Jill Churchill - A Midsummer Night's Scream

"What are your feelings about Professor Imry?" Mel asked.

"Not good ones. I never liked him to begin with, and when I learned what he'd planned to do, replacing another actor with me, I didn't like it. It's not professional."

"Thank you, Mr. Engel. If I have other questions, I'll ask them later."

The Buntings, together, were next. He gave the same warning, which they both waived. Mel asked them the same question he'd asked Norman Engel at the end of his interview. "Did you know Denny Roth before you got here?"

Both said they hadn't.

"What is your opinion of Professor Imry?"

Gloria Bunting fielded this question. "We learned early in our professional lives never to give opinions of our co-workers."

Mel had a grudging admiration for her speaking so plainly.

"Where were you on Wednesday night?"

John Bunting took over. "I was out late with

old prep school and college friends." He named the bar and grill where they always met when he was in town.

"And you, Ms. Bunting?"

"Sound asleep. It had been a long day and I knew John wouldn't stagger in for hours."

Mel dismissed them and doggedly worked his way through the rest of the cast and crew. Nobody admitted to knowing Denny before the rehearsals started. Nobody liked Professor Imry.

When Jane arrived home, she tried to write another page or two of her manuscript, but her mind kept wandering back to the real murder.' Everything Shelley had said was true. They didn't have enough knowledge of any of these people to even guess who had committed the horrible act. Professor Imry was, in both their minds, the primary suspect. Which wasn't really fair.

They'd made up their minds, as had most of the cast, that he wasn't a nice person. But that proved nothing. Lots of offensive people went through life without killing anyone. Hurting their feelings, yes. Maybe harming their career, yes, very likely. Though people like him, Jane guessed, never gave a thought to how much they'd harmed anyone with words alone.

Shelley was also right to say that Mel would find out about everyone's background, and thatshe and Jane should stay out of it. Even petty crimes often showed up in legal records. And if not, acquaintances remembered them. Mel would have to dig deep into everyone's lives, even those who weren't actors. Denny might have done something awful to one of the other people involved in the production. Stagehands, the volunteer students who were making the set. Even Tazz or Evelyn Chance.

On the other hand, Shelley and Jane had often provided information to Mel that only they knew. He'd seldom asked for their opinions. This time, he had asked Jane what she thought of Imry and even agreed with her. That made things different.

Or did it? Jane and Shelley, like others, didn't like him. But Imry wasn't the victim. He was the primary suspect. Denny Roth was the victim. And they knew very little about him. He wasn't much nicer than Imry. Though he'd committed only one offense they knew of, which was telling off Imry about his bad grammar in front of others. Hardly a good motive for Imry to actually kill Denny. Unless this criticism hit Imry in his heart and ego so hard that it unbalanced him.

She hadn't written a word. She had to stop worrying over this. Shelley was right. They weren't likely to become good friends of any of the people involved. The cast and crew would disperse in a matter of weeks. And Jane and Shelley themselves would step out of their involve‑

ment as soon as the rehearsals were over in another week. But she'd like to keep in touch with Ms. Bunting and Tazz, if she could.

Jane closed down her computer, went upstairs. She'd been so absorbed in her book that she hadn't been aware of the battle going on between her son and her daughter. Mike had his bedroom door open, music blaring. Katie was standing in the doorway, shouting, "I'm trying to talk on the phone. Could you hold the noise down?"

Todd, at his own computer, was staying out of the fray.

"Mike, Katie's right," Jane said. "Turn it down and close your door, please."

The din of drums and screaming lyrics died down and finally stopped. Jane prepared for bed and went back to reading a Martha Grimes novel she had somehow missed finding till now. It was a very early one, in which Jury and Melrose had met only one time before. How could she have not read it yet?

Ten

Mel called at ten-fifteen Friday evening. "Is it too late to talk to you?" he asked.

"It's never too late when it's you. I was reading a mystery novel I hadn't known existed. What's

up?"

"I have the preliminary report from Pathology."

"Does it tell how he died?"

"Sort of. He'd taken some whiskey. Quite a lot. And tranquilizers. There's no way to tell, at least yet, if the whiskey had the tranquilizers in it, or if he took them at different times."

"No whiskey bottle?"

"No sign of one. Not a bottle of pills either. He was unconscious. He'd apparently put his head down on the makeup table in his dressing room. Then someone took something heavy and vaguely oblong to the back of his head. Crushed the connection to the spine and disabled all of his nervous system. He must have died instantly. The

blood-spatter pattern indicated that his head was on the table when he was struck. But he might have died of the whiskey and tranquilizers anyway."

"How horrible," Jane exclaimed.

"Slightly better than being on a respirator and a feeding tube for life," Mel said. "If he'd been hit a little bit lower, that's what could have happened."

Jane thought for a moment, debating which of many questions she should ask. "Would this have taken a huge amount of strength?" was her first.

"It depends. If the perpetrator was strong and accurate, it could have happened."

"What else could it be?"

"Something like a pendulum. Not so heavy, but delivered with a swing of a rope or chain. Almost anyone could do that."

"I assume all such items have been looked for in the Dumpster outside?"

"The whole thing has been searched, of course. No sign of rope, chain, or a bottle of anything, just empty plastic cups and plates and empty water bottles. They've all been taken in to be tested for contents and fingerprints. Nothing that looks like an oblong weight."

"Wait a minute, Mel. How is the word 'oblong' being used?"

"What do you mean?"

"I once ordered a long rectangular tableclothfrom a catalog, and when the package arrived it was labeled as being 'oblong.' Before I even opened it," Jane said, "I called the place where I ordered it and said that it looked rectangular in the picture. I was told that 'oblong' meant rectangular."

"I thought 'oblong' was a thing that was longer than it is wide, and curved into circles at the end," Mel said.

"So did I," Jane said. "Another perfectly good word trampled. 'Rectangular' is apparently not politically correct. Or maybe the people at the catalog thought they were synonymous — and maybe they are."

Mel was silent for a moment, then asked, "Who would have thought a murder could cross over into grammar? I'll ask the pathologist exactly what 'oblong' means to him. There is a weight missing."

"What kind of weight?"

"Something to do with raising and lowering the background scenery that goes up or down depending on the scene. Of course, there hasn't been a play there for a long time, and it could have been missing for years. Or only days. The young men who are painting the background of the room this play takes place in were looking for the rope and counterweight and couldn't find it."

"Would the missing weight be the oblong object?"

"Maybe. But if it had been there for a long time, there probably would have been signs of dust or rust in the wound."