Tell Me Pretty Maiden

by Rhys Bowen

  “Well, I’ll be . . . ,” Daniel said, without finishing the sentence. “What on earth can she want so urgently with you?”

  Miss Van Woekem, I should perhaps explain, was an elderly lady of impeccable pedigree, not prone to flights of fancy or to exaggeration. She also happened to be godmother to a certain Miss Arabella Norton, Daniel’s erstwhile betrothed.

  “Maybe Arabella has displeased her and she wishes to make me her goddaughter instead,” I joked, but Daniel continued to frown. “This would happen now, when I’ve no time,” I said, “but I suppose I’ll have to go. I’m rather fond of the old thing and she does sound upset.”

  “Perhaps I should go with you,” Daniel suggested. “I might be able to help.”

  “I’m not sure, Daniel,” I said. “It may be something she wants to keep private from her usual circle and she counts you among them.”

  “Counted,” Daniel said. “No longer.”

  “All the same I think I had better go alone. I don’t know if this is a personal matter or a professional one. I’ll report back to you if I’m not required to keep confidentiality.”

  “As you wish,” Daniel said, feigning indifference.

  I patted his cheek. “You are a silly thing. You know very well that you wouldn’t take me with you if you were summoned on police business.”

  “Of course not. It would be more than my job is worth.”

  “There you are then. I’m a professional detective, just like you. And I’m not trying to get rid of you, but I have to get dressed and out of here or I’ll never get my work done today.”

  After he had gone I felt guilty, of course. He was obviously struggling with his current situation and probably needed companionship and reassurance. But then one of us had to earn some money and right now that person seemed to be me. I rushed upstairs to wash and dress, all the while trying to decide in which order I should tackle the many things I had to accomplish today before tonight’s dress rehearsal.

  Probably my first task should be to find out if anyone held a grudge against Blanche Lovejoy or would want her show closed for any reason. I wasn’t quite sure how to do this until I realized that I knew people who were connected to the theater. Obviously, the first person on that list would be Oona Sheehan. It was she who had sent me to Blanche, after all. And then there was Ryan O’Hare, the flamboyant and completely outrageous Irish playwright. If anyone knew juicy gossip, it would be Ryan.

  I wrote down both names in my little notebook.

  Then I scribbled “buy greasepaint etc.” Oona would know where to do that.

  But there was also my other worry—the mute girl in the hospital who could be transferred to an insane asylum any moment. What chance would she ever have of regaining her speech and her senses in that terrible place? Dr. Birnbaum was going to place advertisements in the New York newspapers and I had promised to speak to New York police matron Sabella Goodwin. In truth Mrs. Goodwin’s official title was matron, but the police had recently begun to use her as a detective in undercover assignments, in cases where a woman’s presence would raise less suspicion than a man’s.

  I decided to go to her home, rather than to police headquarters, where my presence would be awkward, to say the least. I took out my pen, ink, and writing paper and wrote her a note, in case she wasn’t at home. It was hard to tell with her strange schedule. Sometimes she would be out on the streets all night and might just have returned. Then I washed and dressed and set off at a lively trot.

  Mrs. Goodwin lived within walking distance from Patchin Place, on East Seventh Street, but over on the East Side near Tompkins Square. The neighborhood had a more refined air than Greenwich Village, with well-scrubbed front steps and well-dressed children playing in what remained of the snow in the park. Her home was a solid brownstone, with pots containing bay trees on either side of her front door. I knocked and was delighted to hear approaching footsteps. My bright smile waned, however, when a cross voice demanded, “Who is it?”

  “It’s Molly, Mrs. Goodwin. Molly Murphy.”

  The door opened to reveal Mrs. Goodwin, clad pretty much as I had been an hour previously: her dark hair, now tinged with gray, lying loose over her shoulders, her body wrapped in a large red flannel robe and slippers.

  “Molly dear,” she said. “You’ve caught me at a bad time. I just got home after a night’s duty on the streets. I was literally halfway up the stairs to bed.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll go away and come back another time then. When it’s more convenient.”

  “Was this just a social call, or something important?” she said.

  “I had come to ask for your help,” I said, “but I can leave you the note I brought in case you weren’t home.”

  She sighed. “Since you’re here, you’d better come in. I don’t suppose it will kill me to wait another half an hour before I go to bed.”

  “If you’re sure,” I began but she frowned and dragged me inside.

  “Now then, what is today’s great drama?” she said as soon as she had seated me in an armchair beside a well-banked fire. “You are well, I hope?”

  Her look said volumes.

  “Quite well, thank you,” I said hastily. “I’ve come to you about a baffling case.” And I recounted the whole story of the girl in the snowdrift.

  “I know she is nothing to do with me,” I said, “but I want to see her safely home.”

  Mrs. Goodwin was still frowning. “I’ll do what I can,” she said, “although it might not be as easy as you think to trace her next of kin. Girls run away from home all the time because they are in trouble, because they quarrel with their parents, or because they dream of the bright lights and the big city. Or they run away with a young man who subsequently betrays them and abandons them. As often as not they fall in with bad company and wind up on the streets.”

  “This girl didn’t look like a prostitute,” I said. “Her style of dress was demure.”

  “Not all girls in that trade look as if they are,” Mrs. Goodwin said. “If she was in a brothel that catered to a high class of clientele, she would dress appropriately. And there is a certain type of man who is attracted to the virginal and vulnerable. Do we know the state of her virginity?”

  “No, I haven’t asked that question. I was told that she hadn’t been assaulted in that way.”

  “Then I would suggest that finding out would be a next step. It would mean we were dealing with a girl who had recently run away and not fallen into the hands of a pimp or a madam.”

  “But what about the terrible trauma?” I asked. “The one that has robbed her of her speech?”

  “Until she regains her speech and tells us, we have no way of knowing. From what you tell me I suggest that someone was deliberately trying to get rid of her. You say she suffered a blow to the head. Perhaps someone intended to knock her out and leave her to freeze in the park. By the time her body was found he could be far away with an alibi.”

  “How terrible.” I shuddered, reliving the cold of that snow against my own bare skin.

  “People do terrible things every day,” she said. “Some of the sights I have witnessed seem beyond belief. Mothers who kill their innocent little children, men who beat their wives, men who kill for a bottle of liquor or a new coat. Life, I am afraid, is very cheap in New York City.”

  “But you will do what you can, won’t you?” I asked. “You’ll go through the reports of missing girls. You’ll ask around at headquarters. I’ve given you the description.”

  “Yes, I’ll do what I can,” she said with a weary smile. “But you have to realize that you can only do so much. She is not your sister. You have no obligation here. You can’t solve all the troubles of the world.”

  “I’d like to give it a darned good try,” I replied, making her smile.

  After I left her, I decided that my next visit should be to Ryan O’Hare. He had rooms at the Hotel Lafayette, near Washington Square, and at this relatively early hour was likely to still be at
home. I was told at the front desk that Mr. O’Hare was indeed in residence and tapped cautiously on his door. I say cautiously because one was never quite sure whom one might find in Ryan’s rooms. He had, shall we say, an extensive and diverse circle of friends. But this time my knock was answered by a very sleepy “Come in.”

  I opened his door and found the room still in darkness, the heavy drapes drawn.

  “If that’s you, Jacques, be an angel and put the coffee on the table,” a voice muttered from the gloom.

  “Ryan, it’s Molly,” I said. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you but it is after eleven.”

  “Molly?” The voice sounded instantly wide awake. “What a lovely surprise. Open the curtains, my angel, so that I may feast upon your beauty.”

  “Enough of your blarney, O’Hare.” I laughed as I went over to the window and pulled back the drapes. Ryan was now sitting up in a very regal-looking four-poster. His long dark hair was tousled, he was wearing a frilled night shirt, and he looked remarkably attractive. He patted the red silk eiderdown beside him. “Come and sit and talk to me. I have been positively starved of your company of late.”

  “Yes, I know,” I said, positioning myself beside him on the bed. “I’ve suddenly become very busy.”

  “It’s that brute of a man of yours, isn’t it?” Ryan said. “He has forbidden you to see me. I could tell from the way he looked at me that he disapproved. I’m so sensitive that way.”

  “Well, he doesn’t approve,” I said, “but no man is ever going to tell me how to select my friends.”

  “How bold of you, Molly, especially when that policeman is so forceful, so domineering.”

  “Can you see me being dominated?” I chuckled.

  “So did you come here for something special or just because you were pining for me as much as I was pining for you?”

  “Actually, Ryan, I came for juicy gossip,” I said.

  His eyes lit up. “Juicy gossip. How divine. Now if that lazybones Jacques would only bring my breakfast we could both have coffee and my happiness would be complete.”

  “My big news,” I said, “is that I have taken a job in the theater. I’m to appear in Blanche Lovejoy’s new play.”

  “At the Casino? My darling girl, how did you manage that?”

  “Let’s just say I have a little secret assignment from Miss Lovejoy.”

  “Anything to do with the ghost?”

  “You’ve heard then?”

  “My dear, the whole theater world is abuzz. Everyone is so thrilled that Blanche is finally being haunted.”

  “Is she much disliked then?”

  “Not disliked, but she has been known to play the grande dame a little too often, and she never forgives those who have insulted her.”

  “So she does have enemies?”

  “My darling, we all have enemies. Anyone who is successful has enemies.”

  “Who would want Blanche’s latest venture to fail?”

  Ryan frowned, staring out of the window at two pigeons walking up and down the wide sill. “I couldn’t tell you that,” he said. “It’s her show, after all. One gathers she put up most of the money herself. Well, she’d have to, wouldn’t she. She’s getting a little long in the tooth to be the leading lady, especially since Florodora made sixteen-year-olds the standard fare. So it’s not as if she pipped another actress at the post for the part.”

  “A rival theater owner, maybe? Someone who doesn’t want the Casino to be successful?”

  “But it already is successful. If someone had wanted to bring about its downfall they’d have done it years ago. Now it’s one of the best houses in the city.”

  “What do you know about Robert Barker?”

  “Dear little Bobby? Madly in love with Blanche, of course.”

  “Is he?”

  “Has been for years. Why else would he keep directing her plays and taking all that abuse from her. He keeps asking her to marry him and she keeps refusing. Not rich enough, for one thing. And not forceful enough. Blanche craves to be dominated.”

  “Might he want to get back at her for all that abuse and rejection?”

  “Only if he’d abandoned his quest, because she’d never have anything to do with him again if she found out he’d been doing the dirty on her.” Ryan’s eyes opened wider. “I see what you are getting at. You are hinting that it’s not a ghost but a mere mortal who is making nasty things happen to dear Blanche?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m hinting. But I was there yesterday when the wind machine suddenly went off, all by itself. The whole cast was onstage. The stage crew was working together to finish a prop. The only people who weren’t present were Mr. Barker, who came through from the front house, and the choreographer, Desmond Haynes.”

  “Dear Desmond,” Ryan’s eyes became dreamy. “How is he these days?”

  “A friend of yours?”

  “Former friend. Will you tell him that Ryan still misses him?”

  So much for any thoughts of unrequited love for Blanche. So why had he been watching in the shadows that first time I was in Blanche’s dressing room and then melting away before he thought I had seen him? “You can’t think of any reason why he’d want the play to fail, can you?”

  “Dear Desmond? He is a perfectionist. If he felt that the play didn’t meet his standards? But no, he’d have made sure it did meet his standards. Another forceful man, I have to tell you.”

  “And he has no special relationship with Blanche? Former attachment? Former confrontation?”

  “Relationship? Oh no. Desmond only likes beautiful people, like moi. And confrontation? I don’t remember one, although he has his pride and Blanche did once do an impression of him at a party, I remember. She was brilliantly good, I have to admit, and Dessy was furious. But that was long, long ago. One doesn’t carry a grudge over such small things. If one did, I’d have challenged half of New York to a duel by now.” Again the wistful look. “I’ve never challenged anyone to a duel. Wouldn’t it be divine? Think of the velvet britches and the white handkerchiefs and pistols at dawn and the mist swirling around. Of course, I absolutely can’t stand the sight of blood, so probably not.”

  I patted the covers to interrupt this fantasy. “So to get back to the Casino, Ryan. There’s no way into a theater besides the stage door if all the front entrances are locked, is there?”

  “There is sometimes a cargo door when they need to bring in large pieces of scenery, but that’s always kept locked, too. The only way in would be past the stage door keeper.”

  “So it has to be an inside job. Maybe a member of the cast could somehow have . . .”

  “Tell me who is in the cast,” he said. I reeled off those names I could remember and Ryan pronounced each of them blameless, except for Hiram Hunnycutt, who played the American millionaire. He was known to have tantrums about things like his billing on the marquee. Was it possible that he wasn’t happy with the size of his part? And the maid, Collette, had also complained that she didn’t have many lines. But in each case a small part in what Ryan described as one of the best theaters in New York was surely better than being out of work. Nobody working in what was destined to be a hit show would want to sabotage it.

  Ryan’s breakfast arrived and I accepted a cup of coffee. Ryan was ready to divulge more gossip and dying to tell me about the new play he was writing—about a freedom fighter bandit in South America. He had been in correspondence with the real bandit and couldn’t wait to go to Bolivia to meet him in person. “He sounds divine,” he said. “So utterly rugged, and if one can go by the photographs, not a bad fashion sense, either.”

  I had to laugh. “Ryan, you are too much,” I said. “Can you see yourself in Bolivia? I bet they don’t have running water or proper sanitation, especially not where bandits live.”

  “Oh I’m sure he’s a remarkably civilized bandit,” he said. “South American bandits are so romantic, compared to the low-down animal behavior of New York criminals. You’ve heard about these brutal Sicil
ians, I take it? Utterly ruthless.” A wistful look came into his eyes as if he were almost hoping to be kidnapped.

  I got up from my comfortable seat. “Much as I would love to stay and chat, I have a lot to do before a dress rehearsal tonight.”

  “So you really are going to be in the play? What is your part—do tell?”

  “I can’t. You’ll have to come to opening night and see for yourself.”

  “I’ll never get tickets for opening night. Everyone will want to be there.”

  “Blanche is that popular, is she?”

  “No, darling, to see if the ghost appears, of course.” He laughed gaily and went back to attacking a boiled egg.

  SIXTEEN

  I left Ryan filled with the warm glow that always lingered after being in his presence and caught the Broadway trolley north to Oona Sheehan’s rooms at the Hoffman House. It must have been my lucky day. Miss Sheehan was also in residence and prepared to see me. I was whisked up in the elevator, without bumping into the Divine Sarah this time.

  Oona was bustling around, getting ready for her own theatrical performance, shouting instructions to the new French maid as that maid showed me into the drawing room. “And Yvette, my fur muff. I can’t risk getting my hands cold. And the new jar of cold cream. You might as well bring that as well.” She broke off with a beaming smile. “Molly. How lovely. Blanche tells me you have taken the case and words cannot express her gratitude. Have you been there yet? Have you seen the ghost?”

  “I haven’t seen a manifestation, but I’ve seen an example of its work,” I said, and told her about the wind machine. She was clearly delighted. “How terribly chilling. So the place really is haunted. Poor Blanche. She would pick that particular theater for her big comeback. Now I bet she wishes she’d aimed lower and gone for the Fifth Avenue Theater instead. Not as glamorous but surely safer.”

  Yvette appeared with the muff and the cold cream. “Anything else, Madame?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t offer you coffee, Molly. I have a matinee today, so I’m all a-dither. Was there something you wanted particularly?”