Death at the Emerald

by R. J. Koreto

  “No, sir.” She thumbed through the pages. “She’s not until the parlor scene. She’s probably in the dressing room.”

  “Please show Lady Frances and Miss Mallow there.”

  She gave them a quick look with her cool blue eyes. “My lady, Miss Mallow—follow me, please.” They headed toward the back of the building.

  “What is your job here?” asked Frances as they worked.

  “Script management,” she said, a little surprised that anyone would ask. Then seeing the look of interest on Frances’s face, she continued, “We’ve started making longer motion pictures with more elaborate stories and multiple scenes—more like a play, my lady. Such motion pictures are not filmed in linear order, my lady. We film all the scenes in one set at once, then film all the scenes for the next set together. It’s all sorted out during editing.”

  “That is fascinating,” said Frances. “One doesn’t think of these things. What did you do before this?”

  “I worked in an office, my lady.” She’s wondering who I am and why I’m so interested, thought Frances. Any job a woman has is always of interest.

  “Just between us,” said Frances, giving their guide a conspiratorial look. “Is this more interesting than working in an office?”

  The woman laughed. “Oh, my lady, have you ever worked with motion picture actors?”

  They had passed through a warren of small rooms and storage spaces in the back of the building. One door was marked, “Dressing.” The woman knocked and opened it without waiting for a reply. The room looked much like the dressing rooms at the Emerald, with pots of cosmetics and clothes thrown around rather slapdash.

  There was one occupant, a woman of middle years, in a faded dressing robe. Yellow hair fell across her shoulders. Her skin wasn’t as youthful as it no doubt had once been, which accounted for the little jars of cream all about, but she had a good figure. She looked at them curiously with her soft brown eyes.

  “A couple of friends, Miss D’Arcy,” said the guide. “I’ll see someone is back in about half an hour to help you dress.” With that she left, closing the door behind her.

  “Friends?” asked Miss D’Arcy, sounding a little amused. “I’m afraid I don’t remember you.” Her voice was whispery. As Mrs. Mancini had said, her voice had faded.

  “We have friends in common, I should say. We were visiting Mrs. Mancini at the Emerald Theatre, and she mentioned your name,” said Frances.

  “Dear Daisy. I do miss working with her. She knows a thing or two about dressing women.” Miss D’Arcy looked over Frances and Mallow. “I daresay the two of you do as well. But make yourselves at home, if you can.”

  Frances knew Mallow was itching to clean up the room, and her maid indeed quickly removed dresses from the chairs, hung them up neatly, and took a seat along with her mistress.

  “I’m Lady Frances Ffolkes, and this is my maid and assistant, June Mallow. Genevieve D’Arcy—are you of French background?”

  “Good lord, no, my lady,” she said, smiling. “A lot of actresses do that, take a fancy name so people remember us. Jenny Derby I was born, and Jenny is what they call me.”

  “Very well then. We’re helping an old friend of ours, tracing some family history. Your name came up as someone who was a friend of the late Sir Arnold Torrence.”

  “Oh, dear God!” She threw her head back and laughed. “A ‘friend’—that’s a good one. Yes, I was his ‘friend,’ if that’s the way you want to put it. Dear Arnie. That was a long, long time ago, but we had some fun, I can tell you.” Then suddenly she glared at Mallow.

  “You there, Miss Mallow, you can stop looking so surprised. I wasn’t always on the far side of fifty. I had skin as smooth and soft as yours once upon a time, and I had a line of men waiting outside my door after every performance. Let’s you and me meet again thirty years from now and we’ll see what you look like then.”

  “I am sure I don’t know what you mean, miss,” said Mallow coolly. It took more than that to cow Mallow.

  “Mallow wasn’t judging you,” said Frances. “She and I come from a different world than yours, and behavior is different. Neither better nor worse, but different. But we three have something in common. You, Mallow, and I are women in a world of men. Mallow spent years answering to a butler. You answer to a director. And for all I am the daughter of a marquess, my late father tied up my principal until I marry or pass the age when no man will have me. I come not as a lady to an actress but as one woman to another, for your help. To help a friend, I need to know what happened many years ago.”

  I’ve heard other ladies say her ladyship is the best speaker in the suffrage club, and I’m seeing why, thought Mallow.

  Miss D’Arcy seemed a little stunned by this, as if she didn’t know how to respond. It took her a while to find her voice.

  “I don’t know what I can tell you. Arnie—Sir Arnold—was a ‘friend’ of mine, as you say. Oh, he had a lot of ‘friends.’”

  “And his wife? Do you think she knew?”

  “Oh, my goodness. I heard that Sir Arnold had died, although I hadn’t seen him in many years. Don’t tell me his widow has sent you to make trouble for me after all this time. What will she get from me? Vengeance?”

  Frances shook her head. “No. She doesn’t even know about you, not personally. She is old, and I believe has made peace with any shortcomings in her marriage. Indeed, I ask you: Did she know about her husband’s many friendships?”

  “Very well then, my lady. I don’t see how she couldn’t have known. Some men have a certain—what you might call discretion. Sir Arnold did not. Sometimes he’d spend days with me. Where did she think he was?”

  “He had daughters. Do you think they knew?” asked Frances.

  Miss D’Arcy shrugged. “I didn’t know anything about his children until I read about him dying. I have no idea if they knew. My lady, what’s the point in any of them knowing?”

  Frances nodded. “Back then, when you were one of the Green Players and working at the Emerald, another actress joined the company. She was just a little younger than you, I think. Her name was Helen.”

  Frances watched Jenny’s face fall. Was she sad? Upset?

  “What can I say about Helen, my lady? She was a funny one. Not a bad girl, but not especially popular here. Didn’t fit in, I should say.”

  “Was she unpleasant? Unfriendly?” asked Frances.

  “No. Nice enough, I guess, but thought very well of herself. She lost no time setting herself up at the Emerald. Every man in the company panted after her, and she toyed with them, with her teasing and smirks. Could’ve had half a dozen men taking care of her, but she wouldn’t do more than have a dinner or two with any of them, and I always got a sense she looked down on any woman here who . . . well, who did more, if you get my meaning.”

  Frances thought about her next question carefully. She didn’t want to give the game away, but she had to know. “Did Helen have it in for you particularly? Was she jealous of you for having a wealthy friend like Sir Arnold?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say exactly jealous, my lady. But she would ask me, like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, what I saw in him, was it really worth it having to be with a man like that to get some nice meals and a few trinkets? So pure she was. I told her to stay away from him, and from me. She’d just say, ‘Don’t worry. I have no intention of meeting him. I can do better than that.’” Miss D’Arcy seemed to forget Frances and Mallow were there, lost in old memories of Helen. It made sense, thought Frances. Louisa may have thrown in her lot with the theatre crowd, but her sense of superiority would’ve been ingrained. And considering what she knew about her father, her contempt for actresses who took second jobs as mistresses was only to be expected.

  “What happened to Helen?” asked Frances.

  “She was as stupid as she was beautiful. She didn’t do better after all. Married an accountant and moved away. Africa? India? I don’t remember after all this time. She said they were moving to the c
olonies, where her husband had a government job. She could’ve been set up with a wealthy man. Every man in the company practically went into mourning when she married.”

  “It doesn’t sound like Helen had ever met Sir Arnold. And yet she had formed an opinion about him.”

  Miss D’Arcy looked curiously at her. “Very interesting you should ask that, my lady, because I wondered about that myself at the time. I even asked Helen how she had formed such a low opinion. She’d just smile and say, ‘Oh, we’ve met.’ I asked Sir Arnold about her. He just shrugged and said he never knew an actress named Helen, and if he was lying, he did it very well. But wait—” Light came into her eyes. “You’re not interested in Sir Arnold. It’s Helen you want to know about.”

  Frances saw no reason to lie, especially as Miss D’Arcy would never guess that Helen was her lover’s daughter. “Yes. As you said, she got married and moved away, but that’s when she disappeared. She came from a family that would like to find her, and I’ve been asked to help them.”

  “Well, I can’t help you there,” said Miss D’Arcy. She gave Lady Frances another shrewd look. “It must be someone with money if a lady like you is asking. I suppose there’s a reward? But not for a thousand pounds could I tell you. I can say this though—there were plenty of actresses who were happy to see her leave. As I said, she wasn’t really one of us.”

  Frances stood. “Thank you for being so frank. I appreciate your assistance.” She produced a card. “If on reflection you think of anything more, you can find me here, and you will be paid for your time and trouble. Good day.” With that, she left with Mallow right behind her.

  The women paused in the hallway as another woman passed by them, probably to help Miss D’Arcy get dressed for her scene.

  “My uncle was right, Mallow. We got a very different view of Helen—Miss Torrence—from a woman. She wasn’t much liked, it would seem.”

  “I have observed, my lady, if I may say, that beautiful women are often subject to the jealousy of other women.”

  “That’s a wise observation, Mallow. That may be part of it. So the men worshipped her, and the women wanted her gone. Was she killed? Did a woman do it? And for all she ran away, Miss Torrence was gently bred and would not have been a good enough actress to hide that. If she even wanted to. I was thinking too far ahead. I had wondered if a jealous lover killed her, but it may have been a jealous woman. If in fact she was killed! We don’t even know if she’s alive or not. If she is dead, we don’t know whether she died a natural death or not . . . Anyway, it’s time to give a report to Lady Torrence.”

  They were seeing themselves out the door when Mr. Pyecroft intercepted them. “Lady Frances . . . Miss Mallow. Did you find Jenny D’Arcy all right? Listen, if you aren’t busy, how would the two of you like to be in a motion picture?”

  “We are not actresses, sir,” said Mallow, and Frances felt the frost from her maid. Mr. Pyecroft hastened to reassure them.

  “No, of course not, Miss Mallow. As ladies who appreciate the performing arts, this would be a chance to see it from the inside, so to speak. We have a need for a brief scene of a lady being served. You would wear your current clothing.”

  “Oh, let’s do it,” said Frances. “We’ll learn something.”

  “Well, if you put it like that, my lady,” said Mallow, a little reluctantly. And so they were quickly ushered into one of the fake rooms. A woman came up to them with some powder. “Your faces can’t be shiny, or they will look wrong on the film,” she said, liberally applying a powder puff to their faces.

  Mr. Pyecroft came up to them. “It’s very simple, ladies. I will be standing there by the camera. You sit here, Lady Frances. When I say ‘Action,’ you, Miss Mallow, will pick up the food on the plate over there and serve it to your mistress. You can see the camera over there.” He pointed to where stagehands were setting up the camera they had examined earlier, some twenty feet back, far enough to get in the whole room.

  “Do we look at it?” asked Frances.

  “No. In fact, pretend it isn’t there. Even trained actresses have a hard time remembering that when they look at the camera, they look at the audience. Unless you’re addressing the audience, you never look at the camera.”

  Mallow was meanwhile reviewing the setting. “Excuse me, sir. But your place setting is backward,” said Mallow.

  “What?” Mr. Pyecroft didn’t seem to understand.

  “This is not the way a table is properly set. I served meals at the household of the Marquess and Marchioness of Seaforth, sir, and this is how the table setting should be arranged.” And Mallow proceeded to fix it. Standards must be maintained, even in motion pictures. As she was doing it, she could hear in her head the solemn approval of Cumberland, the Seaforth butler.

  “She’s right,” said Frances with a little amusement. “If you want to expand your audience, you do need to get the details right.”

  “Oh . . . very well. Fix it as you see best, Miss Mallow.” Mallow laid out the table as carefully as if it were a formal dinner party, not a shabby motion picture set.

  “Very good. Are you ladies ready now? This will be about thirty seconds. You should talk to each other, but it doesn’t matter what you say, of course. Again, in a moment, I’ll say, ‘Action.’ The cameraman will start moving the film through the camera, recording your movements. You should keep going until I shout ‘Cut.’ Also, it’s a little overcast today, so we’ll need some extra light.” Frances saw more stagehands carrying one of the heavy arc lamps near the camera. They connected it to a cable and turned it on. Both women jumped; it was like having a streetlight right next to them. The scene was washed in harsh, white light.

  “Sorry, ladies. I forget how startling that is, but we need plenty of light to film.” The men then adjusted its direction a little and spoke with Mr. Pyecroft before settling on a direction and adjusting the movable shades for the light.

  “Very good, ladies. Take your places. Now, action!” Mallow did as instructed, serving her mistress as she would during her days as a housemaid.

  “It’s a little bit of history, Mallow. We will learn about this new form of entertainment. It’s just starting, so there’s a chance for women to grow with it—not just as actors, but as directors and managers.”

  “Very good, my lady.” Mallow poured a glass of water for Frances. “I’m not sure what your late mother would say, God rest her soul, my lady.” Frances laughed, and then Mr. Pyecroft called, “Cut,” and the scene was over.

  “Very nice, ladies, very nice indeed. The film will be developed, and I will send you a note inviting you to come and see it at your convenience.”

  “Thank you very much, Mr. Pyecroft. I look forward to hearing from you,” said Frances. They headed outside. “I know it was a little unusual, but it was a little fun, wasn’t it?”

  Mallow smiled. “I will admit it, my lady. After seeing so many films, to actually be in the place where they make motion pictures and to actually be a part of one is very exciting, my lady.” Then she became serious again. “Of course, it was mostly to help you for your work. I normally would not be doing this.”

  “Of course not, Mallow.”

  Frances looked for a hansom—and frowned. “There’s a workman in a street worker’s uniform across the street—he’s been poking at that sewer cover since we got here. Why is he working alone? And why is that hansom waiting there on the far side? There’s no reason for him to be there. I am willing to bet that the moment we step into a cab ourselves, that so-called workman will follow us in that cab, which is waiting for him. He’s our soldier, I’m sure. We will have to thwart him.” She thought a moment. “Mallow, how would you like to be an actress again, just one more time . . . ?”

  A few moments later, Mallow headed along the street. The stalker would be looking at Frances, not at her. It didn’t take her long before she was out of sight, behind a delivery van, and she swiftly crossed the street and headed toward the waiting hansom. She approached it from be
hind and quickly jumped in. Her heart was pounding, but her ladyship was counting on her.

  “See here, miss, I’m already taken,” the driver yelled down.

  “I don’t see anyone here. Now I’m going to Miss Plimsoll’s hotel. I assume you know the way.”

  “But Miss—”

  “Are you going to take me, or am I going to have to call a constable? I have my fare.” She held up the bills Frances had given her. “Now please be on your way.” Meanwhile she saw that there was a cloak on the seat next to her—the stalker was no doubt holding it in reserve to hide himself.

  Frances gave Mallow a few minutes to take charge of the hansom and then headed straight for the “workman.” He didn’t even pretend that he wasn’t watching Frances and, pulling his hat down, started walking quickly for the hansom. He was just a few feet away when he saw that Mallow was now occupying it, despite the driver’s complaints to the contrary, and Frances was bearing down on him.

  “You, sir! You won’t get away this time!” Frances took out her silver police whistle and started blowing it. The man pulled his hat down and began running. Frances kept blowing, and people started to stare. Oh, please, may there be a constable around now, when I really need one, thought Frances. To her delight, she saw a constable running toward them. It seemed inevitable that the constable would catch the man, but the stalker surprised both of them by turning into a large building nearby. Frances followed closely after him with Mallow—who had abandoned the hansom to join Frances—and the constable behind her. The building seemed to be some sort of hardware wholesaler, realized Frances, with workmen of all kinds bringing goods in and out through large doors she could see at the back. It was a busy place, and some of the men looked at the trio curiously as they strode in and out of the aisles between the tall metal shelves that reached to the dimly lit ceiling fifteen feet above them.

  “Did he rob you, miss?” asked the constable.

  “No. He’s been following me. But we should be able to find him. He’s wearing a street worker’s uniform, so he should stand out.” The constable nodded, looking around. “You two ladies stay here for safety. Let me see if I can flush him out. If you see him meanwhile, blow that whistle of yours.” He turned to a couple of hefty workmen who were loitering by the door. “You two—there’s a man in a street worker’s uniform. If you see him, grab him and call for help.” They nodded, and the constable disappeared down the nearest aisle.