by Maia Chance
“That bastard!” Beaulah yelled. “I’m gonna sock him one!”
“Don’t do anything rash,” I said. “Winfield is powerful and wealthy—”
“I don’t care. I’m gonna go see him! I was thinking about it and thinking about it, ’cause I saw in the newspaper he’s gonna give a speech at a Coney Island beauty pageant this afternoon. Well, this settles it. I’m going to Coney Island. Pageant’s at four o’clock, I saw it in the newspaper. I wanna stop home and change real quick. I hate Winnie’s guts, so I have got to look my best, you know—”
I nodded. I knew.
“—but I gotta be quick because I might have to take the train if my friend Harriet—she’s got her own motorcar—can’t take the afternoon off from her cashier job at the feed store.” Beaulah tossed aside her cigarette and stood. “Say, Lola, you’ve been so nice, warning me, why don’t you borrow this?” She held out her copy of Thrilling Romance.
“Really? Thank you!” I took it.
“Just drop it off at my place when you’re through. I’m at seven-oh-three Oak Street in Hare’s Hollow. It’s a boarding house and the landlady won’t let you in, but if you give the magazine to her, she’ll give it to me.”
“Seven-oh-three Oak Street,” I said.
“Mrs. Woodby?” Hermie’s voice called. “Mrs. Woodby, are you in the maze?”
Beaulah narrowed her eyes. “Mrs. Woodby? Say, you some relation of Dr. Woodby’s?”
I swallowed. “Well, yes, but Chisholm and I—”
“You stinking rat!” Beaulah snarled. “Give me my magazine back.”
“But I—”
“I don’t lend my Thrilling Romance to sneaks.” Beaulah snatched it and stormed away.
“There you are, Mrs. Woodby,” Hermie said, emerging from around a hedge with Cedric at his ankles. “What are you doing in here?”
Could he have been eavesdropping?
“Only exploring, and then I spoke with Nurse Beaulah a bit,” I said.
“You can’t hire good help these days, can you?” Hermie said. “But Father refuses to fire that chit. He’s a filthy old beast. Now, then. It occurred to me that we haven’t discussed Cedric’s diet at all.”
“His diet?” To be honest, Cedric looked like he was wearing a thermal waistcoat. “I’ll put it this way, Mr. Inchbald: he has the appetite of a Newfoundland dog.”
“It is a good thing that you don’t intend to show him, then.”
21
I excused myself from Hermie as quickly as I could, and motored to the spot where I’d dropped off Berta earlier outside the Morris estate.
No sooner had I parked than Berta exploded from a hedge, crossed the road, and climbed into the passenger seat. She carried her handbag and a soft-bound book. “Goodness me,” she said, picking a leaf from her dress. “This heat is dreadful.”
“Aren’t you going to ask me what I discovered at Inchbald Hall?” I asked, accelerating onto the road to Hare’s Hollow.
“It cannot possibly be as important as what I have discovered.” Berta waved the book. “The Institut Alpenrose Alumni Directory, 1922 edition.”
“Wowie. How did you manage it?”
“I posed as a cleaning woman—recall the apron borrowed from Mr. Demel. I entered by way of the conservatory and traversed the house unseen. However, just as my hand was upon the doorknob of Muffy’s room, a thuggish man in a suit appeared—”
“Buster?”
“Another one just like him—and a most unsettling exchange transpired, in which the man seemed to take me for one of—” Berta coughed. “—one of Senator Morris’s assignations.”
“Really? You in your apron?”
“There are men who find aprons exciting, Mrs. Woodby. Thinking swiftly, I decided my best course of action would be not to disillusion the man.”
“Berta!”
“At any rate—knowing how you tend to dillydally, Mrs. Woodby—after I located the directory, I examined it on the premises and found each American woman who had attended the school in the years 1890 through 1895, of which there were ten. I then proceeded to telephone these women.”
“From where?”
“From Muffy’s boudoir telephone, of course. I got through to three—the others were either not at home, or they would not take my call.”
“Who did you say you were?”
“A detective. Of the three I spoke to, only one was kind and womanly. The others were rather obstructive and rude, and one threatened to call the police. At any rate, we are to meet with a Mrs. Dun—Margaret Dun—at eleven o’clock tomorrow at the Imperial Ballroom on Forty-second Street. She suggested that she has something to relay about the schoolgirl scandal rumor that might interest us a great deal—goodness, Mrs. Woodby, look out for that squirrel!”
I swerved to miss a squirrel scampering across the road.
“Where are you motoring to in such a hurry?” Berta asked. “I would very much enjoy an iced beverage, you do realize. I have been trotting about like a pig to market.”
“No time for a beverage,” I said, rolling through a stop sign and turning right. “We’re going to Nurse Beaulah’s boarding house before it’s too late.”
“Too late? Nurse Beaulah?”
I told Berta about how Beaulah was the night nurse in the East Ward and how she’d been Senator Morris’s twist-and-twirl. How he’d promised to marry her if something ever happened to his wife, and how he’d jilted her right after something had happened to his wife. “I think Senator Morris might have set Beaulah up as his scapegoat to take the fall for Muffy’s murder.”
“But he hired us to look into his wife’s death,” Berta said. “Why would he have done that if he is responsible for her murder?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ah. I know,” Berta said grimly. “Such a scenario befell the novice gumshoe Brett Wallins, Thad Parker’s young protégé.”
“That fellow with the hook for a right hand?”
“It is his left hand, but yes. In Parisian Peril, the villain Marceau Dumonde hired Brett to investigate his own crime. Dumonde believed Brett would bungle things, you see, while at the same time exonerating himself by having hired someone to investigate.”
“You’re saying that Senator Morris hired us to investigate because he thinks we’re … incompetent?”
“In a nutshell, yes.”
“Bastard.” I pressed harder on the gas.
Berta straightened her hat. “However, I must add that Brett Wallins ensnared Marceau Dumonde in the end, after a thrilling chase to the top of the Eiffel Tower.”
I slammed to a stop in front of a tall clapboard house on Oak Street with a picket fence and 703 on the mailbox. “This is Beaulah Starr’s boarding house. We’re motoring her to Coney Island in order to see for ourselves what happens when she gives it to Senator Morris hot and strong. The truth might all come out, and I want to be there if it does.” We got out, and I left the windows open for Cedric. Poor peanut.
A landlady with a sharp face and a pendulous bosom opened the door to my knock. “Yes?” She gave Berta and me a disdainful north–south.
“We’re here to visit Miss Starr,” I said.
“No visitors allowed.”
“What is this, a nunnery?” I said, trying to see past her.
“I do not like your tone,” the landlady said.
“I must return a magazine,” I lied, shaking my handbag as though it contained a magazine. “The new issue of Thrilling Romance.” Surely even the stoniest woman could, at least secretly, sympathize with that.
But the landlady’s lip curled. “My niece reads that lurid publication. Nothing but detailed instructions on how a young girl might lose her virtue.”
“I do agree,” Berta cut in, “but Miss Starr requires the magazine for other, more moral purposes. You see, the most recent issue of Thrilling Romance happens to contain an advertisement for a mail-order teach-yourself-piano at-home course, and Miss Starr would very much like to learn how to pla
y the piano.”
“No music in my house. Go away.” The landlady slammed the door.
“Should we shout for Beaulah?” Berta whispered.
I shook my head. “The landlady might telephone the police. Let’s sneak in.”
Berta sighed. “After this, no more sneak-ins for me for the rest of the day.”
“I’m afraid I can’t guarantee that.”
We motored away in case the landlady was watching, parked around the corner, and crept down an alley to the backyard of the boarding house. Laundry drifted on a clothesline.
“Look—there’s an open window in the cellar,” I whispered.
“I am not certain we will be able to fit through.”
The open window was one of those smallish, ground-level affairs. “We might not. But let’s give it a try.”
We tiptoed through the laundry to the window. Berta went through feetfirst and although it was a tight fit, she made it. I went next. Also, alas, a tight fit.
“See?” I whispered to Berta. “Kid’s stuff.” I looked around the dank cellar.
“You have ruined your buttons.”
“Buttons?” I glanced down. My dress gaped where the window frame had tugged two buttons loose on their threads. “Phooey. I think I have safety pins in my handbag. I’ll fix it up later. Come on.”
We went up the cellar stairs and peeked through the door at the top. The kitchen. A pot simmered on the stove, but no one was there. We rushed through the kitchen and stopped again at a doorway onto the main entry hall. Ah—and there were the stairs. We went up as quickly and quietly as we could and found ourselves in a long upper hallway.
“Which room?” Berta whispered.
“No notion.” We went down the hallway, softly rapping on doors.
When I rapped on the fourth door, someone called, “Yeah?” The door popped open. Beaulah. Her eyes went hard. “Oh. You again. What do you want? How’d you get past Mrs. Beecher?”
“Miss Starr, may we come in?” I asked.
“Fine, but only because I’m too busy getting ready to try and get rid of you. I’ve got just enough time to get to Coney Island, and I’m not gonna let that lying scumbag get away this time.” Beaulah went into her room, and Berta and I followed. I shut the door.
Dresses, nylon slips, wadded stockings, and brassieres were flung across the bed, on chair backs, and over the mirrored wardrobe door. The windowsill held a vase of dead roses. Romance and beauty magazines lay on every flat surface along with, oddly, three of Violet Wilbur’s home décor books.
“Whatcha staring at?” Beaulah stood inches away from the wardrobe mirror, going to town with heated curling tongs.
“I wouldn’t have pegged you for a Violet Wilbur fanatic,” I said.
“She gives some real good advice about pillow tassels. What? I’m not gonna live in a dump like this forever. Someday I’m gonna have a big, beautiful house. I’ve got aspirations. So. Whatcha want?”
“First of all,” I said, “I would like to tell you that, although Dr. Woodby is my brother-in-law, I am in no way allied with him.”
“She detests him, dear,” Berta said to Beaulah in a soothing voice.
“Then you’re really a lady detective?” Beaulah asked.
“Yes,” I said. “And this is my detecting partner, Mrs. Lundgren.”
“Hi,” Beaulah said to Berta.
“We’d like to motor you to Coney Island,” I said.
Beaulah’s hands froze mid-wave. “How come?”
“We are investigating Senator Morris,” I said. Well, it was true as of ten minutes earlier, wasn’t it?
“Okay,” Beaulah said, “because I hate to bug my friend Harriet at the feed store. But I’m not going anywhere with you two dressed like that.”
“Like what?” Berta said in an offended tone.
“Like a couple of church ladies,” Beaulah said. “And you lost a couple buttons, Lola. Coney Island’s a place of style on a hot summer day like this. You gotta look pretty. It’s okay—you can borrow some things from me.”
I would have protested, but I had two dangling buttons.
“I do not believe I shall fit into one of your dresses, Miss Starr,” Berta said.
“Sure you will. My figure goes up and down like a seesaw. I always slim down when I’m working for months at a health farm, but whenever I go home to see Mom, something comes over me and I go at the honey ham like there’s no tomorrow. Mom makes the best honey ham with those pineapple slices stuck all over, you know?”
My mouth watered.
“Your mother must be very proud,” Berta said.
Ten minutes later we were on the road to the city, with Beaulah and Cedric sharing the backseat. Berta and I were wearing cheap and lightweight summer dresses. Berta had chosen a roomy yellow number with a white sailor collar and white buttons. Mine was red-and-white gingham and a size too small. It never would have buttoned up all the way if I hadn’t happened to be wearing my most robust girdle. As it was, my bosom wasn’t fully stashed away.
Good thing we were going to Coney Island.
22
When we at last arrived in Brooklyn, I parked the Duesy at the curb on Surf Avenue—a possibly illegal spot, but we were in a hurry—and switched off the engine. The entrance to Luna Park was just across the street, with towers and flapping flags and, beyond, a roller coaster. Faint screams floated on the breeze.
Beaulah climbed out of the backseat. “Thanks, girls. Maybe I’ll see you there.” She bolted down the crowded sidewalk, her white handbag swinging.
I clipped on Cedric’s leash, and Berta and I hurried after Beaulah to the long boardwalk. Beaulah’s pink dress and barmaid’s sway in the crossbeam were easy to keep track of.
“She seems to know where she’s going,” I said to Berta.
We snaked through merrymakers with their ice cream cones, screaming kids, and sunburns, past hot dog stands, cigarette shops, dance halls, and nickel exhibits. Seagulls squawked and calliope music burbled. Down in the sand and surf, people swarmed in bathing suits.
Halfway down the boardwalk, a huge sign arched over a stage: CONEY ISLAND MERMAID QUEEN. Beyond the sign, the ocean glittered.
“Where is Beaulah?” I said.
“There.” Berta pointed. “Up near the front. Do you see her straw hat?”
A crowd pressed thick around the stage, and onstage, girls in dresses paraded stiffly. Each girl had a number pinned to her dress and a frozen smile. Photographers snapped pictures, and a couple of journalists scribbled on notepads.
I picked up Cedric, and Berta and I plowed through the crowd toward the front.
“Where is he?” Beaulah was demanding of no one in particular. “Where’s the senator?”
“Shut up, we’re trying ta watch the beauties,” a stocky man growled.
Beaulah grabbed the man’s hat and tossed it in the air. “Watch that, dough boy.”
A splatter of applause as one contestant exited the stage and another entered.
“It smells quite intensely of underarm in this crowd,” Berta said.
“Berta,” I whispered, “is that—is that Grace Whiddle onstage?”
“Oh my. Yes, it is. She is standing up straight for a change.”
Grace had made up her face and bobbed her blond hair. She’d also chucked her eyeglasses, which probably explained why she bumped into a wooden support before she disappeared behind the curtains.
“Forget Beaulah and Senator Morris,” I whispered to Berta. “Let’s catch Grace! Maybe Mrs. Whiddle will pay up after all.” More tantalizing than getting paid was catching Grace before Ralph Oliver did.
Berta nodded.
We inched sideways through the crowd and found a gate in front of a curtained-off backstage area. I glimpsed pageant contestants dashing to and fro back there.
The gate was blocked by a fellow with forearms like a bricklayer. “Contestants only,” he said.
Berta stiffened. “We are contestants.”
“That
so? Then I suppose you know that it’s the bathing suit contest next?”
“Oh.” Perspiration sprang up on my hairline. Bathing suit? With photographers in the crowd? I took a step back, hugging Cedric.
“We are going to be late,” Berta cried. “Now, please, allow us through!”
Popeye shrugged and opened the gate.
I said, “On second thought, Berta, I think maybe I ought to go and keep an eye on Beaulah after all.” I took another step back. “And Cedric probably shouldn’t—”
“Weak as a kitten!” Berta glared at me before pushing through the gate.
“You coming?” the guard asked me.
“Um, no,” I muttered. I slunk back to the audience. But really! A bathing suit? Don’t misunderstand, I’m not a prude, but wearing slinky underthings in the dim—and preferably pinkish—light of one’s own boudoir is not the same as exposing every soft, white inch to the merciless light of the afternoon sun.
I’d just positioned myself where I could see the stage when someone said, “Well, hello there, angel. Smashing dress.”
“Why, Mr. Hathorne!” I said. “Hello. Coney Island is just about the last place I would’ve expected to see you.”
“What about me?” Hermie Inchbald poked his head out from Raymond’s other side.
“Mr. Inchbald!” I said. “Nice to see you again so soon.”
Hermie Inchbald was rashy and damp-looking in his black wool suit and hat. Raymond Hathorne looked tall and cool in fawn-colored flannels and a straw boater hat with a navy blue band.
Raymond said, “I motored down to investigate soda pop sales and consumption patterns here on Coney Island—what better place?—and I brought Inchbald along to give him an airing.”
“It was all very sudden,” Hermie said, dabbing his forehead with a handkerchief.
“No sense in him moping at home in a pile of poodle fur,” Raymond said.
