A: Three o’clock. On the button.
Q: How do you know it was on the button?
A: Because I finally got the unprintable clock on the unprintable lightboard working at two minutes to three. I set the clock, see? Then she come staggering in, like always, and tried to rape me.
Q: And then she went over to the soft?
A: Like a tug in a heavy gale.
Q: And you spent the entire afternoon at the lightboard?
A: I had a couple head breaks. You know. And I went out and watched the rehearsal a while.
Q: Can you give me the times you were away from the lightboard?
A: I went away at three o’clock, right after she racked out on the sofa, and came back at three forty-two. The unprintable clock was still working.
Q: Did you leave there any other times?
A: A little after four, I went over to the scene dock and got a screwdriver from Charlie. The little one. Mine was too big.
Q: You said something about head breaks.
A: Yeah, two of them. The first one was at three o’clock, when I hung around out front and watched the rehearsal a while. The second one was at five-thirty. On the button again. And I got back at twenty-four minutes to six. I was watching that unprintable clock. You know it’s busted again?
Q: I didn’t know that.
A: I looked at it this morning. It conked out at midnight.
Q: But it was working right yesterday?
A: On the button. With my watch.
Q: And when you went to get the screwdriver from Charlie, in the scene dock?
A: A couple minutes after four. Say five after. And I wasn’t gone more’n two minutes.
Q: We’ll give it lots of leeway-Sometime between four o’clock and ten after, you were gone for two minutes. Right?
A: Right.
Q: Did that cop ask you these questions?
A: Not in so much detail.
Q: How do you mean?
A: He asked me where I was between three and six, and I told him by the lightboard. So he asked me if I was there every minute of the time, and I said no, I took a couple head breaks.
Q: That’s all? He didn’t get the times?
A: Nope.
Q: Then how the devil does he expect to get anywhere?
A: Don’t ask me. You know these unprintable cops.
So I thanked him, and sent him away, and said to Edna, “Now, we’ve got ourselves a timetable. That GP they brought in, calls himself a medical examiner, said she was killed no later than six o’clock. She got there at three. Russ was in plain view most of that time, so she had to be killed either between three and three-forty-two or between four and four-ten or between five-thirty and five-thirty-six.”
She said, “Unless Russ is lying, Andy.”
“Okay. If he’s lying, that means he did it himself. If we use his timetable and eliminate every other possibility, then it was him.”
She said, “I think you’re wonderful, Andy.”
So the great detective necked with a suspect a while. Although she wasn’t really a suspect. Not to me.
We were interrupted by Einstein, back to ask some more questions of his own. But still not the sensible ones. He was asking us about what we did for a living back in New York, and did we know Heather before this summer, and where we lived before New York, and things like that. Then he went away again, presumably to send teletypes all over the place and find out whether or not we were, as he suspected, a gang of desperate criminals posing as actors.
I went back to my own questioning, of Edna this time:
Q: When did this rehearsal start?
A: Two o’clock. Well, it was supposed to start at two o’clock.
Q: Everybody was late, I take it. As usual.
A: Some of the kids had gone off to Berger’s Kill in Archer’s car. They didn’t get back till almost two-thirty.
Q: You were holding the book, right?
A: That’s right. And the watch.
Q: Oh, god glory! A line rehearsal?
A: Sure. Monday, you know. We went through the whole play, for lines and timing.
Q: Starting when?
A: At twenty to three. And it ended at quarter to six.
Q: Get the master script, will you, honey? And lots of paper and pencil.
A: I was going to tell you all this before, but you started kissing me.
Q: I may do it again.
I did. But I waited till she brought back the master script.
A master script is something like a three-dimensional maze, with the Start at page one and the Finish three acts later. It’s made up by the assistant director, held by her during rehearsals, and shared by the stage manager and light man and sound man during performances.
Here’s the way it’s made up: The assistant director takes two copies of the script (acting version, from Samuel French) and cuts them up into their separate pages, then glues one page each to a sheet of loose-leaf filler paper. This bundle is then put, hopefully in proper order, into a filler. The assistant director marks, in pencil around each glued-in page, all of the director’s instructions for movement and stage business, with arrows to the appropriate actor and place. Light cues are added later, in blue pencil, and sound cues in red pencil. Line changes are made in pen. Pretty soon, the whole thing is impossible for anybody in the world to read, except a stage manager, who uses it as his Bible during each performance.
The master script of Love Among The Falling Stars, which Edna now brought me, was practically clean. There were a few line changes inked in, that was all, and tiny pencil notations at the beginning and ending of each scene. These pencil notes had been made yesterday afternoon by Edna, timing the rehearsal for pace. It had, as they always do, run overlong.
They’d started act one at twenty minutes to three, and had gone through the three scenes of that act without a break, finishing at twenty to four. That was when Russ had grown bored with watching, and had gone on back to his recalcitrant lightboard and his unprintable clock. Archer Marshall, phony director, had yakked at them about interpretation of various lines for fifteen minutes, and at five to four they had started act two, going through both scenes without a break and finishing at twenty-five to five. After ten minutes of directorial advice, and five minutes of head break, they had gone on to act three, from ten to five till quarter to six.
Number one: Russ had been at the lightboard during the entirety of both act breaks.
Number two: If it was one of the twelve actors who had killed Heather Sanderson, he or she had to do it during a period when he or she had no lines, the character not then being onstage.
Number three: In later questioning, the entire cast corroborated Edna’s alibi. She had taken no breaks at all during the entire afternoon, but had sat at all times on the stage apron, in front of the curtain, holding the ‘book’, the master script, timing the rehearsal and prompting people who forgot their lines.
Number four: Aside from the twelve actors, this left four other suspects; Archer Marshall, phony director; Sterling McCall, producer; Charlie Wilbe, set builder; and Russ Barlow, technician.
So. Edna and I decided to leave the actors for later and see if we could eliminate all four of the others at the outset. That evening, after supper and after Edna had driven her vintage Plymouth back into town and home and mother, I started questioning more suspects:
Charlie Wilbe:
Q: You were working on next week’s set all afternoon, Charlie?
A: Since nine o’clock in the morning. Jack Andrews and Ray Hennessy helped out in the morning, before lunch.
Q: But you worked alone all afternoon.
A: Sure. They was all rehears-in.
Q: What time did you start, in the afternoon?
A: Just about two, maybe a few minutes after.
Q: What work were you doing?