A Golden Cage

by Shelley Freydont

“She will; tell her it’s for Charlie’s sake. She’ll do it.”

  It was getting late and Deanna knew she was pushing the limits of what she could expect Elspeth to manage. And then there was the afternoon drive with Gran Gwen. “I’ll try, but I won’t be able to get back today, and how will I carry it all?”

  “It’s just one suitcase. We were only supposed to be here two nights.”

  “But what are you going to do?”

  “I’ll be okay. Soon. Soon I’ll be okay. But please get my things.”

  “I’ll try. I have to go now. Will you be able to get enough water and food until then?”

  “Yes, if you’ll promise to come tomorrow.”

  Deanna nodded. She hesitated at the door, but there was really nothing else to say. She left Belle sitting on the trunk, wringing her hands. All that was missing was a villain twirling his mustache, and if Belle could be believed, he was right offstage waiting to make his entrance.

  Chapter

  15

  Joe stood on what had been the stage of The Sphinx. Behind him the wooden dance floor was gone, the birdcages and flowers were gone, the large pieces of scenery had been dismantled and were being stored in the nearby stable. But the stage itself, the roof over it, and the mechanical wheel were still in place.

  “So you constructed this exclusively for this performance?” Joe asked, taking a close look at the wheel mechanism.

  Obadiah Jenkins sucked on a tooth and nodded. “Ye-ah. Me and the crew came in from Manhattan two days early to get it up and running.” Obadiah was a stage carpenter in the theater district. A big guy, clean-shaven, and who recognized something familiar in Joe, another beardless man who worked with machines.

  “Got my beard caught in a conveyor belt once. Thought it was gonna tear my face off before they got it stopped. As it was, it hurt enough. When the swelling went down, I shaved the damn thing off and I’ve been shaving every day since.”

  Joe nodded. Eliminate all the variables, especially when it came to safety.

  “I’ve done one of these before for a production in Manhattan, but my cousin worked on the Chicago one. That was a major undertaking, tons of steel and two hundred and sixty-four feet high. This one? Puny piece of cake.”

  “But based on the same principle as the big one.”

  “Hell, same principle as the waterwheel. Wish I had thought it up, the big one, I mean. Then it would be the Jenkins wheel instead of the Ferris wheel carrying loads of people at one time, all of them paying to ride. La-di-da. I’d be a rich man.” He shrugged his substantial shoulders. “I’m not complaining. Theater work keeps a roof over my family’s head. Pays good enough, for the likes of me, anyway.

  “Now, these theater people love their flash—something they and these rich folks have in common. They keep wanting bigger and grander, and Obadiah Jenkins is the person that can put a crew together and get it done.” He huffed out air. “’Cept we’re stuck here now because young Charlie got himself killed. Told him to stay away from the rich folks. But like a moth to the flame, ya know?”

  “I thought he and Amabelle Deeks were engaged.”

  Obadiah frowned at him. “How do you know any of this? Theater folk don’t like other people knowing their business. They have a hard enough time as it is. Work hard, bring a little joy into people’s lives, and everybody looks down on ’em.”

  “Not me.” Joe moved closer to the black curtain that hid the inner workings from the audience, and pulled it back to inspect the axle. He really didn’t want to talk about Charlie but about the mechanism, but he’d promised Will to keep an ear open. “Did you know Charlie well?”

  “Nah. I was just hired on to come oversee this thing. It doesn’t have a wheel in the production in Manhattan, just that hydraulic lift thing for the goddess. Now, she’s a diva.

  “I guess the daughter saw this in some other play and insisted on adding one to the show.” Obadiah shrugged. “Her nickel. My job security. They just reblocked the wedding scene and the end where they all come back to take a bow.

  “We were supposed to take it down the next day, but the police stopped us. I come down once or twice a day to check on everything. You never know when one of these folks will get it in their minds to have a joy ride and then get themselves killed.”

  “Is the distribution of weight based solely on geometry? Is it counterweighted?”

  “A little of both when they’re this small,” Obadiah said. “Like I said, the waterwheel, or a bicycle wheel.”

  Joe laughed. “Ah, the glorious wheel.”

  Obadiah laughed with him. “Once you get it right . . . Ye-ah.”

  Joe nodded. “Was the ‘heavenly chorus’ part of the play staged or done that way for technical reasons?”

  “Again, a little of both. Gotta stay on your feet on the road. We woulda let them off closer to the ground, but we couldn’t make the changeover quick enough. We tried it with only one platform, but the balance was off and it took forever. They woulda been singing all night.

  “Then we tried it with two, which worked, only we couldn’t let them off on the ground without stranding one couple in the air and stopping the action onstage. So we built a catwalk at one o’clock and they just stepped off to either side as it passed by.”

  “A lot of coordination,” Joe said, gazing up to the flies and the scaffolding to either side of the wheel.

  “And rehearsal.” Obadiah laughed. “The first time, one of the girls was so panicked she rode around twice before I had to stop the machine and drag her off. Then, at the last rehearsal, someone touched the scrim and the fabric got caught up in the motor, and I thought we’d pull the whole stage down with us. But it went off without a hitch on the night of.”

  Joe rubbed his chin. “What’s the power source?”

  “That was a problem. The one in Chicago was run on steam—too loud. I considered electricity. Thought we might rig up a generator, but the smell would have asphyxiated half the audience in this enclosed space. And we didn’t have the relays to leach power from the generators running all those little lights in the lawn.

  “In a real theater, we would use a counterweights system, but I couldn’t do the rigging in this space. In the end we came up with this.” He motioned Joe over and threw back a large canvas cloth.

  It took Joe a few seconds to understand what he was looking at. He laughed out loud. “The glorious wheel indeed.” It was a custom bicycle, held stationery and bolted to a frame. A chain from the back wheel ran over to a system of gears.

  “Good thinking,” Joe said.

  “Think you can make use of this?” Obadiah gestured to the wheel.

  “I think so. Only I’ll opt for electricity.”

  They were interrupted by a harsh call, and a man striding toward them.

  “Just what are you two doing in here?”

  “Edgerton,” Joe said.

  Walter Edgerton stopped. “Ballard? What are you doing here?” Now his tone was more curious than angry.

  “Mr. Jenkins here was kind enough to offer to show me the inner workings of this Ferris wheel.”

  Edgerton glanced quickly at the wheel. “I wish my wife had been content with dinner and dancing. This is a nightmare. My mother-in-law is beside herself, says every time she looks out the window and sees this, she is afraid she’ll have an attack.”

  “Is she prone to attacks?” Joe asked.

  Edgerton rubbed his face. “She’s . . . shall we say, she knows what she wants.”

  Joe nodded shortly. “And what does she want?”

  “First, for all this to be taken away. And to send those awful actors back to where they belong. On the streets of New York.”

  “But I thought the Judge enjoyed the entertainment.”

  Edgerton’s mouth tightened.

  “And had the good sense to return to the city once thin
gs started falling apart. Leaving me to shore up mama-in-law and Drusilla. Of the two, I don’t know who is the more hysterical. Drusilla wringing her hands and whimpering that it was all her fault. Really, the woman could have a career on the stage. Or her mama and her demands.

  “Which brings me to . . . She was nearly prostrate after your grandmother and that Randolph girl left.”

  “Left where?”

  “This house, Monday morning. A morning call. Them and a hundred other nosy busybodies. No offense, Ballard.”

  Joe ground his teeth. “None taken.” Busybodies, maybe, but he was pretty sure his grandmother—and Deanna—had ulterior motives.

  “I’ll speak with them if you like.” In his dreams. Joe wouldn’t dare interfere, but Edgerton didn’t need to know that.

  “Never mind. It’s taken care of.” He started to leave. Stopped. “Have they found the killer yet?”

  Joe shook his head. “Not that I’ve heard.”

  “And the girl?”

  “Amabelle? No.”

  “I’ll have to talk to the mayor again. The whole household is upset. Cook burning the dinner, my wife and her mother in hysterics. This is unendurable.” He strode away without another word.

  “Seems to me,” Obadiah said when Edgerton was gone, “the ladies in that house are not the only ones having a fit of the hysterics. He was having a rare set-to when I came in yesterday. They were standing at the open window overlooking the yard.”

  “Edgerton and his wife?”

  “Edgerton and the Judge’s wife.”

  * * *

  Deanna managed to get down the stairs and out the back door before she practically ran into Elspeth.

  “Whew, miss. You took your time. Lilbeth is out hanging the laundry. I woulda helped her, but I thought I should keep an eye out for you. Was she there?”

  Deanna nodded. “But let’s get away from here.”

  “Let me just say good-bye.”

  While Elspeth was gone, Deanna fetched her bicycle from the shrubbery.

  “Now what are we going to do? Turn her over to the sergeant?”

  “No. I promised I wouldn’t tell a soul.”

  “Oh, miss.”

  “I know. But she was so frightened, I didn’t have the heart to turn her in. I also promised I’d go see that odious Noreen and see if I could get Belle’s things back. Elspeth, she was wearing some old dress that she must have found in the attic; she looked awful. Like she was sick or something.

  “Really pale, like Adelaide gets when she has one of her headaches.”

  “Hmmph. Maybe she and Charlie were expecting a little package, and that’s why they were running away.”

  “Do you think so? Then why not just get married and make everything proper?”

  Elspeth shrugged. “They’re actors.”

  “Were, at least Charlie was.”

  “So what are we going to do?”

  “I’m going back to the boardinghouse to see if Noreen is there and somehow convince her to give me Amabelle’s belongings. I’ll say her mother wants me to send them home or something.”

  “What am I going to do?”

  It would be so much simpler if Elspeth had her own bicycle. But Deanna was already taking her chances being seen by some gossip as she rode around town. If she and her maid were seen on their bicycles, it was bound to get back to her mother. And her mother would surely foist Aunt Harriett on her. Besides, Elspeth was adamantly opposed to showing her ankles in public.

  “You’re going to meet me there, but stay out of sight.”

  Elspeth rolled her eyes. “Where are they staying?”

  Deanna told her and off she stomped.

  Deanna’s mother would say Elspeth was getting above her station, and perhaps she was, but Deanna couldn’t imagine having some mealymouthed maid who was always telling on her. It had been the one questionable decision her mother had ever made. But since she’d spent all of her attention on launching Adelaide into society, the choice of her second daughter’s maid had been an afterthought. Which was fine by Deanna.

  She rode straight to Mrs. Calpini’s boardinghouse, but came to an undignified stop when she saw the Black Maria parked in the street outside. As she stood astride her bicycle, the van started up and drove away, leaving a group of people on the lawn and on the porch.

  Deanna climbed off her bike and rolled it quickly up the street to the house. The first people she saw were Talia and two other girls, huddled together, their faces masks of fear and apprehension.

  Deanna leaned her bike against a tree and hurried to them. “What’s happened?”

  The women just looked at her.

  Deanna looked toward the porch, where Gil, Timothy, and several other men had turned away and were talking among themselves.

  “Talia? What’s going on?”

  “They’ve arrested Rollie for killing Charlie.”

  “Rollie?” She remembered him. He’d been the most upset about Charlie being dead, as Deanna recalled. He seemed like a nice man, except being nice didn’t stop people from killing.

  “Do you know why? Do they have evidence?” If they did, this might exonerate Amabelle. She could come out of hiding, and Deanna wouldn’t have to keep her promise to not disclose her whereabouts.

  “Evidence?” one of the women shrieked. “They have Rollie. That will be enough.”

  She burst into tears, followed by Talia and their companion.

  “Where’s Noreen?”

  Talia sniffed, looked around. “She was here a minute ago.”

  Not seeing her, Deanna started for the house. At least maybe she could get Amabelle’s clothes so she wouldn’t have to face the world wearing a dowdy dress years out of fashion or a white toga and gold cape.

  The men had preceded her inside, and when she reached the foyer, there was a yelling match going on between the landlady and a man whom Deanna had met at the theater performance, Edwin Stevens, the company manger. The other players had disappeared.

  Deanna took the opportunity to slip upstairs. If she could find Noreen, maybe they could gather Amabelle’s possessions before they were noticed by the others.

  But once she reached the second floor, she stopped. Two of the doors were closed, two were left wide open as if the occupants had left in a hurry. Talia and Noreen’s room? Rollie’s? She could imagine the police dragging him forcibly out of the house. Unless Will had drawn that duty; he would have accomplished it with much more finesse.

  She heard low voices coming from a room at the end of the hall. She tiptoed toward it. She didn’t want to bother the occupants unless it was someone she knew who could help her. Maybe Noreen was there comforting someone.

  She stood just outside and leaned forward to peer in the room. Gil and Timothy were sitting on the bed. Gil’s arm was around Timothy’s shoulders. Timothy’s head was bent forward.

  As she watched, Gil lifted his head, caressed a piece of hair that had fallen across Timothy’s forehead.

  It was such an odd gesture of comfort from one man to another, that Deanna stepped back. Gil looked up. Saw her. He stood up and with two strides, crossed the room to slam the door in her face.

  She fled back downstairs to find everyone else standing around Edwin Stevens.

  He held up both hands. “Calm. We must stay calm. I can’t talk sense into this crazy landlady. I’ll have the stage manager call the hotel and book rooms.” He shot the fingers of both hands violently through his hair. “Then I will approach the Granthams about paying for this delay. And then I will see about getting Rollie out of jail. But you must stay calm.” He lowered his voice. “And very discreet. Now, go collect your things. One day we’ll have a good laugh about this over a pint or two.”

  “Over Charlie, too?” Talia spat out the words.

  “No, not over Charlie. But we’ll re
member the good times. And we’ll dance when the real murderer is brought to justice.”

  “You don’t think Rollie did it?”

  Stevens hesitated. “I certainly hope not.”

  They broke up then, Stevens to use the landlady’s telephone and the others upstairs to pack. Deanna followed Talia to her room. “Where is Noreen?”

  “I don’t know. Go away.”

  “What about her things?”

  “I’ll pack them. And you better not talk to anyone about what you heard.”

  Deanna shook her head. What had she heard? A bunch of people trapped in a town where they knew no one, losing money as each day slipped by. Away from their families, angry, grieving for a friend and colleague, and each reacting in their own way. And now, one of them accused of murder.

  And yet she couldn’t get the image of Gil and Timothy out of her mind. The gentle touch, the concern for a friend.

  She shook her thoughts clear. “What about Amabelle’s things?”

  “Someone will pack them.”

  “Maybe I should. The lady I’m spending the summer with is a friend of her mother’s. I’m sure she would want them.”

  “Well, you can’t have them. How do I know you’re not some snitch come in here to make us all look bad?”

  “I’m not. I want to help.”

  “Then bugger off.” Talia stepped in front of her, clipping her shoulder hard enough to send Deanna stumbling back.

  Things were getting out of hand. It was time to ask for help.

  Elspeth was standing across the street, hands on her hips, when Deanna came out of the house. “What’s going on over there?” Elspeth said as soon as Deanna reached her.

  “Pandemonium.” Deanna explained what she knew, though she left out the part about Timothy and Gil. She wasn’t sure why, but she just felt like it wasn’t something she should share, at least not out on the street.

  “I’m afraid we have to make one more stop.”

  Elspeth slumped. “I near wore off the soles of my shoes running around after you all day.”

  “I know, I’m sorry. We really should think about getting you a bicycle.”