The War of the Worlds Murder (19 page)

After the slightest breath, Welles changed his tone from vaguely portentous to briskly matter of fact: “In the thirty-ninth year of the twentieth century came the great disillusionment. Near the end of October, business was better, war scare was over, more men were back at work, sales were picking up. On
this particular evening, October thirtieth, the Crosley service estimated that thirty-two million people were listening in on radios....”

A starry night seemingly like any other had settled over Grovers Mill, a bump in the New Jersey roadside consisting of little more than a gas station, general store, feed store and mill pond. Eight miles east of Trenton, the state capital, fifty miles southwest of New York, this was the epitome of sleepy small-town America, described by one wag as “nestling in a time warp of refinement and genteel country living.” To find a hamlet more typically American than this, you’d have to go to the backlot of MGM.

On a small farm just a few miles east of Grovers Mill, family members had gathered around the tall walnut cabinet of the household radio in a living room that also held a wood-burning stove and a spinet piano, as well as doily-pinned furnishings reflecting the tastes of the woman of the house, who had passed away less than a year ago.

Les Chapman, twelve, his younger brother Leroy, ten, and their eight-year-old sister Susie were spending Sunday evening with their grandfather, Andrew, a widower of sixty-two who ran his small farm pretty much by himself, though his son Luke helped out some—Luke worked in the feed store at Grovers Mill. Luke and Alice, the parents of these children, usually spent Sunday night here at Grandfather Chapman’s, where the extended family listened to the radio together, Charlie McCarthy a particular favorite. But Alice was down with a bad cold and Luke was tending to her, so the kids had gone off to spend the evening with Grandfather.

Les, Leroy, and Susie were bathed in the glow of the radio’s yellow dial, transported by this magical box to mental
landscapes of their own creation—a journey they took regularly, to various outposts. Every one of the kids had his or her favorite show—Les loved
Jack Armstrong
, which aired every afternoon for fifteen exciting minutes (“Wave the flag for Hudson High, boys!”) and, right after that, Susie’s favorite came on,
Little Orphan Annie
(“Who’s the little chatterbox, the one with all those curly locks?”). But even Susie admitted that however much she loved Orphan Annie, she couldn’t make herself swallow their sponsor’s product, Ovaltine. Or as Susie put it, “Oval tar!”

Leroy’s favorite had been on earlier, this afternoon—
The Shadow
(“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!”). But Leroy didn’t think it was as good as it used to be. They had a new Shadow now, and Leroy just couldn’t get used to him.

Right now all three kids were laughing as Charlie McCarthy made a dummy out of Edgar Bergen. Attracted by their laughter, Grandpa came in from the kitchen, where he’d been cleaning up after the sandwiches and milk and cookies he’d served (the kids had washed, and put away, the dishes).

“I’ll moooow ya down,” Charlie McCarthy was saying, in his wiseguy kid voice; the catchphrase was one that never failed to create peals of laughter from listeners, and the Chapmans were no exception.

Grandpa, settling into his comfortable chair, chuckled, too, even if he didn’t quite seem to know why.

In Studio One, a standard weather report had been faded up to start mid-sentence, after Welles’s opening. Kenny Delmar, with his black-rimmed glasses and curly hair, was wrapping it up: “This weather report comes to you from the Government Weather Bureau.... We now take you to the Meridian Room in
the Hotel Park Plaza in downtown New York, where you will be entertained by the music of Ramon Raquello and his orchestra.”

Bernard Herrmann directed his world-class musicians in a sluggish version of “La Cumparasita” that was so downright mediocre, it had everyone smiling.

Everyone but Herrmann.

Ben Gross and his wife Kathleen were sharing a quiet little dinner with a few friends in an apartment in Tudor City. The salad had barely been served when the host asked, “How about turning on Charlie McCarthy?”

Gross, the radio columnist of the
New York Daily News
, liked Charlie McCarthy as well as the next guy; but he was a bigger fan of Orson Welles and his
Mercury Theatre on the Air
. He’d been making a point, lately, of catching Welles’s Sunday night broadcasts, which the critic considered the best experimental dramatic productions currently on the air.

So he found himself saying, “Okay, but do you mind if we first hear what Orson Welles is up to?”

“I thought you weren’t working tonight, Ben,” their hostess said, as she filled his coffee cup.

“Well, you know—no rest for the wicked. But if anybody does anything worth me
writing
about tonight, it’s probably going to be Welles.”

Gross could almost not believe his own words. When he’d dropped by CBS a few days ago, he’d run into one of the actors on the show, Ray Collins, an avuncular sweetheart of a guy.

When Gross had asked about this week’s Mercury offering, Ray had said, “Just between us, Ben—it’s lousy. Orson couldn’t get a script of
Lorna Doone
up and running, so he’s falling back on that old H.G. Wells chestnut,
War of the Worlds
.”

“
That
museum piece?” Gross had said.

“Yeah. We’re trying to blow the dust off.” Collins had a wry smile that was like a wrinkle in his face; the guy was only in his forties but he seemed like he’d been born sixty. “Good Sunday-funnies fantasy, but for radio?”

“I’d think Orson would leave that kind of thing to the kiddie shows, like
Buck Rogers
.”

Collins shrugged, then said, “Well, he has dressed it up some. And this
is
Hallowe’en weekend. It’s better than it was at a first read-through, anyway.”

“Should I give a listen?”

“Aw, I wouldn’t bother, if I were you. Probably bore you to death.”

Now here, a few days later, Gross was imposing on his hosts to give up their favorite comedy show, at least for a few minutes (and everybody knew the best part of the Charlie McCarthy/Edgar Bergen hour was the opening monologue), to let him check up on what a Mercury insider himself said was Welles at his lousiest.

Still, you never knew with that boy-genius. Welles coasting along was better than most people at full throttle; and if Mr. Mercury Theatre displayed some ingenuity in dressing up that familiar fantasy, who knew? Might be worth a line or two in his column for the late edition.

So everybody ate their salads as the show began, conventionally enough, with the standard intro and theme and a sonorous opening by Welles.

Then it took a strange turn.

“
Ladies and gentlemen
,” an announcer was saying, “
we interrupt our program of dance music to bring you a special bulletin from the Intercontinental Radio News—at twenty minutes before eight, central time, Professor Farrell of the Mount Jennings Observatory, Chicago, Illinois, reports observing several explosions of incandescent gas
...”

The hostess asked, “Is that the program, or...?”

The announcer was saying, “...
occurring at regular intervals on the planet Mars
.”

The host smiled and said, “It’s just the show—it’s Mars they’re talking about. ‘War of the Worlds,’ remember?”

Somebody else said, “No such thing as the ‘Intercontinental Radio News’ service.”

Then everyone was smiling and laughing, feeling nicely superior, as the announcer continued:
“The spectroscope indicates the gas to be hydrogen and moving toward the earth with enormous velocity. Professor Pierson of the observatory at Princeton confirms Farrell’s observation, and describes the phenomenon as, quote, like a jet of blue flame shot from a gun, unquote.... We now return you to the music of Ramón Raquello, playing for you in the Meridian Room of the Park Plaza Hotel, situated in downtown New York
.”

The tango limped back on.

And stayed on.

“Heard enough?” the host asked.

Kathleen whispered to her husband: “Dear...this is boring. Don’t you think?”

Gross swallowed a bite of tomato drenched in Italian dressing, which was tart enough to make it seem like he was making a face when he said, “Please—just a few more minutes.... You know, Doris, this dressing is delicious. Just great.”

The others at the table smiled at him.

But they didn’t seem to mean it any more than Gross had meant his salad-dressing compliment.

James Roberts, Jr., twenty, was behind the wheel of a Buick coupe purchased for him by his father, James Roberts, Sr., business executive. Wearing a rust-colored sweater and dark brown tie on a yellow shirt, the young man was slender, well-groomed, with neatly cut and combed brown hair, an attractive college man but for his rather close-set blue eyes that gave an impression of less than stellar intelligence, an impression which James Jr. seldom gave cause for reconsideration.

Riding with him was his friend Bobby, another junior at Princeton University. They were on their way back to their frat house, having visited Bobby’s girlfriend, Betty, for the weekend in Manhattan.

Blond, round-faced Bobby, lighting up a Philip Morris cigarette, asked, “What did you think of Betty’s sister?”

“Cute,” James said, hands on the wheel. No one called him “Jimmy” just as—oddly—no one called Bobby “Robert.”

“Cute, huh? Then why didn’t you make a move?”

“A little young. Naïve.”

“Nice chassis on her, though, for a sixteen-year-old, don’t ya think?”

“Yeah. Oh yeah.” James thought it might be somehow impolite or even gauche to mention that the sister had an even better build than Bobby’s Betty, who was kind of broad in the beam and flat in the chest, for James’s tastes.

“Sometimes,” Bobby said with a knowing wink, “naïve ain’t such a bad thing.”

The two laughed.

The night was bright, with a moon and stars, and the countryside had an unreal aspect, bathed in ivory—a very pretty blue-gray, though a gentle fog was starting to roll in, not a hazard, merely a touch of unreality. Funny how the cold concrete
of Manhattan could disappear into the idyllic countryside of New Jersey in a seeming flash.

“Mind if I switch on the radio?” Bobby asked.

“Not at all,” James said.

Dance music was on.

Pretty soon a news bulletin interrupted “Stardust,” and Bobby turned it up.

New York State troopers Carmine and Chuck had spent an uneventful, even sleepy afternoon on the job. They’d even kept the top down on their ’37 Ford Phaeton, to better enjoy the beautiful fall day, and keep a good wide view of the landscape, including the ribbon of cement that was their responsibility. The majority of state-trooper strength, this Sunday, had been on the road, dispatched to deal with heavy weekend traffic as the upstate resorts emptied their clientele back into the city.

And on Hallowe’en eve, the usual run of adolescent pranks could be assumed, though nothing yet. Maybe the teenage ghosts and goblins would wait till tomorrow night to spring with their stuff.

Carmine and Chuck’s job was to keep traffic moving, and to handle any accidents or other mishaps. But after several hours of not-much-of-anything, they headed in to make a stop at HQ. This was necessary because the troopers had yet to score the newfangled radio communications gear some big city forces were getting, and rural police did not have call boxes to make checking in a snap.

So for updates and new assignments, periodic stops at HQ were a must.

In the teletype room, the trooper on duty—Rusty, a burly, boyish guy whose curly red hair had given him his
moniker—looked up as Carmine and Chuck swaggered in. Rusty’s trademark was a corncob pipe that he puffed harder, the more excited he got about a subject.

“Any wants?” Carmine asked.

“Any lookouts?” Chuck asked.

“A few stolen cars. Here’s the list.” Rusty handed it over. Puffing away like Popeye, he gestured to the portable radio at the desk from which the trooper monitored the teletype machine; dance music was playing. “The regular programs have been interrupted a couple times—some kinda, I dunno, lunar disturbance out in South Jersey.”

Carmine frowned. “What kind of what?”

Rusty shrugged. “Do I look like a scientist? I just hope it ain’t a earthquake, ’cause I got my folks over there in South Jersey, and they ain’t young.”

“Well,” Carmine advised from the doorway, “you keep one ear glued to that radio—we’ll stop back in an hour and see if there’s anything
to
this thing.”

Rusty nodded. “Roger,” he said, and puffed on his pipe. “Hey—it’s supposed to be gettin’ foggy. Watch it out there.”

The two troopers nodded, gave casual forefinger salutes, and went back out into a quiet night that was about to get louder.

Walter Gibson, blissfully unaware that the Mars broadcast had already begun to stir hornets, was conducting his murder investigation.

He began by chatting with Williams, the security guard, describing Virginia Welles to the man. It turned out Williams knew who Mrs. Welles was but, today or tonight, he hadn’t seen
“hide nor hair” of her. Then Gibson passed along a description of Balanchine (courtesy of Houseman), as well.

At the reception desk, Williams shook his head. “I never seen that guy that I know of.”

Then Gibson described, as best he could, the three thugs who had accosted Welles and himself down the street from the Mercury Theatre last night.

But Williams was no help there, either.

“And I’m pretty familiar with everybody who comes in and out of the place,” the guard insisted.

His effort barely begun, Gibson already felt helpless, unsure of what to do next.

“Kind of a dull program tonight,” Williams said.

“Huh?”

The guard nodded over toward a speaker positioned high on the wall, over the doorway to the Studio One hallway; the live broadcast was being piped in—dance music, right now. Gibson, who’d heard the show rehearsed half a dozen times, had been oblivious to it.