Tell Me, Pretty Maiden (5 page)

For a while I had been feeling pity for her. Now that vanished as easily as a pricked bubble. “I can’t stay long, Miss Sheehan,” I said. “I have brought the clothes that I had to wear when I left the ship, because my own were not available to me. I’m afraid you’ll need to have your maid give the outfit a good cleaning.”

I had started to open the bag, but she waved me away. “Keep them, please. You should have helped yourself to any of my clothes that you wanted. Couturiers are always giving me things to wear. I have far too many. Come and see—is there anything else you’d like?”

She took my hand and tried to drag me toward her bedroom. She was trying to be friendly, and I have to admit I was sorely tempted. Who wouldn’t want to help themselves to a Worth gown or two? But I remained steadfast. “You are most kind, but no, thank you.” There was the little matter of the money she still owed me. I hated asking for money but I had completed the assignment for her, hadn’t I? And almost been killed in the process. She did owe it to me. I took a deep breath. “If you want to repay a debt,” I said, “there is the money you promised me.”

“Promised you?” She looked up with dramatic surprise.

“When you asked me to deliver your luggage, remember? An extra hundred dollars?”

She flushed prettily. “Oh, that. Of course. How silly of me. I’d completely forgotten.”

Obviously, a hundred dollars was a mere trifle to her. She fished around in her purse, then gave me an embarrassed smile. “I appear to be out of checks,” she said.

“You can mail it to me,” I said. “You have my address.”

“Of course,” she said with relief, then looked around with impatience. “Yvette? What has happened to tea?”

“Coming, Madame,” came a voice from far away. “They are sending it up in the service elevator at this moment.”

“You see. Tea is on the way.” Oona patted the seat beside her again. “And while we wait, I have to confess that there was another reason I brought you here. I have another little assignment for you.”

I might have known, I thought.

“Oh, no thank you,” I said, jerking my hand away from her. “What is the phrase? Once bitten, twice shy.”

“But it’s not for me, this time,” she said hastily. “It’s for my dear, dear friend Blanche Lovejoy.”

“Blanche Lovejoy?” I asked. The name somehow rang a bell.

“You must know Blanche,” Oona said. “Everybody knows Blanche. Her name is a household word.”

“I haven’t been in New York long,” I said, feeling stupid. “Although I know I’ve heard the name.”

“She is only one of New York’s best-known and best-loved entertainers. She was in
A Country Maid,
and
Springtime Follies
. Both of them huge hits.”

Neither meant a thing to me, but then I hadn’t exactly had the money to go to the theater much.

“She hasn’t had a show on Broadway for a year or so,” Oona went on, “but she has a new show opening this week at the Casino. Best location in town. She has high hopes for it, because frankly the leading roles don’t come so easily when an actress turns thirty-five.”

“Sarah Bernhardt seems to have no problem,” I said. “I bumped into her going into the elevator. She must be over forty.”

Oona laughed merrily. “Close to sixty, my dear. But then the divine Sarah is an institution. For the rest of us mere mortals our careers are over when we lose our looks. I have five more years, at best.” She gave a wonderfully dramatic sigh and put a hand to her breast.

“And what will you do then?” I couldn’t resist asking. “I presume you’re accumulating a nice little nest egg.”

“My dear, I shall marry well,” she said. “Before I’m too old I shall let some very rich man snap me up and spend the rest of my life in pampered luxury.”

“Artie Fortwrangler, for example?” I asked, referring to a young man I had met on the ship.

“Oh merciful heavens. So you bumped into Artie, did you? I don’t intend to be that desperate.” She laughed. “I was thinking more of a European. A duke maybe, or an Italian prince.”

Yvette burst upon this scene of self-adoration with a curt. “Your tea, Madame,” putting the tray down so firmly that the teacups rattled. “Do you wish me to pour?”

“No, thank you, Yvette. That will be all,” Oona said, waving her away.

As she retreated Oona muttered, “I suppose French maids have a certain flair, but they always make one feel that they are doing one a favor and are being ill-used. Rose was so amiable.”

I wasn’t going to allow her to slip back into reminiscences about Rose. “So to return to Blanche Lovejoy,” I said. “You told me she has a new play opening this week. Why do you think she needs my services?”

Oona leaned closer to me, as if she didn’t want to be overheard. “Because, my dear, she thinks that the theater may be haunted.”

“Haunted?” I couldn’t help smiling. “What does she think I could do about it? She needs a spiritualist if she wants communication with the dead.”

“She believes the ghost is trying to kill her. She wants someone from the outside to prove to her that she is not imagining things, that she is not going off her head. You can do that for her, can’t you?”

SEVEN

I came out of Hoffman House and paused to turn up my collar against the bitter chill of the wind that blew down Twenty-fifth. I was annoyed that I had come away empty-handed—I didn’t think that she’d post that check without more prompting, and I wasn’t sure what to do next. I had half-promised Miss Sheehan that I would visit Blanche Lovejoy, and I had to admit that I found the assignment intriguing. Ghost hunting was something I hadn’t tackled before. But I already had a case I was working on for at least another week, which would be too late for Miss Lovejoy. That’s not to imply that she would have been killed by then. She had apparently invested a considerable amount of her own money in the venture and was threatening to close the show before it opened if she didn’t feel safe in the theater.

Then there was the girl we had found in the park that morning. I knew she was no longer my business, but I couldn’t get her out of my mind. I had to make sure she was all right and safely home among her loved ones. And I was dying to know exactly what had happened to her. My mother had always warned me that my curiosity would be the death of me—if one of my other sins didn’t put an end to me first.

So how could I possibly juggle two assignments at once? I couldn’t be in two places at once, that was sure. Miss Lovejoy would presumably be at the theater primarily in the evenings, which was exactly when I should be following Mr. Roth. What I needed was an employee. Then suddenly it came to me. I had the perfect person to work with me. Instead of mounting the steps to the Twenty-third Street El station, I kept walking on Twenty-third until I came to the brownstone where Daniel had rooms. His landlady, Mrs. O’Shea, was delighted to see me.

“Why, Miss Murphy. You’re a sight for sore eyes, and that’s a fact. You’ll no doubt cheer the poor man up,” she said. “Grumpy and gloomy doesn’t describe it these days, does it?”

“He’s going through a bad time,” I said. “Is he home?”

“Just got in some ten minutes ago,” she said. “I was just about to ask him if he’d like to join us for supper. I don’t like to think of him brooding alone up there.”

“I’ll go on up then,” I said.

“You’re most welcome to stay for supper, too,” she said. “I’ve made enough Irish stew to feed half of New York.”

“Thank you, but I have to be somewhere else this evening. But I’ll pass on the invitation to Daniel then, shall I?”

“Most kind of you.” She beamed as I went to climb the stairs. “I bet you’ll be glad when this is all over and you and the captain can get on with your lives again,” she muttered confidentially. “He’s of an age when he needs to settle down with a family of his own.”

“I will be glad when his current problems are over,” I agreed, and went up the stairs before she could ask any questions I couldn’t answer.

Daniel looked startled as he opened his front door and saw me standing there.

“Molly, what on earth are you doing here?”

“Well, that’s a fine way to greet the woman who is supposed to be the love of your life,” I said.

“But we parted only two hours ago,” he said. “Even the most ardent lovers wouldn’t miss each other in such a short space of time. Unless, of course, you regretted sending me out into the snow last night with only one chaste kiss and have come to make amends?”

“I’ve come to do no such thing,” I said. “It’s a business proposition I have for you.”

I didn’t wait any longer to be invited but pushed past him into his rooms. It’s funny how you can always tell a man’s residence from a woman’s. That lingering herby smell of pipe tobacco, the austere polished wood, rows of serious-looking books, leather armchairs with no fluffy cushions, nothing frivolous or unnecessary. I swear, if Victorian men had been responsible for decorating their houses, there would never have been a solitary stuffed bird or aspidistra in sight.

I seated myself into one of the leather armchairs on either side of his fireplace without being asked.

“You saw Miss Sheehan?” Daniel asked. “Did you get the money she owed you?”

“She was conveniently out of checks,” I said. “She promised to mail it to me. I’ll believe it when I see it, but she did offer me another job.”

“After what she put you through the first time? I hope you turned her down.”

“It’s not for her but for a friend. And I have to admit that it sounds intriguing. Another actress. Blanche Lovejoy.”

“Blanche Lovejoy?”

“You know her then?”

“Know her? She’s a big star, or rather she was a big star a few years ago. There was a time when a Blanche Lovejoy musical comedy was always playing on Broadway. And before that she made her name in vaudeville. I remember seeing her when I was a college student. Some of her songs were very risqué. So what does Blanche Lovejoy want you to do for her?”

“I’m not quite sure yet, but I’d like to pay her a visit at the theater this evening. However, this is where I run into a problem. I already have an assignment. I should be shadowing Mr. Roth in the evenings.”

“You certainly can’t do two jobs at once,” Daniel said.

“No, I can’t. Unless—” I paused for dramatic effect. “—unless I take on someone to help me. A business associate.”

“Really? Can you afford to do that? And would they do a good enough job?”

“I hope so,” I said. “It was you I was thinking of, Daniel.”

“Me? You’re asking me to come and work for you?”

“You have the right qualifications for the job,” I said, trying not to smile, because I was actually enjoying this moment. “And you told me yourself that you’re sitting home twiddling your thumbs while I have more work than I can handle. I’m offering you a chance to keep your hand in at your detective skills. I’ll give you seventy-five percent of the fee.”

“Only seventy-five?” He was smiling too now.

“Administrative costs, you know. I have an agency to run. Now what do you say? Have I found myself a new associate?”

Daniel frowned. “If it ever got out that I’d been working for a woman, I’d be a laughingstock when I returned to the force,” he said.

“Not working for a woman, Daniel. Working with a woman. You know that you and I could make a great team. You’d be the biggest asset my little agency ever had. I know I can’t pay you what you’re worth but at least you’d have some money coming in—enough to pay for cab fares to take your lady friend to Central Park.”

I saw him frown again, and swallow hard, his Adam’s apple dancing above the starched collar.

“If you don’t want the job, I’m sure I can find someone else who would do it for me. I believe that Ryan O’Hare is unemployed with no current play on Broadway. He’d definitely find it a huge lark to play the detective.”

That did it, of course. I knew that Daniel despised my friend, the flamboyant playwright Ryan O’Hare.

“You’d surely never dream of working with such a creature,” he said. “Think of the reputation of your business. No prosperous Jewish family would ever consider letting such a man work for them!”

“Then take the assignment yourself, Daniel. It’s absolutely up your street. Following a man around unsavory neighborhoods—who better to do it than you?”

“You’re right,” he said. “Nobody could do it better than I. Except that I am well known among the criminal element.”

“I don’t think that Mr. Roth will be mixing with the criminal element,” I said. “At least I sincerely hope he won’t.”

“I suppose I could try this one assignment and see how we get along,” Daniel said at last.

“If we can’t work together for a few days, then I see little hope in planning any kind of future together,” I said. “It’s about time you learned that I will never be the demure miss who waits at home for her lord and master, doing her embroidery and playing croquet.”

He looked a little startled at this outburst, then he had to nod. “No, I can’t see you being anyone’s lapdog, Molly. It is one of the things I admire about you. And maybe I can teach you a thing or two about detective methods.”

“Maybe I can teach you a thing or two about mine,” I said. “Shall we shake on it?”

I reached out my hand. Daniel took it, then pulled me toward him. “Sealed with a kiss,” he said and planted his lips firmly on mine. This time I let him kiss me, returning the kiss with full fervor.

Mrs. O’Shea’s tap on the door was the only thing that prevented the encounter from going on a little too long.

“Did Miss Murphy tell you that you’re invited to supper, Captain Sullivan?” she called through the closed door.

“I’m afraid I won’t be home for supper, Mrs. O’Shea,” Daniel called back. “I’ve a detective assignment.”

I grinned. “And I have a date with a ghost,” I said.

EIGHT

The Casino Theater on Broadway at West Thirty-ninth was where Blanche Lovejoy’s new play was about to open. I wasn’t at all sure what I could do for Blanche Lovejoy. How did one prove that a theater was or wasn’t haunted? If I made actual communication with a spirit, she’d stop production and that would presumably put a lot of people out of work, unless she could find another theater at the last minute. And to be quite honest, I wasn’t at all sure that I wanted a face-to-face encounter with a ghost, especially a malevolent one that was trying to kill Miss Lovejoy.

As soon as I spotted the Casino Theater, I could tell that Miss Lovejoy wouldn’t want to move to another theater unless it was absolutely necessary. It was a magnificent-looking building—more sultan’s palace than theater, with carved stonework, arch-ways, vaulted windows. Lit only by the electric lights from the buildings around it, the stonework seemed to glow. On one corner a round tower seemed to reach up into the heavens and I could just glimpse the metallic dome on top. There was a sign on the marquee, although it wasn’t yet illuminated.

OPENING NEXT WEEK,

Miss Blanche Lovejoy

makes her triumphant return in

Ooh La La.

The engraved glass front doors were firmly locked but I finally located the stage door down an alleyway. I went in and found myself in a dimly hit hallway.

“Where do you think you’re going?” a voice from the darkness demanded.

I must have jumped a mile. I hadn’t seen the little kiosk built into the wall and the man’s face in the window floated like a disembodied head. “We’re not open to the public,” he said. “So I must ask you to leave right away.”

“I have a message for Miss Lovejoy,” I said. “From Miss Oona Sheehan. It’s urgent.”

“From Miss Sheehan, huh?” I could now see that he was an older man with a round face and not much hair, and most of him was hidden behind the booth in which he sat, making me feel that I might be talking with the man in the moon. “What a lovely gracious lady she is. So you know Miss Sheehan, do you? She worked here a couple of years ago.”

“I know Miss Lovejoy will want to see me as soon as she has a minute,” I said.

“From Miss Sheehan, you said?” He repeated the words.

“Yes.”

“They’re in run-through. We open next week.”

“I won’t disturb her until she has a minute free,” I said, “but Miss Sheehan was most insistent that the message be passed along tonight.”

He squinted at me, sizing me up. “Well, you can’t be trying to get a job,” he said. “We’ve all the chorus girls we need.”

“Do I look like a chorus girl?” I asked.

“You’d be surprised. It takes all types, my dear. When they first come in here, all fresh-faced and no lipstick or rouge, you’d think they were somebody’s granddaughter, straight from the farm. Soon they start dressing themselves up and painting their faces and then they look like everyone else in this ridiculous profession. Some of them aren’t changed by it, but for some of them it goes to their heads. Well, it would, wouldn’t it? Stage-door Johnnies with more money than sense, flowers, champagne out of slippers. Nonsense all of it and it makes some of the girls go off the rails. I try and keep an eye on them. Sort of grandfather figure . . . I’m Old Henry. That’s what they call me. Old Henry.”

I could tell he liked to talk and that we’d be there all night if I wasn’t careful. From far off I could hear the
thump-thump
of music and then female voices raised in song. Then squeals. Then a deep man’s voice shouting, “Wait, don’t go!”

“Coming to the end of act one,” Old Henry said. “That will be the bathing number. You can tell by the shrieks. If you go through now, you’ll have a chance to see Miss Lovejoy in her dressing room between acts.”

“Thank you.” I gave him my brightest smile.

“And what did you say your name was, young lady? You have to sign in before I let you go any farther.”

“It’s Kitty Kelly,” I said, coming up with the first Irish name that popped into my head. I scribbled it on a sign-in sheet. “And how do I find Miss Lovejoy’s dressing room?”

“Follow this passage to the end. Go left. Up some stairs. Round the corner and then down the hall. You’ll see her name on the door with the star on it. But don’t go anywhere near the stage or you’ll get me in trouble. Miss Lovejoy don’t like outsiders watching until it’s all just so. Thinks it brings bad luck. Very superstitious theater folk are, you know.”

I was about to leave when something struck me. “Henry,” I asked, “does this theater have a reputation for being haunted?”

His expression changed instantly. “Hold on. You better not be tricking me, young lady. If you’re one of them lady newspaper reporters . . .”

“No, why would I be?” I said.

“Then why did you ask that about the place being haunted?”

“Because I’m sensitive to these things. You know that we Irish have the second sight—and I got a definite feeling of a hostile presence.”

He leaned out of his booth. “For pete’s sake, don’t go saying that to Miss Lovejoy. She’s in a bad enough state as it is.”

“Why? What happened?”

“Silly little accidents, really, but she thinks there’s more to it. A scenery flat falling over when she was singing, and a breeze almost starting a fire when it knocked over one of the candles onstage. Theaters are big drafty places. Accidents do happen. But she’s scared it’s something more. There, I’ve said more than I should. You can ask her yourself, if you want to hear more.”

“I will,” I said. “You can be sure I will.”

I set off down a narrow passageway that became darker and darker until, by the time I reached the steep iron stairs, I had to almost feel my way upward. The stone wall felt cold to my touch and unseen breezes wafted around me. I could hear more jolly music coming from what sounded like far below me now, but up here it was chill and quite deserted. I told myself firmly that I didn’t believe in ghosts, but my heart was beating rather faster. When I saw a billowing white shape out of the corner of my eye, I almost tumbled back down the stairs until I realized it was a curtain, hiding some kind of doorway.

Then I was angry with myself for being so stupid. I who had taken on my brothers in a dare to sit in the churchyard all night after old Dan O’Haggerty had been buried. I came out to an iron platform from which a spiral staircase dropped straight down into a cavernous backstage area. A backdrop and pieces of scenery blocked the brightly lit stage from my view, but I could hear the echo of voices, although I couldn’t make out the words. Then, just as I left the platform to take the passage to Miss Lovejoy’s dressing room, a horrible scream filled the theater. I told myself that it was only part of the play, but it made my blood run cold.

Almost immediately afterward there came the pounding of running feet and the iron stairway vibrated as a bevy of chorus girls came running up.

“Did you see it?” one of them was whispering.

“I didn’t see anything, myself, but Clara swears she felt it moving behind her. She said it made her go all cold and shivery all over.”

“Poor Blanche. This will be the end of her if it goes on.”

They were coming toward me. I hadn’t yet found Blanche Lovejoy’s dressing room and there was nowhere to hide, so I flattened myself against the wall for them to run by me. This turned out to be a mistake. The first girls saw me moving in the darkness and started in fear. One of them gave a little scream.

“It’s up here. I can see it now,” another one whimpered.

“It’s all right, ladies, I’m quite human, I can assure you,” I said loudly.

“What are you doing up here? You’ll get in awful trouble.” A tall blonde pushed past the others. “Miss Lovejoy don’t allow no public before opening night.”

“She sent for me,” I said. “She knows I’m coming. I was told to wait in her dressing room.”

“She won’t be in no state to talk to anybody,” the lanky girl said. “She’ll need a sedative after what happened.”

“What did happen?” I asked. “I heard the scream.”

“She saw a face at the window,” one of the girls whimpered.

“Window?”

“In the scene she was doing, she is supposed to open the window and look out,” the tall blonde said. “She went to the window and saw a face outside, staring at her.”

“Did any of you see it?”

“We weren’t onstage,” another girl said. “But Clara said she was waiting in the wings and she felt something brush past her—something cold and clammy, she said.”

“Trust Clara,” the blonde said with a sniff. “She’s a bundle of nerves all the time.” She glanced back down the stairs. “We’d better beat it. We’ll be in big trouble if we’re not in our dressing room when Blanche comes up.”

As one they ran on together like a gaggle of slim white geese, all jockeying for position. I found Blanche Lovejoy’s dressing room. It had her name and a star on the door. I wasn’t sure what to do next—wait in the dark hallway and risk scaring Blanche to death or go ahead into her dressing room and risk scaring her equally when she entered. But she wouldn’t want me down in the theater either. I decided to go into the room. At least I’d look less threatening in brightly lit surroundings.

Just to make sure, I tapped on the door. When it opened slowly and I saw a hideous form on the other side, it was all I could do not to scream and run. But I stood my ground and found myself staring at an old woman, bent over and with a nose like a witch’s. I almost believed she was the ghost until she cocked that head, like an old bird, and said, “I don’t know you. Go away. I’ll not have you upsetting Miss Lovejoy.”

“I don’t intend to upset her,” I said. “I’ve come to help her. Oona Sheehan sent me—to help deal with the ghost.”

“Well, I never.” The old woman was still looking at me with birdlike eyes. “You’d better come in then.” She ushered me into a small, cluttered room. I had expected a star’s dressing room to be spacious and glamorous, like Oona Sheehan’s rooms at the Hoffman House, but you could hardly swing a cat in here. Straight in front of me there was the dressing table with its mirror surrounded by electric lightbulbs and sticks of grease paint strewn higgledy-piggledy all over the table. On one side there was a screen, blocking off part of the room and hung with several costumes. In the other corner there was an armchair and a table beside it with a bottle of Irish whiskey on it.

“You heard the scream, did you?” the old woman asked. “Something else must have happened then.”

“She saw a face at the window when she went to open it.”

“Oh dear. She’ll be in a proper state then. I’d better find her calming mixture.”

“Calming mixture?”

“Her doctor makes it up special. I’m not quite sure what’s in it but Miss Lovejoy says it’s like laudanum, only better. Opium, I suppose. Or morphine. Or both. Wait—that’s her coming now. You go and sit over there so you don’t startle her.”

She motioned to the armchair. I obeyed just as the door burst open and two people came in. I suppose I had been expecting Blanche Lovejoy to be another Oona Sheehan—a delicate beauty. But the woman who came in was more cart horse than racehorse. She was big-boned, with an almost mannish face and a great mound of brassy blonde hair that made the face seem even bigger. She had a booming deep voice. What’s more, she was swearing like a trooper.

“Jesus, Robert, don’t you damned well dare try to patronize me as if I was a goddamned idiot child. I know what I saw and I am not going out of my head and you blasted well better do something about it, or this show is not going to open. You hear me?”

“Blanche, please, be reasonable.” The second person had come halfway into the room. He was a small, round, bald-headed man, with sagging jowls and a mournful expression like a blood hound’s, and he reached out to touch her. “Blanche, baby, sit down and have a drink. You’ll feel better. Come to think of it, I could do with one, too.”

“I am not your baby. I’m nobody’s baby. Get out and leave me alone,” she shouted. “And drink your own whiskey. You can go to hell, all of you.”

“But what about act two?”

“I’ll come down for act two when I’m good and ready.” She said. “If I’m good and ready.” She literally shoved him out of the door and slammed it shut. “Martha, I need my calming mixture.”

“Of course you do, my darling precious one,” Martha said. “Why don’t you lie down and Martha will bring it for you.”

“And a drink,” Blanche added, sounding like a petulant child now. “A big drink.”

Her eyes turned toward the bottles on the table and she saw me.

“What’s she doing here? Who let her in? What did you let her in for?” she demanded.

Before Martha could answer, I got to my feet. “Miss Lovejoy, I’m here because Oona Sheehan sent me,” she said. “I’m Molly Murphy. She said you needed my services.”

“Molly Murphy?”

“Private investigator,” I said. “I gather you’ve been having a spot of trouble in the theater.”

I saw light dawning on her face, a face that must have been made for the theater. All her expressions were larger than life—her anger, her despair, and now her radiant smile.

“Miss Murphy—you came. Thank God,” she said.

S
oon I was sitting beside Blanche Lovejoy while she reclined behind her screen and worked her way through a large tumbler of neat whiskey.

“I was so excited about this play, Miss Murphy,” she said. “I had such high hopes for it. After all this time, a chance to star again on Broadway. I even invested my own money in the production and that wonderful songwriter George M. Cohan wrote a new song just for me. It’s called ‘That’s the Way the French Do It!’ Rather naughty, you know, but that’s what my public has come to expect. I made my name singing naughty songs in vaudeville, after all, didn’t I?”

I nodded as if I was aware of this.

“And the part is just right for me. All the leading roles in musical comedy recently have been for silly little girls. As if I could sit on a swing in
Florodora
like that awful little Nesbitt girl. I’d break most swings unless they had iron chains. The public doesn’t want real women anymore. It wants girlish fantasy. Sixteen-year-olds who flutter their eyes and exude innocence coupled with budding ripeness. And look at me—among all that budding ripeness, I’m just an old overripe tomato.”