The Red Queen Dies (10 page)

“And that was when you mentioned John Wilkes Booth?” McCabe said.

Noel nodded. “I told her how he had been performing in Albany on the night that Abraham Lincoln stopped en route to his presidential inauguration. She was really intrigued by that. It always gives me chills, too.”

“Yes, it is that kind of story,” McCabe said.

“But what really intrigued Vivian was what might have been different if Henrietta Irving had killed Booth.”

“Who?”

“An actress who was Booth's lover. It happened two months after Booth and Lincoln had both been in Albany. That April of 1861, Booth came back for a return engagement at the Gayety Theatre. Irving had performed with him in Rochester, and they were together again in Albany. They had a drunken quarrel when she realized he had no intention of marrying her. She tried to stab him, but he deflected the knife. His face was slashed, but not enough to do permanent damage to his classic profile. He left town the next day.”

“What happened to Irving?” Baxter asked.

“She thought she had killed Booth. She went back to her room and tried to commit suicide. Luckily, she survived.”

McCabe said, “If she had killed Booth that evening in April 1861—”

Noel nodded. “Then Booth and Lincoln would never have had that final encounter in Ford's Theatre. Booth's madness would have ended here in Albany.”

Baxter said, “That's what the play she was writing was about?”

“The story as told by an elderly Henrietta Irving. A play about Lincoln and Booth here in Albany, but also about Irving and who she was. Irving is one of those nineteenth-century actresses who is almost forgotten today.”

Baxter said, “Was she charged with trying to kill Booth?”

“No,” Noel said. “Not after she told them that he had seduced her and then refused to do the honorable thing. Apparently, she wasn't the first or last woman to make a fool of herself over Booth.”

“But the only one who tried to kill him?” McCabe said.

“As far as we know. But the man was accident-prone. While he was in Albany, he also fell on the dagger he was using doing a performance. He was just returning to the stage after that injury on the night Lincoln stopped in Albany. Booth did his performance with one arm strapped to his body. The papers praised the passion of his performance.”

“Probably pissed as hell that Old Abe was in town,” Baxter said.

“I don't doubt he was,” Noel agreed. “Albany was a Democratic town, but they turned out for the president-elect, even thought he was a Republican.” She smiled. “Not to say that Booth didn't get better reviews in one of the newspapers. But he had been warned by the theater manager that he couldn't go around making inflammatory pro-South declarations.”

“Not to say there were no pro-slavery Southern sympathizers here in Albany,” McCabe said.

“Definitely not to say that, Detective McCabe. The North has never been pure in its ideology.”

“But getting back to Vivian Jessup's reaction to the story you told her,” McCabe said. “You said she was ‘intrigued.'”

“Yes. And a few months later, she contacted me because she had this idea for a play and she wanted to know if I would be interested in doing a theater lab here in Albany.”

“What's a theater lab?” Baxter asked.

“That's when a play is tried out, often with student actors. It gives the playwright and the director an opportunity to work through any problems. Since this was going to be Vivian's first attempt to write a play and the encounter had happened here in Albany, she thought UAlbany would be the perfect place to do the lab.”

McCabe said, “Speaking of the ‘it happened here' aspect, didn't I hear on the news that the mayor intended to feature the play as a part of the yearlong events?”

“Yes, she did. She and Vivian met at a UAlbany reception. The mayor was really excited about the idea of having a Tony Award–winning actress involved in her PR campaign.”

“Now that we have the background, could you tell us what we're going to see in the footage?” McCabe said.

Noel glanced at the wall. “This is a ‘work-in-progress' session that Vivian did for the Theatre Department. We post these for the students and anyone else who is interested. She's talking here about her inspiration for the play and what she wanted to achieve with it. And about her creative process.”

“Okay,” McCabe said. “Could we watch now? And then we'll follow up if we have more questions.”

Noel waved her hand toward the wall, and Vivian Jessup completed the gesture of brushing back a strand of her shoulder-length red hair. The gesture seemed unconscious, made as she was focused on conveying what it was about Booth, Lincoln, and Henrietta Irving that had made her go home and start to jot down notes. And when she'd read more about Lincoln and his assassination, learned that the young couple who had joined the president and his wife in their box at Ford's Theatre had been a major and his fiancee from Albany, that the soldier who had shot Booth when he was trapped also had been from Albany, or close enough, from nearby Troy, she had gotten more and more excited about telling the story. Not just Albany's recurring role in the Lincoln-Booth saga but also Irving's story. She had imagined Henrietta Irving looking back and realizing that she had shared her bed with a future assassin, that if she had killed Booth that night in Albany …

Vivian Jessup pushed back her hair again and said, her British accent stronger, “There are moments when our lives intertwine and connect. Moments when we encounter each other, when a gesture, a word, a decision to do one thing rather than another changes everything. And we move through our lives, unaware of how what we did or didn't do affected other lives … unless something happens, as with Booth and Lincoln, and then we go back and we try to reconstruct. And we think, What if. What if I had done that or this? Or been able to do that? In my play, Henrietta Irving imagines, looks back.…” Jessup shook her head, smiled, and pointed to the open journal in front of her. “I was no more coherent when I tried to muddle through this in my writing log. But I hope the play captures the essence of what I want to convey.”

“That's all,” Noel said. “She planned to record a longer version later.”

McCabe said, “Where was she in the production process? Had the play been performed in the theater lab?”

“Not yet. Vivian had a couple of months before beginning rehearsals for her next play—sorry … the play she was starring in, not the one she had written. Having that hiatus, she intended to spend two or three days a week here in Albany, working on ‘John and Henrietta.'”

“That was the name of the play?”

“The working title. She wanted to work it through, see it onstage.…” Noel's eyes filled with tears. “She was so excited about getting started. We had scheduled the first public performance for November twenty-third. The mayor was going to be here to introduce…” Noel lowered her head into her hands. Voice muffled, she said. “I saw Vivian on Wednesday. We met here that morning and talked about what we wanted to do next Monday, with the students.”

“What time did she leave?” Baxter asked. “Did she mention her plans?”

Noel raised her head. “She got here at a few minutes after nine. We were here until just before eleven, when I had to leave for my eleven o'clock class. She said she was going back to the hotel and work. And later, she was going to have dinner with Ted Thornton and his fiancée.”

“She knew Ted Thornton?” Baxter said.

“Yes. She and Thornton are—were old friends. She had told him about the play. If it did well here and in repertory theaters, she thought she might persuade him to back it on Broadway.”

Baxter shot McCabe a glance.

She was pretty sure he was thinking that this was even bigger than they'd thought, not only a Broadway actress but a billionaire businessman/adventurer to boot.

And Ted Thornton's name did keep popping up.

McCabe said, “Is there anything else you can tell us, Professor Noel?”

Noel frowned. “I'm not sure this is important. But Vivian mentioned that she had been talking to a collector about a Dalí edition of
Alice
.”

“A what?” Baxter said before McCabe had to reveal her ignorance.

“Salvador Dalí,” Noel said. “The Surrealist artist. He did the illustrations for a limited edition of
Alice in Wonderland.
”

“So these editions are rare?” McCabe asked.

“From what Vivian told me, a mint edition is hard to come by. The one she had was stolen when the apartment she used to live in was burglarized. She had it in a glass case, which must have suggested it was valuable.”

“When did this burglary happen?” McCabe asked.

“Years ago. She had just moved to New York City and was sharing a flat with two roommates.”

“And she could afford a Dalí edition?” Baxter said.

Noel wrinkled her nose. “I think it was a gift from a friend.”

McCabe said, “This friend wouldn't happen to have been Ted Thornton?”

“Oh, no, she hasn't known Thornton that long. I mean not as long ago as when she first moved to New York. She mentioned meeting him at a Hollywood party when she was out there for her role as Lady Macbeth. That movie came out about ten years ago.”

“Okay,” McCabe said. “If we could go back to the collector who contacted her. Did she mention a name?”

Noel shook her head. “Only that he lived here in Albany and he said he had both a Dalí edition and one of the stamp cases that Lewis Carroll designed.”

Baxter said. “And was she planning to meet this collector to get a look at the book and the stamp case?”

“She said he was being cagey. She wasn't sure he actually had what he claimed to have.” Noel pushed her fingers through her hair. “She said he contacted her after the interview she did the last time she was in Albany. It was a Public Radio interview, and the interviewer had asked about her
Alice
collection.”

“How did this collector contact her?” McCabe asked.

“I think he contacted her through her publicist, who forwarded his tag to Vivian. That was after she had gotten back to the City. He offered to show her the book and stamp case the next time she came to Albany.”

“But she wasn't sure he was for real?” Baxter said.

“He had this story about a distant cousin who'd been a huge
Alice
fan and how he'd been thrilled to inherit the items when the cousin died. Vivian thought that if he was for real, he was going to try to get as much money out of her as he could. She told him she'd rather they meet in the City and have the items authenticated. He was balking about going down there when she was going to be right here in Albany. She offered to pay for a hotel overnight. She was waiting to hear back from him.”

“And that was where things stood on Wednesday when you spoke to her?” McCabe said.

Noel nodded. “Yes. She mentioned it because she was going back to the City on Thursday and she hadn't heard from him. She really wanted that Dalí edition.”

Baxter said, “Did she want it enough to agree to meet the collector here?”

“I don't know.” Noel looked from McCabe to Baxter. “But I thought I should mention it, in case … I mean, the man may be perfectly legitimate, but…”

“But we need to find him and confirm that,” McCabe said. “Professor, when we searched Ms. Jessup's hotel room, there was no sign of any type of communication device. No ORB.”

Noel said, “She had her ORB with her when I saw her on Wednesday. She … Do you think the person who killed her took it?”

“That's possible,” McCabe said. “Did Ms. Jessup also have a purse or handbag with her on Wednesday?”

“Yes, a beautiful bag. Red leather in the shape of a rose. She said she'd bought it the last time she was home in London.”

McCabe said, “The clothes we saw in Ms. Jessup's hotel closet were rather plain. Expensive, but not—”

“Vivian preferred classic lines in her clothes. But she loved one-of-a-kind accessories.”

McCabe took her card from her own plain black shoulder bag. “If you should think of anything else, will you contact us?”

“Yes, absolutely,” Noel said. “Vivian's daughter—”

“We're expecting her in this afternoon.”

“Vivian adored her daughter and her grandchild. She even adored her son-in-law. Something that many mothers-in-law can't say.”

McCabe didn't ask if Noel had a son-in-law, but from her tone, she suspected she did. “Thank you again, Professor Noel. You've been a great help.”

“I will call if anything else occurs to me. It's so awful that Vivian should die … be murdered … here in Albany.”

McCabe said, “But not your fault.”

“Yes. I know that logically. But right now, it doesn't help.”

They left her sitting there at the conference table.

Outside, Baxter said, “Didn't I hear your brother works here on campus? You want to stop in and say hello?”

McCabe shook her head. “He's probably busy, and so are we. We'd better let the lieutenant know about Vivian Jessup's dinner engagement with Ted Thornton and see how he wants to handle the interview.”

“Discreetly?” Baxter said.

 

11

 

“Go have lunch. I'll get back to you as soon as I hear from the commander.” Dole ended his call with McCabe and turned back to the detective standing in front of his desk.

“Pettigrew, you've got at least four other cases from last week alone that you ought to be working on. Cases where you have a cooperative victim, or a witness, or a lead. Something. Anything.”

“I know that, Lou,” Pettigrew said. “But even if the victim isn't cooperating, we know a crime was committed. We have the attack on-cam—”