Untimely Death (2 page)

“We’re going to have a problem with some of the women’s costumes. They don’t fit the younger women anymore.”

Aaron raised an eyebrow as he took a sip of coffee.

“They get breast enlargements. Lauren’s had hers done. The costumes are too tight across the chest. Why don’t you have a good look at them?”

Aaron gave her an amused look, and Charlotte laughed.

“Her costumes, not her breasts. See if you can insert a gusset, saving us having to make all new tops. Think about it, make a few sketches, and we’ll talk about it later.”

Aaron cleared his throat and rubbed his hands together.

“Are you all right? What’s the matter?” Charlotte asked.

“She was the last person I expected to see here. I don’t know how Uncle Harvey could have hired her.”

When the hotel opened in the 1950s, what was now the theater had been a noisy bingo hall by day and a supper club by night, where up-and-coming comedians, dancers, crooners, and magicians had entertained ladies in strapless satin dresses and gentlemen in suits as they drank champagne and smoked cigarettes. Today, it was in use as a rehearsal room as Simon Dyer got the new season under way.

“All right, everybody. Quiet please. Places.”

Simon walked onto the stage. In his early fifties, tall and trim with curly grey hair, he looked the part of a central casting theater director. It wasn’t so much the beige trousers, blue shirt, and boating shoes. It was the yellow sweater draped over his shoulders and tied around his neck, not to mention the glasses on top of his head. But the real giveaway was the script in his left hand.

“All right,” he repeated, raising his right hand to get the actors’ attention. “This morning we’re starting our
Romeo and Juliet
read through at the beginning. Act one, scene one. And I don’t want you to just go through the motions—I want to see some real acting here. Pay attention to the words. Listen to the way they sound. Think about what they mean. Put your heart into it. This is where you start to become your character.”

He stepped off the stage, took a seat in the front row, threw one leg over the other, and stretched his arm along the back of the chair beside him. The actors, dressed in jeans and casual sweatshirts, exchanged words with one another as they took their places.

“We’ll skip the prologue and start with the entrance of Sampson and Gregory. Right. Transport me to old Verona. Off you go.” Simon eased himself back in his chair as the action began.

The young men playing the friends of Romeo swaggered their way around the stage, speaking their lines of easy, risqué banter for a few minutes to prepare the way for the entrance of Brian Prentice, who was appearing in this play in the relatively minor role of Romeo’s father, Lord Montague.

Every year, the Catskills Shakespeare Theater Company managed to bring in a second-rate, almost but not quite down-on-his-luck British actor that most American theatergoers had never heard of. The accent was right, and it was hoped that the casting of an actor “direct from
London’s West End” would boost sales and add a certain cachet of English authenticity to the productions. And this year, Brian Prentice was that actor.

The acting world is a small one, and Simon Dyer was well aware of Prentice’s reputation, both good and bad. Great things had been predicted for him in the early stages of his career, although he hadn’t been expected to come into his own until he’d matured into the meaty, king-sized Shakespearean roles. Now that he had reached the right age, his reputation for drinking threatened to eclipse everything he’d worked so hard for. Producers and directors weren’t as tolerant of heavy drinking as they had been a generation or two earlier.

Simon had given him fair warning a couple of nights ago, and he hoped Prentice had taken his words to heart. He leaned forward slightly in anticipation of Prentice’s entrance.

On cue, Prentice entered stage left, leaning just a little too heavily on the arm of the actress playing Lady Montague. And then he spoke.

“Thou villain, Capulet. Hold me, let me go.”

Simon groaned inwardly.
Oh, God. Here we go. He can’t even get his entrance line right.
He’d left out the word “not.” He was meant to say, “Hold me not, let me go.”

Simon rose slightly, ready to stop the action, but decided to let it play out for a few more minutes and settled back. Prentice spoke another couple of lines and then gazed off into the wings while the actor
playing the prince delivered a rather long speech almost word perfect. Simon was impressed. And then everyone except Prentice and two other actors exited the stage. It was Prentice’s turn to speak next, but he missed his cue as he continued to look off into the wings, frowning.

“Brian.” Simon brought his attention back to the stage.

“Sorry,” muttered Prentice. Then, seeming to refocus, he carried on: “Many a morning hath he there been seen, with tears augmenting . . .” His voice trailed off. “Sorry,” he repeated. “Not quite with it this morning.” He looked down at Simon in his front-row seat. “Can we take a break? I need a break.”

Simon looked at his watch. Just past eleven. “Of course.” He stood up and addressed the actors on stage. “Can you ask the others to join you?” When the rest of the actors required for this rehearsal had shuffled back on stage, Simon told them they were taking a twenty-minute break and they should be back and ready to go again at eleven thirty sharp.

Wanting a quiet word with Prentice, Simon walked along the front of the stage, mounted the steps that led to the wings, and searched the backstage area. Prentice was nowhere to be seen.

At eleven thirty, the actors drifted back onstage, ready to pick up where they’d left off. Some clutched water bottles; others held scripts. They took their places, and the rehearsal resumed until Romeo confessed to Benvolio that he was in love with Juliet. They wrapped up the scene, and then Simon called the lunch break. “Back at one,” he shouted as the actors headed off stage. “We’ll start scene three.”

Although he desperately wanted to speak to Prentice, he decided to let the man enjoy his lunch. And that would buy Simon time to consider what he needed to say and the best way to say it.

He slipped out a side door of the hotel into the grounds and then walked down the long drive, once lined with wooden benches, that led from the hotel to the main road and the lake beyond.

The weather was pleasant but brisk enough that he was glad he’d worn his jacket. He crossed the road and
made his way down an overgrown path to two weathered Adirondack chairs that overlooked the lake. Peeling, rust-colored paint on the arms of the chairs revealed bare spots of grey wood beginning to splinter.

Simon leaned over each chair and rocked it gently from side to side. Choosing the one that felt marginally sturdier, he sat in it and gazed across the lake. A light mist hovered over the surface of the water and wreathed the bare trees that surrounded it.

He wondered briefly, as he often did, how his life had got so crazy that he’d ended up here. But after all that had happened, he reckoned he was lucky to have a job at all. A job that came with room and board—board being a meal ticket to the canteen, and room being the small bungalow beside Charlotte Fairfax’s slightly larger one. He’d have to set up another meeting with her soon to go over the costume requirements and make sure everything was ready in time for the dress rehearsals scheduled to start in about six weeks. But he’d been in the theater business long enough to recognize a well-organized professional when he saw one. He didn’t anticipate any problems in the costume department.

Where he did see trouble brewing, however, was with Brian Prentice. The drinking was going to be a problem, and if Simon wasn’t mistaken, Prentice already had something going on with Lauren Richmond.
Be very careful when you stir the pot of desire, Brian
, he thought.
Especially when your bitch of a wife is hovering nearby and
the object of your desire is out for what she can get. You’re headed for trouble there, old son.
Tears before bed, as his old English gran used to say.

He checked his watch and, groaning, stood up.

*

“All right, everybody. Hope you had a good lunch, and now let’s get back to work. Scene three. Clear the stage and let’s go.”

Once again seated in the front row, Simon stretched his long legs in front of him and waited. Two women hurried on stage. When one stepped toward the edge of the stage to speak to Simon, he waved a dismissive hand and told them to start.

“Nurse, where’s my daughter? Call her forth to me,” said the actress playing Lady Capulet. Her lines were met by the nurse’s response.

She held a hand over her eyes as if blocking out the sun and rocked sideways slightly. But Lauren did not appear. After a moment, the actor nearest to the wings called out, “Your cue, Lauren darling!”

Simon stood up and approached the stage. “What’s the matter? Where is she?”

“That’s what we wanted to tell you,” said the actress playing Lady Capulet. “She isn’t backstage.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Simon. “Where the hell is she?”

Aaron Jacobs stuck his head around the curtain. “I’ll go find her.”

“No, you won’t,” said Simon. “Come out from behind that curtain and get down here so I can talk to you without shouting.”

Aaron descended the steps that led from the side of the stage and planted himself in front of Simon.

“I need you to find Charlotte. Tell her Lauren hasn’t shown up for rehearsal. Find out from the cast mates what room Lauren’s in and ask Charlotte to check it. Maybe she’s fallen asleep or got the rehearsal time wrong or something. Tell Charlotte to phone me if Lauren isn’t in her room.” He handed Aaron a card. “Here’s the number. And after you’ve spoken to Charlotte, you’d better come right back here in case you’re needed. If Lauren hasn’t shown up by the time you return, we’ll have to find someone to stand in for her. We’ve got to keep this rehearsal moving. Got all that?”

Aaron nodded.

“Right. Off you go.”

The older actors, well used to the hurry up and wait aspect of theater and cinema work, milled around the stage, talking amongst themselves in low voices. A few of
the younger ones pulled out their phones and thumbed through them.

About ten minutes later, slightly out of breath, Aaron returned.

“Charlotte’s gone upstairs to look for her,” he said to Simon.

*

It had been a long time since Charlotte had been up to the hotel’s second floor, but nothing had changed in years; the painted floorboards still creaked under the faded and frayed beige carpet runner that ran the length of the hallway. She checked the room numbers on the wooden doors that should have been replaced years ago to bring the building up to code.

The metal numbers
1
and
5
nailed to the door told her she’d arrived at Lauren’s room. She knocked and waited. When there was no answer, she knocked again and, after a brief pause, tried the doorknob. She was a little surprised when it turned in her hand, and with a little pressure and a small creak, she opened the door a few inches.

“Lauren, it’s Charlotte Fairfax,” she said in a voice just slightly louder than a normal speaking tone. “Are you there? May I come in?”

When there was no response, she opened the door wider and, repeating Lauren’s name, entered the room. The curtains were drawn, and it took a moment for her
eyes to adjust to the semidarkness. She made out a chest of drawers on her left and an unmade bed on her right. Lying on the bed, fully dressed but her dark hair tousled, was Lauren. Hand held out, Charlotte approached her.

“Lauren! Wake up! You’re late for rehearsal,” she said. “They’re waiting for you.”

When Lauren did not move, she took a step closer to the bed and bent over the still figure.

Trying to quell the rising sense of panic by telling herself to remain calm, Charlotte gave Lauren’s shoulder a gentle shake and repeated her name, a little louder this time and with more urgency. She then touched her cheek with a slightly trembling hand and bent down, placing her face close to the girl’s. Lauren’s breathing was ragged and shallow, and her breath was giving off a strange, unpleasant odor. Charlotte gave the sleeping girl one last shake and, unable to rouse her, hurried from the unnaturally quiet room.

Lady Deborah Prentice steered the midsize American rental car up the long driveway that led to the Jacobs Grand Hotel. She slowed down and, fighting her deeply ingrained instinct to pull over onto the left shoulder, steered the car to the right as flashing lights behind her signaled the approach of an ambulance. When it had passed, she picked up speed and continued the rest of the way to the hotel and then drove around to the back and parked. She opened the rear door of the vehicle, lifted out two plastic carrier bags from Fifth Avenue stores, and entered the hotel through the service entrance. The long, empty back corridor led in one direction to the kitchens and in the other to the theater space, with the lobby and registration desk beyond that. She turned in the direction of the theater.

Lady Deborah was just an inch or two short of six feet tall and finely made. She had that distinctive translucent
skin so admired among the English aristocracy, and her carefully and expensively tinted blonde hair was swept back behind her ears and tied neatly with a small black velvet bow. Her eyes were a pale blue and her top lip was thin, with a full, pouty lower lip. She wore pearl earrings and a double-strand pearl necklace. Her Burberry raincoat was undone, revealing a tailored dark green suit. Her court shoes made no sound as she strode along the hallway, the Launer handbag she carried swinging gently in time with her steps.

A few minutes later, she pushed open a door marked “Backstage Area—No Admittance” and entered a large open space. A few plastic chairs were scattered around a concrete floor, but the area was empty. From somewhere off to her right came the muffled sound of voices. She turned toward them, pushed aside a couple of black curtains, and entered the wings. The actors were grouped together on the stage, some sitting on the floor, others standing.

“What’s going on?” she asked in a cut-glass English accent. “An ambulance passed me in the drive. Is it Brian?”

“I’m all right, darling,” Brian Prentice said, emerging from the shadows. “I’m fine. It’s Lauren Richmond. She’s poorly and been taken to hospital.”

“Poorly? What on earth’s the matter with her?”

“We don’t know, Lady Deborah,” Simon Dyer chimed in. “She didn’t turn up on time for rehearsal, so I sent
someone to look for her, and she was discovered unwell in her room. And now, as Brian just said, she’s on her way to the hospital.”

“If she’s that unwell, I expect that’s the best place for her,” said Lady Deborah, in that clipped, British, no-nonsense way. “Well, I’ll leave you to it, then.” Brian took a step toward her as she turned to go.

“I’ll come with you.” He turned his gaze to Simon. “You’re finished with me for the afternoon, I take it?”

Simon nodded. “If you’re not feeling up to it, we’ll just have to manage without you.” He took a step closer and said in a lower voice so the other cast members couldn’t hear him, “We need to talk again. And soon.”

“If you’re coming with me, Brian, then you can make yourself useful and carry these.” Lady Deborah held out her carrier bags and, with an aggressive swipe, pulled the wings curtains aside, and the two left the stage, Brian trailing after her with a bag in each hand.

Simon watched Prentice and his wife leave and then opened his script and addressed the rest of the cast.

“Those of you not in the scene, clear the stage. The rest of you, places.”

“What about me?” asked Aaron. “Do you need me anymore?”

“No,” said Simon in a gentler tone. “Go back to whatever it is you were doing.”

*

Aaron opened the door to the costume department. The afternoon sun filtered through tall windows covered in a thin layer of winter dirt, casting long shadows and picking out the details of the worktable. Charlotte, her back to the door, was bent over her desk. She straightened at the sound of the door opening and turned slowly to see who it was.

“Oh, it’s you. Good. Come in and tell me what’s happening.”

Aaron set a mug of tea on her desk. “Here. Thought you could use this.”

She smiled at him. “Very thoughtful. Thank you. We didn’t quite finish our office tour, but there’s a little, well, you couldn’t really call it a kitchen, but a cupboard with a sink and a kettle and a little fridge just through there.” She pointed to a door off the main room. “It gets too expensive getting drinks in from the canteen, so I usually make my own tea. I just sent you to get drinks from the canteen this morning to give you something to do whilst I had a private word with Lauren. Normally we don’t put our drinks on the account. That’s just for special occasions.”

“I didn’t put these on the account, Charlotte. Paid for them myself.”

“That was sweet of you. Thank you. But before you sit down, would you mind picking up that can Lauren left on the worktable and taking it into the kitchen? I
can’t believe I let it sit there all day. Too much going on, I suppose.”

Aaron disappeared into the kitchenette with the can before returning and pulling up a chair beside Charlotte’s desk.

“What are you working on?” he asked.

“Trying to sort out the rest of the costumes for all three plays in production this season. When I have the list complete, we’ll have to check them. They’re put away dry-cleaned and mended, so we should be all right. Then we have to set up fittings for every actor, every costume, every scene, every play. It’s all very time consuming, so I’m glad you’re here. Between us, we can do two actors at a time. But tell me. What happened at the rehearsal? How did the cast take the news about Lauren?”

“Well, nobody really said anything, but to be honest, I don’t think anybody likes her very much. Then Lady What’s-her-name showed up, and her and Brian left.” He stifled a yawn.

“Aaron, you mustn’t call her Lady What’s-her-name. She’s Lady Deborah. Her father’s an earl. If you’re going to make it in the fashion business, you’ve got to work on your professionalism. In the theater, actors expect to be treated with a certain amount of deference, and if you can’t manage that, you should at least get people’s names right. And it’s not ‘her and Brian left,’ it’s ‘she and Brian left.’ You wouldn’t say, ‘Her left,’ would you?”

She sighed, took a sip of tea, and set the mug back down on the tray. Although she was only in her early forties, she suddenly felt old. She could hear her mother, a real stickler for good grammar, reflected in her own voice. “If you’re going to make something of yourself, Charlotte,” she’d said at least a thousand times, “you’ll have to speak properly.” But that was in Britain, where grammar and accents used to matter more than they did here in America.

“Sorry, Aaron,” she said. “Starting to sound like my mother. In the end, we all turn into our parents.”

“No worries.”

“What did you make of Lady Deborah?”

“She seemed a bit stuck up. Like she thinks she’s better than the rest of us.”

“In England, we call that ‘posh.’”

“Posh. Hmm. I like that word. Anyway, expensively put together, I’d say. Dressed way more formally than most people around here. Looked like she’d been shopping in the city. Had a couple of shopping bags from Saks and Barneys.”

“Saks and Barneys, eh?” Charlotte pursed her lips and nodded slightly. “Right, well, let’s get your work organized for the rest of the day. We’ve got to set up a meeting with Simon to offer our suggestions for costumes and to hear what he has to say. He may have some specific requests or ideas. The best directors always do. For
example, he may need something done a certain way so it’ll work with what the lighting designer has in mind.”

Aaron made a little noise that seemed to indicate agreement. “That’s interesting. Hadn’t really thought of that. So when I’m designing for the runway, I need to keep lighting in mind.”

“Oh, I can teach you all kinds of tricks that’ll come in handy for the runway,” Charlotte replied. “For example, say a script requires a character to pull a revolver out of his pocket and shoot somebody. What are the implications of that for us in costume design?”

Aaron thought a moment, and then his face brightened. “He has to be wearing a costume that has a pocket?”

“That’s right! And not only must there be a pocket, it has to be deep enough and strong enough to hold the revolver.” Charlotte paused, and then continued.

“Okay. So, this season we’re opening with
Romeo and Juliet
, but we’re also doing
King Lear
and
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
. Here’s the cast list for each play.” She handed him a binder. “You’ll see who’s been cast in what part. Here’s the big question. Have you read the plays?”

He shook his head. “Sorry, no.”

She pointed to the bookshelf beside her desk. “You’ll find all the Shakespearean plays there. The complete works. Help yourself. You’ll have to be familiar with all three plays being performed this season, so if I were you,
I’d start this afternoon with
Romeo and Juliet
, as that’s the first one up.”

Aaron flipped a few pages in the binder. “This information would be so much better set up on a spreadsheet. That way, you could see who’s playing what part in each play. And then, with one keystroke, you could sort the data by actors’ names so you could look up Brian Prentice, say, and see immediately all the roles he’s playing. So in effect, you’d know by play and by actor every costume that’s required.

“You could replace your little card system with spreadsheets of all the details on each actor. Measurements, roles, dates, and so on. You could print it out if you prefer working from paper and also have a record on your computer.”

Charlotte looked at him in admiration. “That would be wonderful! Would it be a big job?”

Aaron shook his head. “Nope. I could start setting it up for you this afternoon. That, and reading
Romeo and Juliet
, of course.”

Charlotte gave him a thumbs-up and then pulled a slightly tattered paperback copy of
Romeo and Juliet
from the bookshelf and slid it across the desk to him.

“This Brian Prentice guy,” said Aaron thoughtfully, as he picked up the book and glanced at the cover.

“Yes. What about him?”

“Well, it’s just that when his wife arrived . . .” he looked up from the book and continued, “Lady Deborah . . .
when she arrived, the first thing she said was something like, ‘Is it Brian? Is he okay?’”

“So?”

“That just seemed a bit weird. Why would she think something had happened to Brian? I mean, if I saw an ambulance in the drive, I wouldn’t automatically assume it was there for a specific person. Why did she think the ambulance was there for Brian?”

“Well, it’s pretty well known that Brian’s got a drinking problem, so she might have thought something had happened to him. He’s been drinking heavily for a long time. That may be part of the reason he didn’t do as well as people thought he would. His career never really took off the way it should have. At one time, he was a rising star, and the theater world expected great things from him. The next Laurence Olivier, everyone said. But he didn’t live up to his promise, unfortunately.”

“I guess that explains what he’s doing in a place like this, then. I wondered about that.” Aaron narrowed his eyes slightly and gave her a quizzical look. “His wife must have money of her own, because he’s not buying stuff for her at stores like Saks and Barneys on what my uncle pays him.”

“Speaking of your uncle, I think you should go and see him and make sure he’s informed about what happened to Lauren.”

*

Brian Prentice poured himself a couple of fingers of scotch, held the glass up to the light in a mildly pretentious gesture, tipped it slightly in his wife’s direction, and then drained it.

Lady Deborah crossed her legs and gave him a level, measured look, tinged with the contempt she no longer took any pains to conceal.

“I had lunch in town with Harriette Ainsworth,” she said. “She mentioned a reception at the British consulate coming up in a couple of weeks. They’re invited. I wonder why we’re not.”

“Probably because the people at the consulate don’t know we’re here,” Brian replied. “Why don’t you ring them and let them know? Ask them to put us on the guest list. Or better yet, suggest they hold a reception for me.”

“For you? I think they’d be more likely to hold one for me. Anyway, asking people to give a party for you doesn’t seem like good form.”

“Really, Deborah, nobody takes any notice of that sort of thing nowadays. If those consulate people had known we were here, they’d surely have invited us. Make the call, why don’t you? You can be very persuasive. They’ll put us on the standing guest list, and that’ll give us six months of lovely parties with free drinks. Speaking of which . . .” He turned back to the drinks table and reached for the bottle.

“I think you’ve had enough, don’t you?” Lady Deborah said in a voice dripping with ice. With a frustrated sigh, Brian set the bottle down and dropped heavily into the armchair at right angles to the sofa.

While the rest of the cast was housed in the former staff bedrooms on the second floor of the hotel, with room and board costs deducted from their wages, six months’ accommodation in the bungalow reserved for the exclusive use of the season’s star performer was included in Brian’s contract. The two-bedroom dwelling was clean and comfortable but in sad need of a refurbishment. Brian’s eyes wandered over the flowered curtains, worn brown carpet, and old-fashioned furniture. The back of his chair even had an antimacassar, and it was against this that his head now rested.

“God, I hate this place already, and we’ve only been here five minutes,” he said, gazing up at the water-stained ceiling.

“Oddly enough, I rather like it,” said Deborah. “Reminds me a little of nanny’s old flat when I was a girl. Which we only got to see if we’d been very good. It was always such a treat to have our tea there. Of course, her flat wasn’t nearly as shabby as this place—Mummy saw to that—but still.”

Brian shifted in his chair. “I think I’ll have a bit of a lie down before dinner.”

“You do that. It’s getting a bit late now, but I’ll ring the consulate on some pretext or other tomorrow and
try to wrangle an invitation to the party. I don’t suppose you’ve lost your passport, have you?”