The Dragonfly Brooch

by Estella McQueen

  Charlie sat back on the floor, jolted into the present. The clock on the wall showed he’d been in the room well over an hour. His legs were stiff; he had pins and needles in his toes, but he waited for Minnie to reappear. Nothing happened. The dislocation was ended. William was gone, the bed was empty. There was nothing on the pillow. He caught sight of his reflection in the mirrored wardrobe front. An Art Nouveau-style daffodil design was overlaid on the wooden doors and around the mirror frame.

  The wardrobe was locked, but the key was in the door. He turned it slowly; the mechanism was stiff, and it required a little force to make it work. The door dropped with a jolt; one of its hinges was damaged, and he clung onto it to avoid it swinging out. Supporting it with one hand, he caressed the garments within. Musty with old perfume, the stiff folds of a gold lace-patterned dress were rigid beneath his fingers. A fur coat hung to one side. Next to it a black coat with large ebony buttons and a salmon pink chiffon evening dress with a pearl embellished neckline. Then he came across something hidden beneath a protective layer of calico. This gown was heavy on the rail, and he had difficulty lifting it out. He carried it over to the bed, where he laid it down flat and divested it of the calico cover. The most beautiful green garment was revealed, slithery and slippery like fish scales and densely embroidered in patterns of shimmering thread. Robustly engineered and structured, it was not an evening gown, or a day dress; it was a costume. Which character, which play? A queen perhaps? Might there be a crown to go along with it, in a box or a drawer. Shoes, a wig? He took a photo …

  ‘Do I not resemble a lizard, my love? Or some scaly creature dragged from the deep?’ Minnie is back.

  ‘My Titania, my beauty!’ exclaims William. ‘You look magnificent! On stage, lit by the spotlight, displaying your twinkling fabulous costume all the way to the back of the theatre, you will be as iridescent as a star!’

  ‘It is splendid, is it not? Mrs Carr always finds the most sumptuous material and the finest thread. And the stitching, so precise as to be almost invisible! Although with all the weight of the beading and the jewels I feel as heavy as though I were clad in chainmail!’

  ‘When the audience comes in from the wet street, my angel, their coats and cloaks steaming with rain, their noses running, their eyes sore from the smog, imagine the vision that will befall them! Minnie, beautifully got up in cloak and regalia, her hair a tumbling mass of magenta, flanked by torches, surrounded by fairies and wood folk! Surely you would endure the weight of such finery in order to convey her queenly effect?’

  ‘Clinking and clanking across the stage, like some tinker? Of course I would.’

  ‘For me, my angel? For me?’

  ‘For you, my love, only for you.’ Minnie drapes her arm languidly around his neck and kisses him ….

  There was the sound of a key in the front door. Victor was back. Charlie wrestled the calico back on to the costume and thrust it deep inside the wardrobe behind the fur coat.

  He gathered together the reviews and cuttings and stowed them back inside the box file. He was on the verge of replacing it on the bookshelf when Victor came in. ‘Get everything you want?’ Victor asked.

  ‘I have a confession to make,’ said Charlie. ‘I looked in Minnie’s wardrobe.’

  Victor raised an amused eyebrow. ‘Oh you did, did you? Full of frightful old frocks as I recall.’

  ‘The costume is beautiful.’

  ‘Ah yes, it’s quite something. Haven’t taken it out in ages. God knows how she lugged it about the stage … Anne Marie tried it on once and nearly fell down the stairs!’ He opened the wardrobe door and removed the costume. This time the material seemed limp and shapeless, a flat dead skin, as if the snake had sloughed off its external layer and left it to dehydrate in the sun. ‘By all accounts,’ said Victor, ‘it wowed everyone who saw it. Queen of the Fairies. Midsummer Night’s Dream. 1920, I think it was. Although it was such a perennial, they put it on more than once. Revived Farrar Fay’s fortunes, briefly. Don’t know why Minnie decided to keep this particular outfit at home. Must have been attached to it. Good thing she did, though.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘The rest of the props and costumes went up in smoke!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Warehouse fire,’ Victor said. ‘All his fabled scenery, his genre-changing designs, his groundbreaking effects. Burnt like matchsticks. Under-insured, of course. And no evidence left. All we can do is imagine.’ He lifted the costume by the shoulders and held it in front of him. ‘If you take a moment, can’t you picture her wearing it?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Charlie. ‘I can certainly do that.’

  Victor draped it back on the bed. ‘Oh, there’s one more thing I can show you. She did leave some dressing-up jewels behind. Of course they’re mostly paste, glass, silver-plated, but there’s one piece my girls were quite fond of …’

  He’d opened a drawer in the dressing table and removed a very old yet very sturdy cardboard chocolate box, circular in shape, dusty blue in colour with a picture of pale pink roses on the lid. ‘Pretty isn’t it? You wouldn’t dream of sticking this in the recycling.’ He put it on the bed next to the dress and loosened the lid.

  Amongst the tangle of green and orange beads, watery blue pearls and bent brooch pins lay an exquisite jewel. Victor lifted it out and placed it on Charlie’s palm. ‘It’s not genuine. It’s a fake, based on a Lalique design. You may be familiar with it?’

  ‘I have seen it,’ said Charlie. Not half an hour earlier, but he kept that to himself. It was the dragonfly ornament he’d seen William leave on Minnie’s pillow.

  He turned it over and around, smoothing his fingertips along the edges, tracing them around the line of the head and shoulders of the human torso, and the lace wings and tapering tail of the insect. This beautiful jewel, once bestowed on a woman by the man who loved her, was now a symbol of a long-lost passion.

  ‘It’s worth buttons,’ Victor said. ‘Just like the rest.’ He ran the beads in his fingers as if weighing their value. ‘Always useful to get a picture of someone when you’ve handled their possessions, isn’t it?’

  ‘Absolutely. Nothing like it.’ Charlie was on the alert. Did he know? Had he guessed?

  Victor wrapped the dragonfly ornament in its tissue paper and carefully replaced it in its case. ‘Anne Marie says you’re to take it with you. Says I’m to let you borrow it for a while.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Charlie. ‘That’s very kind of her. And you. Thank you.’

  ‘Like I say, it’s worth buttons.’

  ‘Nevertheless, it will add colour to the story.’

  Victor put the lid back on the chocolate box, replaced it where he’d found it and shut the drawer so firmly the handle loops tinkled. ‘Not much of a story.’

  ‘I disagree,’ said Charlie. ‘It’s shaping up quite nicely.’

  Chapter Ten

  Disinterred from the bowels of the Theatre Museum library, the long-out-of-print biography was dusty, fusty, crinkled with damp and at least fifty years old. ‘The author K M Fraser died years ago, but she wrote a whole series on Edwardian actors; and this should give you an insight into the woman and her character,’ said Celia, the librarian. ‘And this …’ she handed over a slim volume, ‘… is all I could find on William Farrar Fay. It dates from around the same time, but I don’t think it’s especially promising.’

  He’d come across many clichéd looking librarians in his time, but Celia wasn’t one of them. In her vibrant make-up and large silver hoop earrings she was more like a design student than a bibliophile and he was pretty sure she didn’t return home at night to an empty flat and a cat. ‘This might be a stupid question, seeing as how you work in a theatre museum and library, but is this period of special interest to you, or are you an expert in all eras?’

  Celia smiled. ‘Obviously I like to give the impression that I’m the fount of all knowledge, but I’m not so much interested in the big, famous, well-documented players, as I am of the minor cha
racters, the ones who’ve fallen off the radar. The more obscure the better.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘That’s what I hoped you’d say.'

  Celia guided him towards a semicircular reading area underneath one of the windows. The grubby padded chairs were going bald at the edges and there was a large unidentifiable stain on the carpet. An empty crisp packet decorated the window ledge along with a couple of dead flies. Against the wall, a set of melancholy oak-framed museum cabinets contained a random selection of theatrical artefacts including a zoetrope, a Harryhausen model dinosaur made of degraded rubber, a pair of slightly soiled gloves that once belonged to Vivien Leigh and a copy of Private Lives signed by Noel Coward.

  ‘No budget,’ said Celia. ‘Otherwise we’d do the place up.’ She handed him a box file.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Something I think you’ll find very interesting.’

  Inside was a collection of theatre programmes, playbills and newspaper cuttings all relating to Minnie Devine. They were fragile and smooth to the touch, so he carefully released them from their bulldog clip and spread them across the table. ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’ There were dozens to choose from. He hardly knew where to start.

  The Notorious Woman returns to London, ran a headline. The hit stage play is back in the capital after its nationwide tour. Catch it while you can. Tickets selling fast.

  House on Fire, said another, is the critically acclaimed drama from England’s finest playwright Geoffrey D’Urvaine. Starring the celebrated actress Miss Minnie Etherege Devine, the show begins next week at the Haymead theatre.

  He picked up a third: Dolores Daylight is in town! Our favourite actress creates a new character in a light comedy, a style we’re anxious to see her try. Miss Minnie Devine makes a spectacular return to the London stage this week, appearing in the latest play written by her favourite playwright Geoffrey D’Urvaine and produced by her long-time professional partner Mr William Farrar Fay. The show is sure to be a resounding success.’

  So far, so gushing, but it wasn’t long before he uncovered articles of a less flattering nature. A retrospective piece on the same play less than a month later didn’t pull any punches: The play comes off after a disappointing run, playing to many empty seats and unfilled rows. The former renowned vivacity of our leading lady was severely lacking. We shall thank her for having the tenacity and bravery to try new things, but we will rejoice when she returns with a piece more suited to her style and skills. Her shortcomings were woefully on display, and she knows it.

  ‘Ouch!’ said Charlie. ‘Who are you, Mr Unchivalrous Critic?’

  He made a note of the writer’s byline: George Edwardes Baxter. Was he the critic they’d all been making fun of at the dinner party?

  Working his way steadily through the cuttings, he began to get a picture of Minnie’s repertoire – a career that spanned some twenty years; a continuous procession of productions, provincial tours and trips abroad. Despite the odd scathing review her popularity had evidently been sustained over a lengthy period.

  This Romeo and Juliet, lamented Edwardes Baxter in a later publication, is the most comical I ever did see. The rope ladder refused to unfurl, leaving our hapless suitor swinging from the balcony like a pendulum. Juliet then dropped her lover’s bottle of poison before she had chance to drink from it, whereupon it rolled away from her towards the wings and she was forced to chase after it as though it were some small rodent that had invaded the stage. Having retrieved it, poor angel, she imbibed the fiery potion and fell in a swoon, tripping over the hem of her gown as she did so. The audience was by now tittering amongst themselves and all gravity was lost.

  The newsprint was old and degraded, but the playbills, studio portraits and advertisements illustrated an actress in her late twenties, early thirties – the prime of her life. Photographic studies showed her in elaborate costumes, beaded and bejewelled, with elaborately coiffured hair piled high on her head. But these were publicity stills – characters, roles that she played. For a description of the woman away from the stage he would need to read the biographies. A cursory glance at the Farrar Fay volume told him that if it was a thorough list of William’s technical achievements that he required then this was the ideal place to start, but personal detail was severely lacking and he quickly put it to one side in favour of Minnie’s own biography: The Divine Miss Devine by the anonymous-sounding K M Fraser.

  The introduction was less than flattering:

  Slow to grasp a point, and heavy-handed with her own. She lived in a state of puzzledom that anyone would choose to live in a fashion otherwise or opposite to hers. A sphinx, a contradictory force, she said one thing and did another. Unmanageable, but brilliant. Beautiful, extravagant and outrageous. Promenading through life cultivating hangers on and admirers; when she bade them follow, they unhesitatingly did so.’

  He leafed quickly through the early chapters: bumpy childhood; early marriage; patchy success followed by professional breakthrough. So far, so showbiz. Later on the same few names kept cropping up: the favoured playwright, Geoffrey D’Urvaine; the professional partner, William Farrar Fay; and the unchivalrous critic, George Edwardes Baxter. He was pretty sure that the briefly glimpsed coterie at the dinner party on stage included both Farrar Fay and Geoffrey d’Urvaine. And the critic ‘George’ must have been Edwardes Baxter. Were they all in thrall to Ms Devine? Was she juggling them in expert coquette fashion? Did they dance attendance to their diva?

  Farrar Fay, the actor manager had been her professional partner; his theatre the Haymead was where most of Minnie’s London productions began. A leading man himself, his performances were as minutely scrutinised as hers. His shortcomings caused as much interest as his triumphs. Baxter’s opinion in 1912, reproduced in the biography, was less than flattering: His good looks and obvious charm are without question; unfortunately he labours under the misapprehension that these attributes alone will suffice. He appears to have overlooked the necessity to act while on stage, preferring rather to stand idly by like an elegant Ming vase, and wait for some obliging personage to turn him about and show off his reverse aspect …

  K M Fraser gave a much more objective assessment of his skills: As a director his grasp of stagecraft was immense. Not for him a basic set, a few props, a painted backdrop; Farrar Fay was responsible for some of the most elaborate stage designs yet seen on the London stage. Taking his influence from the German theatre, his love of pyrotechnics and moving parts urged him to develop more and more elaborate stage effects. Of course, these projects were costly, the outlay huge, and for many productions he accrued only tiny profits. More often than not he failed to make money back, and in some cases, lost a great deal. He hired the best talent he could, the best writers, the best set designers, and they all had a price tag to match. But when he did achieve success, the reviews were phenomenal. Unfortunately, ticket sales did not always match the critical acclaim. The Haymead was operating at a loss for three out of every five seasons, the entire twenty years he was in charge.

  Charlie could positively identify William Farrar Fay as the lover in the bedroom. But what about Geoffrey D’Urvaine, Minnie’s favoured playwright? D’Urvaine’s photo showed a thin, wiry man, charismatic, quirkily dressed with straggly facial hair and a monocle. Charlie was pretty certain this was the man he’d witnessed, pouring drink at the dinner party and goading the critic.

  And what of the critic himself, George Edwardes Baxter, a man who had achieved some degree of notoriety during those pre First World War years? Here was a grainily reproduced photo of him sitting at a large heavy desk, with a watch chain looped in his top pocket and an ink pen poised over a large notebook. Narrow-shouldered with black hair and the neat moustache, his demeanour is serious, his age indeterminate; the facial hair described a man in his forties, although he might have been ten years younger.

  Why would a man who wrote such scathing words about her performances be included in a private dinner party? Why would Minnie invite
her harshest critic to such a select gathering? Unless she wanted to butter him up, persuade him to be kinder to her in future?

  He read on:

  The need to make money sent the acting troupe out on the road. Always seeking an income, trying to make ends meet, the Farrar Fay Players embarked on gruelling tours of Britain’s theatres and extended trips to the United States. By the law of diminishing returns, profits decreased each time. Minnie’s first visit to New York had been a resounding success, but with each subsequent visit, and the stresses and strains on a increasingly exhausted leading lady, the returns were few. Box office receipts told their own story: Minnie’s allure was fading, her appeal was in decline. Her leading men were not always ideally chosen. William Farrar Fay cast himself opposite her whenever he could, but with age came increasing stubbornness, vanity and lack of self awareness; he was more often than not the worst actor for the job, but his jealousy would not allow him to choose anyone more suitable. Fear that his lady would stray, kept him continuously opposite her, as young lover, husband or foil. The catcalls grew louder, the criticisms more pronounced. Farrar Fay was becoming a laughing stock and Minnie’s reputation suffered likewise. It was time she put her foot down.

  She needed a new leading man. And in 25-year-old Robert Perry, temporarily at least, she found him.

  In revenge some might say, Farrar Fay did what any man in his position would do: he cast the much younger actress, Jilly Jones in the ingénue roles, and before long it was rumoured he was romantically involved with her. Minnie affected to take no notice, but the only route available was professional separation. In early 1921, the partnership broke up. Minnie was now free to act elsewhere, and with new, younger, more promising actors. Or so she thought.

  Charlie was struggling to keep track. Who was Robert Perry? Another lover? Was he the younger man in the dinner party group? Or simply a walk on part? The ebb and flow of actors in the troupe – young, handsome, or otherwise – swamped the pages of the biography.