14
Disclaimer: I thank Arthur Conan Doyle for the inspiration. It deviates, I promise. Anything you recognize, I don't own but love shamelessly.
A Scandal in AcademiaChapter Two
I was back in Brett Hall at exactly 3 pm the next afternoon, but Holmes wasn't back yet. Another R.A. told me that she'd left for class at 8 that morning. I sat on the floor in front of her door, fully intending to wait on her. I was deeply intrigued with this case. Though anyone could see that it was Tiffany's own fault that she had gotten herself into such a mess and probably deserved whatever she got, I wanted to see what Holmes would make of it. She could make a most mundane, elementary affair into quite something to see. Despite all her powers of deduction and intuition, despite her singular ability to discern the smallest clue from the most seemingly unrelated detail, she had a flair for the dramatic like no other person I had ever met. I think the stage lost a fine dramatic actress when Shannon Holmes decided to devote her life to more mysterious pursuits.
Quite frankly, she was a drama queen. Even in her daily life, when not on a case, she could not quite resist the pull of the dramatic. Everything was done with style, with panache, but utterly thought through. She was not capable of being spontaneous whatsoever; even during cases in disguise, everything was calculated to the extreme, planned out so utterly by her precise, methodical mind that it was no wonder to me that she bored so easily. She already knew everything that was going to happen before it occurred. I was always unsure about how much of her almost outrageously Sherlockian attitude and vocabulary was affected, and how much of it was genuine. She definitely found ways to enhance those aspects of her personality—though it was the guitar rather than the violin, and marijuana instead of cocaine (though she wholeheartedly embraced the cigarettes, much to my chagrin, but thankfully not the pipe). Certainly I think most of it was genuine, unconscious even, but sometimes from a wink or a glance she gave me, I knew when she was embellishing for the sake of the client, or sometimes even her own amusement.
Indeed, when she finally showed up at quarter till four, clad in deepest emo-black, with a spiky wig and dramatic, caked-on eyeliner, her thick black eyeglasses, and enough fake piercings to disturb Tommy Lee, I was not surprised. She didn't say a word, but nodded at me and let herself into the room. Five minutes later she opened the door with her normal long, dark hair pulled up in a ponytail, clad in her more usual jeans and university sweatshirt, rubbing at her eyes with makeup remover.
After she finally had all the black out of her eyes and had put her contacts in, she stretched out her long legs on her bed and started to laugh.
"Seriously!" she cried, then was struck again by a fit of giggles, and laughed until she collapsed back on the bed, gasping.
"What!" I demanded.
"Oh, Watson, it's so ridiculous! I have remarked on more than one occasion about how one or two of our cases have paralleled those of my illustrious predecessor, but this is almost absurd."
"I take it you observed Mr. Adams all day, then."
"Of course," she paused to light a cigarette. "I left here at eight this morning dressed as you saw. There is a certain camaraderie amongst these artsy types—they all put on these airs of depression and angst, and bond through their so-called misery. People notice them but basically give them a wide berth, allowing me easy access for observation, especially once he finally roused himself at 10 am to go to the drama building. I followed, naturally, then lounged around a bit outside with some of the other drama students, comparing eyebrow piercings and bumming a cigarette or two."
"What did you find out?"
"The theater lot are a chummy, gossipy bunch, Watson. It was only a few minutes before I was able to casually bring him up. He's got all the girls in an uproar—apparently he's the most attractive Hamlet this side of Jeremy Brett. He's quiet and shy, very courteous and intelligent, so the girls say. He doesn't drink much and skips a lot of the after-parties, too—other than the traditional drink they have at the final dress rehearsal before opening nights. He has been seeing quite a bit of Ophelia's understudy. Her name's Nora Gordon, a law student. She's rather tall and thin, and has very dark hair and big, dark eyes—she's Italian on her mother's side. A champion chess player, she is. Once you get these girls started, they'll tell you anyone's life story. I stood there for a long time listening to biographies of all the stagehands and the lighting director—that bird would keep you up nights, Watson—until I finally begged off, pretending I had class. Really I just ducked into a corner until their little group split up, and when they were all gone, I sat on a bench near the front of the building, alone.
"Then I wondered what to do. Should I go back to Brion Hall and wait to observe Adams' habits more closely, or should I focus on Nora Gordon? As a law student, she might be able to counsel Ian Adams on his rights regarding the picture—if she even knows about it. Has he told her anything? Sorry if my stream-of-consciousness bores you, but I wanted you to see where my mind was up to that time."
"No, it's okay," I replied.
She stubbed out her cigarette, stood up, and began to pace. "I was still trying to decide what to do when a brand-new Mustang pulled up to the curb, so fast that the tires squealed. Out sprang a girl almost as tall as me—legs up to here, flawless makeup, wearing a mini-skirt and stiletto heels.
"She was on her cell phone, chatting away, waving her arms about—clearly agitated. 'Where the hell am I going to find another Guildenstern this close to opening?' she was saying. She disappeared inside the theater, and was not gone more than five minutes before she popped back out again, sans cell phone, looked around desperately for a moment, then ran up to me as soon as she spotted me.
"'I suppose you'll do,' she proclaimed, giving me a once-over with a slightly curled lip. 'You're creepy enough. Have you any acting experience?'"
"Oh, Holmes, you didn't!" I exclaimed.
"Oh, yes, Watson, I did. I could hardly pass up this stroke of luck. Of course, Ms. Gordon, who is also the stage manager in addition to being Ophelia's understudy, did not want me for the part of Guildenstern. She promoted someone else for that, and I, in the guise of the person you met earlier, am the Gravedigger."
"Jeez, Holmes. That's good, at least, but don't you think you're pushing it?"
She finally stopped her frantic pacing and stared at me, smiling crookedly. "Watson, you give me no credit whatsoever. Do you have no faith in my acting abilities, my friend?"
"That's not what I—"
"I was a damn good Lady Macbeth in high school, I'll have you know." After dropping that thunderbolt into my lap, she simply waved it away with one thin hand and continued. "Anyway, she dragged me into the theater, where sat all the members of the company—scary lighting director included, assembled around the bedraggled Other Gravedigger, a tall and stern-looking Horatio, and our Hamlet."
"Adams! You met him, then?"
"I did. 'You're a life-saver,' he said to me, positively rushing up to shake my hand. 'Half our crew's down with food poisoning. We're almost all understudies here, and for you to come in at such short notice is fantastic. We can't thank you enough.'
"I mumbled something unintelligible and let myself be led away to study a script. I was then shoved off to be measured for my costume, taken to the makeup chair, and then I practiced my scenes for the next several hours."
She paused to light a cigarette. "I must say, Ian Adams makes a respectable Hamlet. He's quiet tall and broad-shouldered, with a very commanding voice and stage presence—and he is extremely handsome. He has…a very nice face."
She had turned away from me, but I still tried to hide my smile. "This is crazy," I said to her. "All of it. What happened then? What are you going to do?"
"Well, the rehearsal came to an end," she said, turning back to me and flopping down into her inflatable chair, wincing as it hissed yet again. "Everyone milled around a bit, talking. I noticed Gordon and Adams standing near his dressing room, having what seemed to be an animated conversation. Ms. Gordon told her beau that he needed to 'take care of it' and that she was sick of him 'playing this stupid game.'"
"Hmm."
"Yes. It was then that Gertrude and Rosencrantz noticed me watching the two of them. Gertrude said, 'Oh they're at it again. They do this all the time.'
"'What, fight?' I asked.
"'Yeah, constantly. She's been after him for a good long while about something, but we don't know what it is. They shut up as soon as you go near them.'
"Rosencrantz piped in with, 'Something sure is rotten in the state of Denmark!' and we laughed, then the conversation moved on to other things. But I am now convinced of something."
"What is that, Holmes?"
She took her time putting out her cigarette before she answered me. When she finally had it ground out in the ashtray and all the ashes out of her fingernails, she turned to me and replied, "I am convinced that Nora Gordon knows all about this indiscreet picture and wants very much for Mr. Adams to destroy it, so much so that their relationship is suffering because he will not do so. I am also convinced that the picture is in that theater."
"It is?"
She held up a finger. "Yes, in his dressing room."
"Are you sure?"
"Think about it," she said, leaning forward in her steadily sinking chair. "His dorm room has been ransacked—twice. His car has been broken into. They have even roughed him up, more than once, and there is no trace of it, so obviously he does not carry it on him. He spends the majority of his time, outside class, at the theater. Unless he has placed it in bank, which I seriously doubt, where else would it be?"
I thought about it logically and had to admit it made sense. It was a gamble; if he had placed it in a safe deposit box all was lost, but we had to take the chance. "So what are you going to do about it?" I asked her.
"Well…" she looked at me very closely, steepling her fingers beneath her chin. When I did not react, she continued to stare at me intently until I realized what she meant. Something must have shown on my face, because she began to smile very slowly.
"What do you want me to do?" I asked, matching her smile with my own.
"After we have eaten, will you accompany me to the theater?" She rose from her chair.
"Of course," I replied. "How will I get backstage with you? I assume they don't let just anybody wander around back there."
"I have already taken care of that," she replied, placing four pepperoni hot pockets into her microwave. "You have your Messenger credentials handy, I assume?"
"They're over on my desk," I confirmed.
"Good." The microwave dinged. She handed me two of the pockets and a Coke, sat back down in her chair, and took a bite of one of her own. "You are going to attend tonight's dress rehearsal with your friend Aggie Escott, because you have been assigned to write a feature about the play. We'll have to disguise you a bit, give you an alias—" the last part of her sentence was lost in a bite of food.
"I'll carry around a notebook and look official," I offered.
"Yes, perfect," she said with a smile. "You've got it. I will chum up to Adams some more, and the cast—they have a toast in the lead actor's dressing room at the final dress rehearsal before the performance starts. It's a tradition."
"What do you want me to do?" I asked.
"Keep an eye on me and wait for my signal, then pull the fire alarm in the hallway between the dressing rooms. In the ensuing chaos, I will get Adams to show me where the picture is hidden—"
"What! Show you where the—"
"Oh, without a doubt. I'm convinced of it. Are you finished eating? We must get ready; it's nearly five-thirty and we have to be at rehearsal by seven."
She threw away her paper plate and soda can and disappeared into the bathroom to don her disguise once more. It actually took her quite some time, so while she was gone I ran next door to my dorm room to grab my press credentials and notebook. That done, I sat back down on her futon to study her Hamlet script, which was already full of her own scribblings and notations.
Holmes finally emerged, resembling a reject from a Good Charlotte video (though I would never tell her this for fear of the horrid scowl I would face), and set to work on me. A lot of people on campus knew my name from my newspaper stories, but few of them outside of the English department had ever actually seen what I looked like. Thus we did not think it was necessary to form as elaborate a disguise as Holmes'. She French-braided my very tightly, so tightly that it raised my eyebrows in perpetual surprise and gave me an instant headache. She dressed me in a simple knee-length black skirt with black stockings and Doc Martens, and a red, slightly moth-eaten wool sweater. I too wore dark, thick eyeliner and mascara, in fitting with the characters we had created, and a pair of non-prescription wire-frame glasses. The contrast between the dark, thick make-up and my whitish-blonde hair and pale skin was quite startling. Holmes was very pleased. I was not. I thought I looked like a demented librarian.
Nobody even took any notice of us as we left Brett Hall. They were used to strange characters coming and going at all hours. No one said anything until we were almost out the door, and even then, it was only Mrs. Johnson saying, "Be careful, girls." Holmes turned around and saluted her. We were off.
We went in the theater through the back door, straight to the backstage. Almost immediately a girl greeted "Aggie" by name, and she introduced her reporter friend "Gloria Scott" to Carrie, a costume designer. She received me warmly, offered me coffee and soft drinks, and warned me to stay away from the catered food. I met several other people very quickly, in a blur of activity; all of them were extremely kind and bought our story instantly—as, indeed, they had no reason not to.
I felt horrible. I have never been a good liar. I knew my first loyalty ought to be to Tiffany, Holmes' client, but unless Ian Adams turned out to be some horrific ogre, that was turning out to be a difficult task.
"Here he comes, Watson," Holmes whispered about ten minutes after we had arrived.
I snapped back to attention. I had been completely absorbed in the controlled chaos of backstage. I had never been in any kind of stage production before. I was fascinated by the sheer amount of people it took to put on a production of this size. I had had no idea. People were everywhere—carrying scenery, getting into makeup, adjusting props, studying lines out loud, moving spotlights, being chewed out by the director, ignoring the giant piles on the food table (someone had even placed one of those old "Mr. Yuck" stickers right over top of the sign advertising the catering company), talking on their cell phones in costume—it was crazy. I was beginning to think that I might get a real story out of this whole thing, after all.
Holmes' words brought my mind back to attention with an almost audible snap. We were standing near the food table, but I turned to see a tall figure striding down the hall toward us, all confidence, poise, and complete ease.
She had not done him justice. He was radiant, utterly resplendent in his Hamlet costume. He was a good three inches taller than Holmes, who was six-foot-one herself. I could tell that he had dark, piercing eyes, even from several feet away. His dark hair was shaven almost completely; his skin was a nearly flawless coffee brown. Branaugh had nothing on him. Forget Ralph Fiennes and Alan Rickman; even Holmes' beloved Jeremy Brett had nothing on this guy. He was gorgeous.
Holmes let out a noise that may have been a laugh. "You are impressed, Watson?"
"You are the mistress of understatement, Holmes," I whispered back.
She turned and smiled that crooked smile at me again. "He is handsome, yes, and I know how you get with the good-looking ones, my friend. But remember, even 'the de'il hath power/T'assume a pleasing shape.'"
"And I suppose we will be the ones to 'give the devil his due?'"
"Precisely," her eyes positively danced. "Ah, he comes."
"Hi, Aggie," Ian Adams said, with a smile that was at least 1,000 watts bright. He even had beautiful teeth. I was feeling distinctly strange in my knees. Oh, he was still talking, wasn't he?
"We were wondering where you got off to," he was saying to Holmes.
"Oh, just a few things to do; you know how it is," Holmes replied, smiling radiantly back at him. How she managed to do this with the fake ring in her lip I have no idea. Her voice had become several octaves higher than it usually was. She had also added a bit of a Scottish brogue to her normal clipped accent. I was amused. Was I about to witness the rarest of the rare—Shannon Holmes flirting with a man?
"This is my friend, Gloria Scott," Holmes was saying. "She writes for the Messenger."
"Great to meet you, Gloria," Ian Adams replied, turning that killer smile to me and shaking my hand vigorously. I tried not to wince, nor to break the equally vigorous eye contact he was making with me, either. "I hope you'll write good things about us."
I swallowed. He had a really deep, smooth, masculine voice—like honey wine. "I'll sure try."
He laughed. "Well, they want me in wardrobe, so I'll see you both later. Don't forget, we have a toast in my dressing room just before we go on. It's the last dress rehearsal before the show starts. We save the really good stuff for opening night, of course, but tradition is tradition."
"Of course, sounds great!" Holmes squeaked. I had to stifle a laugh. "See you there."
He smiled once again and walked away.
"Watson, if I had known how much you were utterly undone by a pretty male face, I would have left you at home," Holmes chided, in her normal voice, when Ian was out of earshot.
"Me?" I was incredulous. "Holmes, you were…grotesque."
She laughed. "Probably. I am out of practice. The male sex is your department, Watson, as I have said more than once. But even I was not drooling all over him."
"Oh, I wasn't that bad," I blushed.
Her smile was fleeting. "Yes, I don't suppose Mr. Morgan has anything to worry about, does he? Good. Stay alert, and wait for my signal. It's time for my makeup."
With that I was on my own for a while. I walked around taking notes, talking with anyone who would speak with me. The vast majority of people was completely open to talking to me, happy to interview and definitely excited to be there. I talked to principal actors including Ian Adams himself, several stagehands, the whole costume department, several makeup artists, two of the drama professors involved in the production, the creepy lighting director, and Nora Gordon, who was equally as friendly as her boyfriend.
Right before eight o'clock someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around and almost gasped. It was Holmes, made up in her Gravedigger's outfit. She looked, in a word, ghastly. They had enhanced "Aggie's" Goth makeup and placed her in a strange sort of black robe. They were going for a really claustrophobic, creepy feel to the graveyard scene, she said. Well, it was going to work, I thought. They had even used some kind of red, bloody makeup to emphasize the long-healed scars on her face, hands, and arms, which she normally took great pains to cover up. I was deeply surprised she had let them do this and was about to remark upon it when someone called the actors together. It was time for the toast.
"Come on and watch, Gloria," Nora Gordon called to me, as we walked down the hall toward Ian Adams' dressing room. "It will be an interesting part of your story."
"Sure," I replied, nervously.
Everyone gathered into the room. It was not really an elaborate dressing room; there was actually just a beat-up vanity and an ancient-looking couch with four huge posts attached to it. The couch looked like a relic and apparently smelled like one too; I saw one girl sit down, make a face, and jump up quickly, preferring to stand.
There were so many people standing in the room that most of them spilled out into the hallway. I managed to get away from Nora Gordon and position myself outside the door, behind the throng of people, but not before noticing Holmes finangle herself right up front next to Adams. Next to the radiant prince of Denmark she looked like a goddess of darkness.
"Well, here we are again, last dress rehearsal before the big opening night on Friday," Ian Adams began. I could not see him at all, but his voice carried well out into the hallway. "We've had some bumps and bruises along the way," he continued. Everyone laughed.
Someone handed me a beer and I smiled at him.
"We've eaten some really crappy food, too!" someone yelled from across the room.
"Boo!" another voice called.
Everyone laughed again, Adams loudest of all. I inched closer to the door, until I could just see Holmes standing next to him, smiling widely. Again I felt a pang of regret for what we were doing to these people, for deceiving them like this. I tried to harden my soul, to remind myself that Ian Adams, at least, deserved this. Tiffany might well be a vapid, ridiculous person, but she was our client and it was our duty to prevent any further harm from coming to her. This meant securing the picture at any cost.
"But we've made some great new friends, too," Adams continued, looking sideways at Holmes and sliding an arm around her shoulders. I nearly fainted. "And to me, that's what this whole thing is about. That might sound really lame, and you can all take the piss out of me if you want to—"
"We will!" the food heckler called, causing everyone to break up again.
"Seriously! I don't know anywhere else that I've ever felt like I belonged, other than the theater, with people like you guys. Where else can a six-foot-four dude from inner-city Boston fit in?"
That got another laugh. Adams let go of Holmes. I did not imagine the very slight step she took away from him. Even her acting abilities had their limits, it seemed. Ian Adams raised his glass in the air—no crappy beer for the principal players, I noticed. Everyone raised his or her drinks, Holmes and myself included.
"And so, I toast you all. To you, my friends, and to the Bard, wherever he is. Let us hope our performance does him justice. And if it doesn't, who cares, he's been dead four hundred years."
Adams tipped his glass and drank, to cheers and applause. Just as the glass reached his lips, Holmes gave an almost imperceptible nod of her head. No one paid the least bit of attention to me as they finished the toast. I slipped back behind the gathered people, spotted the fire alarm, and after a miniscule hesitation, pulled it.
There is no other word: the thing blared. I was momentarily disoriented, and, fearing permanent hearing damage, ducked into a dressing room without looking and nearly fell onto a half-dressed couple in complete disarray on a couch even more decrepit than Ian Adams'.
"Uh…sorry…" I stammered. "There's um, a fire."
I did not wait for their response but hustled back out of the room and nearly ran headlong into Nora Gordon.
"Gloria!" she shouted over the still-shrieking alarm. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I uh…where's the way out?" I managed.
"This way," she said, pointing to where the rest of the huge crowd of people was going out of a tiny door. "If I find out who pulled that, I'm going to kill them."
Chaos reigned for the next twenty minutes, as everyone in the entire theater was evacuated. The fire department arrived, swept through the building, and left an hour later looking extremely annoyed.
Holmes and Ian Adams were two of the last people to emerge from the building. Adams looked upset and immediately headed for Nora Gordon. Holmes slowly made her way over to me, looking like a very creepy cat that had swallowed a canary.
"Don't tell me," I said.
"Oh yes, Watson, he showed me exactly where it is. After rehearsal we shall formulate our plan."
We went back inside. The entire incident was blamed on Arnie, the lighting director of dubious reputation, who was not believed despite his vehement denials. The rehearsal went on from there without incident, and at midnight, Holmes and I began to walk home.. I demanded to know what went on in the room after I pulled the alarm.
Holmes was positively glowing beneath all her horrid white makeup. "Oh, you were just splendid, Watson," she said, when we were a few blocks away and finally clear of people. "That was wonderful. Everything is going to be all right."
"Do you have the picture?"
"No, but I know exactly where it is."
"How did you manage that?" I asked incredulously. As we walked I had begun to let down my poor hair. My head actually ached from having it pulled back so tightly.
"He showed me, like I said he would."
I stopped and stared at her. "I have no idea what you mean, Holmes."
She laughed and took my arm to start me walking again. "It's one of the oldest tricks around, Watson. Any thought that the building might actually be on fire would send him running for anything valuable within the room. It is quite possible in a theater of that size with their lighting equipment and such—and students running it, no less—that they sometimes do have fire scares. He did not disappoint me. Literally as soon as you pulled the alarm he instinctively reached for the newel post on that rather lurid couch—"
I gasped.
"Yes. He did not actually remove the thing, but looked up sharply and exchanged a look with Miss Gordon, who proclaimed, 'oh just relax; it's just someone screwing around' and stomped out of the room. He then looked at me and shrugged, turned around, and went after her."
"So now what?"
"We come back here tomorrow, with Tiffany, and remove it. We will come during the daytime, while Adams has class, so he will not be here. Most people will be in class, actually, so it should be clear for us to get in here."
We had reached Brett Hall and stopped so she could fish her ID card out of one of the many zippered pockets on her pants. She found it and started to insert it into the electronic lock, but stopped abruptly as a group of sorority girls walked behind us, laughing. They took no notice of us, but kept going, holding each other up. A lone car drove past. She did not move.
"Holmes? What are you doing?"
"Listening," she said quietly.
"For what?"
She looked at me sideways, the corner of her mouth twitching sideways. "Nothing," she said, rubbing at the makeup that covered her scarred left cheek. She slid her card into the slot and we went upstairs to our rooms and to bed.