Excerpt: Murder at the Little Theater

“It’s Friday night, and it’s been a long week, and I know everybody’s tired,” Sid said at the beginning of the rehearsal. “We’re going to make it a short night and just go through the first act.” This announcement was greeted by an assortment of relieved sighs from the cast, and even a smattering of applause.

The rehearsal started smoothly enough, with the orchestra playing the overture flawlessly, and then the assorted lords and ladies of the court of Camelot gathering to greet the coach of the approaching Guinevere. Ernie Wang, as Merlin, made a creditable job of playing the wizard’s exasperation with the shallowness and thick-headedness of the members of the court, despite his short stature and dense acne.

Dane Hamilton, as Arthur, however, was a disaster. He managed to come off as even more wooden than the tree that he was hiding in. Ernie’s exasperation was more than just acting as he tried to evoke some credible emotion out of Dane. But still, there was none.

That changed when Bunnie arrived on the scene. She was, herself, continuing to improve, and she made her first number more believable than she ever had before. Not only that, she seemed to act as a catalyst, improving the performance of those around her, most especially Dane. As she continued to sing, Dane became visibly less stiff up in the tree, and by the time he fell out of it in front of her, he actually had a hint of an expression on his face. When the time came for him to sing of the virtues of Camelot, he was only ninety-eight percent wooden, rather than a hundred percent. The robot was becoming less mechanical.

Dane continued to soften in the next scene, which didn’t involve any singing, in which Arthur first comes up with the idea of the new chivalry. In the past, he had delivered his lines with precision, not missing a single word, but he had been completely robotic. That had been a serious contrast to Bunnie, who never got the lines right and did show some emotions, but never the right ones. Now, Bunnie was evoking Guinevere with some appropriateness, and Dane, while he never became believably fired up, now did at least seem to express some sort of lukewarm approval of his ideas, as he summoned the page to send the word out of his new plan.

The scene changed, and the orchestra swelled up in preparation for Lancelot’s arrival at Camelot, with the opening bars of “C’est Moi.” The orchestra paused, awaiting Flash’s entry to launch into the song. Nothing happened. The conductor waved his baton, signaling the orchestra to play the introduction once again, and once again paused in anticipation of Flash coming in. Again, nothing happened. There was no sign of Flash.

“Now what?” Sid shouted in exasperation, as he stalked onto the stage. “Flash, you idiot, where are you?” Hannah imagined that this glitch in the works was especially galling to Sid, since everything up to this point had gone far better than ever before. For something to go wrong with the one actor who had been getting things mostly right, while the actors who had been getting things wrong were suddenly so much improved, must have been frustrating.

Sid strode to the side of the stage where Flash was supposed to make his entrance, his eyebrows becoming increasingly low and his face taking on a scowl deeper than Hannah had seen before. “Flash!” he shouted. “Get in here, you bastard! Don’t mess everything up!” He headed off the stage in the direction Flash was supposed to have come from.

Worried, Hannah detached herself from the chorus, which had been sitting in the audience seats during the scenes they weren’t taking part in. Ignoring the knowing smiles of those who thought they knew why she was concerned about Flash, she hurried through the backstage door – this time remembering to duck her head to keep from knocking off the unwieldy headdress – to follow Sid. Had something happened to Flash? She thought of the person or persons who didn’t want Bunnie to get help. Might they have found out that Flash was continuing the lessons and taken action against him? She had warned him, but he hadn’t taken the threat seriously. Maybe she should have worked harder to convince him. If anything had happened … she wasn’t sure what she would do, but she knew that she would be blaming herself at least in part for whatever did happen to Flash.

Hannah caught up with Sid in the same backstage hallway where she and Flash had had their laughing fit the night before. Was it only last night? Less than twenty four hours ago? So much seemed to have happened since then.

“I guess I should have expected you to show up to come chasing after your lover,” Sid growled when he saw Hannah. “Oh, well, maybe you can help. Or maybe you can’t. I’ll never know why you chose to take up with the most unreliable human being on the planet. You just seem too smart to do anything like that.” He headed up the hallway, past the green rooms where the members of the chorus got costumed and would get makeup, and where they would rest between their scenes during the actual production, to the special dressing areas for the main characters. Hannah followed as closely as she could while encumbered by the heavy dress and taking care not to lose any parts of her costume.

Sid barged into the door of the dressing room that Flash shared with Dane Hamilton and Brad St. Francis, the football hero who had been cast as Mordred. Just inside the door, he stopped short, so suddenly that Hannah crashed into him. Hannah, being a good head taller than Sid was, could see over his head and into the room. On the carpet in the middle of the floor lay Flash, face up, in his full suit of armor, except for the helmet, which had rolled off to the side. He wasn’t moving.

Shoving Sid aside, and now not caring that she had knocked her headdress and wig off on the door frame, she rushed into the room and knelt down beside Flash, fearing the worst. She felt her throat choking up, and tears burned her eyes, blurring her vision. She really should have tried harder to get him to quit helping Bunnie. She should have known that whatever or whoever had made Sid and Cyd fear for their lives should also have made Flash fear for his. She should have told Flash more of the truth as she understood it, even if it was just speculation, to convince him to change what he was doing.

She reached out a hand and stroked his cheek, so soft and smooth even though Flash had spent most of his life outdoors. He must have shaved just before the rehearsal began, she thought, and then she laughed at herself, a bitter little laugh, for having such an irrelevant thought. She leaned over to put her face close to his, and stroked her hand down the side of his face to his throat.

No, it couldn’t be, she thought. Under her fingertips, she thought she felt a pulse. She rested her fingers just below his jaw, and she felt it again, a faint but steady beat. Now, she could just feel the faintest whisper of his breath on her face. “He’s alive!” she said to Sid, in a voice that she had meant to be a shout but that came out as a strong whisper. “He’s still alive! Help me get this armor off him, so he can breathe!”