FEMME FATALE

by Carole Nelson Douglas

This pair of twins were as curvaceous as circus steeds and wore flesh-colored tights beneath indecently short skirts. They clung together in coy shyness despite their bold state of undress, and the large even bolder type beneath their likeness read:

  PANSY AND PETUNIA,

  THE TWIN TOASTS OF FOURTEENTH STREET

  THEY DANCE, THEY SING, THEY TWIST YOUR HEARTS

  AROUND THEIR LITTLE FINGERS

  “This memorializes the beginning of the end,” I said. “The time when their paths and yours parted.”

  “Indeed, but first those paths conjoined in the horrible death of poor Petunia.” Irene shook her head. “Some things I was perhaps better off not remembering.”

  “Have you,” I asked gingerly, “in your memories recalled some facts that might possibly predict where Mr. Holmes will find his confederate?”

  “Perhaps.” Irene’s face remained sphinxlike. “I will let Pink and Mr. Holmes direct this show.”

  “They cannot both do so!”

  “I know, that is why I will watch. It will be most amusing.”

  In fact, barely had the last placard been set in place and the waiters left, then the man in question strolled through the open double doors to our private room.

  His hat, gloves, and cane had been intercepted by a waiter at the door, but he kept one hand in the pocket of his soft-toned plaid suit in such a way that I suspected a firearm could lay concealed there.

  After nodding at us and Miss Pink and quickly summing up the table with no great pleasure, his eyes fixed on the playbills.

  Pink was still rearranging flower arrangements on the table, so he addressed her first. “Your work?” he nodded at the ring of easels surrounding the empty table.”

  “No. I assumed yours.”

  At that he smiled tightly and bowed toward us again, following the courtesy by a slow tour of each and every placard, beginning at the ones nearest the doors.

  Pink cast us an impatient look, as though Irene’s forethought was to be faulted for absorbing too much of the great man’s time, no matter how cavalierly he regarded the display.

  He stopped before us as if we were but one more placard on display: the Neuilly Sisters, internationally renowned . . . jugglers, perhaps.

  “Is this to be a command performance, or a séance?” he inquired softly. “Half the artists represented are dead.”

  Irene was swift to answer. “I believe that you are the impresario of this luncheon, ably assisted by the energetic Pink the Wonder Tattler.”

  “I would prefer a singing mermaid,” he muttered after glancing over his shoulder. “Or at least a reliable secretary. She expects a startling revelation in time for the morning edition, all to please her new publisher, Mr. Pulitzer.”

  “And will you oblige?” Irene asked sweetly.

  He said nothing, merely moved on to the next playbill.

  “I wish I knew,” Irene whispered to me, “whether he was still making up his mind.”

  “Do you think so?”

  But before she could answer, our first guest deposited his outerwear at the door and entered our arena.

  “Professor Marvel,” Irene greeted him, finally sweeping forward as the hostess she was.

  He took both her hands, and kissed her cheek.

  Was this a Judas kiss, I wondered, for I was now keenly suspicious of everyone we had met.

  As a veteran performer on the variety stage, the professor was familiar with every sort of act, and no doubt could have stepped in to play many parts in an emergency.

  My suspicions were derailed a moment later when a heavily veiled figure paused in the doorway, a dwarf standing beside it, the light at their backs making them into a sinister pair.

  I rushed forward when I realized this was the unfortunate Pig person accompanied by her small daughter Edith, not Phoebe Cummings.

  “Do come in,” I urged, taking the little girl by the hand to encourage her mother forward.

  I suspect the poor lady avoided public places. I escorted them to chairs beside Professor Marvel, who immediately greeted them warmly. He stood to seat both Edith and her mother, calling a waiter over to install a pillow on the child’s chair. Soon they were chatting away like old friends, which I suppose they were.

  A moment later the professor was calling for a new pillow, as Phoebe Cummings herself entered the room, attired in a checked cape coatdress that most resembled Pink’s new ensemble that resembled the outfit and cap I had worn in Paris last spring. In fact, the coat reminded me of the one Sherlock Holmes had worn to visit us at Neuilly. Thinking of myself, Pink, and Mr. Holmes all attired in similar checked coats quite confused me. I realized that if Edith had been so attired, she and Phoebe would look like twins.

  Not too far away, Sherlock Holmes was aiming a battery of questions at Professor Marvel and his “every fact at my fingertip” technique. I was struck by the fact that they seemed to know each other.

  “My ‘marvels’ are the product of years of performance, my dear sir,” Professor Marvel was expounding with pleasure. “You would be surprised at how limited any given audience’s range of questions is. I thrive on the public’s lack of imagination, rather than any miraculous skill of my own.”

  “It takes nimble fingers as well as a nimble mind, however,” Mr. Holmes remonstrated.

  The professor waggled chubby but knuckle-enlarged digits. “Dexterity in both mind and matter fades with time. Luckily I compensate in other ways. The quick quip, for instance, defers the moment of truth just long enough, and a laughing audience feels itself well entertained.”

  I doubted there would be much laughter here once the main “act” of unmasking a murderer was underway. Speaking of which, an utterly new performer was about to make his entrance.

  The threshold hosted a man in a checked suit, his beefy form straining at the plaid vest beneath, whom Pink rushed to greet and install next to the chair she had chosen herself, introducing him as “Mr. Holly.”

  This could only be the city police detective, and he was no French inspector like the dandified François le Villard. I would not be surprised to find such a man driving a hansom cab or touting horses at the racetrack. Indeed, he didn’t think to remove his bowler hat until he was halfway to the luncheon table.

  While I watched this fellow eased into a place he looked most uncomfortable in occupying, Irene was escorting her own unlikely fellow to a seat opposite Pink’s guest.

  It was Mr. Conroy, the Pinkerton inquiry agent!

  I gazed upon the two women who faced each other over their respective unhailed representatives of law and order: Pink and her policeman, Irene and her Pinkerton. They rather resembled mothers of rival debutantes jousting for pride of place for their awkward darlings at the table.

  Even I had to admit that Sherlock Holmes was several cuts above these New World policemen, public and private, but then he had the inimitable advantage of being English.

  He had not yet taken the seat Pink had pointed out to him, but was still roving the room, studying placards and occasionally running a disconcertingly sharp eye over the assembling guests.

  Another tall figure darkened the door. I rushed to greet the maestro, who dangled a top hat from the same knobby fingers I had last seen holding a violin.

  A waiter soon relieved him of hat, gloves, and cane. His tie was elegantly knotted. I was relieved to see him show some care in his dress on this formal occasion, which gave him an Old World air I had not noted before.

  Irene came to claim him from me, and seated him in a place of honor on her left side, for she had taken the other end of the long table, opposite Mr. Holmes.

  I was not pleased to see these two rivals thus posed, like lord and lady of the manor, but there was also something of the chess board in their placement.

  Pink’s mother entered thereafter. I raised my eyebrows. She had nothing to do with these matters, did she?

  Here Irene certainly could not counter Mrs. Cochrane with her own candidate, as she had with the “dueling
detectives.”

  I was not surprised to see another gentleman arrive, introduced by Pink as Mr. Gordon Evers.

  This was the light-fingered acquaintance Pink had imported to the séance to help her detect legerdemain in the doings there. With Professor Marvel also here, almost all the persons who attended that first of more than one fatal, recent performance was present.

  The long table was beginning to look crowded. I quickly claimed my foreordained seat at Irene’s right. Pink was in the same position at Mr. Holmes’s end of the table.

  Messrs. Conroy and Holly, the Pinkerton and the policeman, bracketed Mr. Holmes two seats down from his position. Clearly, Pink expected him to expose the miscreant and wanted the long arm of the law within easy reach of whoever the villain turned out to be.

  I studied the table, now that it was fully occupied, myself.

  Gazing upon it, I felt a sense of unease I couldn’t name.

  I tallied the dead women we knew of. From the theatrical world, there was the never-met Abyssinia who had endured a rather too-close encounter with her performing partner, a boa constrictor. There were the twin sisters Sophie and Salamandra, recently killed in the very performances of their acts. There was the never-met Winifred who matured into the doomed Petunia, or Pet, whose lifeless body in a bathtub had caused Irene to lose her voice. There was her twin sister Wilhelmina, also known as Mina, who had survived her twin’s tragic death, yet spent anguished years trying to find the child she had given birth to in secret. Both twins had been patrons of Madame Restell’s infamous contraceptive and pregnancy-terminating skills.

  And then there were the sympathetic landladies and doormen we had met, passing acquaintances who yet mourned the needlessly dead.

  For a moment, I wondered if Mr. Holmes would conduct a séance here! But then I realized that Irene had already summoned the dead with the device of the playbill placards.

  We needed no more ghosts on the scene, we needed a murderer in the flesh!

  Irene had determined one half of the equation, and had beaten Mr. Holmes to the scene of the crime . . . crimes, plural, on Fifth Avenue. One would have to credit her with that achievement.

  Yet there was a missing murderer, what Mr. Holmes termed a confederate. It was indeed unlikely that Mina Gilfoyle had secreted herself at Sophie’s séance to play the part of confederate-turned-murderer. It would have taken someone with more strength to strangle Sophie quickly in full view of a table of witnesses.

  Strength would not be required to douse Salamandra’s performing wardrobe with flammable substances, not once, but twice. Stealth, however, would be needed, and an ability to pass backstage without question.

  Mina had been over ten years absent from the stage. No current doormen or stagehands would recognize her, but a woman backstage who was not a performer could not pass unnoticed. She could have gone in disguise, but that was unlikely. Mina was obsessed with cheating Irene of her heritage, the knowledge of her origins, so she wanted the Dixon sisters dead, yes, but she was rich enough to avoid the doing the murderous work herself.

  As Mr. Holmes had wisely remarked, her madness was of the sort that finally turned on its possessor, not on others . . . except in motive rather than execution.

  I thought again of the many personas child performers adapted as they aged. It struck me that one could get mired in a particular period, as Wilhelmina, turned Pansy, had when she allowed her envy of Irene’s beauty and talent—and integrity—to fester. When her sister Petunia had died and Irene discovered the body, did she somehow blame Irene for Pet’s ill fortune? Was that easier than blaming her sister, or herself? Was her vendetta against Irene a case of ancient Greek tragedy, the impulse imbedded in the tendency to “kill the messenger?”

  I had many questions, but first had to put my attention to a lavish luncheon that began with cream of chestnut soup, served cold in honor of the summer season. The entree was a large fillet of fish curved like a scimitar on a bed of greens and candied apricot slices. The fish were headless, thank goodness. I cannot think why the more elegant the meal the more obviously dead creature parts the diner is forced to confront. Each fish was served in portions to several people and its entire length was covered with thin-sliced almonds arranged like fish scales. For the absent “eye,” some overenthusiastic chef had sliced green olive stuffed with red pimiento into an unlikely orb. Baked onions stuffed with garlic paste and studded with cloves made an unusual vegetable course, along with a more conventional timbale of macaroni, with its rich combination of cream, eggs, chicken and ham to enhance the delicately bland fish. Desert offered ripe red islands of strawberries amid a silken creamy sea, which I enjoyed tremendously, much remarking on the unusually tasty flavor, until Irene in-formed me that the sauce had been flavored with whiskey!

  It took several sips of tea to banish the uncivilized taste, which I’d fully believed was due to exotic spices, and not common spirits.

  It was only when the plates and serving dishes were cleared and we were all left to our cups of tea, or coffee in some cases, that Irene rung an exquisite call to attention on her crystal water goblet with a sterling silver spoon.

  She stood, lifting her wine glass as for a toast.

  “I welcome our near and dear spirits to this table, those who are gone and whom we mourn and celebrate, most particularly Sophie and Salamandra Dixon, and now even more recently, Wilhelmina Hermann Gilfoyle.”

  First everyone lifted a glass—I made do with water—then came the buzz and clatter of neighbors interrogating neighbors.

  “Wilhelmina dead too?” asked the Pig Lady’s gentle voice. I had observed her eat beneath the curtain of her veil without making the sheer but opaque fabric flutter once.

  A greater buzz arose. The news startled all present but Irene, myself, and Mr. Holmes.

  Pink was conferring with the policeman, who could only shrug and seemed loath to interrupt his avid consumption of whiskeyed strawberries to attend to the postprandial speechifying.

  “What is this new death?” Pink finally asked Irene directly, and a bit sharply.

  For answer, Irene waved a hand at the poster of Pansy and Petunia. “The last of the twins. It’s ironic that Sophie and Salamandra were twins as well.”

  “Another set of twins? With one set dead only days ago? When and where did this Pansy or Petunia die?”

  “Last night,” Irene answered calmly, ignoring the gasps that stirred the table. “At home.”

  “And was it foul play?”

  “I doubt any charges will be filed.”

  “And her sister died too? Where and when?”

  “Winifred, also known as Petunia, died in town here, perhaps sixteen or seventeen years ago.”

  “That long?” Pink cogitated visibly. A death that old did not fit into her scheme of some contemporary maniac killing possible candidates for Irene’s mother. “How old was Petunia?”

  “Perhaps sixteen or seventeen.”

  Pink sat quietly and unhappily calculating. In no way could a woman who would be thirty-two or -four today be considered a candidate for Irene’s mother. Nor could her twin sister who had just died last night.

  “Perhaps,” came Sherlock Holmes’s high but commanding voice, “these people attending the luncheon need to better understand why the loss of Mrs. Gilfoyle surprises Miss Nellie Bly so much.”

  An even greater buzz expanded as our luncheon companions realized an infamous reporter was in our midst.

  Pink flashed Mr. Holmes a look of pure impatience, as if he were quite ruining her lofty plans through a bit of pompous British stupidity. Oh, how I hoped she was wrong, even if that meant that I would have to accept Mr. Holmes as being right, at least in this one instance! Better the devil you don’t know very well than the one you have clutched to your bosom in more innocent days, although no devils are to be recommended as bosom companions, even temporarily.

  “Mrs. Norton,” he went on. “Most of those at this table knew you well years ago, during your days as a ch
ild performer. Perhaps you would care to inform them of the mysteries that have brought you back to the shores of America.”

  “The first mystery,” Irene said, “is Nellie Bly, who seems to have taken more interest in my history and origins than even I might have.”

  Every eye focused on the professional snoop at our table.

  “She told me that she was convinced that I had a mother I had never known in the States, and that someone was trying to kill her.”

  “So that is what brought you back!” Professor Marvel exclaimed, nodding. “Didn’t you realize that some of us would have told you about any parents they knew you had?”

  “I did indeed. That’s why I was extremely skeptical of her claim.”

  The next voice came from behind the Pig Lady’s veil, which remained eerily unmoving despite the breath that must be wafting across it. If she wished to give séances, I have no doubt she would be most uncannily successful at it!

  “Was the death of Sophie an indication that she might be your mother? And Salamandra also? That’s quite impossible.”

  “Someone might not have known that,” Irene said. “And why is it impossible?”

  The Pig Lady’s veil turned left and then right as she inspected both sides of the table. “I cannot speak of that in this company.” The veil lowered as she presumably glanced down to little Edith at her side.

  “Nell, perhaps you could take Edith for a walk outside.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “I do not wish to leave at this critical point. I might be required to . . . to testify.”

  “I’ll walk the child,” Professor Marvel offered jovially, tossing his napkin to the tabletop in preparation for rising.

  “I think not,” Mr. Holmes said, rather ominously. He sent a sudden smile Mrs. McGillicuddy’s way. “Could you, madam? A few minutes should suffice, I think.”

  She was already leaning across the table toward Edith opposite her. “Now, dearie, they’re getting all grown-up and boring after eating. Let’s go see something more interestin’.”

  The child was happy to oblige the jolly landlady, and the two went off hand in hand like the Walrus and the Carpenter, with less lethal results, one would hope.