The Summer's Tale: A Professor Deshpande Mystery

 “I’m Posthumus,” Ethan explained.

“My disconsolate sympathies,” Saanvi murmured. “You certainly look healthy.”

“Posthumus,” Assistant Professor Cooper clarified with a crooked country boy grin. “Posthumus Leonatus. Husband to Imogen, ward of vassal King Cymbeline’s court.”

“I suppose this means the University cannot proceed with selling off your larger pieces? And we could so have used a new multimedia wing.”

“I know – I put in the original proposal, remember?”

Chairman Deshpande raised an imperious brow. “Yet you are unwilling to make the ultimate sacrifice for the greater good. I nonetheless am delighted to see you involved in the life of the community.” Saanvi peered about the grounds of Innes Castle– the Elizabethan-style post-WWI extravagance of a Millington candymaker who’d cashed in on a more innocent America’s fascination with horehound and sassafras, from the flag-festooned amphitheater where an all-female cast was assaying a futuristic Julius Caesar to the crowded local barbecue truck repurposed for the day to dispense drumsticks, haunches, and (via temporary municipal permit) tankards of mead. “Well, a community of sorts.”

“Innes Foundation needed help with set and prop design, and they paid me with a lead role,” the sculptor/smith related. “I was Harold Hill in the Tecumseh High production of The Music Man. Which pounded one more nail into my coffin with Dad. You?”

“The Winter’s Tale -- like Cymbeline, one of Shakespeare’s lesser-known dramas,” Saanvi said. “The West Asian Student Coalition was invited to stage a production at this year’s Bardfest, and I was drafted to advise on what may well be Central Illinois’ first major local Bollywood rendition of Shakespeare’s opus. Which forces me to ask: Wasn’t Cymbeline set during Rome’s rule over Britain? Isn’t a Regency waistcoat somewhat, well, anachronistic?”

Ethan shrugged. “They been doing this for 35 years, and Lissa hopes we’ll bring in a bigger soccer mom/millennial crowd with the Bridgerton treatment. I mean, you’re doing Bollywood.”

“My Music Department colleague insisted on it, so as my Music Department colleague is named O’Donnell, I wanted to ensure at least a measure of cultural integrity. Plus, I had Thea as a resource to help assemble the lehenga-choli and chagra-choli and ghungroos. What are you smirking at?”

“Sorry, it sounds like underwear with giraffes.”

“Ghungroos are the metallic bells worn about the ankles in Kathak dance,” Saanvi elaborated patiently. “They enhance the musicality of the performance, help the dancer maintain precision footwork, and evoke joy or melancholy or, in the case of this number, the turmoil and passions of the jealous Leontes and the dignified suffering of Hermione.”

Professor Cooper nodded. “Lissa told Imogen to show more boob and Cloten to stuff his breeches. So I get attention to nuance.”

“I do desire we may be better strangers,” Professor Deshpande quoted in parting.

**

“Yeah, I still don’t see if I’m so jealous and everything I’m not wearing green,” Leontes, AKA Dev, whined.

“Because this isn’t the fucking Teletubbies,” Meredith O’Donnell snapped, roughly adjusting the junior’s near-indigo dhoti with more punitive than aesthetic intent.

“In Kathak, green as worn by Perdita represents nature, renewal,” Saanvi intervened serenely. “Darker hues reflect Leontes’ internal turmoil, his suspicions, the gravity of and deep eventual remorse for his actions.”

“Yeah,” Professor O’Donnell grunted. “You got the chakkars and the footwork down, but maybe we could try to look a little less like we’re in line at the DMV, OK? Fucking emote. And where are your fucking dungaroos?”

“Ghungroos,” Saanvi amended.

“Priyani!! Drop that greasy drumstick or I will drop you,” O’Donnell barked, unwittingly performing a 10-point chakkar toward a young woman frozen in a Guy Fieri crouch over a glistening turkey leg. “If Hermione hurls during the death scene, my letter to the Natya Dance Theatre dies with her!”

“There,” Saanvi cheerfully informed a dumbstruck Dev. “That is the rage you must convey.”

**

“Before we return to Cymbeline, I’d like to remind our Bardfest patrons that the next presentation, at 3 p.m., will be a classic of intrigue, vengeance, transformation, redemption, and the supernatural -- The Winter’s Tale: A Bollywood Opera, staged by the University Department of Music, the West Asian Student Coalition, and the Millington Pan-Geo Performing Arts Center. The Winter’s Tale was Shakespeare’s 1623 comedy, set in the royal courts of Sicilian King Leontes and Polixenes, King of Bohemia. In Bardfest’s reimagining, the Indian state of Rajasthan, with its royal heritage and vibrant culture, stands in for Sicily, while the state of Kerala represents the pastoral, idyllic Bohemia. Bollywood meets Stratford-on-Avon in The Winter’s Tale, to be followed at 5:30 by Mack’d, a hip hop extravaganza based on the Scottish Play. Fun fact: The Winter’s Tale features one of Shakespeare’s most famous theatrical quotes, ‘Exit, pursued by a bear.’”

“So much fun,” the Queen, AKA Denise Eovalde, groaned with an eyeroll. She reopened her Field Notes and withdrew the rose-gold pen clipped to her imperiled bodice. “Now, as I was saying before, I had just a few notes for you, you know, when you turn yourself in to Cymbeline...?”

The dermatologist had eagerly coopted Lissa’s advice to Imogen, and while the spectacle held little organic interest for Ethan, he looked to the peak of her platinum wig as he glanced about the backstage area. Which was incumbent, as the Queen had achieved near-thoracic contact with the now-presumably posthumous Posthumus. “Yeah, Denise, I’d love to go over that with you, but we’re about to go on, and Lissa says Iachimo’s dagger seems to be missing.”

“Isn’t Gerald in charge of props?”

“Lissa can’t find Gerald, either. So, later, okay?” He hastily escaped the trio, and blundered out into the blinding July sun behind the Innes Castle Amphitheater. Cloten – alias Austin Wennick, he of the East Washington Street FryBoy franchise – began to stash a vape pipe in a non-existent pocket before spotting his co-star with a grin. He had been relieved of further responsibilities via decapitation, but still wore his high-collared shirt and augmented beige pantaloons.

“Sup,” Austin nodded.

“We’re about to go back on. You seen Gerald?”

“Naw… Think maybe he went to his car over in the church lot to refill. You know he’s got that flask, Eddie Bauer or Smarter Image or whatever. Guess when you’re just stage manager, you want to play it to the hilt, anyway. Hey, where you going?”

“Posthumus” jerked his head toward the bank of blue privys near yon funnel cake concession. “Where you think?”

**

“Did they even have bears back then?” Dev inquired.

“Somewhere,” Saanvi responded distractedly. “Have you seen Perdita, I mean Kiara? I need to have a word with her.”

“She ghosted me like a week ago. Hey, what’s going on over there?”

Saanvi tore her eyes from the colorful waiting players and followed Dev’s squint toward the port-a-johns near a poorly (or perhaps fortuitously) sited fried dough stand.

“Bardfest patrons,” the PA erupted abruptly. “I’m afraid the remainder of today’s performances have been indefinitely postponed due to a, an unfortunate incident...”

“FUCK!” Meredith O’Donnell echoed across the festival grounds like a musket shot.

“At the request of the Millington Police Department, we’d ask everyone to please remain on the premises until further notice. For your convenience, all exits have been secured.”

Saanvi caught sight of a tall corn-fed man in an incongruous violet waistcoast, waving frantically from the plastic outhouses. “Dev, tell Professor O’Donnell I had to attend to something. And straighten your dhoti.”

**

Saanvi made it across the velveteen lawn just ahead of an approaching cadre of cops led by a familiar figure. Castle security – far more plebeian than it might sound – was blocking an open port-a-potty, and Ethan, sitting on the grass roughly 15 feet away, pointed toward the guarded stall, and the Arts Department chair could make out a man, jeans mercifully secured, sprawled across the toilet seat against the back wall.

“Alas, poor Gerald,” Ethan muttered.

**

“Kinda hoping for a locked room, even a shitter,” Detective Curtis Mead confided to the academics. “Feel kinda like Poirot.”

At an outdoor temp of 80 and the players compressed into floor-length, low-topped, high-waisted gowns and gloves and Spencer jackets and waistcoasts and woolen breeches, Curtis moved the drama into the Carrier-cooled Innes Castle parlor. The Bridgerton magic had evaporated, and the cast of white-collar amateur thespians and Gen-Plus drama majors looked to be plotting homicide for the constable.

“There was a line at the johns during intermission,” Ethan related, “and everybody just grabbed whichever one was vacant at the time. I noticed one of the port-a-pots wasn’t being used, though I could see it was occupied. Some dude told me he’d heard some guy in there, um, kind of grunting before, and I was afraid maybe he’d had a stroke or a heart attack or had fallen in or something, so I yanked it open. Gerald, in the toilet, with a dagger.”

“So you see anybody nearby, maybe from your show?”

“Well, it gets pretty chaotic on and off stage,” Ethan said reluctant. “Most of the cast in Act III huddled with the director during the break, except Lissa sent me to find Gerald.”

Saanvi inserted herself between the sculptor and the detective. “I noticed that the right pocket of Mr. Farrelly’s jeans had been turned out. Perhaps the killer was searching for something on the body?”

“Guess they found it,” Detective Mead shrugged. “Hey. Chris!”

A highly pregnant, windbreakered forensic tech waddled over.

“You got that stuff from the victim’s pants?”

The gloved mother-to-be extracted an evidence bag from her jacket. “One of those mini-flasks like you find at Maxx or Target, half full, $1.99 nip bottle checkout counter whiskey.” Curtis gave her a curious look. “Thirty bucks in assorted bills. Ink pen. Nice, but a giveaway.”

Curtis squeezed the bag gently, located the flask, the wad of bills, the upscale brushed metal pen embossed with the legend Lissa Deckard Financial Services. “The director?” he inquired. “She have any beef with Farrelly?”

“I don’t know she even noticed him most of the time,” Ethan said.

“See if she did today,” Detective Mead suggested.

**

Lissa Deckard exhaled. “I’ve been doing community theater with Gerry and half these people for the last 15 years. I caught on to his habit during A Few Good Men -- he tried to award Col. Jessup five million in punitive damages. But on crew, that actuary anal-retentiveness kicked in, and there was nobody better — at least ‘til today.”

“Managing so many diverse personalities must be challenging,” Saanvi sympathized.

“Don’t I know,” Lissa sighed, turning the kliegs back on herself. “Gerry could be a real dictator, especially with props and costumes. Codi, our Imogen? The tan little Barbie millennial over there? She thinks she’s doing improv -- it throws everybody off, and if I threaten to bump her, she reminds me she’s a lawyer.

“I’ve caught Codi and Austin doing it backstage, and that hack Denise is constantly giving everybody notes — she used to be really good, but now she wants to run everything and keeps insisting on the ‘integrity’ of the production. Our Belarius — Lawrence — has to be fed more lines than Tony Montana, and Ethan, well, he’s a nice guy, but he needs to unleash that Channing Tatum/Regé-Jean Page yumminess.”

“Huh,” Curtis grunted. “So between intermission and the discovery of the body, who might have been out of your eagle-eyed scope?”

“I tried to have a half-time huddle with the cast, but they have the attention span of a swarm of cicadas,” Lissa breathed. “And then I had to deal with Gerry and that knife. So, basically, who the blank knows? Look, here’s my number, if you have any more questions.”

“Hold up,” Curtis said, scribbling dry circles in his notebook. “Shit.”

“I gave out all my cards earlier,” Lissa grated, “But…” The director turned to her ensemble. “Hey! Focus up! Anybody got a pen?”

The lords and ladies of Cymbeline gestured contritely toward their quaintly ribald wardrobe.

“Oh yeah, no pockets,” Lissa lamented. “Lemme get my purse.”

Detective Mead shook his head. “I had ribeyes thawing, and the Cubs are at St. Louis. Sorry your musical thingy got f—, screwed up.”

“The Indian-American CultureFest is in two weeks, so the show shall go on,” Saanvi reassured the cop. She paused. “On the other hand, were you to ‘wrap the case’ within the hour, might we still make an evening curtain?”

Curtis’ brow rose. “What’ve you got?”

“Here we are,” Lissa sang, bestowing a pinkish-gold gift on the detective. “Name and number on there. And I believe you needed one. Gotta console the ‘talent.’”

“Professor?” Curtis prompted.

“I'll call for pen and ink and write my mind,” Saanvi murmured. She smiled up at Detective Mead. “Henry the VI.”

“Oh,” Curtis nodded. “Sure.”

**

“The inside was literally coated with it, and even in an advanced stage of gestation, I could smell it a mile off,” Chris the Tech proclaimed immodestly. “And luckily, I retrieved the goblet or whatever, and I got a faint stank of digitalis off it, too.”

“Heart medicine, right?” Curtis’s face lit in theoretical hope. “So let’s find out who’s got a cardiac history or a sick mom or dad or spouse.”

“Unnecessary, I believe,” Saanvi interrupted. “Cymbeline is rich with mistaken identities and nefarious substitutions, and I believe what happened here followed that narrative. Curtis, would you allow Professor Cooper off premises for a few minutes? There is a Barnes and Noble nearby, and I have a notion.”

**

Ethan released the actress from his empathetic embrace as the pair approached, and Saanvi caught a whisper of a lusty smile as he backed away.

“You lied a little while back.” Det. Mead told the player.

“About what??” the killer protested.

“When Mrs. Deckard requested a pen, you stood there like a mannequin with the rest of the cast,” he rumbled with masterful severity. “But everybody here knows different. Right, Professor Cooper?”

Ethan nodded, and a compact brown notebook materialized in his hand. The murderer gasped and grasped her chest. “You were about to give me some very thoughtful notes before all hell broke loose. But I don’t see a word about me here, except some I suppose complimentary doodle?”

“Is that what you were doing?” Denise growled, outraged and more than a smidge hurt. “You switcheroo-ed me! That is so illegal!” She yanked the decoy Field Notes from her bodice and waggled it.

“The bluff remains a fundamental freedom,” Saanvi murmured. “And as your pen has now slipped into the public domain, might Detective Mead examine it as well? No? And why would that be? Perhaps because you haven’t written a single notation today?”

Denise looked incredulously to Det. Mead. Who shrugged.

“Everyone in this room is in period garb. The wrong period, but no mind. I would wager you are the only cast member currently with a pen in their possession. To be precise, a rose-gold Deckard Financial Services pen. One identical to that found in Gerald’s jeans pocket. Well, excepting a partial fingerprint on the barrel not of Gerald’s making.”

Mead shook a plastic bag containing a gleaming, pseudo-swank ballpoint, and the killer smirked. “Lissa gives away like a million of those things.”

“Lissa gives you rave reviews — one of the quickest studies and most intuitive actresses she has ever seen on the local stage. But she is concerned that you may be slipping. In the half-dozen community presentations where Lissa has shared a stage with you, she cannot recall you referencing or even bringing a script or notes to rehearsals. Why now? Perhaps to establish the routine presence of a notebook? Or more accurately, a pen. The murder weapon.

“Gerry was stabbed with a dagger!”

“Not Mr. Farrelly’s murder – the attempted murder of the actress who was scheduled to drink a cup of sleeping potion after the intermission – Imogen, alias Codi.

“Would the murderer risk carrying a vial or needle of digitalis onto a confined set, with people coming and going and changing and waiting in the wings, especially when there would be no escape following the crime? But a pen, such a common object, who would think?” Saanvi pulled her own newly conferred Deckard Financial pen from her shoulder bag and efficiently unscrewed the two pieces that comprised the barrel.

“Ample room to store a deadly dose of poison. Unscrew pen, deposit the digitalis in Imogen’s cup, restore pen to innocuous original state. Easy peasy. Until Gerald walks in on you changing after your offstage death, having perpetrated the foul deed, and you drop or you both drop your pens. Perhaps you realize afterwards the flustered stage manager has walked off with your pen, or you realize you can’t fight him backstage for an identical pen. So you pursue him before he realizes his pen is inoperable, discover traces of the poison, and connects things up after Codi dies onstage. I tried to imagine a motive, and then I connected the dermatologist and the litigious, sun-worshiping young woman. Will we find a misdiagnosis in your files, one which once discovered, you failed to disclose. One that, perhaps tragically, may be too late to disclose?”

“Ms. Eovalde,” Curtis rumbled, “The pen, please, or should I get a female officer?”

“You can get a warrant down here, is what you can do. If you found that pen in Gerry’s pocket, I can guaran-damn-tee you I didn’t put it there.”

“We know you didn’t,” Curtis stated calmly. “Victim put it there. Number one rule in the field. Always keep a backup. Pen, I mean.”

“In your haste, you searched the wrong pocket, Denise,” Saanvi murmured. “Then, gravely wounded, Farrelly locks himself in a vacant privy, but it is too late. Denise!”

“Methinks the lady has fainted,” Assistant Professor Cooper observed, dropping to a knee.

“Please, Ethan, swooned,” Professor Deshpande scolded as Curtis called for the onsite EMTs. “I must say, however -- that is dedication to the craft.”