Pity Him Afterwards

3:00 arr in town

3:25 picked up by Mary Ann

3:40 arr at theater, meets dead girl in box office

3:40-4:05 in Bob H’s office.

4:05-4:25 meets Perry Kent and Arnie Kapow, both in theater, meets two girls, Linda and Karen, washing flats back of theater

4:25 meets Ralph Schoen and other members of company in rehearsal room. Not sure how many present.

4:30 find body. Saw no one in halls or on stairs.

Sondgard thanked Daniels for his co-operation and told him, “Tell the sergeant I want to see Bob Haldemann next. And wait in the rehearsal room, please.” Because Captain Garrett might want to question everybody all over again. Sondgard couldn’t guess how many important questions he hadn’t thought to ask.

Haldemann came in and confirmed Daniels’ timetable, as he had been with the boy from three-forty on. He and Daniels had parted on the first-floor hall of this house just before Daniels found the body. Haldemann had already gone back to the office, and Will Henley, one of the actors, had come over to get him after Ralph Schoen had checked and found Cissie Walker really murdered.

As to the dead girl: “She was a very cheerful girl, Eric. Something of a flirt, I guess, but she didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Could someone have misunderstood, thought she did mean something by it?”

“I don’t see how. It was all too innocent and playful. She was only nineteen, just being playful. I don’t think anyone could have thought she was serious about it all. She was just — I don’t know exactly how to explain it, Eric. She was just a healthy, happy girl, having a lot of fun with the brand-new discovery she was a woman. I wouldn’t be surprised if she were a virgin. In fact, I’d be surprised if she weren’t.”

He could add nothing more. The dead girl, like the rest of the company, had only been here since yesterday. So far as he knew, no one else in the company had known Cissie Walker before meeting her here. So far as he knew, no one had become a special friend or a special enemy of the girl in the twenty-four hours the company had been together.

Sondgard asked him, “Is everybody in the company in that room out there?”

“All except Mary Ann; she’s at the box office. And Tom Burns. You remember him, our stage manager. I imagine he’s over at the Lounge. I haven’t seen him since this morning.”

Sondgard remembered Tom Burns. So far as anyone knew, Burns hadn’t drawn a sober breath in ten years. He was precise and competent and reliable as a stage manager, but whenever he was neither working nor sleeping he was drinking.

Sondgard said, “Okay. I’ll look for Tom later. Here” — he passed his notebook and pen across the table — “make me a list of this year’s company.”

Haldemann did. Including himself, there were fifteen names on the list. Sondgard looked at the list and shook his head. He’d be hours questioning all these people. He sighed and said, “All right, I’ll talk to Arnie next.”

But the questioning didn’t take as long as he’d expected. Arnie Kapow had spent the entire afternoon in the scene dock in the theater, and Perry Kent had spent the entire afternoon on the stage, setting up the lights. Neither of them knew anything about the killing. Nor could either of them be involved; they were alibied. In later questioning, Sondgard established that the theater’s front door had been under the eyes of Mary Ann McKendrick constantly between three-forty and four-thirty, and the rear door had been right next to where two of the young actresses, Linda Murchieson and Karen Leacock, had been washing flats. They had seen no one during that hour except Mel Daniels and Bob Haldemann.

After Arnie and Perry, Sondgard talked to Ralph Schoen, who was even fatter this year than last year. Schoen had spent the entire afternoon in the rehearsal room on the first floor. The doors to the hall had been closed, so anyone could have come into the house without being seen. Schoen could vouch for Loueen Campbell and Richard Lane, who had been doing most of the rehearsing and neither of whom had left the room at any time. He thought all of the others had stepped out at one time or another during the afternoon, but he couldn’t be sure of specific times.

Loueen Campbell and Dick Lane, questioned after Schoen, merely agreed with what Shoen said, and could add nothing.