The Fourth Wall

By Barbara Paul

A playwright searches the theater for a crazed saboteur

Sylvia Markey sits in her dressing room, holding her cat’s head in her hands. Just the head—the body is nowhere to be found. This gruesome act of violence was committed just a few minutes before curtain, and Sylvia has no time to grieve. She collects herself, and gets ready to perform. She makes it halfway through the second act before her nerves get the best of her, and she vomits onstage. As the run continues, so does the sabotage, and the unknown troublemaker attacks actors, vandalizes the set, and hurls acid at one of the designers. To playwright Abigail James, the meaning is clear: Someone is trying to murder her play.

The police do all they can, but it will take someone who understands theater to unravel the mystery. This is a matter of revenge—and Abigail will settle it backstage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: MysteriousPress.com Open Road
• Release date: Mar 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781504032377

Barbara Paul

Barbara Paul is the author of numerous science fiction and mystery novels, including Full Frontal Murder, Fare Play, and The Apostrophe Thief. 

Book preview

Part One

1

Sylvia Markey was holding her cat’s head in her hands. Just the head.

Sylvia was swaying on her feet; I didn’t feel any too steady myself. A whispered Jesus Christ floated from behind me. I snatched Ian Cavanaugh’s make-up towel away from him and wrapped up the cat’s head, handed the mess to Leo Gunn, the stage manager.

Come on, Syl. I took her by the arm and steered her to her dressing room. Inside, she just stood there, too shocked to think what to do next.

In times of stress people are always offering each other a good stiff drink, but Sylvia didn’t drink and I didn’t have anything to offer her anyway. I could think of nothing to say beyond the obvious What sick mind would do an ugly thing like that? I still saw the cat’s little black face with its white patch around one ear, its eyes like glass, the blood still warm and sticky on the stump of its neck. I washed Sylvia’s hands.

She was staring at a red smear on her dressing table. Why would anyone hate me enough to do such a thing? Why?

Who knew. I cleaned off the top of the table and started opening drawers. The cat’s body had to be someplace, and I’d just as soon Sylvia didn’t come upon it while looking for eyeliner or a Kleenex. She still had a performance to get through tonight.

She sank into a chair. Poor little cat.

He probably didn’t know what was happening to him, I said. The cat’s body was nowhere in the dressing room. One quick wrench and it was over. I’m sorry, Sylvia.

She began to shake—not a ladylike tremble, but big racking convulsions that alarmed me. She waved me away and gulped, Abby—don’t look at me.

I nodded and left her alone.

Outside Sylvia’s dressing room the stage manager was looking at his watch. You’ll have to delay the curtain, Leo, I told him.

He rubbed his chin. Look, I’m real sorry about her cat, but—

It won’t be long, I said quickly. Just give her a few minutes to pull herself together.

He grunted assent and turned away. Once a play opens, the stage manager is God. Fortunately Leo Gunn was a reasonable God, a fact for which I’d already rendered thanks several times in the past.

Coming back, Ms James? asked the doorkeeper as I opened the stage door.

I shook my head and slipped outside, where I leaned against the wall and tried to take stock. People who work on a play are a sort of accidental family thrown together. The family members may not all like one another and the sibling rivalry can get pretty fierce, but everyone knows everyone else’s skills, capacities, shortcomings, and personal quirks quite thoroughly—sometimes too thoroughly. But not this time. This time, there was somebody in our family whom we didn’t know at all—someone capable of decapitating a cat and placing the head on its owner’s dressing table.

It had to be someone connected with the play. The cat was alive when I arrived at the Martin Beck Theatre just an hour earlier; I’d stopped to pet it. So somebody in the theater had killed it and had done so within the past sixty minutes. I couldn’t imagine which one of them had that kind of nastiness in him. Or her.

I thought of Sylvia Markey alone in her dressing room, psyching herself up for the evening performance. Sylvia and I weren’t friends, but we didn’t dislike each other enough to call ourselves enemies. I found Sylvia mean-tempered and rude; she liked nothing better than pulling rank on people younger and less sure of themselves than she. She had a malicious streak in her, often being nasty just for the fun of being nasty. Sylvia Markey was the center of the universe and by God you’d better not forget it.

But on stage she was a different person altogether—or several different persons, depending on what her roles called for. I didn’t know another actress whose off-stage personality was so totally divorced from her on stage persona. She was relatively co-operative and businesslike in rehearsal, and in performance she was consistently better than anyone else on the stage with her. Sylvia was a stylish, intelligent actress who brought class to every role she played. She had a way of moving on stage that was riveting; a critic once devoted an entire review to raving about her elegant thinness. In spite of her awfulness off stage, I was always delighted to have Sylvia Markey in one of my plays. Foxfire was the third of mine she’d acted in.

It was Foxfire that had brought me rushing back to New York. In only its fourth week, the play was beginning to limp. The director, John Reddick, thought the second act was too slow in fulfilling the promise left by the first-act curtain. If true, this was something we should have caught during tryouts. But we hadn’t, and John had asked me to come watch a couple of performances and see what I thought.

A gust of the kind of wind Shakespeare called sneaping reminded me it was November. I hurried around to the front of the theater and went inside. There were some empty seats, alas; I settled down, wondering how it would go tonight. There’d be nothing like the electricity of opening night, of course. But what can you expect when your leading lady has just been traumatized by the cruel, senseless killing of her pet?

When the play opened Sylvia was on stage with one of the minor characters—so it was Sylvia who set the tempo for the rest of the cast to follow, during this first part of the play at least. Tonight she was speaking slowly, taking special care to articulate each syllable clearly. The result was an impression of tightly controlled tension—fortunately not at all out of character. But even as I was thinking that, she began to speed up her delivery—as if she’d just realized how slowly she’d been speaking. The unmotivated change of pace must have been puzzling to the audience. Now, this was cause for worry; soon Ian Cavanaugh, the male lead, would enter. Ian’s normal delivery was clipped and precise; and with Sylvia’s fast-paced overarticulating, the two of them would end up sounding like escapees from a Noel Coward comedy if they weren’t careful.

But I needn’t have worried. Ian knew Sylvia was still floundering after the correct tempo and slowed down his own delivery. He drew out the vowel sounds and introduced new pauses. Sylvia was quick to follow his lead, and after a few minutes they’d adjusted the tempo to what it should have been all along. I leaned back and relaxed.

The first act moved smoothly—very smoothly. A few refinements had been introduced since the last time I’d seen a performance, sometime during the second week of the run. Since then I’d been in Pittsburgh, working on another project until John Reddick had summoned me back.

She’ll be all right now, said the director’s voice in my ear. John had slipped into the row behind me without my noticing. I glanced back into the dark, near-Levantine eyes that were fixed on the stage. John Reddick was as WASP as his Cincinnati, Ohio, background could make him, but there was something slightly exotic about his coloring that sometimes made strangers assume he was foreign-born.

The house lights came up and the audience began to file out for the obligatory intermission cigarette. The talk, I was glad to hear, was more of the play than of a good place to go to eat afterward.

I called Jake, said John. He should be backstage by now. Jake was Sylvia’s husband. The first act’s solid, don’t you think? John went on, closing the subject of Sylvia’s distress. I don’t think we should touch a thing in Act I. I’ve tried speeding up the second act and even cutting some of the stage business, but it’s still not right. Frankly, Abby, I can’t think of anything else to do. I’m passing the buck to you.

I growled. I didn’t want to believe him, but John Reddick had this annoying habit of being right ninety-nine times out of a hundred—at least as far as plays were concerned. In this late thirties, John was theater’s oldest enfant terrible. When he was nineteen, he’d written a tragedy that was produced on Broadway. It closed after one performance, but the miracle had been in getting it produced at all. John had disappeared into the hinterlands for a couple of years, acting small roles in touring companies. After that he’d turned to set construction, he worked as a lighting assistant and a properties manager, he designed the costumes for an off-Broadway production. He stage-managed two plays. Then, when he had satisfied himself he’d learned as much as he needed to know about all those facets of putting on a play, he turned to directing. His career as a director had been full of ups and downs, stunning successes and glorious failures. After he’d made his name, he sat down and wrote a book about directing, a good book.

But as talented as he was, John had a child’s need of constant reassurance. Consequently he tended to surround himself with sycophants. John’s need for reassurance expressed itself sexually as well, leading him to a kind of desperate love-me Don Juanism. He’d tried marriage, but after a year his tired-looking wife had divorced him. He operated on little sleep, little food, and lots of nervous energy. John Reddick was one of the most interesting people to talk to that I knew, but he was so go-go-go that a few hours in his company usually had people looking around for a way to escape.

Nevertheless he had a way of putting his finger on the core of a play that made him a man to listen to. What it all boiled down to, I guess, was that I trusted him with my plays. If John said something was wrong with Act II, then the chances were that something was wrong with Act II.

Act II began. Almost immediately I started to squirm. I didn’t know whether it was because John had planted the idea or not, but those people on the stage seemed to be taking an awfully long time getting to the point. The first act had ended with the raising of a question about the honesty of one of the characters, and that’s what the other characters should be talking about now. Plunging into the question immediately would have been a mistake; some delaying action was called for. But the delay was going on far too long. Instead of building up a crisis, I had watered it down.

I listened to the dialogue carefully. They were good lines, lines that normally would hold an audience’s attention. But this audience was getting restless and they did what all playgoers do when they’re unhappy: they started to cough.

And you can’t cut any of those lines, John said in a low voice, reading my mind. I’ve been over them a hundred times. Not one of them is superfluous.

So the problem with the second act of Foxfire was one of placement. The delaying lines were also preparation for later developments and therefore would have to be kept, but the sequence of scenes would have to be rearranged and new transitions written. Always a tricky job—so many opportunities for error.

The characters were now dealing with the honesty problem, and the tubercular audience was beginning to recover. Sylvia Markey was strong now, moving through her role with confidence and style. She and the others were doing some excellent ensemble acting, something I always find exciting.

Suddenly there was a lump in my stomach and a ringing in my ears. We’d reached a point in the play where Sylvia was to gather up some papers and put them in an attaché case. The minute she reached for the unopened case I knew what was going to happen. I stood up.

What’s the matter? hissed John.

Sylvia opened the case. She stood there for a moment, staring, not moving. Her jaw started working, up and down, up and down. Then a high whining sound came out of her nose. Hhhnnn. Pause. Hhhnnn. Pause. Hhhnnn.

Ian Cavanaugh stepped over and looked in the attaché case. He blanched, then shut the lid. He turned to Sylvia and tried to lead her away.

But he was too late. Sylvia vomited on the stage, in full view of the audience.

2

The next day was Wednesday. Sylvia Markey’s understudy played the matinee; Sylvia herself would be back for the evening performance.

I was depressed. Part of it was the matinee; part of it was what had happened the night before. I’d taken one look at the mutilated remains of the cat in the attaché case and almost lost my own dinner. Somebody clearly had it in for Sylvia.

Jake Steiner, Sylvia’s husband, had hurried his abnormally quiet wife into a cab and away from the theater. Leo Gunn, the stage manager, had laid into the prop man until it was clear the attaché case had been placed on the prop table early in the evening, as it always was, where anyone could have gotten to it. John Reddick had called the cast and crew together and delivered a blistering tirade to the effect that you really shouldn’t do things like that. No one admitted a thing, of course.

I’d forgotten how awful matinee audiences could be. So many crackling packages in the laps of shoppers who look upon the theater as a good place to rest their feet for a couple of hours. And they talk. God, how they talk! Just as if they were home watching television, where nobody has to concentrate more than ten or fifteen minutes at a time.

What galled me most was that this audience was watching a job of acting so good I could scarcely believe what I was seeing—and they hadn’t even noticed! Ian Cavanaugh was giving an absolutely brilliant bravura performance, and it was almost solely his effort that was carrying the play. Sylvia Markey’s understudy was giving it her all, but her voice was just too light for the role—something else we should have caught during tryouts. Early in the first act the cast had seen that the ensemble performance they were used to giving just wouldn’t work this time—the understudy couldn’t carry her share of the load. I sat there and cringed, listening to what she was doing to my lines.

The performance was in serious trouble. So Ian Cavanaugh had, quite literally, taken over. By sheer force of personality he dominated the play. Normally I would have screamed bloody murder at this distortion of my play, but under these circumstances I wasn’t about to object to Ian’s herculean effort to save the performance.

The rest of the cast began to play to Ian in a way they’d never rehearsed. It was a curious thing to watch—actors are a competitive bunch, not noticeably given to sublimating their roles to make another performer look good. But that’s exactly what they were doing. They yielded stage to Ian; lines normally addressed to a roomful of people were now aimed specifically at him; stage business that might distract from his performance was abandoned. And over it all soared Ian, like an omnipotent mandarin demanding his due.

Ian Cavanaugh was a big, aristocratic Irishman with the handsomest face I’d ever seen. He didn’t have the acting range Sylvia Markey had, but within his field of competence he was one of the best. Ian had built a good New York career for himself playing light comedy; his experience with heavier roles had all been limited to out-of-town summer festivals and tour companies and the like. I’d first met Ian about eight years ago, when we were both associated with a repertory company I’d helped organize. But he’d never acted in one of my plays before Foxfire, and at first I hadn’t wanted him for the part. John Reddick had talked me into changing my mind; now I was glad I’d listened.

At intermission the audience that had talked all the way through the first act continued the conversation in the lobby and on the sidewalk in front of the theater. Much of the talk was about Sylvia Markey’s cat. For some reason the out-of-towners knew what had happened and the New Yorkers didn’t.

Backstage, I saw Ian Cavanaugh’s dressing room door was open. He’d sweated off all his make-up during the first act and was applying fresh. When he saw my reflection in his mirror, his face took on a defensive look. Abby, before you say anything—

It’s all right, I interrupted. I think you’re doing the right thing. And doing it beautifully. Keep it up!

He relaxed slightly—only slightly, because he would have kept it up whether I approved or not. I sought out the understudy and told her a few comforting lies. She was doing the best she could.

Abby, would you come in here a minute?

I turned to see Hugh Odell gesturing to me from his dressing room door. Hugh was an actor I’d known all my professional life, about fifteen years. He was one of those bulletproof actors who are almost never idle, the kind Hollywood calls character actors. He was a highly gifted performer, but a lot of his success was due to the way he looked. Off stage, he had an appearance that made no positive statement—he could have been anybody, a face in the crowd. So on stage he could be whatever he needed to be without having to shed a strong personal image first. His role in Foxfire was a big one, almost big enough to be called a third lead.

I went into his dressing room and glanced at the girl sitting at Hugh’s dressing table brushing her long brown hair. Hello, Rosemary, I said.

Hanh, she answered.

Hugh closed the door. You’ve been out front? he asked me. You’ve seen that audience?

I’ve seen them, I said grimly. And I’m wondering how they all managed to escape their keepers on the same day.

Hugh nodded. I’m worried. I don’t think we’re handling it right.

Is there a right way? The regular approach obviously didn’t work.

But don’t you mind, Abby? We’re not playing it the way you wrote it. I think we ought to go back to the other way.

Yes, I mind. I mind very much. I knew what was bothering Hugh. In spite of his professed concern about playing Foxfire the way I wrote it, he wasn’t really thinking about the play. Actors aren’t interested in plays; all they care about is their own parts. Hugh Odell was having second thoughts about underplaying to Ian Cavanaugh because it diminished his role. I mind, I repeated, but we have to be practical. I think the way you and Ian are handling it—a little soap—has a better chance of succeeding than depending on Sue to come through. Sue was the understudy. She can’t do it.

Rosemary spoke up. I think you ought to do it Hugh’s way. I mean, he’s the actor, after all.

Hugh blew her a kiss.

But there are other actors involved. Hugh, if you go out there and start playing it the regular way, you’re going to throw everybody else off.

Not if you tell them to switch back.

Ah, that was it. In John Reddick’s absence, Hugh wanted me to order the cast to return to acting the play the way they’d rehearsed it. Well, I wasn’t going to do it. I shook my head. No, Hugh. You can’t switch back now.

He was on the verge of accepting it when Rosemary said, He doesn’t have to do what you say. I mean, you’re not the director. You only, uh, well.

Wrote the play, you fool girl.

Rosemary got up from the dressing table and slipped her arm around Hugh’s waist. She smiled up at him, feeling her power. "I think you ought to do it the way you want to, Hugh."

I sighed. I was too old and too tired to have to compete with sweet young things like Rosemary Odell. When a man doesn’t marry until he reaches fifty, he sometimes chooses a mate that leaves his friends and well-wishers a little nonplused. Rosemary’s attraction was blatantly sexual; Hugh couldn’t keep his hands off her. Rosemary was of the generation that had grown up on rock music and television, so she was both a petrophile and a bibliophobe. Hugh worshipped her.

While I was trying to think what to say next, Hugh moved over to the washbasin for a glass of water and swallowed some pills. He suffered from asthma, and I mean suffered. Daily medication and weekly injections kept it under control, and the only way the respiratory ailment had interfered with his career was to prohibit his making a Hollywood movie. He’d acted in movies and television shows filmed in New York and Europe, but California had defeated him. He’d turned out to be allergic to all the grasses growing in the southern part of the state. The one time he’d gone out there to make a movie, he’d had to drop out after two days.

Hugh, I said, "I can’t force you to do anything. All I can do is appeal to your professionalism. Right now the performance is the only important thing. Act with the others, not against them. Please."

There was a rap on the door. Two minutes, Mr. Odell.

I started to leave, but Hugh stopped me. Don’t worry, Abby. You can count on me.

Relieved, I thanked him. As I left, I could hear Rosemary complaining. I don’t see what all the fuss is about. It’s only one performance. I mean, it’s not the end of the world or anything.

Soon after the beginning of the second act, that idiot audience finally tumbled to the fact that they were seeing something extraordinary. Hugh Odell and the rest of the cast continued to support Ian Cavanaugh’s heroic efforts, and the audience began to respond. At the end of the performance they pounded their hands together and someone even yelled Bravo! I tried to convince myself I was glad for Ian’s sake, but the afternoon left a sour taste in my mouth.

Home was a brownstone on West Thirty-fifth Street, and that’s where I headed. Perhaps it was an unconscious avoidance of the problem of the second act, but all I seemed able to think about was Sylvia Markey’s cat. I prowled around turning on lamps, but lighting the rooms didn’t lighten my mood a bit. I opted for the distractions of late-afternoon television. Rerun Heaven.

Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy were all reminding one another of their duties. Scotty spoke of his engines in the language of lovers. Lt. Uhura opened the hailing frequencies.

My ex-husband and I had kept a cat. She’d lived with us for six years, a funny little animal that gave us at least one good laugh every day. If I’d ever come home and found her head on my dresser …

Who? I couldn’t think of anyone in the Foxfire company capable of that kind of malice. If the cat had been, say, poisoned—that would have been bad enough. But the vicious, sadistic dismembering of the animal could only be the work of someone not quite right in the head. And the dismembering had gone on backstage at the very time everyone else was getting ready for the performance.

The backstage crew was small for Foxfire. I knew them all fairly well with the exception of the properties manager, a rather shy young man named Jerry. He was the one Leo Gunn had chewed out for letting the attaché case get on stage with its grisly contents.

John Reddick and most of the cast I knew like family. None of them could have done it, I was sure. But against my will, one name floated to the surface of my mind.

Ian Cavanaugh.

It wasn’t that I believed Ian capable of cat-slaughter; I’d thought of him simply because I had no idea what he was capable of. Although I’d known Ian for eight years, I didn’t really know him. He was a reserved man, managing to remain remote and even aloof in a let-it-all-hang-out profession. He never capitalized on his family for publicity; in eight years I’d met his wife only once and his daughter never. He brushed off interviewers who asked too-personal questions and never spoke of his life before he entered the theater. He existed for the world only while he was acting; what he did with the rest of his life was none of your business, thank you. I liked his rather prickly defense of his privacy and often wished some other people I knew would follow his example.

But the fact remained that Ian Cavanaugh was a virtual stranger to me. I’d never particularly wanted it any other way, but right now I was wishing I knew him better.

My refrigerator was empty; there hadn’t been time to stock up since I got back. I went to a deli for a bite before going back to the theater.

Backstage there was some talk of the matinee audience, but mostly there was no talk at all. Jerry the prop man kept opening the attaché case (new) and checking the contents.

Abby.

I turned to face Sylvia Markey.

Have you finished the new opening for the second act?

I stared at her. She knew I’d just got back to town the day before.

It’s just not working the way it is, she went on. And we really can’t wait much longer. When can we have it?

When it’s written, I said. Not one minute before.

Now look, Abby, you’ve got to understand something. The professional telling the amateur how it’s done. If that second act isn’t fixed soon, this play is going to close. Gene Ramsay told me so. Gene Ramsay was our producer. "So you can’t afford to keep us waiting. And it does take some time to learn new lines, you know."

Come off it, Sylvia. You know I’ve only just learned there’s a problem.

"Well,

Reviews for The Fourth Wall

[julesjones_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

[2006-11-25] Early mystery from Barbara Paul, set in a New York theatre in the present day. A modern take on the Jacobean revenge tragedy, it's harsh and a traumatic read, but one hell of a book. One of my all-time favourite mysteries, and I'm pleased to see that it's recently been brought back into print.