The Oblivious Heiress: A Jane Carter Historical Cozy (Book Four) (Jane Carter Historical Cozy Mysteries 4)

by Alice Simpson

  I then moved on to my proposal: The League of Women Voters would serve as interim staff members for my newly-minted magazine, and Carter’s All-story Weekly would print large and copious advertisements on behalf of the LWV. Not only that, I told Mrs. Dunst, but her members would have the opportunity to write popular fiction sympathetic to the cause of equal rights for women.

  “Women have the vote,” I concluded my appeal, “but there is yet a great work to be done before the American woman possesses full equality with the American man. What better way to enlighten and emancipate the female sex than through the vehicle of entertaining and uplifting works of fiction?”

  I was pleased with my little speech. If that did not move Mrs. Dunst, nothing would.

  Mrs. Dunst again extended her gloved hand. This time around her face was wreathed with smiles.

  “I shall report to your offices bright and early Monday morning,” she said, “accompanied by such like-minded members as are willing to join me.”

  At breakfast the next morning I ate with such a preoccupied air that my father commented upon my sober countenance.

  “I hope you haven’t encountered knotty problems so soon in your literary venture,” he said.

  “None which you can’t solve for me,” I said.

  “Indeed? And when does the first issue appear?”

  “I’ll print three weeks from today.”

  “On Sunday?”

  “It’s the only day your presses wouldn’t be busy.”

  “My presses?”

  “Yes, I haven’t hired my pressroom force yet. I plan to make up the magazine, set the type and lock it in the page forms. Then I’ll haul it over to your plant for stereotyping and the press run.”

  “And if I object?”

  “You won’t, will you, Dad? I’m such a pathetic little rag. I’m not even a competitor since you deal strictly in the news of the day and wouldn’t think of touching anything as frivolous as sensational and sentimental works of fiction.”

  “I’ll run off the first edition for you,” Dad promised. “But mind, only the first. How many issues will you want? About five hundred? I know you’re calling yourself a magazine, but my presses are configured to print newspapers.”

  “Oh, I won’t let that stop me. A newspaper format is perfectly ducky. It’ll make Carter’s All-Story Weekly stand out from the crowd. For the first printing, I was figuring on roughly six thousand. That should take care of my street sales. Of course, when my national subscription scheme takes off, who knows how big a print run I’ll need.”

  Dad’s fork clattered against his plate.

  “Six thousand! Street sales? Where, may I ask, did you acquire your distribution organization?”

  “Oh, I have plans,” I said. “Running an all-story magazine is really very simple. Just a lot of hard work.”

  “Young lady, you’re riding for a heartbreaking fall,” warned my father. “Six thousand copies! You’ll be lucky to dispose of three hundred.”

  “Wait and see,” I said.

  During the week which followed there were no idle moments for the staff of the newly-organized Carter’s All-Story Weekly.

  As promised, Mrs. Dunst showed up at nine o’clock on Monday morning with ten Women Voters prepared to lend their aid to the cause of creating quality fiction for the modern female. Six of Mrs. Dunst’s henchwomen showed literary aspirations, so I set them to the task of creating the needed short stories. I advised them in advance that I reserved the prerogative to heavily edit their efforts, emphasizing their amateur status and my professional expertise.

  The only things I required of them were that their heroines must not be lily-livered shrinking violets and that their romantic heroes—should they choose to write romance at all—must treat their heroines not with addled and idealistic admiration but clear-eyed respect.

  Leaving Florence in charge of supervising the aspiring lady-novelists, and Mrs. Dunst in charge of seeing that cleanliness and order were restored to the facility, I focused most of my attention on the problem of winning advertisers.

  One of Mrs. Dunst’s confederates, Mrs. Ruby Applebee, was the wife of a prominent local businessman, James Applebee of Applebee and Applebee Glass and Lumber. I immediately identified Mrs. Applebee as an asset to our enterprise. When I explained to her the inherent difficulties of gaining advertisers for the inaugural issue of a brand-new story paper, Mrs. Applebee said she understood completely and was fully prepared to exert her influence, which was considerable, in helping Carter’s All-Story Weekly round out it’s stable of advertisers. She promised to tackle her husband that very evening.

  I then spent the entire following day going around to every local business and inviting them to buy ad space—at cut-rate prices—in Carter’s All-Story Weekly. The novelty of the enterprise intrigued some businessmen, while others took space because they were friends of the Applebees. Money continued to pour into the till of Carter’s All-Story Weekly.

  Yet, when everything should have been sailing along smoothly, Florence complained that it was becoming difficult to keep her staff of writers satisfied. One by one they were falling away.

  One of those remaining, Mrs. Pritchett, turned in a short mystery, “The Black Heart of Malcolm McGrew,” which, while painting the female sex as strong and highly-capable, was a bit more melodramatically forceful than even my open mind could tolerate.

  “Was it quite necessary,” I asked Flo, as I placed the pages of Mrs. Pritchett’s story back on Florence’s desk, “for the black-hearted Mr. McGrew to come to quite such a violent end? I could have stood the heroine stabbing him to death, but did she have to lock him up in a dank dungeon and let his arms and legs be gnawed off by rats before avenging her sister’s suicide?”

  “Well, the villain did besmirch the sister’s spotless virtue and drive her to the brink of despair,” Flo pointed out. “And you do have a history of writing similar scenes.”

  “I do not!” I protested. “What scenes?”

  “The worthy cowboy hero in ‘Evangeline: The Horse-thief’s Unwilling Fiancée’ lost his arm while fighting off a pack of ravening wolves.”

  “That’s completely different,” I said. “That wasn’t Evangeline’s fault. It was Mr. Pittman’s. I’d wager my beloved Bouncing Betsy that never for a single moment during the entire protracted saga of ‘Evangeline: The Horse-thief’s Unwilling Fiancée’ was even one reader confused about whether the heroine might actually turn out to be the villain in disguise.”

  Flo sighed, but she conceded my point.

  “Well, fix the story to your liking,” she said. “I have to leave in a few minutes. It’s my afternoon to work at the library, and after I’m finished there, I promised mother that I’d visit Mr. and Mrs. Smith and deliver some soup. Mrs. Smith is poorly, and, according to my mother, Mr. Smith wouldn’t know a saucepan from a coal shovel. I’ve been instructed to heat up the soup personally and see that Mrs. Smith eats at least a bowl of it before I’m free to retire for the evening.”

  “Is Mr. Smith the one who collects antique spectacles?” I asked.

  “Yes,” said Flo, “and, if you have any questions on the subject, be sure and ask me later because by the time I get an entire bowl of soup down Mrs. Smith I expect I’ll be even more enlightened on the eyewear of yesteryear than I am presently. Did you know that the first pair of eyeglasses is believed to have been made in Pisa, Italy in 1290?”

  I told Flo I had not previously been made privy to that vital tidbit of information.

  “Well, I have apparently been predestined to become ever more educated on the subject of primitive optics,” Florence continued, “that is why I do not have time to deal with your scruples concerning homicidal heroines. Besides, we agreed I’m be working in a purely administerial capacity. You know I lack imagination.”

  “For which I make up in spades,” I said. “I’ll figure out a more proportional fate for the black-hearted Malcolm McGrew, don’t you worry.”

  I pause
d as Flo put the cover on her typewriter, stood up and collected her coat. I realized I had been remiss and unappreciative of my friend.

  “Thank you, Flo,” I said. “You truly are the bee’s knees.”

  “Oh?” said Florence. She arched one eyebrow and put on her hat.

  “Truly, you are,” I insisted. “I persist in dragging you into one crazy scheme after another, and yet you continue to be my loyal friend.”

  “Well, your schemes often sound crazy,” said Flo diplomatically. “But they generally turn out all right in the end.”

  Chapter Eight

  Every moment which I didn’t spend sleeping or collecting box lunches from Mrs. Timms, I spent at the plant. Long after everyone else had left the building, I remained, trying to master the intricacies of the linotype machine. Although in theory, it operated somewhat like a typewriter, I could not learn to set type accurately.

  I rewrote the closing scenes of “The Black-Hearted Malcolm McGrew,” leaving him dead but with his limbs intact. As a concession to Mrs. Pruitt, I allowed a rat to gnaw off a single pinky finger, but I made clear that this loss of digit was neither the wish nor the responsibility of the heroine.

  I then put the finishing touches on part one of “The Mystery of the Octopus Tattoo,” a story inspired by the near-drowning of the tattooed sailor who I had witnessed being pushed into the river.

  Finally, I made minor alterations to a complete novelette and the first installments of the three older serials of my own which were to comprise the bulk of the first issue.

  I had previously approved the other two short stories—‘Moon Madness’ and ‘Old Loves for New’—submitted by the remaining writers recruited from the women of the LVW.

  The material for the inaugural issue was complete, rounded out by a soppily sentimental set of verses by Mrs. Dunst, which I had accepted without a murmur, despite their ghastliness (lad and withstand do not rhyme, despite Mrs. Dunst’s apparent belief that they did). Without Mrs. Dunst, Carter’s All-Story Weekly wouldn’t have gotten as far as it had, so, since the lad in question had not locked anyone in a dungeon to be dismembered by rats, I let it go.

  On the Friday night preceding the deadline, alone in the building, the task of setting type finally overwhelmed me.

  “Machines, machines, machines,” I grumbled to myself. “The magazine is going to be a mess, and all because I can’t run this hateful old thing!”

  Dropping my head wearily on the keyboard, I wept with vexation.

  I stiffened. Footsteps were coming softly down the hall toward the composing room.

  Twice during the previous week, Florence had insisted that she believed someone prowled about the plant when it was deserted, but I had been too busy to take her concerns seriously. Now that I was alone, my pulse began to hammer. I reached down into my handbag which lay at my feet, retrieved my cosh from the bottom of it and turned around to face the entrance to the room.

  A shadow fell across the doorway.

  “Who is there?” I called out and tightened my grip around the cosh.

  To my relief, a young man, his bashful grin reassuringly familiar, stepped into the cavernous room. Bob Witzel was one of my father’s best linotype operators.

  “You nearly startled me out of my wits. What brought you here, Bob?”

  “I noticed the light burning and the entrance door was ajar,” the operator replied, twisting his hat in his hands. “So, I dropped in to see how you were getting along.”

  “That’s nice of you, Bob,” I said and surreptitiously dropped the cosh back into my handbag.

  Bob was looking at me intently, I was afraid he could tell that I had been crying.

  “The boys say you’re doing right well.” Bob moved nearer the linotype machine.

  “Don’t look at my work,” I pleaded. “It’s simply awful. I can’t get the hang of this horrid old machine. I wish I hadn’t started a weekly—I must have been crazy just as everyone says.”

  “You’re tired, that’s what’s the trouble,” said Bob. “Now there’s nothing to running a linotype. Give me a piece of copy, and I’ll show you.”

  He slid into the vacant chair, and his fingers began to move over the keyboard. As if by magic, type fell into place, and there were no mistakes.

  “You do it marvelously,” I said. “What’s the trick?”

  “About ten years practice. Shoot out your copy now, and I’ll set some of it for you.”

  “Bob, you’re a darling! But dare you do it? What about the union?”

  “This is just between you and me,” he grinned. “The union needn’t know about it. You need a helping hand, and I’m here to give it.”

  Until eleven Bob remained at his post, setting more type in three hours than I had done in three days.

  “Your front page should look pretty good at any rate,” he said as we left the building together.

  When I arrived home—a full hour earlier than I had warned Mrs. Timms to anticipate my homecoming—I stabled Bouncing Betsy and let myself into the kitchen with my key. There were no lights on, save the light of a lamp filtering in from the living room. I assumed that Mrs. Timms was sitting up for me. Our housekeeper had a habit of falling asleep in the lamp-lit living room while she read a magazine and waited for me to come home.

  I was about to call out to Mrs. Timms when I heard my father’s voice:

  “I love you, Doris.”

  “Not here, Anthony. What if Jane—”

  I crept to the door of the living room. There, haloed in lamp light were my father and Mrs. Timms, locked in embrace on the couch. My father was kissing Mrs. Timms, whose carefully-coiffured hair ejected bobby pins like a porcupine shedding its quills.

  I decided it was best not to disturb them. I quietly shed my shoes and tiptoed noiselessly around the back of the davenport and up the stairs, smiling broadly to myself all the way to my own bedroom.

  Saturday was another day of toil, but by six o’clock, aided by Bob, the last stick of type was set, and the pages locked and transported to the Examiner ready for the Sunday morning run.

  “I’ll be here early tomorrow,” I told the pressman. “Don’t start the edition rolling until I arrive. I want to press the button myself.”

  Dad, Jack Bancroft, Shep Murphy, and several other members of the Examiner staff, came to view the stereotyped plates waiting to be fitted on the press rollers.

  “You’ve done well, Jane,” my father said. “I confess I never thought you would get this far. Still figuring on a street sale of six thousand?”

  “I’ve increased the number to seven,” I said. “It would be a shame to sell out with another thousand protentional sales lost to small-minded thinking.”

  “And how do you plan to get the papers sold?”

  “Oh, that’s my secret, Dad. You may be surprised.”

  Exhausted but happy, I went home and to bed. I was up at six, and after a hastily-eaten breakfast, arrived at the Examiner office early Sunday morning in time to greet the workmen who were just coming on duty.

  “Everything is set,” the foreman informed me. “You can start the press now.”

  I was so nervous that my hand trembled as I pressed the electric switch. There was a low, whining noise as the wheels began to turn, slowly at first, then faster and faster. Pressmen moved back and forth, oiling the machinery and tightening screws.

  I watched the long stream of paper feeding into the press. In a moment, the neatly folded newspapers would slide out at the rate of eight hundred a minute. Only slightly over an hour and the run would be completed.

  The first printed paper dropped from the press, and the foreman reached for it.

  “Here you are,” he said, offering it to me.

  Almost reverently I accepted the paper. Even though there were only twenty pages, three of which were taken up by full page admonishments from the LWV—“Don’t Let Granny Down! She won the vote in 1920...it’s your job to make it count. Join the League of Women Voters”—each page rep
resented many hours of labor. I had turned out a professional job and could rightly feel proud of it.

  My eyes fell on the top line of the page. I gasped and fell back against the wall.

  “I’m ruined!” I moaned. “Ruined! Someone has played a cruel joke on me!”

  “What’s wrong?” the press foreman asked, reaching for another paper.

  “Look at this,” I wailed. “Just look!”

  I pointed to the name of the paper, printed in large black letters. It read: Carter’s All-Story Weakly.

  “I’ll be the laughing stock of Greenville,” I moaned. “I’ll be the laughing stock of the state. The papers can’t go out that way. Stop the press!”

  Chapter Nine

  As the foreman turned off the rotary press, the throb of machinery died away and the flowing web of paper became motionless.

  “How could such a mistake have been made?” I said. “I know that originally the name-plate was set up right.”

  “You should have taken page proofs and checked the mat,” said the foreman.

  “But I did! At least I took page proofs. I’ll admit I was careless about the mats.”

  “Well, it looks as if someone played a joke on you. Well, it’s done anyway,” said the foreman with a shrug. “What will you do about the run?”

  “I’ll never let it go through this way. I’d rather die.”

  The foreman reminded me that, with paid advertisements, I was compelled to print an issue. I knew that it would not be possible to make a change in the starter plate. The entire page must be recast.

  “I don’t suppose the type can be matched in this plant,” I said gloomily.

  “We may have some like it,” replied the foreman. “I’ll see.”

  Soon he returned to report that type was available and that the work could be done by the stereotypers. However, the men would expect overtime pay.

  “I’ll give them anything they want,” I said recklessly. “Anything.”

  After a trying wait, the new plate was made ready and locked on the cylinder. Once more the great press thundered. Again, papers began to pour from the machine, every fiftieth one slightly out of line.