Kiss Your Elbow. Alan Handley
do it?” He answered himself. “No indeed, the little brat carefully took the elevator down to the main floor, probably pulled her dress off one shoulder, put eyeshadow under her eyes and staggered all the way across the street into Sardi’s and announced it like a messenger in Macbeth. What a performance! Nothing like it since the Cherry sisters. I was having lunch with Terry and Lawrence…. They’re doing a new show and there’s the dream part for me…”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Cut to the finish.” He gave me a nasty look but went on with his story….
“Well, you can imagine what a stir there was. The place was jammed to the ears. Vincent Sardi called the police right away, and everyone tore out and up to her office. And sure enough there she was dead as a door nail. What a crush in that little office. Everyone was there. Stanley and Brock and Cheryl and George…”
“Spare us the society notes. Then what?” I said.
“Well, after a while the police came and all of us except Libby had to leave.”
A policeman wandered about muttering for the crowd to break it up and move along, but after a while gave it up as a bad job because you can’t break up a crowd of actors. They just shift into other groupings. Ted took off his hat, held it in his teeth and pulled out a pocket comb and combed his hair. Maggie and I just stood there watching him. When every hair and wave was arranged to his satisfaction he wiped off the comb, stuck it back in his pocket, carefully replaced his hat and kissed Maggie on the cheek again.
“Well, darling, I’ve got to fly. Let’s have lunch one day. I’ll call you. Be sure and see the morning papers, I think my picture’s in them. Of course Libby hogged most of them. But the lad from the Brooklyn Eagle was very nice. Remembered me from my last picture with Paramount. Bye now.” And he was off down the street headed toward Broadway.
“Let’s have a drink before I vomit.” I took Maggie’s arm and led her into Sardi’s.
CHAPTER FIVE
SARDI’S RESTAURANT IS REALLY just one big room divided by some chest-high partitions with benches or, in the chi-chier places, I expect they would be called banquettes. All the woodwork is dark brown and the chairs and benches are covered with dark leather and the walls are shingled with caricatures of well-known theatrical people. Needless to say, one of me is not included. New ones are added from time to time, I suppose, though I don’t know where they find the room to hang them, unless it’s the ladies’ room.
It was almost empty when Maggie and I came in. Just a few people were scattered around starting the five o’clock jump a little early. Just like we had been doing all day. We sat down and ordered drinks. Maggie shed her mink and pulled off her hat. I lit her a cigarette. She took a deep drag, blew it out and slumped back against the wall. I was slumping some, too; I was feeling definitely let down and very, very tired.
“Anyway it was fun while it lasted.” Maggie smiled at me. “You know I feel kind of sorry for the old gal. Heart failure. I didn’t know she had a weak heart. I didn’t even suspect she had a heart for that matter.”
“I don’t think it was heart failure.”
“Oh, Timmy, now don’t start that murder game again. You’d think someone had broken your bicycle or something. So you’re not a wanted man…you’re still young…there’s still something to live for…if you’re real good and eat your broccoli you may find another body one day.”
“All the same, did you ever step on a nail when you were a kid?”
“No, I’ve never enjoyed that sort of thing.”
“Well, I have lots of times, and with my full weight on it it didn’t go in even an inch.”
“You can scarcely compare the bottom of your foot with Nellie’s right mammary gland, after all.”
“There’s not that much difference.”
“Well, dear, you ought to know.”
“Oh, shut up.” Then I remembered what Ted Kent had said. “Still, one way to find out—I might ask Libby Drew what the police thought when they found Nellie.”
“Knowing Libby, if it would help get her picture in the paper, I’m surprised she didn’t confess to doing in Nellie herself.”
I nudged Maggie as the front door swung open and Henry Frobisher walked in. We watched him as he slowly came across the room and sat down at a wall table, two away from us. I’d been wondering about him, off and on, all afternoon. Frobisher had billing in the Youth and Beauty Book, too. An appointment with Nellie at three-thirty this afternoon. It was now about four-thirty and had Nellie been alive, he would have been just coming from it.
I’d put Frobisher at around fifty-five and, although it had started creeping back, he was by no means a scratch-bait boy yet. Maybe it was the sunlamp tan, or, maybe, his eyebrows bleached out more than his brown hair, which was graying at the proper places; anyway, his eyebrows blended strangely into his high forehead and made his face look naked.
His newest show, A Kiss Thrown In, starring Louise Randall, had been in rehearsal for two weeks and I couldn’t tell whether it was going badly, or whether Nellie’s death had upset him. No matter what caused it, I have never seen a man look so tired and still move. He sat back, ordered a drink and looked around the room. His gaze finally hit us and he gave us a vague smile. But I wasn’t going to waste any chances to talk to any producers, even if he didn’t have anything for me in his show….
“Wasn’t that awful about Nellie?” I said across two tables.
“Yes, tragic, tragic.” He seemed to be looking right through me.
“I didn’t know she had a weak heart, did you?”
“No. No, I didn’t.” He looked at Maggie. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Lanson.”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Frobisher. How’s the show going?”
“Still pretty rough. We’re doing a bit of rewriting.” Maggie didn’t need a job and I did. I wanted to be in on the conversation.
“Mr. Frobisher, you knew Nellie pretty well, didn’t you? I mean, she cast most of your shows and all that.”
“Yes, I’ve known Nellie for a good many years, fine woman.”
“Well then.” I leaned toward him. “Can you think of any enemies she might have had?”
“Enemies?” He looked a little startled at that, and I noticed for the first time that his eyes were almost green. “Good heavens no, what makes you ask that?”
“Don’t mind him, Mr. Frobisher.” Maggie pulled me gently back against the wall. “He’s been in so many mysteries, he’s trying to make one out of this.”
Mr. Frobisher picked up his drink and came over and sat down on the bench next to me.
“I don’t understand what you mean. Do you think she was killed? Murdered?”
I had been thinking that to myself ever since I had found her, but now that someone else said it it sounded a little foolish. Something in Frobisher’s manner of asking it, his soft, rather clipped voice, seemed to make my even having thought it vulgar and very corny.
“No, I guess not,” I finally admitted. “But did you ever step on a nail when you were a kid?”
The moment I said it I felt ridiculous.
“No, I don’t believe I ever did. I may have, though it’s been a long time since I was a kid.” Wistful is the word, I think, for the smile that followed. “But what has my not having stepped on a nail got to do with Nellie?”
“Well, you know that thing she fell on, the desk spindle…it wasn’t much larger than a good-size nail.”
“You seem to know a good deal about it.” I could feel my face starting to redden, so I took a quick gulp of