Miss Kopp Investigates

by Amy Stewart

  “You’ll take the pictures this time,” said Mr. Ward, easily, as if it fell within the normal course of business.

  Fleurette was about to object again, or simply get up and walk out, when Mr. Ward turned to the subject of money.

  “I believe you’ll find our fees to be completely fair, Mrs. Martin,” he said, although he was pitching his voice at Fleurette. “We charge one hundred dollars to take the pictures. If you are satisfied with them—and only if you’re completely satisfied, Mrs. Martin—it’s another hundred to file the petition for divorce with the court, with the pictures entered as evidence. Then there’s our time in court. As long as Mr. Martin doesn’t put up a fight, you can expect the case to be disposed of with no more than a brief hearing. How does that sound to you?”

  “All right, I suppose,” said Alice. “I’d been told to expect to pay five hundred dollars for a divorce.”

  Five hundred dollars? And Mr. Ward had only been paying her twenty? Fleurette sat up a little straighter at that. Mr. Ward noticed.

  “Well, you can expect to pay some court fees,” he said, keeping an eye on Fleurette. “And of course it could be higher if we had a lengthy trial, like the ones you read about in the papers, but that hardly ever happens unless there’s a large family fortune to be haggled over. I don’t believe you’re afflicted with one of those, are you?”

  Alice shifted uncomfortably and said, “I only wish I was. Think of the trouble that would’ve saved me.”

  “Money’s just a different kind of trouble,” said Mr. Ward. “We can start right away, if you like. You’ll pay the hundred dollars now, directly to my associate, for her expenses. I’ll collect the rest when I have pictures to show you. Does that—ah, does that pose any difficulty for you, Mrs. Martin? It gets tricky if you don’t want your husband to know that any money’s missing.”

  “I suppose I have a few things I could sell,” she said. “Little trinkets he wouldn’t notice.”

  “A silver tray here, a bracelet there? That’s just fine. Now, if you could just put down the particulars about the theater . . .”

  There was more to it than that, but Fleurette wasn’t listening. She was calculating.

  This couldn’t be another trick, could it? She’d heard the client’s story for herself. Mr. Martin wouldn’t try to get his hands on her. He already had a girl. There was a good reason to send her to take the pictures instead of Petey: she’d have an easier time slipping backstage.

  And a hundred dollars! Was he serious about paying her all that, or did he intend to keep a share for himself ? She’d walked in with little hope of retrieving her missing jewelry and hadn’t even intended to demand that he pay her a hundred dollars for her trouble with Mr. Thorne. That had occurred to her only at the very last minute, on a rising tide of outrage.

  What if she walked out with two hundred dollars, along with the emerald?

  She could pay off every merchant in Hawthorne. Bessie could start fresh, with her credit restored. Norma and Constance would never have to know.

  She might even have enough left over to make a mortgage payment, although Fleurette hadn’t any idea what was owed or how she’d pull that off without her sisters finding out.

  If nothing else, she could slip a few needful items to Bessie and the children: new school clothes, a pair of shoes here and there . . .

  Even if she never saw Mr. Ward again (and this was her intention, still, after what he’d done), this single job—this simple, straightforward, and not at all dishonest job—would ease Bessie’s troubles considerably.

  “That’s just fine, Mrs. Martin,” Mr. Ward was saying, as Mrs. Martin handed him an envelope and he counted out the bills. “This goes directly to Miss Blossom for her trouble—”

  And there he was, handing an envelope of cash to Fleurette, which she took automatically, as anyone would do—

  “And we’ll get those pictures this Wednesday, if we possibly can. Is there anything else we can do for you today?”

  Alice looked back and forth between them, a little startled, as if she hadn’t expected to have conducted her business so briskly. “No. I suppose that’s all, then.”

  18

  “YOU SEE, IT isn’t always such a terrible thing, working for Ward & McGinnis,” Mr. Ward said, when Alice left. “That little envelope full of cash has cheered you up considerably.”

  “As long as there aren’t any unpleasant surprises.”

  “I can’t vouch for Mr. Martin, but it sounds like his interests lie elsewhere. Of course, if you feel it’s too much of a risk, I could give this one to Petey.”

  “I can handle it myself,” said Fleurette, snatching up the envelope.

  “I never doubted it.”

  It was no consolation for the way she’d been treated, but to walk out of Mr. Ward’s office two hundred dollars richer, to say nothing of the emerald hidden under her blouse, did leave Fleurette feeling victorious. She went directly to Belsky’s to pay off the account, and then stopped at every other merchant to whom the Kopps owed money, bringing Francis’s debt to zero.

  Money can’t solve every problem, but it solved this one. Fleurette walked down the sidewalk with a fine feeling of satisfaction: it was all she could do not to brush her palms together, briskly, as Norma did when she was finished pounding a fence-post.

  At home, she met with glum faces all around. The bank manager had refused to see Norma and Bessie without an appointment, and his secretary insisted that no appointments were available for a week. Norma was ready to draw up placards and stage a demonstration on the bank’s threshold, but Bessie convinced her to wait.

  “We’ll go back tomorrow, and the next day,” Bessie said. “He can find one minute in his busy day to speak to us. We’ll be persistent, but polite.”

  Norma never would have brooked such an objection from Constance or Fleurette, but gave far more leeway to a widow expectant with child. “All right, we’ll try polite and persistent, but if that doesn’t work, we’ll just be persistent. And we won’t give that bank one dime in payment until they give us the explanation we’re owed.”

  “Of course we won’t,” Bessie said.

  “And if they don’t like it, they can speak to our attorney,” Norma said.

  “Do we have an attorney?” asked Fleurette, wondering what use a man like John Ward could possibly be in negotiations with a bank.

  “We will hire one, if they give us any trouble,” said Norma.

  * * *

  PETEY DIDN’T MIND at all that he had to turn his camera over to Fleurette and teach her how to use it. “I’ve been telling Mr. Ward that we could use a girl photographer,” he said later that night, when she slipped out to meet him in his automobile. “There are some places I just can’t go. A chorus girl’s dressing-room is one of them.”

  “Then you don’t mind that I’m taking your salary?” asked Fleurette.

  “Miss, I’m a partner in the law firm, although Mr. Ward doesn’t treat me like one. Half of everything he collects belongs to me.”

  “Of course,” muttered Fleurette, although in truth, she had no idea how a law firm operated.

  “Most lawyers hire a photographer when they need one,” he said, “and the photographer brings the girl, if there’s going to be a girl. But we had a receptionist who said she’d like to be the girl, if we’d pay her extra. I already had a camera, so . . .” He shrugged. “We keep more of the fee that way. But if Mr. Ward would rather have you do the pictures, we just pass the cost on to the client. You see how it works.”

  “I do now,” said Fleurette. She was starting to see that working for a lawyer was not much different from working for a vaudeville showman: whatever she pocketed was only a percentage of what the man hiring her put in his pocket. Neither the legal profession nor the theatrical business was designed to make money for her, they were both designed to make money off her—off her talents, off her time. She was paid; someone else profited.

  Nonetheless, she was willing if not eager f
or the job. A bit of spy-work was in order first. On Tuesday she took the train into Manhattan, dressed in nondescript black so she wouldn’t be seen or remembered. She walked right up to the theater where Mr. Martin visited his chorus girl and waited around at the stage door after the performance, like any autograph-seeker. In this way she had a good look at the costumes the girls wore. They were of a sturdy blue satin, the skirts pleated so they flew up when the girls danced. Fleurette memorized the ensemble with a single glance and knew she’d have no trouble at all putting together a reasonable facsimile.

  The next night, she presented herself at the stage door and met little resistance from the man standing guard. She’d been around enough stage-hands to know just the right tone to take: she must be harried and act as if she already belonged inside.

  “I’m the new understudy, didn’t they tell you? I have a letter from Mr. McCallister—” Here she rummaged in her bag for a letter she didn’t actually have from the director, his name easily obtained from the programs dropped in the street outside the lobby.

  “Never mind about the letter,” said the man at the door. “You’re late. You’d better hurry.”

  With that she was inside.

  What a familiar pleasure it was to be backstage at the theater again! There was no better feeling in the world than to be behind the curtain, amid the chaos of scattered costumes and discarded pots of face-paint. What she’d missed most of all about the theater was the camaraderie of a traveling troupe, the fresh scandals and old jokes, the rising sense of anticipation as the audience filed in, the sliver of danger that hangs in the air around any live performance, knowing that something might go awry, half hoping that it does, if only to keep things fresh . . .

  Perhaps it would do her voice some good to be around theater people more often. Maybe she wasn’t so much taking a rest as atrophying. Would it hurt to audition for something like this—a light musical, just one of the chorus, nothing too taxing? Perhaps that was just what she needed to build herself up again.

  There were enough people scuttling about that no one noticed her at first, but she had to get herself hidden, and quickly. She could claim to be a new understudy to one or two people, but as soon as they started checking around, she’d be sunk.

  Fortunately, there were any number of curtains and backdrops where she could conceal herself. Once the entire cast was on stage, she could have a look around the dressing-rooms to see if Arthur Martin was waiting in any of them. His wife had described him as short, round, and balding, with quite unmistakable black horn-rimmed glasses. He didn’t sound like the sort of man an actress would carry on with, but perhaps, Fleurette reasoned, he had compensatory charms.

  Once she found him, she had only to lurk nearby, camera in hand, and wait for the right moment. There was no such thing as a door with a lock on it in a place like this: the dressing-rooms were nothing but curtains with paper-thin walls that didn’t even go all the way to the ceiling. She’d have no difficulty getting into the room. Whether she’d have enough light to take a recognizable photograph was another question.

  As to how she’d get out again, with a furious Mr. Martin chasing after her . . . for that, Fleurette might have to rely more on wits than speed.

  She could pretend she was a friend of one of the other girls, taking pictures for a lark, and had popped into the wrong room by mistake.

  She could put her acting skills to the test and pretend to be a fan, desperate for a picture of Mr. Martin’s love interest.

  Or perhaps she would outrun him—she was small and nimble, after all.

  Perhaps.

  Fleurette realized, as she considered her options, that there was a reason Petey didn’t mind letting her take the job, and it wasn’t because a man would have a harder time sneaking backstage.

  It was because getting the picture was a nearly impossible task. And there were no easy exits. The stage-hands would know every possible hiding-place. If she was caught, here in the theater district, a police officer was easily summoned.

  It was a mad scheme and unlikely to work. But she’d taken the money and spent it already. What else could she do but try to finish the job?

  It was nonetheless with a sense of relief that she realized she wouldn’t have to.

  As she crouched in her hiding spot behind a half-unrolled painted backdrop, she heard a girl call from a dressing-room, “Arthur! Come and see how I’ve expanded my diaphragm!”

  Another sang out, “Listen to my triplets! Koo-koo-koo!”

  A third said, “He’s helping to loosen my larynx. You’ll get him next.”

  Could this be Arthur Martin? How many Arthurs could there be backstage?

  Soon enough she heard him answer back in a deep, sonorous voice, a well-cared-for and cultivated voice. “I’ll be right with you, Madeline! Let me hear your vowels. Hold your diaphragm like I showed you.”

  As Madeline proceeded with her vowels, Fleurette risked a peek from behind the backdrop. The dressing-rooms stretched in a row away from her: in the dim light, she could just make out a figure moving between them. He stopped to knock at the post holding up the curtain between two rooms, and when the curtain parted, he was greeted with enough light that Fleurette could be certain.

  Short, rotund, balding, with heavy glasses. Arthur Martin didn’t have a love interest in the theater. He had students.

  Well, perhaps he had both. She waited to see if he treated any one of the girls differently from another. Elizabeth was made to practice sustained passages. Anita was introduced to the idea of lip strokes, and shown how to sing wa, wo, we, up and down the scale.

  Fleurette couldn’t help but follow along. Wa, wo, we, with the lips pursed as if to whistle, and then drawn quickly back, causing the suction of air. Why hadn’t she ever been shown that before?

  She was by now so distracted by Mr. Martin’s lessons that she’d forgotten about the photographs. There wasn’t the slightest hint of impropriety in his manner toward his students. Fleurette was entirely convinced that she’d been sent on a fool’s errand. She couldn’t guess at Alice’s reason for accusing him and did not, in fact, take any time to think about it just then. She was too intent on hearing what Mr. Martin had to say.

  “Hand on your larynx, Martha! Is it entirely relaxed? Is it merely an instrument of the diaphragm?”

  Fleurette put her hand on her own larynx and thought that it hadn’t properly relaxed in months.

  Mr. Martin continued his rounds, listening to scales, dispensing exercises, and exhorting every girl to sing with ease and abundant breath, and to never strain to be heard. “Remember, especially when you’re dancing, that your abdomen dances with you! That’s why I want you walking when you practice, or rehearsing your steps along with your songs. You can’t abandon one for the other.”

  Abandon one for the other. Perhaps that’s where Fleurette had gone wrong. All those tricky dance steps—it was easy to forget about the voice when everything depended on leading with the left foot. Had she ruined her voice not through illness but through improper singing?

  The piano player was starting now. The lights went down in the theater. She could hear Mr. Martin saying his good-byes.

  The girls hurried to their places and the show began. Mr. Martin stood for a moment and watched—she could only see his shoulder, and a foot tapping just under the curtain—and then he turned to leave.

  Fleurette slipped away from her hiding-place. “Mr. Martin!” she whispered.

  He turned and waited, taking stock of her costume. (It was a very convincing costume.)

  “I don’t believe we’ve met,” he said, bowing slightly. He didn’t whisper, so beautifully controlled was his voice that he could send it near or far with no effort at all.

  “I’m only an understudy,” she said. “Laura”—how desperate she had to be, to choose her parrot’s name as her pseudonym!—“Underwood.”

  “An understudy called Underwood. You were meant for it.”

  “I hope I’m meant for th
e cast,” Fleurette said. They were by now near the back door and had no need of whispering.

  “Not with that voice, you’re not,” he said.

  She put a hand over her throat. “But you haven’t even heard me sing.”

  “I don’t have to,” he said. “You’ve had an illness, haven’t you? Or an ulceration.”

  “Both,” she admitted.

  “Your voice is thin and unsupported. You’re trying too hard to protect it. Put your hand here”—and he placed his own hand over his throat. Fleurette did the same. “You’re squeezing it like a lemon, aren’t you? Going around all day with it clamped shut. Trying to protect it from getting hurt again.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it like that,” admitted Fleurette. “I’d been told to rest it, and I thought I was.”

  “But you can’t hold a note, can you? It cracks up and falls apart. Or you start to cough.”

  Fleurette was practically in tears by now. She nodded but couldn’t answer.

  “We can’t do anything about it now,” he said. “I can’t hear you properly with the show going. I don’t know if you ever get to Paterson . . .” He fumbled around in his pockets until he withdrew a card. “I give lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

  “And you teach here as well?” Fleurette thought she ought to at least be sure of her assumptions about Mr. Martin.

  “These girls can’t afford lessons, or they can’t be bothered to take the train all the way to Paterson, but they pool their pennies and have me come around on Wednesday nights and give them a little—well, punching up, I suppose you’d call it.”

  That sounded like a reasonable explanation. Didn’t Alice know what her husband was doing?

  “It’s good of you to come all this way for them,” Fleurette said.

  “Oh, I’m out most nights, at one theater or another,” he said. “Hazard of the job. Go on, take my card, and come see me when you can. You’re going to need to build yourself back up again before you go on stage.”