“They’re the lucky ones, you know, kid.”
“I tell myself this.”
“It’s one good thing about being a sports writer.” He took a drink. “The swells stay away from us. They read our stuff, but we ink-stained wretches are well beneath their notice.”
“Yes. No one puts you on display to show their friends how cultured they are.”
“That would be a very unwise idea.”
“ ‘Unwise idea,’” Montezuma contributed.
Preston turned with a wide smile and held his hand out. “Love the birdie.”
Montezuma swooped down to greet him and took a sniff of his drink. “Not for birdie!”
We humans laughed. Preston had said that, at considerable volume, the first time Montezuma sniffed at his drink, and it was now a tradition between them.
“No, ‘not for birdie.’” He stroked the bird’s head. “Good to see you, as always, Montezuma.”
The bird whistled happily, then flew back to his perch.
“He is a sweet creature, for a parrot.”
“That, he is.”
“And you two are sweet kids.”
Preston is probably the only person in the world who would describe Tommy and me as “sweet kids.” We are, to some degree, substitute family. His wife and only child died in a cholera epidemic decades ago, and while he’s apparently filled the emptiness with a succession of pretty and amiable barmaids, we are special to him.
“And you are sweet to us.”
He grinned, and the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes crinkled. “It’s nice to come home to you two for a change. No touring for a while?”
“San Francisco in the late summer. Just a few weeks. Then home to premiere a new opera.”
“A new one?”
“Louis, my accompanist, has written a piece, The Princes in the Tower, to feature Marie de l’Artois and me as the princes.”
Preston is not an opera expert, but he does know his English History. “Ah, two lovely blondes in doublets and hose singing away. A license to print money.”
“That’s what Tommy said. The music is good, too.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” he said with a knowing smile, “but I’m glad for you that it is.”
“It is. All of the elements of a great success are there, and Marie is willing, so it will be a very happy fall in the city.”
“Excellent. Perhaps it will take away the sting of the Giants’ inevitable decline.”
I laughed. “Something will have to.”
“At least we sports writers can drink.”
“Just a drop, for medicinal reasons.” We clinked glasses and sipped.
“Your friend Hetty turned in a bang-up article on lady fans, by the way.”
“Oh, good. Do you think—”
“Morrison still has no idea what to do with her.” Preston shook his head. “And baseball writing isn’t the answer.”
“After she was banned from the press box, I had my doubts,” I admitted.
“She might do better to keep her eyes open for a good exposé story. It’s worked for other women reporters.”
“Good advice. Did you tell her?”
“You should pass it on, quietly, as a friend.” He shrugged. “I don’t have any doubt about her abilities, or about women’s competence in general—”
“Good thing.” I gave him a hard glance.
“But it’s a harsh world, kid, and the world looks at women a particular way.”
I nodded. “It sure does look at women in a particular way.”
He heard something in my voice and gazed sharply at my face. “I don’t have to have a word with anyone about that society party today, do I?”
“No, no. An acquaintance shooed one of my admirers away, and all was well.”
I was perhaps too quick to offer reassurance, but I had terrible visions of Preston buttonholing the Captain of Industry. That was quite all any of us needed.
“‘An acquaintance’?”
“Ah,” I started, trying to figure out how much I should explain, or could, without giving Preston the guilty knowledge of a story he should pursue, and would not, for our sake.
“Is this the duke that Tommy tells me has been visiting?”
“Yes. Exactly.” I felt a trace of a blush as Preston smiled, and I quickly continued. “He’s trying to find out what happened to a relative that I happened to know. Nothing interesting.”
Preston’s sharp gray eyes rested on me for a moment. “No?”
“No.” I looked away as I tried to skim swiftly over those odd electrical disturbances, not to mention the waltz.
“Ella, dear, you can sell that nonsense to Tommy and his priest friend, but I’m a man of the world. I know what it means when a woman doesn’t want to talk about a man, the way you don’t want to talk about your duke.”
“And as a man of the world,” I told him sternly, “you no doubt know that anything a duke would be willing to offer an opera singer is not something I’d be willing to take.”
“Fifty years ago, I would have agreed with you. And probably punched him in the nose.” He took a sip of his whisky. “Now, who knows?”
“What are you saying?”
“You would be furious if anyone judged you based on where you were born, and to whom, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course.”
“So . . .” Preston raised his glass to me with a smile.
I shook my head. “It’s all probably just some kind of electrical disturbance in the atmosphere.”
“Tell Uncle Preston.”
My blush bloomed into full, embarrassing effect. “It’s nothing. Just some sort of strange . . .”
He smiled as I trailed off. “Some kind of electricity when your hands touched?”
“Yes, all right?”
“And you strongly suspect he’s feeling the same.”
“At least once.”
Preston grinned. “This has never happened to you before.”
“Ever.”
“Well, life comes for us all, Ella. Now you and your duke will have to decide what you do about it.”
“He’s not my duke.”
“Yet.” He took another sip, then looked at me for a long second and shrugged. “On to far more important matters. I hear the lovely Mrs. Grazich was kind enough to leave some kind of cake for us starving scribes.”
“Yes.” As I took a relieved sip of my own, I remembered that odd comment from Mrs. G a few days back and watched him. “I believe it involves gingerbread and lemon curd.”
He beamed. “Now that is a worthy topic of discussion.”
“Preston!” Tommy called. “We’re starting the card game!”
The writer stood and gave me a slightly teasing bow. “My public calls.”
“Indeed. Good luck.”
“I’ll need it with that crew.”
“Set the headline!” Montezuma called after him.
I was smiling, too, as I returned to poor Anne Boleyn in the tower.
Chapter 23
At Her Mentor’s Knee
Next morning, I set out to beard the lion in her den, rising early and dressing in my very best off-the-stage diva style. I knew I would need it when I met Lady Frances’s vocal teacher. As Lentini’s protégée, and a considerable success in my own right, I was automatically on the wrong side of the discussion. Even in our enlightened age, men still tend to intimidate in very blunt ways: size, status, weaponry. Women are more subtle, but woe be unto she who goes into battle without the proper armor. For me, that cool and sunny Monday, it meant a lilac-striped silk morning dress, covered by a short, soft wool cape in a deep purple, with black nutria fur trim, and my best new spring hat. My chapeau was a lilac confection piled with ostrich feathers, barely purple at the tips, to deep heliotrope at the ends. No jewels—we know I don’t go in for that, but the latest fashions in the finest materials made the point well enough.
Tommy drifted past as I checked myself in the hall mirror. “Who’s earned thi
s? Is the duke’s mother in town?”
“Indeed not,” I snorted. “Madame LaFontaine.”
Tommy grimaced. Being a manager, he heard things I didn’t. “Not a nice lady.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Why are you poking that particular hornet’s nest?”
“She was Lady Frances’s teacher.”
He shook his head. “I think I’d drink nicotine before I’d take a voice lesson with that one. The book on her is very short, and not sweet.”
I turned to him.
“Poison mean, Heller.” He looked me over. “At least to anyone who can’t fight back. You should be all right, as long as you don’t let her get to you.”
I nodded.
Tommy leaned against the banister and studied me for a moment. “You’re going to a lot of trouble for this duke character. He’d best appreciate it.”
“You’re not going to have a word,” I told him.
“No.” He smiled. “But I will permit him to have a word or two with you if he asks nicely.”
“I’m not sure I want him to.”
“You’re not sure you don’t, either.”
I sighed.
“Ah. Well, he is a tall, dark man, and Mother said . . .”
“There is no second sight.”
“‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio. . . ’”
I glared at him. “And Horatio is probably a tall, dark and troublesome man, too.”
“We can only hope.”
“Have a lovely morning.” I got on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek, then swept out, chuckling, as Toms had no doubt intended.
* * *
Madame Desiree LaFontaine (also probably not born with that name, not that I had any idea what it might once have been) had spent an eminently respectable career in the opera houses of Europe and across the United States. A coloratura soprano, with excellent range and crisp technique, she’d done quite nicely for herself. However, she was just that one tiny notch below Lentini’s level. Close enough to see the Promised Land, but not to sing there, if you will. If Lentini hadn’t discovered my gift for the trouser repertoire, I might well have found myself in a similar position. As I’d told Saint Aubyn, I was vocally capable of singing many important soprano roles, just not with the amazing quality that separates the star from the merely good. Unlike me, though, LaFontaine never found a place to show off her special gifts. It’s entirely possible she never had them.
With that insight, I was not unsympathetic when I walked into Madame LaFontaine’s apartment, on the middle level of a town house much like mine, though about twenty blocks farther up the island of Manhattan. It was still a respectable area of town; my favorite bookstore was a few doors down from her home, and a music store that I occasionally frequented was a block or so away.
LaFontaine, who was likely just a bit older than Lentini, had apparently retired without anyone’s noticing a few years before, which, in itself, would have been painful. When Lentini retired, there was a gala final performance in New York and a farewell tour. It was undoubtedly satisfying to bask in the praise, but it was also very helpful in setting her up for a prosperous retirement in Amalfi. As a lesser light, LaFontaine had apparently taken her final bow with no such parting gifts, and was now, as Louis had put it, teaching “a few promising students.” Financially promising, at least.
A very, very young and beleaguered-looking maid, probably Irish, answered the bell; she guided me into a dingy foyer. I gave her my card and asked if I might call on Madame LaFontaine, and she whispered a “Yes, miss,” which confirmed my guess about her country of origin, and scuttled away.
A few moments later, an impossibly small, but ramrod-straight, woman walked into the room. LaFontaine was wearing a wine-colored crepe tea gown, with her steel-streaked iron hair in a low knot. She had extraordinary eyes, brown and bottomless, and she was unmistakably wearing kohl around them. A dab of lip rouge, too, unless I missed my guess.
“Ella Shane,” she pronounced, looking up at me with poisonous intensity. “Or should I say, little Ellen O’Shaughnessy?”
It wasn’t a happy-home-days moment. It was a deliberate effort to slap me back to where I’d come from. I kept my gaze steady. Better than she had tried. “Madame LaFontaine.”
“Do you ever hear from Lentini?”
“We correspond frequently.” I smiled politely. “She is like a second mother to me.”
“She’s in Amalfi now, with that awful little Fritzel?”
“I would rather say, retired to a sunny place with the love of her life.”
“‘Love.’” LaFontaine’s still-generous mouth twisted. “Never mind that. Get the jewelry. And if he can’t give you any, don’t love him.”
I felt my eyes widening, but I replied coolly, “I’ve never been fond of jewels.”
“Then you’re a fool.” She shook her head. “The only reason to do this is to do well for yourself. And singing alone won’t do it.”
“That may have been, so many years ago. It is not now.” I returned, denying her any reaction. “In any case, I am not here for advice on ordering my life.”
LaFontaine snorted. “Then what are you here for?”
“A little insight on your late student, Miss Saint Claire.”
“The pretty one who ended up dead.”
She did not seem especially bothered by the fact as she shrugged and waved me into her studio, a dim room dominated by an old piano, with a lovely view of the wall of the town house next door, seen between dusty velvet curtains that had probably once been a reddish color. LaFontaine stopped at a peeling ebony veneer occasional table, turned over a chipped glass and picked up a clearly well-used decanter of amber liquid. “Would you like a brandy?”
“Thank you, no. I have fencing practice later today, and brandy and swords don’t mix.” Especially at ten in the morning, I thought.
“Suit yourself.” She motioned me to a somewhat-worn red plush chair, then poured the tumbler halfway filled before settling onto the matching settee opposite me. La Fontaine took a sip, gave a faint smile and squinted up into my eyes. Her smile was replaced by an appraising scowl. “What are you looking at? Judge when you’re in your seventh decade with no family, and nothing but the memory of a career.”
That was rather awfully close to home, but even so, I could not imagine what brandy at breakfast time would do to improve my lot. Other than perhaps dull the pain, which might well have been the point. I wanted to dislike her, but instead I pitied her.
And she saw it, which only made her dislike me more. “All right, get to it and get out. I don’t wish to look at Lentini’s last protégée any longer than I have to.”
“I merely wanted to know how long Miss Saint Claire studied with you, what you were studying and what you thought of her talent.”
“I thought she should go marry a man who sounded as posh as she did and stop taking singing jobs away from women who need them.”
I just stared at her, feeling almost assaulted by the poison in her voice.
“I taught her because I needed the money. She wasn’t any better or any worse than a hundred other singers.”
“I found some music in her things, sheets for Aida and the Queen of the Night.”
LaFontaine was midway through another slug of her brandy, and she laughed, choked and coughed. “That one?”
“Yes, I think she was trying to learn them.”
“Good for her,” sneered the teacher. “Strain the top register and have nothing left.”
I nodded. “That’s what I’d have been afraid of.”
She looked at me, the poison momentarily ebbing away to a canny assessment. “You’re quite sharp. Don’t put anything past those Lower East Side kids.”
“Something like that. So you wouldn’t have worked on those with her?”
“Hell no.” The profanity came all too easily to her lips. “And I’d have told her to stop at once. Understand, I didn’t like her. I don’t like anyon
e. But I also wouldn’t help someone destroy herself.”
The choice of words was a stopper, since, accidentally or not, that was exactly what Frances had done. I took a breath.
LaFontaine took another drink. This one ended up where it belonged. “I told her, take it slow, wait for your voice to mature, see what you can really do.”
“Good advice.”
“Only if you take it.” She shook her head. “If she was working on those roles that young, she was taking a terrible risk.”
I nodded. “What should she have been doing?”
“Exactly what she was doing with you. Nice light role, get used to the strain of performing. Then slowly start working your way up to harder things.”
“Was she planning to come back to you after the tour?”
“Probably not. She wrote me asking if I could recommend someone in Philadelphia. And, of course, there is no one. There’s barely civilization in Philadelphia.”
I couldn’t entirely suppress a chuckle. We’d played the City of Brotherly Love on the last tour, and it was actually a very acceptable place, with sophisticated and appreciative audiences. But, of course, it’s not New York. Nothing is.
“So that’s all?” LaFontaine asked, looking into her almost-empty glass.
“I think so.”
“Good. I’ve got a contralto coming at ten-thirty. So go.”
I rose and managed a social smile. “Thank you for your time, Madame.”
She gave me a nod and growl, and I didn’t look back as I walked toward the door. But her voice rang out again as I put my hand on the tarnished brass knob.
“You think the music saved you, don’t you?”
I froze.
“Don’t count on it, Ellen O’Shaughnessy. It just might eat you alive.”
I straightened my spine and just kept moving as her bitter cackle followed me out the door.
* * *
Her laugh was still echoing in my head as I walked down the stairs and turned the corner—to nearly walk into three little girls standing in front of the bookseller’s window.
“I’m so sorry,” I said quickly as they looked up at me. They weren’t from one of the most unfortunate families; they were clean and their clothes, while worn, were neatly kept. They didn’t look hungry, either, at least not for food. The oldest one, who might have been ten, was looking in the window of Harrier’s Bookstore like it was the Promised Land.
A Fatal Finale Page 17
