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

“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.”