Death of a Showman

by Mariah Fredericks

“Well, you might not care, but some of us have deadlines.”

  And others had investments. I couldn’t imagine Louise had seriously endangered her vast fortune. But a financial disaster would not improve matters between husband and wife. And I didn’t want Louise’s first strike at purpose to end in failure.

  “Floyd Lombardo?” Behan prompted.

  “Floyd Lombardo is Nedda Fiske’s…” I hesitated, disliking the melodramatic term “lover” but not sure what else to call him.

  “Paramour?” suggested Behan. “Inamorato? Chum?”

  “Millstone? Bad habit? He’s a gambler. Owes people money. Married … possibly to more than one woman. She adores him, depends on him. She also pays his bills. Or did until recently. I overheard them fighting about it. He wanted money and she wouldn’t give it to him. He sounded desperate.”

  “Why shoot Warburton?”

  I told him the story of Floyd’s banishment. “Lombardo’s not a man to take insults lightly. And he probably thinks with Warburton out of the way, Nedda will weaken and take him back. They found his gun next to the body.”

  “You saw him at the restaurant?”

  “No. But a place as big and crowded as Rector’s, I could have easily missed him.”

  “Any idea who he owes money to?” I shook my head. “Know where he gambles? Cards or dice…?”

  “I’ve no idea. But please be sensitive to Miss Fiske. I can’t help but feel sorry for her.”

  “And Mr. Hirschfeld, of course.”

  I recalled Leo’s warning glance at Blanche and Violet’s blushing confession. “Write what you like about Mr. Hirschfeld.”

  I asked if he wanted more coffee. He did. As I got up to get it, he composed headlines. “‘Sidney Warburton, Lion of the Theater, Dies in Men’s Toilet.’”

  “Pants down, I’m afraid.”

  Eyes alight at that detail, he put pencil to paper, waiting for permission.

  “Go ahead.”

  “You are a kind and noble woman, Miss Prescott.”

  Pouring more coffee, I inquired after Harry Knowles, a reporter who also worked at the Herald. Behan groaned. “The man can’t write sober, can’t write drunk; but there’s a level in between where he’s genius, and for some reason, I’ve decided it’s my job to keep him there.”

  “That’s good of you.”

  “Looking after Harry is good training for a father-to-be. He spits up. Throws tantrums. Been known to wet himself on occasion.”

  The mention of fatherhood reminded me. “Wait, I have something for you.”

  I had knitted Tib a pair of socks on the voyage back. Or tried to. Swelling seas hampered an effort already flawed by lack of skill. Still, I had produced something that could be put on a baby’s foot. They were in my room, so I ran up the stairs, took the socks from my top drawer, and hurried back down to the kitchen. They weren’t wrapped, but I reasoned, better unwrapped than never.

  Presenting the woolly bundles, I said, “For Tib. They’re socks. I thought green went with either boy or girl and … Irish.”

  Michael Behan looked at the tiny tangles of wool, taking one in each hand with a bemused smile.

  “Knitting might not be my forte,” I confessed.

  “No, they’re…” Adjectives seemed to fail him. “I was just thinking of them on his feet. Or … her feet. The baby’s.” He looked up. “Thank you, this is very kind.”

  I smiled, pleased that he seemed pleased. Then it occurred to me that gifting his wife with socks made by a woman she had never met and likely never heard of might be awkward.

  “If you want to say they’re from someone at work…”

  “No! No, of course I’ll tell Maeve. She’s a stickler for thank-you notes.” I nodded in vague approval. “I can’t believe you made something for him.”

  He held up one of the socks. “That’s going to be on his foot. In two months. He’ll be here and have feet. That need socks.” He grinned, thrilled anew by the prospect of his child. Putting them in his pocket, he said, “And he’ll have a fine pair.”

  “Or…”

  “Or she will. And I’ll…”

  He paused and the pause became possibility. Then he nudged the socks deeper into his pocket with a brief smile and again said thank you. I said he was welcome. And that I hoped they fit.

  I looked to the window to see the sky already lightening. Louise would not be rising anytime soon. But I didn’t sleep well once the sun was up and I had two hours at best. Today would not be an easy day. Perhaps thinking the same, Behan said he should be going. I let him out the back door. He trundled down the steps, then turned.

  “So, this show. You think it’ll really open, dead producer and all?”

  “Believe me, it’ll take far more than a dead body to stop Leo Hirschfeld opening Two Loves Have I. Unless it’s his own, of course.”

  8

  “The show must go on” was first uttered in the last century during a circus performance in which the lion got the better of the tamer. In order to distract the audience from the blood in the hay and the arm that rested three feet from its former owner, the ringmaster shouted above the snarls of the still restive lion, “The show must go on!” Thus birthing the tradition that no matter what carnage transpires, entertainment will prevail.

  This commitment to art—and the need for employment—brought Leo to the Tyler home a day later. He was admitted, given coffee, and obliged to repeat, “Yes, terrible,” several times as Louise reminded him of the horrors of last night. I know this because the pictures that lined the wall of the staircase outside the living room were very dusty and required me to pause there for a lengthy period of time.

  Finally, he said, “I am going to pay a call on Mrs. Warburton to express my condolences. I would be grateful if you would come with me, Mrs. Tyler.”

  “But I don’t know her socially. Perhaps Mrs. Hirschfeld…”

  “Violet has a headache. A terrible, terrible headache.”

  I smiled. The former Violet Tempest was not a personality suited to bereavement calls; soothing widows would not be her métier.

  Soothing widows was not at the forefront of Leo’s mind either. As he explained to Louise, “I’m afraid we have to persuade Mrs. Warburton that the best memorial to her husband would be the final show he worked on.”

  “Of course it would,” said Louise.

  “And that the show—this marvelous tribute to her husband—will not go on unless she consents to support it for just a bit longer…”

  It took Louise a moment. “You’re asking her for money.”

  “Yes, I am,” he said fervently. “Also, that she doesn’t throw us out of the theater. And I am hoping that as an investor, you will ask with me. Unless of course you’re prepared to invest further—”

  Louise made a noise of distress.

  “—which I would not dream of asking you to do.”

  The subject having turned to money, voices were lowered and it was difficult to hear what was being said. But I could hear in the pitch of the murmurs—Louise’s high and anxious, Leo’s low and urgent—that Leo was winning his argument. This was confirmed when Louise opened the door and said she would be going out this afternoon and would I find something suitable for a bereavement call?

  After lunch, as I buttoned a somber gray-and-lavender dress, she said, “Jane, I hate to ask, but would you come, too? I admire Mr. Hirschfeld greatly. But he’s so desperate about the show, I’m worried he may say the wrong thing to poor Mrs. Warburton and I don’t see how I could stop him. He’ll listen to you, I think.”

  “Won’t Mrs. Warburton think it odd, bringing your maid into her home?”

  “She’s theatrical, isn’t she? I don’t think they mind so much about those things.”

  * * *

  On the drive over, Louise had a final qualm. It couldn’t be right, could it? Discussing money with a grieving widow? “Her husband was just murdered, the poor woman must be devastated.”

  Leo said, “That is a reaso
nable assumption, Mrs. Tyler, but incorrect in this case. She liked being Mrs. Warburton. Sidney, she could take or leave.”

  Louise was right. Mrs. Warburton was theatrical. Also inconsolable. And she seemed to feel it fitting to express the second in terms of the first. If her feelings about her late husband were in any way ambivalent, it was not apparent. She received us in the parlor. Her mourning garb was the blackest of black, calling to mind famous widows such as Mrs. Lincoln and Queen Victoria. In the span of a few minutes, she made her way through as many handkerchiefs, casting the damp ones aside to be removed by a martyred-looking maid. At one point, having run through her supply, her hands fluttered, the display of grief hampered by a lack of props. Then Leo produced his own handkerchief and the weeping resumed.

  The five little Warburtons were artfully arranged on a nearby settee in order of height, the baby in its bassinet on the far left. They were all dressed in black; even the bassinet bore a black ribbon. They gazed at their mother’s distress as if used to it. For a while, we sat, with strained expressions, as Mrs. Warburton gathered the courage to speak. She seemed on the verge at several points, but then relapsed into tears. Her distress was infectious, at least to Louise, whose eyes brimmed as she suggested we return another time. The thought of losing her audience threw Mrs. Warburton into fresh paroxysms of anguish and all hope of escape was abandoned. Glancing at the clock, I thought it was possible we would not be home in time for dinner.

  Leo was unfazed by the histrionics, patting Mrs. Warburton’s hand and maintaining an expression of deep concern for longer than I would have thought him capable. He directed the maid to bring fresh handkerchiefs and a cup of tea (a wave of the finger suggested the addition of spirits), and threw around suitable Shakespeare—“We shall not see his like again,” and so forth. Occasionally, he glanced at Louise to indicate Not much longer.

  It was an awkward scene. Sitting in silence through so much noisy mourning became a strain. The first Warburton child pinched the second. The fourth slid its foot over the foot of the third and pressed down. The second dug vigorously in its nose. A sudden odor told us the baby had released its lunch, at which point, Leo called for the governess, who took the children upstairs.

  Spotting a scrapbook open to a portrait of the man himself, Louise said, “Oh, Mrs. Warburton, may I look?”

  Mrs. Warburton gulped. Then sat up. “It was my little hobby, keeping a record of Sidney’s work for posterity. He’s made so many careers, helped so many people. Given so much joy…”

  Sifting through the pages with a reverent finger, Louise said, “Why, these are wonderful.”

  They were rather wonderful—photos, articles, and advertisements going back at least thirty years. One showed a young woman in tights sitting picturesquely on a motorbike, a banner over her head proclaiming, THE GIRL WHO FLIRTS WITH DEATH! The next was a dark gentleman billed as “The Egyptian Enigma” spewing flame into the air. Another showed a man in high collar and pomaded hair holding a duck. Louise, who loved animals, said, “Oh, how sweet.”

  “Yes, they sang together,” said Mrs. Warburton.

  Louise blinked, then pointed to a picture of three ladies standing with a large drum that bore the name “The Celebrated Cherry Sisters.”

  “What was their talent?”

  “Nothing.” Mrs. Warburton sniffed. “No, truly, nothing. They couldn’t sing, couldn’t dance, and they weren’t funny. Sidney brought them to New York and billed them as the worst act in the world. Then he supplied the audience with rotten fruit and encouraged them to throw it at the stage. They sold out for ten straight weeks.”

  “That’s a difficult way to make a living,” said Louise.

  “Sidney gave them their living,” said Mrs. Warburton sharply. Then she sighed. “Oh, look, Mr. Warburton outside the Folly in Chicago. That’s where we met, you know.”

  I looked at the picture, Mr. Warburton, his hair dark, surrounded by a full vaudeville troupe. It was a merry gathering: ladies in colored tights, tumblers with clown hats. The singer held his duck in his arms, a man in oversize shoes tipped a top hat. The musicians stood with their instruments, cello, trombone. My eye settled on a stout, serious man with a violin who, unlike the rest, refused to smile for the camera. There was something familiar in the shape of his face, but I could not place it.

  Turning the page, Mrs. Warburton said, “And there’s Zoltan the Mighty.”

  There he certainly was in a studio portrait that took up the entire page. An immensely muscled man holding his mighty arms aloft, his foot firmly fixed on an apathetic-looking lion. He wore nothing but laced sandals and the most minuscule of fig leaves. A clipping from a poster read, “The man who lifts train cars with his powerful pinky!”

  “I saw him when I was a kid,” said Leo. “Whatever happened to him?”

  “… Retired,” said Mrs. Warburton, turning to a poster with several acts, one of which was a family group: father, mother, and two daughters with the largest hair bows I’d ever seen. Billed as “The Flying O’Briens,” they were pictured grinning inanely as they flew, tumbled, and stood atop one another’s shoulders. Opposite this was a photo of the Dancing Hollyhocks, “three lovely maids ready to dance into your heart.”

  Then Mrs. Warburton turned the page to reveal a poster of a dark-haired man striking a romantic pose. The headline read, HOW HE YEARNS FOR “SHE OF THE EMERALD EYES”!

  Louise gasped. “That’s Mr. Arden, isn’t it?”

  I said, “I suppose that was before he met Mrs. Arden,” then worried I was not meant to speak.

  But Mrs. Warburton took no offense. “Yes, it was Sidney who introduced them.”

  Recalling the lovely tale of eyes met across the footlights, I wondered how the producer had been involved. But maybe it was just habit for the Warburtons to take credit for things. Romeo and Juliet? Yes, we introduced them. Such a shame how that turned out.

  It was another half hour before Mrs. Warburton turned to the final page, which was an image of Warburton and Leo shaking hands to celebrate their new partnership. Both men bent at the waist, heads meeting in the middle, one gray, one dark; whatever their feelings, they showed broad smiles to the camera. Behind them, the Ardens beamed. I was surprised not to see Violet or Nedda, but perhaps they had not yet been cast.

  This gave Leo his opening. Taking her hand, he said, “It would be a tragedy if Sidney’s legacy ended there.”

  “Sidney’s legacy will never end! It will live on in his performers. They are his gift to the world…”

  “Of course,” said Leo, stemming the tide. “And if he had died in peace at home, that’s just how people would remember him. But he didn’t. And you don’t want his name linked to Floyd Lombardo’s forever.”

  I could feel Louise holding her breath, nervous that Leo would mention the toilet. But the thought of shared billing had given Mrs. Warburton pause.

  “If we could just keep the show going until it opens,” said Leo.

  “I know very little about business,” she murmured. “You feel confident of its success?”

  “Never more confident of anything in my life,” he said, and I thought that that was probably true.

  In the end, Mrs. Warburton agreed to continue supporting Two Loves Have I until opening night. There were conditions. The revenue breakdown between Leo and Warburton had been ridiculously uneven from the start. Now it was made more so. Also, Leo would write a song, an anthem in praise of her husband’s generous pioneering spirit and the theater he loved. All royalties would be placed in trust for the five little Warburtons. So that they might remember their father.

  * * *

  Leo rode back with us to the Tyler house, full of praise for Louise’s masterful handling of the conversation. “I knew it,” he said. “I knew you would be the person to persuade her. Pulling out the scrapbook? Brilliant! If I’d been on my own, I would have botched it completely.”

  That had been Louise’s concern and now she blushed as if found out. “Really, I don’t
see that I did anything much.”

  “No,” said Leo. “You didn’t do anything. You were simply yourself, that’s why it worked, Mrs. Tyler.”

  I could see that the idea that she could be her natural self and accomplish things was heady stuff for Louise, as was Leo, ebullient and enraptured beside her. I was glad when we pulled up at the house and I could remind Louise she was due at the elderly Mrs. Ogilvie’s for tea. Regretfully telling Horst she would go straight there, she let me and Leo out of the car. But she could not stop herself from asking when rehearsals would resume.

  “Tomorrow,” said Leo. “You’ll be there, won’t you?”

  “Of course,” she said with new certainty, and the Ghost rolled down the block.

  Leaving me on the street with Leo.

  As far as I was concerned, it had been a day of crying, lying, and nose-picking; I was not in the mood for further challenge. With a short, “Good day, Mr. Hirschfeld,” I headed toward the back door.

  “Well, at least now you’re talking to me.”

  Angry to be accused of sulking—and unsettled by the car ride—I snapped, “I talk to you, Leo.”

  For a moment, I wrestled: dignity versus fury. Fury won. “But perhaps you don’t hear me because I’m not wiggling down a staircase showing my rump to all and sundry.” He opened his mouth; a compliment was coming. I shouted over him, “Something that, strangely enough, in all my years of domestic service, I have never once seen a maid do. Not even in France.”

  Seeing I couldn’t be charmed, he opted for, “That was Vi’s act before the show.”

  “Yes, I see why you married her. It’s all quite … obvious.”

  “Don’t discount the obvious. The obvious is pretty powerful stuff.”

  The shot landed, making me feel tired and hopeless. If it was all about that—and only that—why bother talking? I turned back toward the house.

  “As you well know,” he added.

  Wheeling back around, I said, “Do you know what else is obvious? That despite Miss Tempest’s—excuse me, Mrs. Hirschfeld’s—abundant charms, they’re not enough.”