by Amy Stewart
“I can’t match this metal thread, of course,” Fleurette said. “I’m just going to put a few stitches in the shoulders and a few under the arms. That should hold until New York, if you’re careful. I’ll look for the right thread when we get there.”
“Do whatever you have to do. I don’t care about metal thread.”
“Oh, but a dress like this? We must. It really should go back to Paris to be fitted. I want to do the very least that’s required to hold it together until . . .” Fleurette’s voice trailed off as she drew close to the gold filet lace that attached at the shoulder and draped so languidly down the back. She remembered looking, as a child, at butterfly wings up close and realizing that those brilliant patterns were made up of tiny scales, like miniature feathers, each attached by some filament too fine to see. That was how this dress was made. To go at it with a No. 12 needle—her smallest—was like attacking it with a sledgehammer.
“Are you sure this sort of slouchy thing is the style? I don’t feel quite upright in it. And where’s the waist? It just sort of—falls down.”
“If it comes from Callot Soeurs, it’s the style,” Fleurette mumbled. She never expected to touch a dress like this. It seemed to be made of spun gold, and it did drape in the most bewitching manner. There was almost nothing to it: just a loose chemise with a belt slung around the hips, tied with two gold tassels at the end, which Fleurette guessed (correctly) were meant to hang carelessly down behind one hip or the other, like an afterthought.
The arms were bare. A corset was superfluous—although Fleurette couldn’t convince Mrs. Ward of that. “I’ve worn every kind of beautiful dress on every kind of stage, dear,” she’d said, “and let me tell you, things don’t always stay where they’re supposed to. I’m going to require some kind of boning if I’m to go flitting about in this little thing. It looks like I’m wearing nothing at all.”
Fleurette made the last of her temporary stitches and stood back to check her work. The dress was all wrong for May Ward. The colors—gold lace and pearly silk—matched her complexion and her hair too closely. In this case, the dress was the picture and the woman merely the frame. It begged for dark hair and olive skin. And it had been cut for a taller, lankier woman, which was why Fleurette had been obliged to take in the shoulders, and why Mrs. Ward insisted on her corset.
“Are we finished?” May Ward asked. “I’m about to drop.”
“Let me take this off you before you do.” Fleurette went to work on the eyelets in the back. “I didn’t know one could buy a dress like this outside of New York.”
Mrs. Ward laughed wearily. “It was a gift. I believe the previous occupant ran out West with a cattleman.”
“I don’t think I’d leave this dress for a cattleman,” Fleurette said.
“Nor should you.” She stepped out of the dress and turned around to face Fleurette. In her ordinary muslin underthings, she could’ve been anyone. “Tell me something, Flora.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Fleurette had given up trying to teach Mrs. Ward her name. She stood with that dream of a dress in her arms, looking at the pale and freckled body that had somehow earned the right to wear it.
“What kind of girl begs for a job as an unpaid seamstress? You aren’t running away from someone, are you?”
“No! Of course not.”
Mrs. Ward put a hand on her hip and cocked her chin. “There’s not a horrible father back in Paterson, or a shrewish mother?”
“I just wanted to work. You saw our act. I want to be on the stage, ma’am.”
May Ward looked puzzled. “What? Oh, yes, your act. That was darling. Now, I can’t persuade Mr. Bernstein to pay you. He’s a detestable old thing and I’m very nearly through with him myself. But you might as well stay on for the rest of the tour. I’ll see to it that the company pays your expenses, and I’ll slip you a few bills when I can. Will that do it?”
Fleurette was very nearly out of money. This was the first mention of her staying on. She tried to conceal her relief, as Mrs. Ward did not go in for sentiment. “Yes, of course. Thank you.”
“Just don’t tell Freeman.” She went to work at the buttons on her corset. Fleurette knew that was her signal to leave, but she had very little time alone with Mrs. Ward and hated to miss her chance.
“I know all the songs, too,” Fleurette ventured, her hand on the doorknob.
May Ward was climbing into bed. “What’s that?” she said, yawning.
“The songs. I know all the songs. If you need another girl.”
From under the covers came a muffled laugh. “The last thing I need is another girl. Send a maid in at eleven, will you?”
46
SHERIFF HEATH WAS NOT at all pleased to hear that Constance had decided to go after Fleurette—or, more to the point, to go after Norma, who was going after Fleurette.
“If you genuinely believe she’s in trouble, there’s nothing stopping you from telephoning the police,” he said. “People do it all the time.”
“But I can’t be certain,” Constance said. “If I send the police after May Ward’s troupe and there’s nothing wrong—well, Fleurette would never forgive me.”
“If there’s nothing wrong, you ought to stay here and do your job.”
“But if I don’t go, Norma and Carrie will chase after her on their own, and that would only be worse.”
He held up his hands in a sign of defeat. “I’ve never seen three sisters get each other so hopelessly mixed up. Don’t take more than two days. Anthony Leo goes before the judge on Friday, and you’re to bring Minnie Davis back.”
Even the girl’s name stabbed at her. If she could think of a single thing to do for Minnie, she would’ve stayed in Hackensack and done it.
“I’ll be here,” she said.
CONSTANCE, NORMA, AND CARRIE stood under the candy-striped awnings at the Harrisburg train station. Norma was dressed for traveling, in an old-fashioned tweed suit that smelled of camphor, and a sturdy felt hat upon which she’d made one concession to fashion, by arranging three plum-colored pigeon feathers into a little fan shape and tucking them into the brim. Constance had to admit that it looked smart on her. Carrie, naturally, looked the part of the city reporter, in a slim blue suit and a double-breasted wool coat. She summoned a porter with an elegant snap of her fingers.
The Hotel Columbus was their destination. According to a woman they’d met on the train, it kept a floor for women and put out a reasonable lunch for forty cents. As it was only a few blocks away, on Walnut, the porter wheeled their bags over rather than bother with a taxicab.
On the way, Constance thought it best to remind Norma of the promise she’d made. “If Fleurette is found safe . . .”
“Yes,” Norma said moodily.
“And it appears that the circumstances are as they have been described to us . . .”
“We’ve been over this.”
“And if there is no sign of any wrongdoing that can be observed by the three of us . . .”
“I know!”
“Then I will never hear the name Freeman Bernstein again. You’ll drop the matter forever.”
Norma refused to look at her.
“Forever,” Constance said again.
“Yes, that’s what I said.” Norma didn’t like being made to say it again.
“And I’m a witness,” Carrie said cheerfully.
“But you’re not a reporter,” Constance put in. “Not on this trip. I don’t want Fleurette to know that we went to spy on her.”
“I’ll only write a story if there’s some trouble. Not that I’m hoping for it.”
“All a reporter does is hope for trouble,” Norma said. Constance didn’t bother to remind her that she was the one who’d involved Carrie in the first place.
The hotel was a dun-colored brick affair on a busy intersection, with a cigar shop on the corner and the hotel entrance off to the side, out of the fray. The porter knew his business and took them directly to the ladies’ desk, where an officious-lookin
g woman introduced only as Miss Lydia took down their names and offered a suite with two large beds, a fireplace, and a view to the river. They took it, even though it meant that Constance would have to share a bed with Norma, who snored.
It was then that Norma decided to play the part of the detective. She wasn’t very good at it, and it embarrassed Constance to watch, especially with Carrie standing back, observing, with a wry little smile on her face and a notebook in her hand.
“My friends and I enjoy the theater and wonder what might be on offer,” Norma began, sounding stiff and unconvincing. She approved of the arts generally but took no interest in any particular occurrence of it.
Miss Lydia nodded and started to shuffle through the papers on her desk. Norma added, “Something we wouldn’t be ashamed to tell about back home.”
Had Norma ever been ashamed in her life? Constance had never even heard her use the word.
Miss Lydia found the card she’d been looking for underneath her blotter. She raised a pair of spectacles to her eyes to read it. “You might enjoy a choral concert at Fahnestock Hall.”
Norma would enjoy nothing less, so Constance said, “That’s exactly what I had in mind.”
Norma eased her heel back on Constance’s shoe and said, “But we want to hear about everything before we decide.”
Miss Lydia looked up at the two of them and said, with a cheery lilt in her voice, “Then I suggest Mr. Howe’s Travel Festival. There are to be film studies of the Indians and of the Swiss Alps. It can be quite broadening to see those places you might never—oh, and it includes ‘curious examples of crystallization, adventures in the insect world, and logging in Italy.’”
“Absolutely perfect!” Constance crowed.
“There must be something else.” Norma sounded a little anxious.
Miss Lydia read down the page. “I don’t suppose you’d want to look at The Birth of a Nation.”
“I hear there’s been some trouble about that,” Norma muttered, before Constance could accept on her behalf.
“Yes . . . well, there’s not much more.” Miss Lydia ran her finger down a column of type. “Fruits of Desire involves a laborer, a capitalist, a humanitarian, and a socialist, along with a society woman, and a woman who gives it all up for love.”
“I’d rather not know what they get up to,” Norma said.
Miss Lydia said, “Nor I. Now, if it’s a comedy you’re after, May Ward and Her Eight Dresden Dolls are at the Orpheum.”
“May Ward is precisely who we’re after,” Constance said, earning another jab from Norma.
“My sister’s an admirer,” Norma said. “She always wanted to go on the stage herself, but she’s too tall and it frightens the men. I thought it would come as an advantage to be able to be seen from so far away, but she’s plain, too, and nothing can be done about that.”
Miss Lydia looked up at them with half a smile, probably hoping to catch Norma in a joke. But Norma stood over her, as dour as ever, and said, “I wonder if May Ward signs autographs. I don’t want to wait out by the stage door all night for nothing.”
It was then that Miss Lydia gave the information Norma had been hoping for. “You won’t have to follow her far. Mrs. Ward and her girls have always stopped over at the Hotel Columbus. They’ll be just down the hall from you. You’d better go up if you want to be ready for the theater at eight. I’ll have three tickets at my desk when you come down. You’ll find the theater just around the corner on Locust, so you’ll have no need of a taxicab.”
They took the keys and went on upstairs. Their room was at the end of a long hallway carpeted in a pattern of parrot tulips. The bags had been sent up ahead and they passed the porter on his way out. Norma handed him a coin whose value she kept concealed from Constance, but which almost certainly wasn’t enough.
“Why am I the admirer of May Ward, when you’re the one who dragged us all the way here to see her?” Constance hissed at Norma when they were out of earshot.
“You don’t seem to understand anything about detective work,” Norma said. “Everything you said made her more suspicious.”
“There was no need to play the detective,” Constance said. “You could’ve just asked her straight away whether May Ward was in residence here or not.”
“She wouldn’t have told me,” Norma said, and proceeded to mutter about it as they unpacked their things and shook out the dresses they’d brought for the theater. Fleurette had made both of their dresses, of course, which left Constance feeling all the more guilty and unsettled about what they’d come to Harrisburg to do.
Carrie worked on her hair in front of the mirror. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to pose as a theater critic? I could interview May Ward and her Dolls, and find out for myself if Fleurette’s with them.”
“Bringing a reporter along only makes this look more suspicious,” Constance said. “I don’t want any of us to be seen. We’re here to make sure that Fleurette is safe, and then we’re going to scurry away and no one’s ever going to know.”
They hadn’t any idea how many rooms May Ward might have taken, or where they were in relation to theirs. Norma kept running to the peep-hole and looking out when she heard footsteps go by.
“You can stop looking, because they’re already at the theater getting into costume,” Constance said. “We’d better see about some dinner before we go.”
Norma was at the window now, watching the people below going past. She was breathing noisily, and a little cloud of steam was making an impression on the glass. “We can’t risk going into a restaurant. We’ll be spotted—if Fleurette’s here at all, and I don’t think she is.”
“Fine, then I’ll order something cold on a tray.”
“I detest anything cold on a tray,” Carrie said.
Constance considered that and said, “Maybe they’ll send up some soup.”
The hotel did a little better than that, but not much. The first course was a delicate affair of thin soup and spongy bread that satisfied none of them. Norma was critical of her baked tomato and picked at the boiled chicken, which she said tasted as if it had ridden on a train.
“I don’t understand why anyone bothers with a city,” she declared.
Constance didn’t try to understand that remark or to answer it. Carrie wrote it down and Constance begged her again not to make a story of them.
They waited as long as they could, to make sure every member of the theater company would be out of the hotel, then went downstairs and out into the blue, lamp-lit night.
47
HARRISBURG WAS A DISASTER. Fleurette didn’t have a dollar to her name. May Ward’s way of arranging for the company to pay Fleurette’s expenses was to put the Dolls back into two rooms, which meant two girls to a bed, two beds to a room, and a cot on the floor for Fleurette.
This made Fleurette decidedly less popular with the Dolls. Just when she thought they might ask her to sneak out with them at night, in the unaccounted-for hours between midnight and five, when Mrs. Ironsides slept, she found herself abandoned again.
“We’ll clear out so you can work” was how Bernice put it. They were gone all afternoon, and only stopped in for a few minutes before leaving for the theater. After the show, they intended to return once for a change of clothes and run right out again.
“If Ironsides comes around to check the beds tonight, you’ll cover for us,” Eliza said.
“What would I tell her?” Fleurette asked.
“Tell her Charlotte had a telegram. It’s her grandmother.”
“No, we already used that one,” Charlotte said.
“Oh, then it’s her elderly aunt. The one who raised her. Say that we ran off to the train station to see about sending Charlotte home to her dear old aunt.”
“But that’s a terrible excuse,” Fleurette called as they gathered their coats and made ready to leave. “It’s too easily checked, and what happens when Charlotte doesn’t get on the train?”
“Say that Roberta has a heada
che and we went out in search of a powder” came Charlotte’s voice, out in the hall now, floating along in their wake.
It was just as well that they’d left. There was no room for her sewing machine unless she dragged the cot onto one of the beds and piled atop it all the combs and brushes and powder puffs that littered the writing desk.
She’d spent far too long on May Ward’s Parisian frock, considering she was planning to pull out her own stitches and replace them when she found the metal thread. Still, it had been impossible not to take extraordinary care with the job, handling the dress as delicately as she could, and looking long and hard at the fabric before finding the right place to put the needle. She wanted to be entirely sure that her stitches could be easily undone and replaced, perhaps by more skilled hands, without any trace remaining of her repair.
Once it was finished and returned to Mrs. Ward (“toss it anywhere,” the actress had groaned, having not yet recovered from a wild night, but Fleurette couldn’t toss it anywhere, and hung it on a fabric-covered hanger she’d improvised with a pillowcase)—once she was finished with that, she had a mountain of costumes waiting for her. The decision to keep Fleurette on for the rest of the tour had led the Dolls to raid their trunks once again, and to pull out their most-hated costumes for a complete renovation.
“I look like a shepherdess in this dress,” Roberta complained, about her shepherdess costume, and the others agreed. “If only you could take out every single ruffle and make it more of a city girl’s dress, we won’t look like such children. Make them look like that dress of May’s you were showing us.”
“That dress of May’s came from one of the very best houses in Paris,” Fleurette said. “There’s no way to make something like it without —”
“You’ll think of something,” Eliza put in. And the entire troupe—all eight of them—deposited their ridiculous and cheaply made costumes with Fleurette, who had no choice but to take one apart to see what, if anything, could be made from it. She had one night to finish the work: the Dolls had persuaded Mrs. Ward to let them skip a costume change so that they might all have new dresses at once for the following evening’s performance.
