanced at his designer. Cheyenne nodded, the thin mustache drooping at the sides of his mouth.

  “That’s the one,” he said.

  “Okay,” said Brian. “That’s all.”

  “No interview?” asked Nick.

  “We’re frozen! We’ve got to get out of here. But we do have some questions for you. Can you come have a cup of coffee with us?”

  “Sure.”

  In stark contrast to the chilled loft, the coffeehouse was overheated. Their booth was badly lit by a hanging light with a tinseled Christmas decoration attached. Steam filmed the window next to them so that the colored lights outside, refracted by a thousand tiny droplets, shimmered gaily through the pane. Cheyenne, in the corner, leaned back into the shadows. “Three coffees,” said Brian to the waiter.

  “Yes, sir.” The waiter snapped his notebook closed, disappointed that they weren’t having dinner. Nick had been a waiter often enough to sympathize. Brian picked up the saltshaker and inspected it, then the quick blue eyes shifted to Nick a little uncertainly.

  “You said you had some questions,” Nick prompted.

  “Yes, well …” He hesitated.

  “Why the hell are you auditioning for our show?” Cheyenne’s voice spoke brusquely from the shadows.

  Nick’s eyebrows lifted a fraction. “Is it really so remarkable?”

  “Frankly, yes.” Brian had found his tongue again. “We’ve had a couple million try out for Hamlet, of course. It’s the best part in the world, and there are plenty of young actors who’d love to get paid for doing it. And at the other end we have a lot of old-timers—tons of experience but getting senile or alcoholic—reading for Claudius or Polonius. And every one of them is between jobs. Or soon will be.”

  “You’re suspicious of me because I’m working.”

  “Look. You could be exactly the Claudius I need. Shrewd, mature, virile, tormented. Head and shoulders above anyone else who tried out. Okay? But a couple of nights ago Cheyenne suggested that we ought to go see The Fantasticks again.”

  Nick’s brown eyes danced. “Spies.”

  “Exactly. Because I wanted to know what I’m getting. And now, well, I don’t want to have you turn me down. But you claim to be willing to throw away one of the best parts in New York, and take a cut in pay besides, to come to Hargate for fifteen weeks and act with a bunch of students.”

  “Yeah, my agent thinks I’ve gone berserk too,” Nick admitted. “Seriously, I’m not playing games with you. But there is a catch.”

  “Okay, good. Cards on the table, okay?”

  “Okay. You see, my wife auditioned too.”

  “Ah! I see.” Brian frowned a little. “What’s her name?”

  “O’Connor, believe it or not. Lisette O’Connor.”

  Brian began flipping through his folder and pulled up Lisette’s picture as the coffee arrived. “Mmm,” he said, with a rather surprised glance at Nick’s balding homeliness. “Yes, I remember. I remember her quite well.”

  “She read both Ophelia and Gertrude.”

  “I remember. But you see, we weren’t really reading for Ophelia.”

  “You weren’t?”

  “Yeah, let me explain. What we’re doing is a centenary production. It turns out that a hundred years ago, the very first play done at Hargate was Hamlet. Now we’ve got a full-fledged theatre department and some grad students in acting, but we’re more modest, I guess. We don’t feel equipped to do Hamlet or Lear or any of the real toughies.”

  “You’ve learned a lot in a hundred years.”

  “Yep. Well, this spring we’re having a big birthday celebration. And we went to Dean Wagner and said, hey, let’s do Hamlet again, and he said fine. And Cheyenne said, let’s get professional actors, and showed him the Equity book. Well, Dean Wagner got excited and said, okay, how much? Turns out he has a special fund. But it’s limited. He found enough money to hire four of you.”

  “Claudius, Polonius, Hamlet. And Gertrude,” said Nick. So much for Lisette’s plan. “Well, you’re right. Those are the parts that really need age or experience.”

  Brian was watching him closely. “You seem disappointed.”

  “Yeah.” Nick shrugged. “We really wanted to go. For various reasons.”

  Brian took a sip of his coffee, then asked, “Is it out of the question for you to come alone? Or, I mean, she could come along, of course.”

  “Not without a job. She’s professional too. We’ll just have to find something else.”

  “Love me, love my dog,” said Cheyenne from his corner.

  Nick glanced at him and said mildly, “Exactly.”

  “Shut up, Cheyenne,” said Brian irritably. He looked down at his notes again. “She’s very good,” he added. “My note says, ‘delightful Ophelia! But out of the question for Gertrude.’”

  “We really didn’t get excited about any of the Gertrudes,” came the voice from the corner.

  “Well, no.” Brian frowned at the designer. “But a dozen of them would be more appropriate.”

  Nick, suddenly tired and anxious to get out, swallowed the last of his coffee. “Well, thanks for letting us read, anyway. I understand your problem. Hope you have a successful production.”

  Brian ignored him. He was still looking at Cheyenne. “You meant something by that,” he said accusingly. Nick realized suddenly that, whatever their official ranks might be, the dominant person in this pair was the taciturn designer. The professional.

  Cheyenne leaned forward, the intense dark eyes and the thin droopy mustache becoming sharp in the brighter light. “I meant, we’ve got a couple of good Hamlets.”

  “Right.”

  “And a couple of Poloniuses, if you can decide which one is least senile.”

  “Right.”

  “But this guy”—Cheyenne pointed at Nick as though he were an object on auction—“this guy is the only one who makes you say, yes! perfect!”

  “Well ...”

  “And his wife makes you say, delightful!”

  Brian whistled. He leaned back in the seat and stared up at the tinseled lamp above them.
“Oh, God, Cheyenne,” he said. “Think of the repercussions!”

  Cheyenne shrugged. “Amateurs think of repercussions. Professionals think of the show.”

  Nick, interested, watched Brian wrestle with the problem. Cheyenne had leaned back into his corner. No one said anything for a moment.

  “Even if I could fend off the raging female acting students,” said Brian, “who the hell could play Gertrude?”

  “Grace,” said Cheyenne.

  Brian whistled again. “Oh, God,” he said. He looked down at Lisette’s photo-resume again. “Your wife has a B.A. in theatre, and other courses since.”

  “She could teach, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I know, damn it. She impressed me. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her we weren’t reading for Ophelia.” He raised a miserable gaze to Nick. “I haven’t read your résumé yet. You’ve got some academic background too, I suppose.”

  “M.A. in theatre. I taught in a college for two years before the Army, and came to New York afterward.”

  “God. The perfect pair.” Brian was silent a moment, then said, “Actually, Grace could be damn good.”

  We’re in, thought Nick, silently blessing the unknown Grace.

  “I’d better warn you,” said Brian. “Your wife will probably encounter an incredible wave of hostility from all our Ophelia hopefuls. Will she still be interested under those conditions?”

  “I’ll ask her.” Nick grinned wryly. “New York actors are not always paragons of good sportsmanship, you know. We’ve worked under hostile conditions before. We can probably cope with your local Furies.”

  “They’ll get over it soon, I hope. When can you let us know?”

  Nick checked his watch. “I’ll give her a call before my show tonight so she can think about it. We can probably let you know by tomorrow morning. Our agent will get in touch.”

  “That’ll be fine.”

  Nick tapped the copy of Hamlet on the table. “I noticed in your reading of Laertes that he responded to Claudius’s political arguments, not to the personal ones.”

  “Yeah, we’ll be playing it that way,” said Brian eagerly. “I’m really going to be working with the state of Denmark concept, the wider implications of Hamlet’s problems. That’s why Claudius, the statesman, is so important. For example—”

  “Ahem,” said Cheyenne.

  “Oh, right. Sorry, that can wait. What else can I tell you?”

  Nick pulled out his notebook. “Dates. Duties.”

  “Okay. First rehearsal, two p.m., January 18. Classes start the next week. Hamlet opens at the end of April, five nights a week for two weeks. We’ll want you to stay a week after it closes, to finish up your classes.”

  “I see. And the classes?”

  “Your official title will be artist-in-residence. You’ll each have two sections of basic acting. But …” He weighed something for a moment, then blurted, “Look, if you decide to come, it would be criminal not to give the grad students a chance at you.”

  Nick grinned. “Invitation to a lynching, from what you say.” He felt good. “Let me ring Lisette right now, in case she has any questions,” he added.

  “Fine.”

  The phone booth was new and plastic, but already smelled of the breath of many users. Lisette answered almost immediately.

  “Hi, Blossom,” said Nick. “I think we’ve got the parts if we want them, but there’s a hitch.” He explained.

  She said, “So the problem is that the acting students will be resentful. Well, I would have been too.”

  “It’ll be fifteen weeks. We’ll be teaching these people and working with them every day,” he warned.

  “Well, hell, Nicky.” There was a bit of spirit back in her voice. “The first thing they’d better learn about this business is that they’ll be turned down for ninety-nine percent of the parts they want.”

  “True.”

  “I want to go. Nothing in this life is easy.”

  “Okay, Blossom. You don’t want to think it over longer?”

  “I’m sure. I really want this.”

  Months later, looking back in sorrow, he remembered her enthusiasm. But the choice she made led to her salvation too.

  Brian was counting out the tip when he got back to the booth. “She says yes,” announced Nick.

  Brian glanced up, surprised. “Already?”

  “I told her she’d be cordially hated at first. She said not getting roles should be Lesson One in every acting class.”

  “Terrific!” Brian bounced up and embraced Nick, then stepped back, abashed. “I’m not very sophisticated about this process yet.”

  “You’re doing fine,” said Nick, returning his thump on the back. Cheyenne was looking at them sardonically from his corner. “It’ll make up for your enraged students.”

  Brian shook his head glumly. “We’re in for a rocky end of the term, all right.” Then, enthusiasm returning, he clapped Nick on the shoulder again. “But, God, it’s going to be a terrific Hamlet!”

  Two

  The third week of January brought two snowstorms, back to back. Ellen Winfield was exhausted by the drive from Pennsylvania, on slick two-lane country highways. She went immediately to bed when she reached the dorm and slept late the next morning. Her roommate had apparently come and gone. There was a half-unpacked suitcase on the other bed, under the Comédie Française poster, and a note. “Dear Rip Van W.—See you at the theatre, M.”

  Ellen grinned and stretched. Time to go foraging. She pulled on jeans and a heavy sweater and frowned at herself in the long mirror. Winter was not her season. Her roommate, taller and bonier, looked fine in thick furry things. But all that wool made Ellen’s more average frame look like two hundred pounds. Should have gone to UCLA. She brushed her straight brown hair back from her face. A reasonable face, only a little tired-looking from the drive. Hazel eyes, a straight nose maybe a touch too long. Jim liked her nose. The hell with Jim. She pulled on her parka, adding yet another hundred pounds to her looks, and went out into the snow.

  Hargate was spread over the top of a hill in the approved collegiate fashion. Today it was beautiful and quiet; only a few figures, bundled up like herself, moving across the snow. Most of the buildings were nineteenth-century, crowned by the Victorian extravagance of the original library at the end of the quad. Below her, the town of Jefferson spilled down the hillside like crumbled steps to the flat floor of the glacial valley and the lake.

  A familiar figure was standing at the newsstand in the lobby of the student union when she entered. “Hey, Paul!” she called.

  He turned, beaming. “Hi, Ellen! How was vacation?” A nice crooked smile, dark eyes, sturdy build. Paul Rigo was the staff of life around the theatre, putting in long hours building sets, hanging lights, hunting down props.

  “Fine. Even Dad took a couple of days off. How’re you doing?”

  The smile left his face. “Not so good. Failed chem again.” Paul’s hours in the theatre were notoriously detrimental to his grades.

  “Hey,” said Ellen, trying to look on the bright side, “you can take it again.”

  He shook his head sombrely. “Nope. Twice is all I’m allowed. Now I’ll have to take physics instead. That’s even harder.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “The real problem is, if I mess up anything at all this term, I’m out.”

  “Christ, Paul. There’s Hamlet!”

  “Yeah. There’s also the draft.”

  Vietnam. The unspoken, ominous presence. The interminable war that threatened to suck in everyone she knew as it grew, inexorably, each year.

  “Hell, Paul.” Ellen looked down and knocked the toe of her boot on the floor to get rid of some snow. What could she say? “Maybe you’d better ease off around the theatre.”

  He laughed. “Fat chance. With Cheyenne around?”

  “Won’t he let you off a little? Under the circumstances?”

  “Well, you remember what he told us that time. He had to miss hi
s sister’s funeral because he was building a show. I mean, he’s a real professional. I don’t think there’s anything in the world he’ll accept as an excuse.” Paul seemed to think this was admirable in Cheyenne.

  “Well, run when you see him,” Ellen advised.

  “I’ll have to.”

  “Listen, I’m starving. They’re not feeding us yet in the dorms. Is the cafeteria here open?”

  “Yeah, just came from there.”

  “Thank God. See you this afternoon!”

  She had some coffee, scrambled eggs, and, guiltily, an English muffin with lots of butter, and felt much better. As she started out of the cafeteria, a voice hailed her.

  “Ellen!”

  She turned back. “Oh, hi, Judy! Hi, David.”

  Slender, regal, with dark hair and aristocratic cheekbones, Judy Allison was one of the graduate acting students. She was to be Brian’s assistant director on Hamlet. A consolation prize. The earnest velvet-eyed young man beside her was David Wagner, an undergraduate theatre major. He would be playing Laertes. He was also Dean Wagner’s son. With them was a stranger, a tall, blue-eyed blond man, who, for no obvious reason, was magnetically attractive. Judy beckoned him from the cafeteria line.

  “Rob, this is Ellen Winfield. Pre-law. She’s our stage manager.”

  “Hi, Ellen.” His smile sparkled. Ellen became conscious of her thick boots and bulky parka.

  “Rob Jenner?” she asked stupidly.

  “Right,” said Judy. “Hamlet.”

  “Well,” Ellen said, her voice small and tight. “Hi.”

  His hands were thrust into his jeans pockets, pushing back his unzipped parka to reveal a knit shirt on a torso as lean and muscular as Jim’s. “Judy and David have been showing me around,” he said. “But so far, all we’ve seen is snow.”

  Ellen pulled herself together. “That’s our specialty,” she said, ignoring his disturbing gaze. “Fifty-seven varieties of it. I collapsed after driving in through last night’s variety.”

  “So did I.” He smiled that shattering smile again. “I hope everyone else gets here all right.”