Max Collins: The War of the Worlds Murder

Gibson felt a sudden surge of claustrophobia as the faces and waving pencils and the sea of fedoras with press passes stuck in the hatbands surged forward….

Another voice: “What word about rioting? How about that fatal stampede in Jersey…?”

Hands up in surrender, Welles said, “Please…”

And another: “How about suicides? Have you heard about the one on Riverside Drive?”

Taylor said, “Call my office tomorrow for a statement, gentlemen.”

Gross asked, “Don’t you have any statement to make tonight, to the reading public, Mr. Welles?”

“None whatsoever!”

The elevator, thankfully, was there, and they stepped aboard and shut the gate on the hungry newshound horde.

Within minutes, Taylor had ushered the trio through the alley to the cab waiting out front, and they were en route to the Mercury Theatre. After all that fuss, life seemed to be going on as usual in late-night Manhattan-cars stopping for traffic, pedestrians out strolling, no riots, no stampedes to speak of….

At the theater, the company had gone ahead and started rehearsing under the direction of one of Welles’s assistants- Danton’s Death would open shortly, and life (and the show) went on, whether their director deigned to drop by or not. The company was used to their leader being absent in battle, due to this radio show or that romantic rendezvous or just a restaurant meal that had gotten out of hand.

So no otherworldly sense of drama seized the auditorium-other than the cast half-falling downstairs as they were singing “Carmagnole”-and the only sign that something special was up were the several resourceful newspaper photographers who’d figured out that this was where Orson Welles would wind up, tonight.

The cast froze in the midst of their song as Welles climbed to the stage and asked them to take a break and take seats at the front of the auditorium.

When they had, he stood with the expressionistic sets as a bold backdrop, with its blankly staring and accusatory array of masks, and told them what had happened this evening. He told the story briefly but melodramatically, and Gibson could not tell whether the contrition in his voice and manner were sincere-particularly when he seemed to be posing for the photographers below, eyes raised to heaven, arms outstretched in crucifixion mode, an early Christian saint in need of a shave…and as Welles’s beard tended to grow in most heavily in the goatee area, a paradoxical satanic aspect cast its shadow.

On the other hand, Gibson had no doubt that all the talk of deaths-with the threat of multiple murder charges hovering-had made both Welles and Houseman genuinely remorseful, not to mention confused and frightened.

Finally, the boy-genius smiled a little, shrugged, and said, “Well, let’s just say I don’t think we’ll choose anything quite like ‘War of the Worlds’ again.”

Standing next to Houseman in the aisle, Gibson had been watching the actors. He whispered to the producer, “Why is the company taking this so…so lightly?”

“They don’t believe him,” Houseman said.

“Why not?”

“He’s the boy who cried wolf-this is simply the most outrageous of his many outrageous excuses for keeping them waiting.”

Gibson chuckled. “Well, I can see that, actually.”

Houseman turned his head, raised an eyebrow. “You can, my boy?”

“Yes-you see, Jack, those three ‘thugs’ that accosted us last night, outside the Cotton Club?… They were actors Orson hired.”

“Ah. You’re starting to understand how he thinks.”

Gibson nodded. “Yes, I heard somebody mention that he once hired actors to play police, as a practical joke on an actor friend with outstanding warrants.”

“Yes indeed.”

“So he hired those actors-knowing I wouldn’t recognize them-to give validity, through me, an outsider, to that wild excuse he made to you and the cast, based on a nonexistent grudge between him and Owney Madden, over some dancer.”

Houseman’s head tilted to one side. “Well-analyzed-though the dancer exists, she just wasn’t Madden’s protegee. You are proving yourself quite a Shadow-worthy detective, Mr. Gibson.”

“You know why I left our little temporary prison cell back at CBS, don’t you? And slipped back into Studio Eight?”

“I can’t say that I do. I was, frankly, wondering.”

“I found your bloody towel. The one that was used to wipe up all that blood. I sniffed it, by the way. Sickly sweet. Karo syrup, I’d say. Standard ingredient in stage blood.”

Houseman bestowed a tiny smile. “How did you become aware that I had a passkey of my own?”

“Louis the janitor told me-I almost missed it, when he said you’d returned the key ‘first thing.’ But then that seemed an odd way to put it, unless you had borrowed the key the day before, to have a duplicate made, and then returned it to Louis-‘first thing.’ ”

Houseman bowed slightly. “And with that piece of the puzzle, there was little left to solve.”

Gibson gestured with an open hand. “Your accomplice was free to clean up and slip out, while we played out our part of the charade. By the way, Leo the elevator ‘boy’ told me of the woman who left the building, obviously not wanting to be recognized, not long after your accomplice would have made her getaway; he thought she might be Mrs. Welles, but then of course neither Mrs. Welles nor Balanchine were ever at the Columbia Broadcasting Building today. You had their names written into the reception book, knowing Welles’s habit to check up on who’d dropped by, natural enough with all the affairs of the heart he’s been juggling-and easy enough to find a Virginia Welles signature to copy. So I was sent scurrying after suspects who hadn’t even been present when the crime was committed. Classic use of the first tactic of magic-misdirection.”

Onstage Welles was sensing the disbelief around him.

“What is this skeptical murmur?” he said. “Every word is factual -it’s all true!”

“Tell us another one,” somebody said from the audience.

Laughter and catcalls followed, even a little light sarcastic applause.

One of the press photographers in the pit called something up to Welles, and the director leaned over at stage’s edge to hear what the photog had to say. Smiling, the wunderkind got to his feet.

“So you don’t believe me? Come with me, my flock of doubters-follow me, boys! And girls….”

All of them-cast members still in full Danton’s Death French Revolution drag-marched up the aisle after their leader and out into the crisp October night, as if looking for a Bastille to sack.

Gibson walked alongside Houseman. “So you wanted to teach him a lesson-and you enlisted someone else who wanted to get back at Orson, huh?”

With a sideways glance, Houseman said, “You understand, of course, I never imagined this panic would be so extensive-I would not have put Orson through that horror show, had I known-”

“Sure.” Gibson fired up a Camel as they walked, waved out the match, sent it gutterbound. “But I think you did anticipate some kind of panic, otherwise you wouldn’t have tried to talk our bumptious boy out of doing the show in so overt a ‘newscast’ fashion.”

“Granted-had I foreseen the extent of it, however, I wouldn’t have found it necessary to provide him that other opportunity for a comeuppance….”

“So where’s the murder weapon?”

“Back on the Mercury office wall.”

In Times Square, on southeast corner of Broadway and 42 ndStreet, awash in neon and with a good view of the Times Building and its lighted bulletin, the so-called Moving News sign that circled the venerable paper’s building, Welles assembled his Revolutionary army.