Tell Me, Pretty Maiden (Molly Murphy Mysteries, #7)

“But what exactly do you want me to do?” I asked.

“Watch out for me. Follow me around. I want to know if you can see the ghost, too, because if you can’t there is only one other option.”

“And what is that?”

“That someone is deliberately trying to kill me.”





NINE

“First call for act two,” came a boyish voice from the hallway. Then there was a rap on Blanche’s door. “Act two, Miss Lovejoy.”

“Somebody is trying to kill you?” I asked. “Do you have any idea who that could be?”

“None at all. Everyone here adores me. That’s why I have to believe that it’s a ghostly presence.”

“Have you spoken about this to the police?”

“I thought of doing so, but they would only laugh at me. That’s why I need you, Miss Murphy. Molly, dearest. You’ll be able to get to the truth about what’s happening to me. You will do it, won’t you?”

“I can try,” I said uneasily, because in truth I was wondering if the ghostly presence might not be induced by too much alcohol and calming mixture.

Blanche looked at me imploringly. “Come down to the theater now and watch. You can slip into a stage box, but don’t let anyone know you are there. If the ghost has appeared once tonight, he might well appear again.”

“Very well,” I said.

Blanche stood up while Martha fussed around her, putting a large number of hairpins into that great mound of hair.

“We’ll have to find some way to explain your presence,” Blanche went on, as she examined herself in her mirror. “There is no point if you can’t be right beside me all the time. Can you dance?”

“Not at all,” I said. “I might manage a poor attempt at a waltz, but that’s about it.”

“Not good enough for the chorus then,” she said. “They have several ballet numbers on their toes. Can you sing?”

“Well enough for singsongs and church, but that’s about it.” I gave an uneasy laugh.

“Then how are we going to explain your presence backstage?”

“I could help with the props,” I suggested.

“Then you wouldn’t be allowed to follow me upstairs and you’d be too busy fetching and carrying to keep watching me.”

“Then how about your dresser?”

I heard a disgusted gasp from Martha.

“But everyone knows I’ve had Martha for years.”

“You could say that Martha is getting—” I was about to say “too old” but stopped myself under her eagle gaze. “That you’re training me to take over from Martha some time in the future,” I finished.

But Blanche shook her head again. “If you are my dresser you wait in my dressing room. You’d have no reason to be hanging around backstage.”

“Act two beginners onstage, Miss Lovejoy.” There was another firm rap on the door.

“I have to go,” she said. She rose unsteadily, then a big shudder ran through her body. “I don’t want to go down there. What if the face is there again? How can I perform if it’s there, watching me?”

“There, there, my little love,” old Martha cackled. “It will be all right. Nothing will harm you with all those people around you.”

“I’m sure it will be fine,” I added. “Just as I’m sure there is a logical explanation for all this.”

“But the face at the window. I saw it. I swear that I saw it.”

“Maybe one of the stagehands peered through the window for a lark and now is too scared to admit it,” I suggested.

“I wish I could believe you,” she said and suddenly reached out and gripped my hands fervently. “Come down with me. Stay close to me.”

“But you hadn’t thought of a good reason for my being there.”

“You can watch over me from one of the stage boxes,” she said. “That’s close enough to see everything. And when I have time I’ll try to think how I can have you beside me all the time.”

Images of me dressed up as a cat or pretending to be a potted plant flashed through my mind, and not for the last time I wondered what I was doing here, and thought how much simpler it would have been if I’d been shadowing Mr. Roth to his favorite restaurant.

“Don’t forget your wrap, darling girl.” Martha placed a woolen wrap firmly around Blanche’s shoulders. “We don’t want you catching cold, do we?”

“Martha has presumably been with you for a long time,” I muttered as we went down the hallway side by side.

“She was my nurse, when I was a child,” Blanche said.

You could have knocked me down with a feather. I’d have taken Blanche for a product of a city slum with her foul mouth and her mannish ways.

“I wasn’t always like this,” she said. “I ran away from home with a man who turned out to be no good when I was sixteen. He left me with a child. I could never go back. It was either the theater or prostitution. Luckily, I had a good voice and could make people laugh, or I’d be dead by now.”

“And the child?”

“Was given up for adoption by some do-gooding church ladies society. I’ve never seen her since.”