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

I took a deep breath. “If you no longer need my services, Miss Lovejoy, then I require my fee.”


“Send me the bill, my dear girl. I’ll be delighted to pay whatever you ask.”

She waved me away as if I were a bird that had flown too near her.





THIRTY-FOUR

I stomped out of the theater in a black mood. I wondered whether I should say goodbye to my fellow young ladies in the chorus, but I didn’t want to go up there and admit I was being given the boot. I’m not one that takes failure gracefully. I was really angry as I passed Henry and stepped out into the night. I couldn’t tell if I was more angry at Miss Lovejoy or at myself. I had been given an opportunity and I had failed.

I started to walk blindly down Broadway, pushing my way through the crowd. Newsboys were shouting out the latest headlines. Something to do with the ghost and the theater, from what I could hear. By tomorrow they would include the news about the spiritualists. Fine, I thought. Let her pay good money to hire those old quacks. A lot of good they’d do her.

Then I stopped dead in my tracks. Something wasn’t right here. The way I had been brought onstage at the perfect moment. The grand announcement to the press. It had all been staged for the maximum effect. Blanche hadn’t needed me there to make that announcement, in fact she had already told me that my services would no longer be needed. Then it dawned on me: Blanche was putting on another play. She had cast me in the role of ineffective detective, as often happens in these little melodramas. She hadn’t expected me to come up with anything because there was nothing to uncover.

I stood there, unmoving, while the crowd surged around me. Then I made my way out of the main stream of people and found a little café, where I sat with a cup of strong coffee, trying to put my thoughts in order. I was tempted to walk to Daniel’s place and talk the thing through with him. But after all my talk of being an independent woman and able to handle my own business life—very well, thank you—I could hardly go running to him when a perplexing problem turned up.

I sipped the coffee and tried to make sense of what had just happened. I thought through each of the incidents onstage—the face at the window that nobody else but Blanche saw, the wind machine, the jug of liquid flying all over her, and then the pillar falling, missing her by inches. Was it possible that Blanche had somehow orchestrated these things herself? It was, after all, her play. Maybe she and Bobby Barker had thought this up between them—even rigged it up between them. But why? The jug of lemonade was just annoying, but the pillar could have cost her her life.

Unless—unless she knew it would miss her because she had carefully moved her own mark a foot to the left. She was a veteran actress. She knew that timing was everything. She had timed the events to perfection.

The words veteran actress played over and over in my brain. I toyed with my spoon and gazed at the crowds surging past the window. Everyone had commented that Blanche was getting long in the tooth, too old really to play the ingenue, especially at a time when the Florodora girls had set the standard of beauty at a sweet sixteen.

So Blanche wanted to make a big comeback on Broadway. She had the play. It was good. She would shine in it, but . . . But she had to get people into the theater. And what better way than a mystery? Poor brave Blanche. The show must go on. What a trooper, continuing with a play even when her own life was in danger. And even a real detective couldn’t find any human explanation for the shocking events that had happened.

I saw it all now. When I had been brought in Blanche had seemed desperate to keep any news of the phantom out of the press, knowing full well that one of her cast would be bound to spill the beans, thus creating that delightful atmosphere of secrecy. She had built the tension perfectly and had achieved the desired result. The show was sold out for weeks. And I had played my part and was no longer needed.

I was really angry now. I suppose I was still too much the na?ve little country bumpkin, but I had been used too many times recently. I wondered if Oona Sheehan was in on Blanche’s little scheme from the beginning and had calmly enlisted me for a second time to be made a fool of. I was about to go and confront her here and now, and let her know exactly what I thought of her. Oh, and to collect the money she still owed me.