Femme Fatale (60 page)

“Shan’t be necessary,” Pink responded with cheery seriousness, not for a moment suspecting Irene’s irony. “Mr. Holmes is our anchor. Once he is properly placed to direct the proceedings we’ll have nothing more to worry about.”

“Except a possible killer in our midst, suddenly exposed and perhaps violent,” Irene pointed out.

“Surely even a murderer would know better than to make a scene at Delmonico’s!”

“I think you overestimate the social nicety of most murderers. But it is all right, Pink. I am armed, and Mr. Holmes may be as well. As surely the New York detective is. I assume he will be in the guise of some serving man until the moment he is called upon to get out the manacles. Delmonico’s, in fact, may make its debut today as a target range.”

“Now that would be exciting, like a Wild West shoot-out! You had best hide under the table, Nell, if any bullets start flying.”

“I believe we had all better hide under the table if any shooting starts,” I said. “Pink, you may be a daredevil reporter, but you are remarkably ignorant about some matters.”

“We shall see who is ignorant when all is said and done here,” she replied.

At that moment some of the serving staff entered the room to finish the table settings and we were forced to withdraw to the paneled walls to watch our stage being dressed for the imminent
debut of its new melodrama. Pink remained center stage to order the centerpieces rearranged for some reason known only to her.

“She is becoming quite insufferable,” I whispered to Irene. “She has no idea what a horrible crime we uncovered completely without her help or knowledge.”

“Yet without her aid we would have never learned so much about Madame Restell,” Irene answered. “She is indefatigable. She has an inbred taste for misdeeds and also a bent as strong for revealing them. That is all admirable, Nell.”

“I suppose so. Were I . . . we . . . not so personally involved in these revelations, perhaps I would be more ready to applaud.”

“And if Quentin were not, also,” she added both gently and pointedly.

There was no answer to such a delicate barb, except to privately extract it and hope it left no scar. I doubted Quentin would appear here today, but I also doubted that he had left the shores of America or even the city of New York. Oh! That sounded so English: New York. Or New Jersey, for that matter. But such nomenclatures were deceptive. From what I had seen of these shores, there was nothing English here but past glories and associations and a few paltry place names. It was a brave new world, as the Bard had said once, and not the sort of place where I would ever be at home. I could not wait to return to the Old World, and, I was amazed to realize, to the civilities and comforts of Paris.

While I watched, a new round of waiters entered the room, these not bearing huge silver compotes of fresh fruit or tall wine stands, but . . . very elegant easels.

Amazed, I saw them place the stands around the fringes of the room, including on either side of Irene and myself by the wall.

“Is this some new liberty of Pink’s?” I asked Irene.

“No, it is some new liberty of mine, for a change.” She smiled as the waiters left, and then quickly returned bearing placards they distributed to the easels, one by one.

“Ah.” I enumerated the placards as they were placed on the
easels. “There is Salamandra’s recent playbill . . . and one, a very old one, celebrating ‘Gemini Burning.’ And there is Professor Marvel! And . . . Merlinda. And handsome young Washington Irving Bishop, who was a walking dead man, only no one knew it. Little Rena and Tiny Tim, the Little Drummer boy. Madame Zenobia, mistress of the mantic arts. The Pig Lady. The Great Malini!? A magician? Not one of our acquaintance?”

“No. I am importing an entire era, without prejudice.”

“Oh.” I leaned forward to see if the next set of female twins were Sophie and Salamandra, but they were Wilhelmina and Winifred Hermann, darling little girls with full starched skirts and curls as tight as pigs’ tails.

“That is when you first knew them.”

Irene nodded, then lifted her chin to indicate a new placard being settled into place on its easel.

This pair of twins were as curvaceous as circus steeds and wore flesh-colored tights beneath indecently short skirts. They clung together in coy shyness despite their bold state of undress, and the large even bolder type beneath their likeness read:

PANSY AND PETUNIA,
THE TWIN TOASTS OF FOURTEENTH STREET
THEY DANCE, THEY SING, THEY TWIST YOUR HEARTS
AROUND THEIR LITTLE FINGERS

“This memorializes the beginning of the end,” I said. “The time when their paths and yours parted.”

“Indeed, but first those paths conjoined in the horrible death of poor Petunia.” Irene shook her head. “Some things I was perhaps better off
not
remembering.”

“Have you,” I asked gingerly, “in your memories recalled some facts that might possibly predict where Mr. Holmes will find his confederate?”

“Perhaps.” Irene’s face remained sphinxlike. “I will let Pink and Mr. Holmes direct this show.”

“They cannot both do so!”

“I know, that is why I will watch. It will be most amusing.”

In fact, barely had the last placard been set in place and the waiters left, then the man in question strolled through the open double doors to our private room.

His hat, gloves, and cane had been intercepted by a waiter at the door, but he kept one hand in the pocket of his soft-toned plaid suit in such a way that I suspected a firearm could lay concealed there.

After nodding at us and Miss Pink and quickly summing up the table with no great pleasure, his eyes fixed on the playbills.

Pink was still rearranging flower arrangements on the table, so he addressed her first. “Your work?” he nodded at the ring of easels surrounding the empty table.”

“No. I assumed yours.”

At that he smiled tightly and bowed toward us again, following the courtesy by a slow tour of each and every placard, beginning at the ones nearest the doors.

Pink cast us an impatient look, as though Irene’s forethought was to be faulted for absorbing too much of the great man’s time, no matter how cavalierly he regarded the display.

He stopped before us as if we were but one more placard on display: the Neuilly Sisters, internationally renowned . . . jugglers, perhaps.

“Is this to be a command performance, or a séance?” he inquired softly. “Half the artists represented are dead.”

Irene was swift to answer. “I believe that you are the impresario of this luncheon, ably assisted by the energetic Pink the Wonder Tattler.”

“I would prefer a singing mermaid,” he muttered after glancing over his shoulder. “Or at least a reliable secretary. She expects
a startling revelation in time for the morning edition, all to please her new publisher, Mr. Pulitzer.”

“And will you oblige?” Irene asked sweetly.

He said nothing, merely moved on to the next playbill.

“I wish I knew,” Irene whispered to me, “whether he was still making up his mind.”

“Do you think so?”

But before she could answer, our first guest deposited his outerwear at the door and entered our arena.

“Professor Marvel,” Irene greeted him, finally sweeping forward as the hostess she was.

He took both her hands, and kissed her cheek.

Was this a Judas kiss, I wondered, for I was now keenly suspicious of everyone we had met.

As a veteran performer on the variety stage, the professor was familiar with every sort of act, and no doubt could have stepped in to play many parts in an emergency.

My suspicions were derailed a moment later when a heavily veiled figure paused in the doorway, a dwarf standing beside it, the light at their backs making them into a sinister pair.

I rushed forward when I realized this was the unfortunate Pig person accompanied by her small daughter Edith, not Phoebe Cummings.

“Do come in,” I urged, taking the little girl by the hand to encourage her mother forward.

I suspect the poor lady avoided public places. I escorted them to chairs beside Professor Marvel, who immediately greeted them warmly. He stood to seat both Edith and her mother, calling a waiter over to install a pillow on the child’s chair. Soon they were chatting away like old friends, which I suppose they were.

A moment later the professor was calling for a new pillow, as Phoebe Cummings herself entered the room, attired in a checked cape coatdress that most resembled Pink’s new ensemble that resembled the outfit and cap I had worn in Paris last spring. In
fact, the coat reminded me of the one Sherlock Holmes had worn to visit us at Neuilly. Thinking of myself, Pink, and Mr. Holmes all attired in similar checked coats quite confused me. I realized that if Edith had been so attired, she and Phoebe would look like twins.

Not too far away, Sherlock Holmes was aiming a battery of questions at Professor Marvel and his “every fact at my fingertip” technique. I was struck by the fact that they seemed to know each other.

“My ‘marvels’ are the product of years of performance, my dear sir,” Professor Marvel was expounding with pleasure. “You would be surprised at how limited any given audience’s range of questions is. I thrive on the public’s lack of imagination, rather than any miraculous skill of my own.”

“It takes nimble fingers as well as a nimble mind, however,” Mr. Holmes remonstrated.

The professor waggled chubby but knuckle-enlarged digits. “Dexterity in both mind and matter fades with time. Luckily I compensate in other ways. The quick quip, for instance, defers the moment of truth just long enough, and a laughing audience feels itself well entertained.”

I doubted there would be much laughter here once the main “act” of unmasking a murderer was underway. Speaking of which, an utterly new performer was about to make his entrance.

The threshold hosted a man in a checked suit, his beefy form straining at the plaid vest beneath, whom Pink rushed to greet and install next to the chair she had chosen herself, introducing him as “Mr. Holly.”

This could only be the city police detective, and he was no French inspector like the dandified François le Villard. I would not be surprised to find such a man driving a hansom cab or touting horses at the racetrack. Indeed, he didn’t think to remove his bowler hat until he was halfway to the luncheon table.

While I watched this fellow eased into a place he looked most
uncomfortable in occupying, Irene was escorting her own unlikely fellow to a seat opposite Pink’s guest.

It was Mr. Conroy, the Pinkerton inquiry agent!

I gazed upon the two women who faced each other over their respective unhailed representatives of law and order: Pink and her policeman, Irene and her Pinkerton. They rather resembled mothers of rival debutantes jousting for pride of place for their awkward darlings at the table.

Even I had to admit that Sherlock Holmes was several cuts above these New World policemen, public and private, but then he had the inimitable advantage of being English.

He had not yet taken the seat Pink had pointed out to him, but was still roving the room, studying placards and occasionally running a disconcertingly sharp eye over the assembling guests.

Another tall figure darkened the door. I rushed to greet the maestro, who dangled a top hat from the same knobby fingers I had last seen holding a violin.

A waiter soon relieved him of hat, gloves, and cane. His tie was elegantly knotted. I was relieved to see him show some care in his dress on this formal occasion, which gave him an Old World air I had not noted before.

Irene came to claim him from me, and seated him in a place of honor on her left side, for she had taken the other end of the long table, opposite Mr. Holmes.

I was not pleased to see these two rivals thus posed, like lord and lady of the manor, but there was also something of the chess board in their placement.

Pink’s mother entered thereafter. I raised my eyebrows. She had nothing to do with these matters, did she?

Here Irene certainly could not counter Mrs. Cochrane with her own candidate, as she had with the “dueling detectives.”

I was not surprised to see another gentleman arrive, introduced by Pink as Mr. Gordon Evers.

This was the light-fingered acquaintance Pink had imported
to the séance to help her detect legerdemain in the doings there. With Professor Marvel also here, almost all the persons who attended that first of more than one fatal, recent performance was present.

The long table was beginning to look crowded. I quickly claimed my foreordained seat at Irene’s right. Pink was in the same position at Mr. Holmes’s end of the table.

Messrs. Conroy and Holly, the Pinkerton and the policeman, bracketed Mr. Holmes two seats down from his position. Clearly, Pink expected him to expose the miscreant and wanted the long arm of the law within easy reach of whoever the villain turned out to be.

I studied the table, now that it was fully occupied, myself.

Gazing upon it, I felt a sense of unease I couldn’t name.

I tallied the dead women we knew of. From the theatrical world, there was the never-met Abyssinia who had endured a rather too-close encounter with her performing partner, a boa constrictor. There were the twin sisters Sophie and Salamandra, recently killed in the very performances of their acts. There was the never-met Winifred who matured into the doomed Petunia, or Pet, whose lifeless body in a bathtub had caused Irene to lose her voice. There was her twin sister Wilhelmina, also known as Mina, who had survived her twin’s tragic death, yet spent anguished years trying to find the child she had given birth to in secret. Both twins had been patrons of Madame Restell’s infamous contraceptive and pregnancy-terminating skills.

And then there were the sympathetic landladies and doormen we had met, passing acquaintances who yet mourned the needlessly dead.

For a moment, I wondered if Mr. Holmes would conduct a séance here! But then I realized that Irene had already summoned the dead with the device of the playbill placards.

We needed no more ghosts on the scene, we needed a murderer in the flesh!