Murder, Stage Left Read online

  “Here’s what our drama critics and columnists have told me about Breckenridge,” he said. “He is considered to be the savviest producer on Broadway right now, and close to being the best director as well. His productions have won a pile of Tonys over the years, in damned near every category: Best Director (himself, or course), Best Play, Best Musical, Best Revival of a Play, Best Performances by an Actor and an Actress, and on and on. I am sure you’ve heard of him, with all the plays you go to with Lily Rowan.”

  “I never pay attention to who the director is, or the producer, for that matter. When I go to the theater, which admittedly is not often, I am more interested in who’s in the cast.”

  “Okay. Anyway, I am told Breckenridge never has any trouble getting the finances for one of his productions. His name is like gold to investors, including Wolfe’s friend Lewis Hewitt, and he is generally well liked by cast members and staff, although he expects a lot out of his performers. The word ‘perfectionist’ gets used a lot in describing him.

  “As to his personal life, Breckenridge has been married and divorced three times, no children. He is quite the man about town, often seen in the best restaurants and at parties with extremely attractive women, many of them decades younger than he. And in the last few years, his name has been linked to everyone from wealthy widows to stage and screen actresses, as well as to the daughter of a Greek shipping tycoon who is worth billions.”

  “Breckenridge sounds a little like the aforementioned Lewis Hewitt in his expensive tastes, although Hewitt has only been married once, and that union has lasted at least thirty years. Did you dig up any dirt on the producer?”

  “Negative. If he has been up to any kind of skulduggery, nobody at the paper has unearthed it. And before you ask, he has never been a respondent in a paternity suit.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask,” I said in what I hoped was a hurt tone. “And I like the word ‘skulduggery.’ I haven’t heard it in years.”

  “I’ve got a way with words, Archie. That’s part of the reason they keep me around here and pay me the so-called big bucks.”

  “So that’s your secret. Well, thanks for the information.”

  “Just remember where you heard it, in case . . . something comes up that might interest readers of the Gazette.”

  I told Lon I would remember and, after hanging up, went to the kitchen, where Wolfe and Fritz were in a heated discussion over the amounts of chives, chervil, and shallots that should be used in the shad roe entree. I didn’t hang around to find out who was arguing which side of the issue. Arguments about food invariably bore me. I am more into consumption.

  Because business is forbidden at lunch, I waited until Wolfe and I were back in the office with coffee before giving him the particulars on Breckenridge, but he did not seem overly interested, so I left him to peruse an orchid magazine and took a stroll in the summer sunshine.

  Chapter 3

  The next day, Wolfe had barely gotten settled in the office after his morning session with the orchids when the doorbell rang. I walked down the hall to the front door, and through the one-way glass, I saw a tall, barrel-chested figure clad in a black homburg and black cashmere overcoat, even though the temperature did not warrant it.

  “Good morning,” I said, swinging open the door with a grin. “Mr. Breckenridge, I presume.”

  “And Mr. Goodwin, I also presume,” he riposted, smiling. “So nice of Nero Wolfe to see me.” He was an impressive specimen in his early sixties, at least six feet three, with piercing blue eyes and the ruddy cheeks of a man who probably liked his drink. I helped him off with his coat and admired the tailored gray pin-striped suit that must have cost more than most working stiffs earn in a month or two.

  I steered Breckenridge down the hall to the office, introduced him to Wolfe, and directed him to the red leather chair. Apparently, our guest had been cued by Hewitt about Wolfe’s distaste for shaking hands, because he did not offer a paw to his host.

  “Thank you for agreeing to see me, Mr. Wolfe,” he said, running a hand over well- barbered silver-gray hair. “I appreciate that your time is valuable.”

  Wolfe dipped his chin half an inch. “Can we offer you something to drink, sir? As you see, I am having beer.”

  “A Bloody Mary would be most welcome,” he said. I went to the kitchen for a glass, ice, and tomato juice. Returning, I mixed the drink at the bar cart against one wall of the office as Breckenridge was speaking.

  “. . . so Lewis and I have been friends for many years, and he has very generously backed several of my plays.”

  “Just so,” Wolfe said. “Mr. Hewitt tells us you have serious concerns about your current production.”

  “I do,” Breckenridge said, nodding his thanks to me for the drink and crossing one leg over the other. “Lest you think me paranoid, I have been in this business for more than twenty years, and never have I had the uneasy feelings I do about Death at Cresthaven.”

  “The play has received positive reviews,” Wolfe stated.

  Breckenridge nodded. “Absolutely. It is not the reviews that concern me, nor is it the finances. The house has been full or very close to it for every performance, including the matinees, and we are about to extend the run. But . . . there is a tension that I cannot put my finger on and that is unlike anything I have ever seen. Members of the stage crew have felt it as well, I believe.”

  “As you can see, I am not suited to be an audience member in one of your theaters,” Wolfe said, “so I am hardly qualified to speak about the Broadway stage and its vagaries. However, I should think, given the artistic temperaments of the players, that tensions would be the rule rather than the exception.”

  “Yes, on that you are absolutely correct, Mr. Wolfe. It is rare, particularly in dramatic productions, when there is not some degree of strain among the cast members. Clashing egos, you know? But then, one does expect actors and actresses to have big egos—after all, it is part and parcel of who they are. Back to the tensions: In this case, they have been excessive from the beginning. Even during rehearsals, the backbiting and sniping were incessant, to the point where I began to wonder if I had erred in many of my casting choices. But I continued to believe everything would smooth out as we neared opening night.”

  “Does the producer normally select the players?” Wolfe asked.

  “That is the case when I’m the producer,” Breckenridge replied matter-of-factly. “I have always been extremely hands-on, particularly because I am the director as well.”

  “Perhaps you can be more specific about the individuals involved,” Wolfe said. “Mr. Goodwin has seen the play, so he will know who is being discussed.”

  Breckenridge turned to me. “What did you think of it?”

  “I thought it was very interesting,” I answered, holding up the playbill as evidence of my attendance. “I was very surprised by the death near the end.”

  “You were supposed to be surprised,” Breckenridge replied with a dry chuckle. “That is why, after the curtain falls and the applause dies down, one of the players—it’s a different individual every performance—comes out and urges the audience members to keep the ending a secret from others who will be attending. The reviewers have been very good in this regard, too, suggesting to readers that the climax might very well come as something of a shock.”

  “Back to the individuals,” Wolfe persisted.

  “Yes, of course, sorry. I will start with Ashley Williston. She vigorously campaigned to get the role of Marjorie Mills, the grand dame of the once-wealthy family who is the focus of the play. Ashley has performed in dramas in New York and other American cities for twenty-five or thirty years and mistakenly fancies herself as the reincarnation of Helen Hayes or Gertrude Lawrence. She tends to be overly dramatic. As I have said, I function as director as well as producer, and my stage manager, who sees her as a real pain to work with, tried to talk me out of giving her the role.”

  “A role for which she hopes
to finally get her Tony Award,” I put in.

  “Mr. Goodwin, it seems you know a good deal,” Breckenridge said with a nod. “And yes, it is common knowledge around town that Ashley lusts after a Tony. At first, I was not enthusiastic about taking her on either, but I felt she effectively made a case for playing Marjorie. ‘After all, Marjorie is something of a bitch, and so am I,’ she told me. ‘Think of it as typecasting, Roy.’”

  Wolfe made a face. “Has Miss Williston proved difficult to work with?”

  “About what I expected,” Breckenridge said. “She tries to take over the directing at every opportunity, and we have had to rein her in a number of times. Then there’s her animosity toward her costar, Brad Lester, who plays her feckless husband, Carlisle.”

  “Lester is a big name in Hollywood,” I told Wolfe, “who is trying his hand at the stage.”

  “And doing a first-rate job of it,” Breckenridge said. “That should be no surprise. After all, Brad has won one Oscar and been nominated for another. But most of his movie roles have been in action films, and it was my idea to cast him in this part because it is so different from what he’s done on the screen, and I felt he had the versatility to handle the role. I was correct. Here he plays an absentminded, somewhat vague fellow in middle age who has never had to work very hard and doesn’t have a real grasp of what’s going on around him most of the time.”

  “What is the basis of Miss Williston’s animus toward him?” Wolfe posed.

  Breckenridge took a sip of the Bloody Mary and shifted in his chair. “Privately—well, not so privately, really—she refers to him as a ‘Tinseltown pretty boy.’ She claims to hold Hollywood and everything about it in low regard.”

  “Has she ever performed in motion pictures?”

  “No, and were I to guess, she would jump at a plum movie role if it got offered, which is unlikely. There is one other thing fueling her anger: She believes I have put Brad in the cast for box-office appeal because her own star has dimmed.”

  Wolfe uncapped his second beer. “Is that true?”

  Breckenridge favored us with a lopsided smile. “Yes, for the ears in this office only, although it has been a subject of a good deal of speculation around town and in the pages of Variety. Although, in Brad’s defense, he is a lot more than a good-looking face. He has played the role very well and has gotten excellent reviews. In one of them, he was praised for ‘making a most graceful shift from West Coast to East.’”

  “What is his attitude toward Miss Williston?”

  “Good question. On the surface, he behaves deferentially toward Ashley. She is somewhere between seven and ten years his elder—she guards her age—and of course she has long since earned her stripes on the stage, while he’s a newcomer, so he is wise to be deferential, although this facade of his sometimes slips. Brad is polite to Ashley, but only superficially. After one performance, he was heard to say, sotto voce, ‘I’d like to strangle that bitch.’”

  “Who heard those words?” Wolfe asked.

  Breckenridge colored slightly. “A stagehand. It always helps someone in my position to have eyes and ears everywhere in the theater, particularly backstage.”

  “Informers.”

  “A rose by any other name,” the producer said. “But I do not apologize. There is a lot of money riding on the success of this show, as is the case with any Broadway production, for that matter.”

  “Surely there are more than two people in your cast,” Wolfe said.

  “Yes, indeed. Pardon me for the digressions. I have not been blessed with the gift of brevity. Steve Peters, who’s a Broadway ‘comer,’ plays Larry Forrest, a wealthy nephew of Carlisle Mills who lost both of his parents in the crash of a private plane in the Caribbean, and as an only child, he is sole beneficiary of their millions. As the play opens, Larry is a house guest at Cresthaven. He has been invited by Carlisle and Marjorie—really by Marjorie—because she hopes he will share some of his wealth with them, which will enable them to hold on to the estate and keep it afloat. It’s a huge old pile of stone and brick that is in desperate need of repairs.”

  “How has Mr. Peters fit into the cast?” Wolfe asked.

  “Very well indeed. The man just turned twenty-eight, but he’s a real pro, learns his lines quickly, is easy to work with, and takes direction well. He is also damned good-looking, which has not been lost on Ashley. She has always preferred younger men in her private life. She has been married twice but, currently, is unattached and doesn’t like it. My sources”—Breckenridge grinned sheepishly at Wolfe—“tell me that she has been putting the make on young Mr. Peters, but he has shown no interest whatever in her, although he apparently has tried to rebuff her advances diplomatically. However, she seems not inclined to take no for an answer.”

  I know Wolfe well enough to realize he was disgusted with Ashley Williston’s shenanigans, but he suppressed his revulsion. “Has this led to friction between them?” he asked.

  Breckenridge nodded. “So I have been told and have also sensed. Apparently, Peters now goes to great lengths to avoid her backstage before and after the performances, although their dressing rooms are close to each other. For that matter, all the dressing rooms are cheek by jowl. The theater that we are in is not known for its amenities. But then, that is the case with most of these Broadway houses, many of which have been around for fifty or more years.”

  “Has this discord affected their performances?”

  “Not in essence,” the producer replied. “Whatever faults Ashley may have, she is a consummate professional once the curtain goes up. Neither I nor my stage manager has detected much tension between them—other than what is called for in the script, of course. After all, this is a drama that contains a lot of inherent tension. Let me correct myself,” Breckenridge said. “There have been a couple of times when Ashley stepped on one of Brad’s lines, and I’m sure it was intentional.”

  “For the record,” I said to Wolfe, “I did not detect any false notes between Ashley and Peters when they were talking one-on-one onstage, which occurred several times. But then, when I saw the show, I wasn’t looking for anything out of the ordinary, and I am hardly a critic.”

  Wolfe drained the last of his beer. “When contretemps occur between cast members, do you ever intercede?”

  “Not if I can help it,” Breckenridge said. “Although, as the producer as well as the director, I need to constantly be aware of personal situations. In the past, I have found it is best for players to work out problems of this sort without external interference. If I tried to inject myself into a situation like this, it might have an adverse effect on the performance of one or another of the principals. However, I must say that during rehearsals, I had to push back against Ashley when she made what I considered to be some niggling criticisms.”

  Wolfe leaned back, saying nothing. Breckenridge picked up the cue that it was time to move on.

  “Another cast member is Melissa Cartwright, who plays Diana Gage, Larry Forrest’s love interest in the story,” he said. “Like Steve Peters, she is in her late twenties and, given her age, has had a good deal of Broadway experience, mostly as an ingénue, which is really the type of role she plays here. She’s a redhead, wide-eyed and ‘perky,’ as one critic described her. She also is staying at Cresthaven because, when he got invited, Larry Forrest insisted that his fiancée also be included. This did not go over well with Marjorie for two reasons: First, she did not want outside interference when trying to persuade her nephew to loosen his purse strings. And second, she disapproved, at least outwardly, of an unmarried couple sharing a bedroom.”

  Wolfe turned to me, the signal that I was in the spotlight, and I knew what he wanted me to ask. “So, the youngsters, so to speak, are a couple onstage. Are they also a couple offstage?”

  Breckenridge cut loose with a hearty laugh, which seemed somewhat forced. “I don’t really think so, although I must say the idea did occur to me as well. One might-have-been affair between cast members is more th
an enough, thank you. As far as I know, both Steve and Melissa currently are unattached. He had a fling a while back with a leggy dancer in a hit musical that won several Tonys, but I think that dalliance ended amicably. And I am afraid I do not have any clue as to Melissa’s love life, although given her looks and personality, I would be surprised if she didn’t have someone special. She is appealing, very appealing.”

  “Another cast member is that gabby old guy, the neighbor who drops in on the Millses all the time as if he considers himself part of the family,” I said.

  “Yes, that’s Max Ennis, who plays Harley Barnes, a friend of the Millses. Max is a character actor who’s been around for decades, one of those types who theatergoers instantly recognize but usually can’t remember his name,” Breckenridge said, turning from me to Wolfe. “His role is as a garrulous old family friend who is obsequious to the point of being a toady. He is obviously enamored of Marjorie, and he follows her around like a puppy with his tongue hanging out. So she has got a man she’s tired of and another one she doesn’t want. And as for poor Carlisle, he’s oblivious to the whole scene. All he wants is to be left alone to play with his stamp collection and listen to his recordings from the Big Band era of the thirties and forties. Brad plays his part superbly. For that matter, so does Max.”

  “Is that all of the cast?” Wolfe asked.

  “There’s one more,” Breckenridge replied. “Teresa Reed, who, like Max, specializes in character roles, in her case, acerbic middle-aged and outspoken crones who are indifferent to what others think of them. These roles of hers often provide a certain amount of comic relief, as is certainly the case in our production. Teresa plays Olive Hawkins, the combination maid and cook who is the last of a household staff that once numbered five, including a chauffeur. Throughout the play, she reminds her employers that ‘things around here sure ain’t what they once was.’”

  “What is Miss Reed’s personality away from the role?”

  “Very much the same, sour and sarcastic. And it’s Mrs. Reed,” Breckenridge said. “In truth, she’s pretty homely, tall and angular with a long face and a hawklike nose. But she does have a husband, Donald Reed, who is the house manager at another of the Broadway theaters.”