A Fatal Finale

by Kathleen Marple Kalb

  Gingerly I put a hand on Saint Aubyn’s free arm and leaned down to try and wake him. His eyes opened halfway and he smiled sleepily up at me. “Shane.”

  Oh, my. This must be what it’s like waking up with a man. I pushed the thought away and cleared my throat as I pulled back, putting some safe distance between us. “Looks like you and the Morsel managed to make a truce.”

  “Um, right, Miss Shane.” He blinked a couple of times as he fully awoke. “He isn’t a bad sort, as you said.”

  I smiled. “Neither are you. Thank you for watching him. Anna will be down to collect him in a moment.”

  “I actually rather enjoyed it. I haven’t spent much time around wee ones. They’re quite nice in small doses.”

  “The Morsel isn’t representative. Most of them are nasty, snotty little beasts.” Unless Marie’s bunch is counted as well.

  He laughed lightly, not enough to wake the Morsel. “Voice of experience?”

  “My aunt took me in when I was eight. I helped care for the babies, a new one every year.”

  “Ah. That’s why you’ve never married.”

  I shrugged. “Marriage is a rotten deal for a woman.”

  “Depends on who’s setting the terms, Miss Shane.”

  Our eyes held for several measures. In another world, another life, this might have been important, the moment where acquaintances move to something else. But for the Duke of Whatever and an Irish-Jewish “theater person,” it was nothing at all.

  “I’m sorry, miss.” Anna burst in. “He’s been watching Morrie?”

  “And quite competently, too.” I cut my eyes to Saint Aubyn with a conspirator’s smile.

  “Well, thank you, sir,” Anna said, settling on an ambiguous honorific, since she didn’t know for dukes, and—as we’ve already established—considered him one odd fish.

  “It’s been my pleasure.” He had an almost wistful expression as he carefully handed over the still-sleeping boy, then looked again at me over his head. “Truly.”

  “He’s a sunshiny little fellow, for sure,” Anna said with a smile as her boy snuggled into her shoulder, recognizing his mama even in sleep, then relaxing in her arms.

  Louis came down the stairs. “Looks like he’s gotten his nap, at least.”

  “Indeed,” Saint Aubyn said as he stood and straightened his tie.

  “Thank you again. See you tomorrow, Miss Ella.” Anna very deliberately looked from the duke to me and gave me a bright smile. Odd fish, but good catch? I wondered. I shook my head and handed the Morsel’s bag to Louis.

  “Thank you. And thanks for an excellent vocalization session, Louis.”

  “You were very good.” He grinned. “Montezuma was not in his best form.”

  We all laughed softly, so as not to wake the Morsel, and I watched them go, fighting down a wave of unfamiliar emptiness.

  “These days, I believe, it is possible to stop at one.” Saint Aubyn was standing behind me, his voice gentler than I was used to.

  A respectable maiden lady should have slugged him for even hinting at such matters. Especially a respectable maiden lady who was quietly supporting Dr. Silver’s efforts. But I’d opened the door with my earlier comment about my youth, and he clearly didn’t mean it as any sort of insult.

  He turned to pick up his jacket, then saw the newspapers. “Your friend really did write an admirable account.”

  “She also wrote the intriguing item two columns over.” It had caught my eye because it hadn’t been in the bulldog edition and probably came in later.

  “Ah, yes. ‘Theater District Pawnbroker Arrested With Stolen Goods.’ ”

  “Should I suspect that someone tipped her off?” I watched his face.

  “One wouldn’t give a friendly lady reporter flowers, would one?”

  “One would give her information.”

  “One would.” He shrugged. “Frances sold two of the drops there. If we assume she sold another to pay her passage, there are two unaccounted for.”

  “It raises a question.”

  “One that I’m trying to answer now.” He looked down at the other paper in his hand. “I didn’t know you read the yellow sheets.”

  “I don’t. Rosa does.”

  Saint Aubyn’s face tightened as he read the item. “You were absolutely right about Mrs. Corbyn.”

  “There’s a dollar princess for the taking, if you want her.”

  “I’d rather let the castle crumble over my head, thank you. I can always earn my living as a barrister, if it came to that, and the rest of the clan can shift for themselves.”

  The comment was so shocking that I laughed.

  “I’m quite serious, Miss Shane. I don’t need some grasping mama feeding gossip to the papers in hopes of a coronet.”

  “Of course, you don’t,” I said. “I wasn’t laughing at you.”

  “I know.” He scanned the paper again, then looked at me very closely. “Does she know that you don’t enjoy singing ‘Ave Maria’? Or why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, in the absence of proof to the contrary, we will add it to her account.”

  “Oh.”

  He looked down at me, suddenly reminding me of Toms or Preston when they’re offering to “have a word” on my behalf.

  “It’s one thing to try to play the press. It’s another entirely to be deliberately cruel. Especially to someone who does her best to be kind.”

  At that, I felt almost weepy, and if he’d been Tommy, I probably would have put my head on his shoulder. As it was, Saint Aubyn made a vague move in my direction, and I didn’t back away.

  Fortunately, Tommy himself blew in just then.

  “Heller, how do you feel about the opera house in San Francisco?”

  I stepped back, took a breath and forced myself into some kind of demeanor. “Somewhat overrated, but they paid well last time.”

  The duke stepped back, too, looking almost guilty.

  “Perhaps you would like to stay for dinner,” I offered, “since we never did get a chance to discuss—”

  “I have an evening engagement.” His voice was cool and polite, despite his strange unguarded expression. “I’m sorry.”

  The duke bowed to me and shook Tommy’s hand. He was clearly still quite displeased about “The Lorgnette” item, and who could blame him? As I saw him to the door, I realized I was shivering and picked up the afghan from the chaise where he and the Morsel had been napping; I wrapped it around myself. It was still warm and smelled faintly of milk, cookies and also something very definitely adult male.

  “Cold?”

  “A little.”

  “Stay warm, Miss Shane,” Saint Aubyn said as we walked into the foyer. Something flickered in the icy blue eyes, and I knew he was thinking some of the same things I was, none of which were appropriate.

  “You too.”

  He pulled the afghan a little tighter around my shoulders, then rested his hands over mine where I was holding the fabric, and just left them there for a moment. This time, it wasn’t electricity, but the simple warmth of his skin soaking into mine, the two of us comfortable and safe and together. It was nothing, and it was everything.

  Finally he took a breath and backed away.

  “Good night, then.” He bowed gracefully again and walked out.

  I watched him go, trying to figure out what on earth had just happened to me.

  “Heller, do you want him?”

  Trust Tommy to get to the heart of the matter. But “want” was such a small and basic word for whatever this was. It didn’t feel like some dirty little bit of business that should rightly be ignored by a respectable artist. It felt more like whole pieces of the earth shifting beneath my feet, rearranging themselves in some entirely new pattern, all somehow related to what was probably desire for Saint Aubyn, along with warmth and admiration for his gentleness with the Morsel. A shocking combination of feelings, accompanied by an incredibly shocking thought: I’m nobody’s whore, but I would
n’t mind being the mother of that man’s child. Even though I knew there was almost certainly no honorable way for that to happen.

  Worse, I found myself thinking about how it might actually happen, honorably or not. I may be active in helping married women not have children, but like any nicely-brought-up unmarried woman, I have only the vaguest idea of how exactly the having takes place. “Your man will tell you what you need to know on your wedding night” was all the information Aunt Ellen had offered me years before. I had never cared to pursue the matter further. I wondered what exactly Saint Aubyn might tell me if he were my man. If he were my man.

  Deep and dangerous ideas, these.

  I turned, quite honestly stunned by my thoughts, and tried to snap back into my normal self. “I don’t need that kind of trouble.”

  “But what fun trouble it would be.” Tommy grinned. “Mother said a tall, dark man would bring you trouble.”

  “Trouble, indeed.”

  “Admit it. You’re at least a little smitten.”

  “Neither here nor there.” And it was leading nowhere good.

  “You’d make a lovely duchess, after all.”

  “I doubt that’s on offer, and I’m a much better diva, anyway. Besides, I like our life.”

  “So do I. But we may want to expand the cast a bit.” He looked hard at me for a second. “He may not be the one you choose, but sooner or later, you’re going to come down off the barricades, Heller.”

  “Not tonight, though.” I stiffened my spine and smiled at him. “I believe Mrs. Grazich made her famous roasted chicken for dinner.”

  “Excellent.”

  “And you can tell me what we’re doing in San Francisco. . .”

  Chapter 28

  All a Lady Has Is Her Reputation

  Next morning, the rain, the cold and the weird and uncomfortable ideas they’d brought with them were gone. With the return of the sun came the return of my senses. No doubt, I enjoyed the duke’s company, and, no doubt, I was indeed giving some contemplation to the idea that I might want to take Lentini’s advice and make sure I did not miss out on motherhood. But these were two entirely separate things, and it was wise to keep that in mind. And it’s a well-known scientific fact that all manner of electrical disturbances take place during rainstorms.

  In any case, I had more pressing matters to consider. I was at my dressing table, getting ready for a velocipede ride with Hetty, when I picked up the tin of lip salve. I then remembered the box of cartes de visite in Frances’s trunk. Upon reflection, I was quite certain it had been Mrs. Redfern’s, the tonic Mr. Chalfont had mentioned. I wondered if that would help Hetty in her exposé efforts.

  I found out soon enough, when she insisted on parking her velocipede at the town house and walking over to Dr. Silver’s clinic, still in our sports costumes and straw hats.

  “And let’s stop at a druggist along the way to get a bottle of this poison.”

  “Mr. Chalfont won’t sell it, as you know. I don’t know where the next nearest is.”

  We ended up walking a bit out of our neighborhood, to a slightly less respectable block, and finally found one. It was nowhere near as clean and elegant as Mr. Chalfont’s establishment, but we were able to purchase a bottle of Mrs. Redfern’s evil potion from the shopgirl, who was a little wide-eyed at the sight of two nice ladies in velocipede costumes looking for beauty tonics.

  “That’s a good one,” she assured me as she rang it up. “You definitely know it’s working.”

  Hetty shook her head. “It’s not working. It’s making you sick. A girl who took too much of this died not long ago.”

  The shopgirl, who was younger than Lady Frances had been, stared at Hetty. “They can’t sell anything that’s dangerous, can they?”

  “Actually, they can. That’s the problem.”

  “Well, that’s just wrong. And this one . . . they make it right here in the City.” She pointed to an address on the back of the box, just a few more blocks away.

  Hetty and I exchanged glances. We might have to pay a visit after our talk with Dr. Silver.

  “Look,” Hetty said to the girl, “just be careful of yourself and don’t use things like this.”

  “You’re beautiful enough, as it is,” I added with perfect truth. Her skin was golden rather than fashionably ashen pale, and her hair curly and black, so she may not have felt like a beauty in a world that honors pale angels. But she was a striking young thing with warm dark eyes and features that held the promise of adult beauty. If she let herself grow up.

  By some arcane miracle, Dr. Silver happened to be between patients when we arrived, and was willing to give us five minutes. Nurse Irma gave our sports costumes a deserved dirty look as we passed, but left it at that. I suspect we were far from the most shocking thing she’d seen, even that day. The doctor waved us into her office, then sat down, not entirely successfully concealing her pleasure at being able to sit for a moment.

  “I’m actually very glad you came by.” She pushed her glasses back up on her nose. “I have a few more thoughts on that poor girl.”

  “Really?”

  She nodded. “She didn’t just wake up one morning and start doing this. She may have had a history, or—”

  “She did.”

  As I spoke, the doctor and I both looked at Hetty. She shrugged. “The story is the medications, not poor Frances. Anything about her stays between us.”

  “All right,” Dr. Silver said. “If she had a history of this, and had stopped, something must have made her start again.”

  “‘Something’?”

  “A concern, a problem in her life, some kind of strain.”

  I thought of the scores in the trunk, and what Louis had said about her upper range sounding raspy in vocalization. “What about the knowledge that she was harming her voice by trying to sing music she wasn’t ready for?”

  “I really don’t know. You’re the singer—would that be a significant disappointment?”

  “If I wanted to sing roles I feared I would never be able to sing, absolutely yes.”

  The doctor looked at me over her glasses. “Then you have your answer.” She turned to Hetty, who was holding the box. “Is that what she was using?”

  “We think so.” Hetty handed it over.

  She looked at the bottle, opened it, sniffed at the liquid inside and grimaced. “I can’t tell much from this, and, of course, there’s no list of ingredients. I can tell you there’s little or no alcohol, so that was not a part of it.”

  “It’s made in New York City.” I tapped the address on the box.

  “Is it, now?” Her eyes narrowed. “I should love to have a word with the maker.”

  “We may do just that,” Hetty said grimly.

  “Just remember, even though we believe it’s wrong, they have the right to sell whatever they like. Unless it’s an abortifacient, it’s legal.”

  I nodded. “That’s right. There’ve been raids.”

  Dr. Silver’s face tightened a little. “Well, those unregulated nostrums are terribly dangerous. The problem is that the police sometimes come after people who are offering women safe ways to protect themselves.”

  We were on exceedingly dangerous ground here, and all three of us knew it.

  “At any rate,” the doctor said, handing the box back to Hetty, “you can at least make Mrs. Redfern into a public scandal. That’s something.”

  Hetty and I thanked the doctor and, of course, Irma. We left them to their good work.

  “So on to the mad scientist’s laboratory?” I asked as we walked down the stairs.

  “For me, not you.” Hetty shook her head. “You can’t come with me.”

  “Are you sure?” I hated the thought of her confronting Mrs. Redfern, or whoever it might really be, alone.

  “Suppose our witch doctor recognizes you? It’ll ruin my story.”

  I sighed. She was right, of course. “I guess I am a distraction.”

  Hetty grinned at me. “Mostly, a
good one.”

  “Take Yardley, then, or Preston.”

  “It’s my story, and I’ll do it on my own.”

  “All right.” Not fair to argue that question. “Then stop by my house for a moment before you go home to change.”

  She was puzzled, but complied. My mind was much more at ease once she had my old stiletto tucked into her bag, and I’m sure hers was, too. Naturally, Hetty was still a bit nervous; the fact that she agreed to call me when she returned to the office told me the truth, even if she’d never acknowledge it. But she also promised to send a boy around with the bulldog edition, so there was no question of confidence.

  * * *

  As it happened, it was an earlier and higher-ranking messenger. Preston appeared with a copy as Tommy and I were relaxing with our books in the drawing room.

  “She’s done a bang-up job, kids.” He spread the article out on the coffee table. “This is exactly what she needs. Morrison will be happy to have his own Nellie Bly.”

  “I’m glad.” I eagerly read her vivid description of a nasty, grubby office where the potion was concocted, and the vile, toadlike man who did the compounding. And nearly fell off the settee when I got to the part where he sold Hetty a “woman’s tonic,” an offense that had already put him out of business with a little help from her Sunday-school chum the postal inspector. “Amazing.”

  “Sure enough.” Preston gave me a satisfied smile. “Looks like our girl has finally found her spot.”

  “About time,” Toms said. “Hopefully, no more baseball games.”

  I laughed. “You like baseball games.”

  “Not when Hetty and Yardley spend the whole time fighting over women’s rights.”

  Preston laughed. “That’s about right.”

  “I’m just glad it all worked out. I wanted to go with her.”

  Both men glared at me.

  “I knew I’d ruin her story.”

  “Never mind that, kid. You could have been blackmailed. No matter what excuse you offered, there’d always be a question about why you were at such a place asking about such things.”