Femme Fatale (61 page)

Irene had determined one half of the equation, and had beaten Mr. Holmes to the scene of the crime . . . crimes, plural, on Fifth Avenue. One would have to credit her with that achievement.

Yet there was a missing murderer, what Mr. Holmes termed a confederate. It was indeed unlikely that Mina Gilfoyle had secreted herself at Sophie’s séance to play the part of confederate-turned-murderer. It would have taken someone with more strength to strangle Sophie quickly in full view of a table of witnesses.

Strength would not be required to douse Salamandra’s performing wardrobe with flammable substances, not once, but twice. Stealth, however, would be needed, and an ability to pass backstage without question.

Mina had been over ten years absent from the stage. No current doormen or stagehands would recognize her, but a woman backstage who was not a performer could not pass unnoticed. She could have gone in disguise, but that was unlikely. Mina was obsessed with cheating Irene of her heritage, the knowledge of her origins, so she wanted the Dixon sisters dead, yes, but she was rich enough to avoid the doing the murderous work herself.

As Mr. Holmes had wisely remarked, her madness was of the sort that finally turned on its possessor, not on others . . . except in motive rather than execution.

I thought again of the many personas child performers adapted as they aged. It struck me that one could get mired in a particular period, as Wilhelmina, turned Pansy, had when she allowed her envy of Irene’s beauty and talent—and integrity—to fester. When her sister Petunia had died and Irene discovered the body, did she somehow blame Irene for Pet’s ill fortune? Was that easier than blaming her sister, or herself? Was her vendetta against Irene a case of ancient Greek tragedy, the impulse imbedded in the tendency to “kill the messenger?”

I had many questions, but first had to put my attention to a
lavish luncheon that began with cream of chestnut soup, served cold in honor of the summer season. The entree was a large fillet of fish curved like a scimitar on a bed of greens and candied apricot slices. The fish were headless, thank goodness. I cannot think why the more elegant the meal the more obviously dead creature parts the diner is forced to confront. Each fish was served in portions to several people and its entire length was covered with thin-sliced almonds arranged like fish scales. For the absent “eye,” some overenthusiastic chef had sliced green olive stuffed with red pimiento into an unlikely orb. Baked onions stuffed with garlic paste and studded with cloves made an unusual vegetable course, along with a more conventional timbale of macaroni, with its rich combination of cream, eggs, chicken and ham to enhance the delicately bland fish. Desert offered ripe red islands of strawberries amid a silken creamy sea, which I enjoyed tremendously, much remarking on the unusually tasty flavor, until Irene in-formed me that the sauce had been flavored with whiskey!

It took several sips of tea to banish the uncivilized taste, which I’d fully believed was due to exotic spices, and not common spirits.

It was only when the plates and serving dishes were cleared and we were all left to our cups of tea, or coffee in some cases, that Irene rung an exquisite call to attention on her crystal water goblet with a sterling silver spoon.

She stood, lifting her wine glass as for a toast.

“I welcome our near and dear spirits to this table, those who are gone and whom we mourn and celebrate, most particularly Sophie and Salamandra Dixon, and now even more recently, Wilhelmina Hermann Gilfoyle.”

First everyone lifted a glass—I made do with water—then came the buzz and clatter of neighbors interrogating neighbors.

“Wilhelmina dead too?” asked the Pig Lady’s gentle voice. I had observed her eat beneath the curtain of her veil without making the sheer but opaque fabric flutter once.

A greater buzz arose. The news startled all present but Irene, myself, and Mr. Holmes.

Pink was conferring with the policeman, who could only shrug and seemed loath to interrupt his avid consumption of whiskeyed strawberries to attend to the postprandial speechifying.

“What is this new death?” Pink finally asked Irene directly, and a bit sharply.

For answer, Irene waved a hand at the poster of Pansy and Petunia. “The last of the twins. It’s ironic that Sophie and Salamandra were twins as well.”

“Another set of twins? With one set dead only days ago? When and where did this Pansy or Petunia die?”

“Last night,” Irene answered calmly, ignoring the gasps that stirred the table. “At home.”

“And was it foul play?”

“I doubt any charges will be filed.”

“And her sister died too? Where and when?”

“Winifred, also known as Petunia, died in town here, perhaps sixteen or seventeen years ago.”

“That long?” Pink cogitated visibly. A death that old did not fit into her scheme of some contemporary maniac killing possible candidates for Irene’s mother. “How old was Petunia?”

“Perhaps sixteen or seventeen.”

Pink sat quietly and unhappily calculating. In no way could a woman who would be thirty-two or -four today be considered a candidate for Irene’s mother. Nor could her twin sister who had just died last night.

“Perhaps,” came Sherlock Holmes’s high but commanding voice, “these people attending the luncheon need to better understand why the loss of Mrs. Gilfoyle surprises Miss Nellie Bly so much.”

An even greater buzz expanded as our luncheon companions realized an infamous reporter was in our midst.

Pink flashed Mr. Holmes a look of pure impatience, as if he
were quite ruining her lofty plans through a bit of pompous British stupidity. Oh, how I hoped she was wrong, even if that meant that I would have to accept Mr. Holmes as being right, at least in this one instance! Better the devil you don’t know very well than the one you have clutched to your bosom in more innocent days, although no devils are to be recommended as bosom companions, even temporarily.

“Mrs. Norton,” he went on. “Most of those at this table knew you well years ago, during your days as a child performer. Perhaps you would care to inform them of the mysteries that have brought you back to the shores of America.”

“The first mystery,” Irene said, “is Nellie Bly, who seems to have taken more interest in my history and origins than even I might have.”

Every eye focused on the professional snoop at our table.

“She told me that she was convinced that I had a mother I had never known in the States, and that someone was trying to kill her.”

“So that is what brought you back!” Professor Marvel exclaimed, nodding. “Didn’t you realize that some of us would have told you about any parents they knew you had?”

“I did indeed. That’s why I was extremely skeptical of her claim.”

The next voice came from behind the Pig Lady’s veil, which remained eerily unmoving despite the breath that must be wafting across it. If she wished to give séances, I have no doubt she would be most uncannily successful at it!

“Was the death of Sophie an indication that she might be your mother? And Salamandra also? That’s quite impossible.”

“Someone might not have known that,” Irene said. “And why is it impossible?”

The Pig Lady’s veil turned left and then right as she inspected both sides of the table. “I cannot speak of that in this company.” The veil lowered as she presumably glanced down to little Edith at her side.

“Nell, perhaps you could take Edith for a walk outside.”

“No.”

“No?”

“I do not wish to leave at this critical point. I might be required to . . . to testify.”

“I’ll walk the child,” Professor Marvel offered jovially, tossing his napkin to the tabletop in preparation for rising.

“I think not,” Mr. Holmes said, rather ominously. He sent a sudden smile Mrs. McGillicuddy’s way. “Could you, madam? A few minutes should suffice, I think.”

She was already leaning across the table toward Edith opposite her. “Now, dearie, they’re getting all grown-up and boring after eating. Let’s go see something more interestin’.”

The child was happy to oblige the jolly landlady, and the two went off hand in hand like the Walrus and the Carpenter, with less lethal results, one would hope.

“I hesitate to speak plainly even now,” the Pig Lady’s soft voice said.

That very reluctance installed a hush over the table as everyone kept quiet, leaned inward, and strove to learn the secret.

“This event, after all,” she went on, “honors their lives as well as mourns their deaths. Please do not make me speak ill of them.”

“I don’t think you could,” Irene said. “They were warmhearted women who were dear to all of us here, second mothers to me, although I can’t accept either one of them for my actual mother, unless you tell me differently. I must admit that I had thought I had set aside all notion, need, and care for a mother years ago. Yet seeing you all again, my foster family of the theater, has made me eager to find what was lost, if it can be had.”

There was no doubting Irene’s simple sincerity. Her old associates eyes brightened and blinked.

The Pig Lady’s eyes were not visible, but her voice resumed, and she said what she had feared to say before. “I know neither Sophie or Salamandra could be your mother, Rena, because they
were young girls when you were born. Even then it would have been possible, and they could have concealed it, for desperate young girls can accomplish amazing feats of directing attention away from what would normally be obvious conditions, especially in such a transient profession as ours. As a matter of fact, both
could
have been your mother, for both had been in the family way before you were born. Girls can be taken sad advantage of, and are often so innocent they don’t even know why it happens.”

Irene had sat back down in shock at these revelations. The women’s sordid history did not surprise her, I am sorry to say, so much as the fact that not one, but two of them had been with child at a time just before she was born.

“Then either one
could
have—” she began, appalled to think that she may have just missed seeing the one again, and certainly had missed recognizing the other for her mother. . . .

“No.” The Pig Lady’s voice was loud and firm. “Both were ‘in trouble.’ They visited a ‘woman doctor’ who claimed to help them, and no children resulted.”

“Madame Restell!” Irene exclaimed. “But there could have been future occasions—”

“No. They had learned their lessons, and, later, when they married, they discovered they could no longer do what they were so loath to do just a few years earlier. It was why both were no longer with their husbands, and had not been for years.”

“Both unable to have children?” Irene sounded extremely doubtful.

“They were twins,” Sherlock Holmes reminded her, and the table. “It could be they suffered the same adverse effects. I understand that sort of illegal surgery is quite crude.”

Irene’s eyebrows went up, even as she didn’t argue with his conclusions. She was no doubt thinking what I was: that Sherlock Holmes had grown increasingly knowledgeable about hidden female matters since consulting with Professor Krafft-Ebing.

“Then”—Irene was sounding more appalled by the moment—
“were their deaths a mistake? Because they were
mistaken
for my possible mother, each of them? Why would anyone be so set upon killing a mother I had never known?”

“You forget,” Sherlock Holmes put in, rather gently for one of his bent, I thought. “As a young performer you engendered a great deal of jealousy. Jealousy motivated the Bible’s first murder; because of it Cain killed Abel. I seldom see a case of pure jealousy, one that does not involve the romantic relationship between man and woman, which is the most puzzling motive of all. It lies in the heart and perception of the murderer, which is often invisible, and incomprehensible, to the larger world.”

Irene sat thunderstruck and silent. I remember her referring to the same Biblical crime when talking to Pink not long ago. Yet she had forgotten her own lesson. This fact was a disturbing reminder of all she had been made to “forget” when last in this country.

“Madam Abyssinia,” Sherlock Holmes was saying to the larger table, ignoring Irene now as I wished he would ignore her now and forever. “I believe she was what is called a snake charmer in the trade. She also was slain by the means of her profession, a boa constrictor of apparently unusual length, strength, and size. Is this true?”

“She was not one of our particular theatrical set,” Professor Marvel said after a silence indicated no one else would answer his question.

“She did share a bill occasionally, in the old days,” the Pig Lady offered.

“She only died in June,” the maestro put in morosely. “I knew her,” he added with a smile that was both apologetic and bereft, “better than most.” He drew patterns on the heavily padded damask tablecloth with the nails of his right hand. I noticed again his arthritis-mangled joints and wondered that he could play the violin at all. “She died childless, as I will. But”—his final words were muttered—“she had seen Madame Restell, years and years ago.”

“That is the connection!” Irene’s voice rang out. “Not
me
. Madame Restell! I am beside the point.”

“I doubt that, madam,” Sherlock Holmes was too hasty, in my opinion, to respond.

His comment brought a thin smile to Irene’s tense lips.

“Madame Restell,” he echoed. “Madam Norton is correct. I have searched for an element in common to these deaths, and only Madame Restell will serve, though she has been dead herself these eleven years. The problem is the matter of the person who wished these women dead, and the person who actually accomplished it. I believe that they are not one and the same—in fact, I found a tall man’s hand print on the curtains of the fatal séance room, a misshapen man’s hand—yet how seldom two people share the same mania. Almost never.”

“Almost?” Irene asked.

“It is time,” Mr. Holmes said, “to be frank with your friends, and all seated at this table are your friends, are they not? Or, at least, they are friends of the dead women we memorialize, for whom we attempt to seek justice. The dual nature of this case struck me from the first, and the more I learned of it, the more it rang double chimes. Not one pair of twins, but two. Events of eleven or more years ago, and fresh events of today, all resulting in death. The confusing search for a mother, which has instead found many who were
not
mothers, whether they could not or would not be.