Rehearsal for Murder (Maggie Ryan) Page 6

  Women came to the white hunter in his tent at night.

  The train slowed and Steve sat upright in alarm. Where was he? Only Douglaston. He sagged back into the seat with a sigh.

  He wasn’t there.

  Not yet.

  Derek hung up the phone in the stair hall and came back into the rehearsal loft. “Oh, Nick. You’re still here.”

  “Maggie’s late tonight. Do you want me to wait outside so you can lock up?”

  “No hurry.” Derek sank onto a folding chair. He looked desperately tired.

  “Was that the hospital you just called?”

  “Yes. I waited till the actors were gone so they wouldn’t come crowding around. But there isn’t any news. They say there’s no change.”

  “Twenty-four hours.” That was bad. Nick looked out the big window that opened on a grimy view of the wet roof of Anna Maria’s kitchen. He shook his head grimly.

  “You saw her, Nick. Was it terrible?”

  Remembering, Nick nodded. “You know how lively she always seems, even just sitting still? All that energy was gone.” Once he had seen Maggie unconscious, and the shock had been similar: the limp emptiness doubly distressing because her radiant vitality was such an essential part of her presence.

  “It’s hard to imagine.” Derek stroked back his faded hair, and Nick noticed that there were streaks of gray among the blond. “I just can’t believe anything could quench that spirit of hers.”

  “Well, as you said, if she’s got any chance at all she’ll make it.”

  “God, I wish they’d let me see her!”

  “They have to do their job as they think best, I suppose.”

  “Yes, but—oh, you’re right, of course.” Derek lapsed into glumness. After a moment there was a quick beat of steps on the stairs and the door opened.

  “Sorry I’m late.” Maggie breezed in, shaking out a damp umbrella. “Sarah took her time finishing dinner. Hi, Derek!”

  “Hi.” He rallied and stood up. “How’s the little one?”

  “Fine, just slow today.” She had put down her briefcase and was unsnapping flaps preparatory to lifting Sarah out.

  “May I hold her?” asked Derek.

  “Sure. I’ll help Nick saddle up.”

  Derek told Sarah she was a super baby and allowed his nose to be squeezed by a small, inquisitive hand, then helped return her to the carrier, now strapped to Nick. “I wondered,” he said very casually, “if you three would like to come along to my place for a bite of steak. I’ve got a couple of questions about Ramona.”

  “I’d love to compare notes,” said Maggie. “But I’ve got to help Dan with the Department of Corrections program at work. And Nick has to take care of Sarah.”

  Derek gave her a wry smile. “Dirty nappies no longer shock me, if that’s your worry. I’ve got three kids of my own back in England.”

  “That’s great!”

  “And a dog.”

  “Yeah, that’s another thing. The dog,” said Maggie.

  Nick could see that she was curious about Derek’s proposition and eager to accept despite the obstacles. So was he. He said, “I’ll phone Julia.” Their downstairs neighbor had their key. “If she can let the dog out, I’ll take Sarah over to Derek’s and you can meet us there at nine.”

  “We’ll hold the steaks until you arrive,” Derek promised. “And we’ll pick up anything Sarah needs on our way over. She’ll have two expert dads waiting on her.”

  Derek’s apartment was in the Village, two big rooms and a kitchenette. “Belongs to a friend of Ramona’s,” he explained as he hung their rain-spattered things next to the door. “I’ve got it for three months. The mess is my fault. The wall things aren’t.” Ramona’s friend went in for metal sculpture, and massive assemblies of straps and chunks of weathered steel, copper, and brass hung on every wall. “Bit like a boiler room, I think.”

  “Or the inside of a coffee grinder,” agreed Nick, touching a jagged edge gingerly.

  “Are steaks okay?” asked Derek. “Last week I finally mastered the grill here.”

  “Sounds great.”

  “Just pop the infant onto the rug by the sofa there while you fix her dinner. Tidied up there today. Practically the only place I did.”

  “It won’t be tidy when she finishes her cereal,” Nick warned.

  “Right. We’ll lay down something waterproof.” Derek pulled out a plastic tablecloth. While Nick fed and changed Sarah, Derek picked up hastily, readied the steaks for the broiler, and prepared a salad. “I wish I had the nerve to call her husband,” he said suddenly. “Maybe he’s seen her. But I don’t want to muddy those waters. She’s got problems enough.”

  “He didn’t know she was doing the show?” asked Nick curiously.

  “I don’t know. She did tell me that if I met him, I shouldn’t mention that she’s an investor. Maybe he thought she was merely acting in it.”

  “That would fit,” said Nick. “And that little interchange at the rehearsal yesterday meant he’d found out.”

  “That would be my guess. I wonder how he heard of it? None of us are chums with him. I wondered if it might be Ken Martin. He’s the family legal adviser as well as her partner.”

  “But surely he would know if Simon shouldn’t be told!”

  “It might be difficult for Martin, though, if he owes allegiance to both of them. You know, I can’t help wondering if Simon might have hired—I mean, if he couldn’t legally gain control of the production money?” He cocked an eyebrow at Nick.

  “Surely not,” said Nick. “But I have to admit he was angry.” Could Derek be right? Could things have been that ugly between Ramona and her husband?

  The intercom sounded and they let Maggie in. She checked Sarah first, who was on the rug again, kicking sturdily and cooing at the lamp. The steaks were ready in a few minutes.

  “Well, mates,” said Derek as he passed the salad around for the second time, “I wanted to ask you something.”

  “Fire away,” said Maggie, attacking her steak and salad with her usual gusto.

  “Nick said she was—what was it? Contrite? Apologetic? About yesterday?”

  “Yes,” said Nick. “She said she was upset about Simon and had been taking it out on us. Claimed she’d reform.”

  “She didn’t apologize for anything specific?”

  “Not really. You’re thinking about Larry’s solo? I’m afraid not.”

  “But I think it was included in the general apology,” said Maggie.

  “I see,” said Derek. “Well, it was just a hope.”

  Sarah was kicking too energetically now, and her cooing had given way to occasional whimpers. Maggie, chewing the last of her steak, excused herself and settled with the baby into a chrome rocking chair. Derek poured Nick the last of the wine and asked, “I was wondering, too, why she suddenly decided to confide in you.”

  “Instead of you, you mean?” asked Nick, stalling for time. He didn’t want to spread stories about the pretended seduction. But his question seemed to upset Derek.

  “No, I didn’t mean that!” he exclaimed. “Not exactly. Though I am the composer, and so forth.”

  Nick studied his wineglass a moment, then said, “You know the two of us were the last to leave.”

  “Yes.”

  “She was still in a truculent mood and was trying to embarrass me when Maggie walked in,” he continued carefully. “So Maggie asked her why, and she admitted being upset over the divorce. The first thing I knew they were hugging and crying and confiding in each other like sisters.”

  “I see,” said Derek, glancing down at his plate. Nick thought his account had been cautious enough, but Derek suddenly slammed his fist against the tabletop and cried, “Trying to embarrass you! Damn her!” Then he stood hastily and took his plates to the sink. He stood there stiffly a moment, looking at the faucet, then added, “Sorry, mates. I’m just upset about everything,” and began scraping the plates vigorously.

  “We’re all upset,” sa
id Nick. “It’s not just the work, though God knows that’s important to all of us. But also, you can’t help getting attached to people when you’re working on a show. She’s like a member of the family.”

  “Right.” Derek came back for more plates. Nick helped him clear the table.

  Maggie was still rocking serenely with the baby. She asked, “How old are your kids, Derek?”

  “Eight, six, and the little one is three.”

  “A lively household.”

  “Yes.” He continued scraping plates.

  “Does your wife have a job?”

  “Yes, in an office.”

  “Will she come see the show?”

  “No. Look, do we have to talk about my bloody wife?”

  “’Scuse me,” Maggie apologized, but Nick, knowing her so well, could see that her interest had quickened. “I’m too curious, as usual. Just wondered what it was like, being a composer in London.”

  Derek plunked a plate into the sink with unnecessary emphasis and swung around to face her. “It’s bloody awful, if you must know. We all live on Elizabeth’s earnings. That means a council flat and a pair of new shoes a year, right? Her mum lives a few streets away. A mixed blessing. She minds the children and complains about the rotter Elizabeth married.”

  “The artist’s usual fate,” observed Nick.

  “Right. I pick up a bit giving music lessons or helping in my friend Ron’s pub, and Ron lets me organize little shows in his upstairs room. A few people come to see them. My kids adore them. But they don’t make money, of course. Elizabeth’s mum complains.”

  “And Elizabeth?”

  “She liked them at first,” said Derek shortly.

  Nick could imagine the situation: the young wife, excited about her man’s talent and dreams, slowly worn down as years passed, babies arrived, and neither money nor fame materialized. At least Maggie loved her work, was not a hired hand in someone else’s office, he reminded himself. But his empathy for Derek had a chilling personal edge.

  “How did Ramona find out about you?” Maggie shifted subjects, and Derek relaxed visibly.

  “Well, I’d put on an early version ofVictoria Rupstairs at Ron’s.” He opened the dishwasher and added the scraped plates. “One of the people who saw it there was a friend of a friend of Ramona’s. About a year later Ramona was looking for a musical piece with a strong female part, and the friend remembered hearing aboutVictoria R. Ramona called, I mailed off a tape, and that was it.” His pale eyes were soft with remembered wonder. “It was amazing, don’t you know, after twelve years of trying to be noticed. Well, I’d sold some songs and had some good notices for the pub theatre pieces. But it was a great leap to meet a New York star, offering a New York production.”

  “She also asked you to direct.”

  “Yes, that was amazing too. At first she said she’d want me for technical advice, history and vocal coaching, that sort of thing. She flew me here. And then after we’d talked, she said, let’s direct it together.”

  “And found you an apartment,” said Maggie.

  “Yes. And even a salary. Most of it goes for the apartment, but still …” He grinned, boyish in his pleasure.

  Nick forced himself to be a little more temperate in his enthusiasm; he’d had plenty of friends who had been convinced that their big break had finally arrived, only to have the show die in preview, or their part disintegrate in the rewrites. It was a hard business, with higher highs and longer lows than most people had to cope with. And yet Derek’s dreams were necessary, almost reasonable. Nick, too, hoped desperately for good reviews, for splashy publicity, for a small piece of the glory. “It’s a cute show,” he said, “and Ramona’s a great performer. We’re all excited about being part of it.”

  Maggie stood and asked apologetically, “All right if Sarah and I use your bathroom? She needs a wash and a change.”

  “Nappie time,” said Derek. “Of course. Here, let me get you a clean towel.” He bustled into the bathroom and emerged a moment later with a bundle of clothes and towels. “The housekeeping in this place is dreadful. I’d fire the chap who does it if I weren’t the chap myself. But go right ahead now, and then come have dessert.”

  While Derek got out ice cream and raspberries, Nick asked, “Was there anything else you wanted to ask us?”

  “A couple of things.”

  “Okay.”

  “Did she tell you whom she was meeting?”

  “No.” Nick was surprised at the urgency of Derek’s interest. “We could ask at L’Etoile, I suppose.”

  “Well, actually I did,” Derek confessed. “When I spoke to the police they asked me about it. And this morning I inquired there myself. They were rather cross with me because the police had already been there. But it seems that there was a table for two booked in Ramona’s name, but no one had claimed it. Not Ramona, of course, but no one else either.”

  “That’s odd.” Like Derek, Nick found this new information troubling. “I wish she’d said something. But she only mentioned the restaurant in passing.”

  “We were in the midst of a deep conversation,” Maggie explained, returning to the table with a fresh-diapered Sarah. “All about divorce and growing old and her hopes for the show. We didn’t discuss cocktail plans.”

  “Hopes for the show?” repeated Derek eagerly.

  “She loves her part,” explained Nick, “and likes the music-hall approach.”

  “Yes, she hopes it will sell even if it’s not rock.”

  “It’s fun. I like our prime minister duet.”

  “You were hilarious today!” Derek grinned. “Exactly what Gladstone would be in a warm-up suit! Did you know that the verse you and Edith sing is something he actually sang with his wife?”

  “Really? The ‘ragamuffin husband’ and the ‘rantipoling wife’?”

  “Yes. Different tune, I imagine.”

  “What’s ‘rantipoling’?” asked Maggie, removing Sarah’s fist from her raspberries.

  “Rude, noisy, rowdy,” said Derek.

  “Did Gladstone really have a rantipoling wife?”

  “Of course not,” said Nick. “She was a member of the highborn Glyn family, a jolly group. They did joke a lot, even invented their own secret language. If they wanted to say someone was worthless, they’d call him a grasshopper’s uncle. That sort of thing.”

  “You’ve been doing your research!” Derek exclaimed. “But these people are fascinating, aren’t they? I mean Victoria and her crew. Marvelous contradictory personalities. Terribly moral and proper but with such unsuitable attachments. Disraeli’s young platonic mistress. Victoria’s Scotsman. Gladstone’s pet prostitutes—you must have read of them?”

  “Oh, yes. He’d pick one up, bring her home, and lecture her in the kitchen about how she ought to reform.”

  “The great orator,” said Derek, playing with the salt shaker. “And afterward he’d flog himself because he’d got himself, shall we say, excited.”

  “Even so,” said Nick, “he really believed God wanted him to reform those women, whatever his hidden motives might have been.”

  “Did the rantipoling wife know about this?” asked Maggie.

  “Oh, yes, he was quite open about it,” Derek explained. “She helped reform them. They founded a shelter for the repentant. She understood some of his conflicts, I think. He didn’t really like politics, would have preferred the clergy. But God had given him the talents of a statesman, and he had to support his family, so he stayed in government and wrote theology in his spare time.”

  “Any artist would recognize that conflict,” murmured Nick, glancing at Sarah. Was Gladstone right? Should he forget his hopeless profession, use his talents for ordinary human things such as money, a solid job, a family?

  “Whichever choice you make, the other keeps nagging for attention,” agreed Derek soberly. “Do you betray your family or betray yourself?” He glanced at Maggie, suddenly confused. “No, I mean—that’s not what I meant!”

 
But Maggie’s eyes were fixed on Nick. She said, “I think the rantipoling wife might have understood, whichever he chose. Women smack into the same dilemma. It’s hard to manage to have both.” She shifted Sarah to the crook of her arm and smiled at Derek. “Was there anything else you wanted to ask us?”

  “Oh. Well, I just wondered if you could tell me a bit more about her injuries. They said internal bleeding.”

  “Yes.” Maggie’s deep blue eyes were serious. “She was bleeding in front here, on the left. And from the exit wound in the back. I gave first aid as best I could, but she slid right into shock anyway. I knew there were problems I couldn’t see. She’d lost some blood, but not enough to knock her out like that, I thought. So internal bleeding sounds right.”

  “Can you show me where she was wounded?”

  Maggie handed Sarah to Nick and stood up. She rucked up her shirt and pointed to a spot by her lower rib cage. “Right there,” she said, then turned around. “And the exit wound was back here, a little closer to her spine. But I don’t think the bullet touched bone.”

  Derek stared at her exposed waist a moment, then leaned his face miserably into his hands. “Oh, bloody hell!”

  “I’m sorry, Derek.” Maggie’s hand dropped to his shoulder.

  “I didn’t see her, you see.” He cleared his throat to get his voice under control. “Up to this very minute it didn’t seem real.”

  “I know. It makes me hurt too.”

  “At least you were there to help! The police told me if you hadn’t been there, there wouldn’t have been any chance for her.”

  “I hope it’s a big enough chance.”

  “She’s a fighter,” said Derek with little conviction.

  “Yes, she is.” Maggie patted his shoulder before taking the dessert plates to the dishwasher. Then she looked at Nick and Sarah. “We’d better get our little one home, Derek.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry to be so silly.”

  “Will you be all right? We can stay a little while if that’s better.”

  “No, no. I’ll manage better alone, I think. It’s just that I need time to absorb it. I—well, it just didn’t seem real until now.” He tried to smile. “It makes one feel such a grasshopper’s uncle.”