“May Ward is precisely who we’re after,” Constance said, earning another jab from Norma.
“My sister’s an admirer,” Norma said. “She always wanted to go on the stage herself, but she’s too tall and it frightens the men. I thought it would come as an advantage to be able to be seen from so far away, but she’s plain, too, and nothing can be done about that.”
Miss Lydia looked up at them with half a smile, probably hoping to catch Norma in a joke. But Norma stood over her, as dour as ever, and said, “I wonder if May Ward signs autographs. I don’t want to wait out by the stage door all night for nothing.”
It was then that Miss Lydia gave the information Norma had been hoping for. “You won’t have to follow her far. Mrs. Ward and her girls have always stopped over at the Hotel Columbus. They’ll be just down the hall from you. You’d better go up if you want to be ready for the theater at eight. I’ll have three tickets at my desk when you come down. You’ll find the theater just around the corner on Locust, so you’ll have no need of a taxicab.”
They took the keys and went on upstairs. Their room was at the end of a long hallway carpeted in a pattern of parrot tulips. The bags had been sent up ahead and they passed the porter on his way out. Norma handed him a coin whose value she kept concealed from Constance, but which almost certainly wasn’t enough.
“Why am I the admirer of May Ward, when you’re the one who dragged us all the way here to see her?” Constance hissed at Norma when they were out of earshot.
“You don’t seem to understand anything about detective work,” Norma said. “Everything you said made her more suspicious.”
“There was no need to play the detective,” Constance said. “You could’ve just asked her straight away whether May Ward was in residence here or not.”
“She wouldn’t have told me,” Norma said, and proceeded to mutter about it as they unpacked their things and shook out the dresses they’d brought for the theater. Fleurette had made both of their dresses, of course, which left Constance feeling all the more guilty and unsettled about what they’d come to Harrisburg to do.
Carrie worked on her hair in front of the mirror. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to pose as a theater critic? I could interview May Ward and her Dolls, and find out for myself if Fleurette’s with them.”
“Bringing a reporter along only makes this look more suspicious,” Constance said. “I don’t want any of us to be seen. We’re here to make sure that Fleurette is safe, and then we’re going to scurry away and no one’s ever going to know.”
They hadn’t any idea how many rooms May Ward might have taken, or where they were in relation to theirs. Norma kept running to the peep-hole and looking out when she heard footsteps go by.
“You can stop looking, because they’re already at the theater getting into costume,” Constance said. “We’d better see about some dinner before we go.”
Norma was at the window now, watching the people below going past. She was breathing noisily, and a little cloud of steam was making an impression on the glass. “We can’t risk going into a restaurant. We’ll be spotted—if Fleurette’s here at all, and I don’t think she is.”
“Fine, then I’ll order something cold on a tray.”
“I detest anything cold on a tray,” Carrie said.
Constance considered that and said, “Maybe they’ll send up some soup.”
The hotel did a little better than that, but not much. The first course was a delicate affair of thin soup and spongy bread that satisfied none of them. Norma was critical of her baked tomato and picked at the boiled chicken, which she said tasted as if it had ridden on a train.
“I don’t understand why anyone bothers with a city,” she declared.
Constance didn’t try to understand that remark or to answer it. Carrie wrote it down and Constance begged her again not to make a story of them.
They waited as long as they could, to make sure every member of the theater company would be out of the hotel, then went downstairs and out into the blue, lamp-lit night.
47
HARRISBURG WAS A DISASTER. Fleurette didn’t have a dollar to her name. May Ward’s way of arranging for the company to pay Fleurette’s expenses was to put the Dolls back into two rooms, which meant two girls to a bed, two beds to a room, and a cot on the floor for Fleurette.
This made Fleurette decidedly less popular with the Dolls. Just when she thought they might ask her to sneak out with them at night, in the unaccounted-for hours between midnight and five, when Mrs. Ironsides slept, she found herself abandoned again.
“We’ll clear out so you can work” was how Bernice put it. They were gone all afternoon, and only stopped in for a few minutes before leaving for the theater. After the show, they intended to return once for a change of clothes and run right out again.
“If Ironsides comes around to check the beds tonight, you’ll cover for us,” Eliza said.
“What would I tell her?” Fleurette asked.
“Tell her Charlotte had a telegram. It’s her grandmother.”
“No, we already used that one,” Charlotte said.
“Oh, then it’s her elderly aunt. The one who raised her. Say that we ran off to the train station to see about sending Charlotte home to her dear old aunt.”
“But that’s a terrible excuse,” Fleurette called as they gathered their coats and made ready to leave. “It’s too easily checked, and what happens when Charlotte doesn’t get on the train?”
“Say that Roberta has a headache and we went out in search of a powder” came Charlotte’s voice, out in the hall now, floating along in their wake.
It was just as well that they’d left. There was no room for her sewing machine unless she dragged the cot onto one of the beds and piled atop it all the combs and brushes and powder puffs that littered the writing desk.
She’d spent far too long on May Ward’s Parisian frock, considering she was planning to pull out her own stitches and replace them when she found the metal thread. Still, it had been impossible not to take extraordinary care with the job, handling the dress as delicately as she could, and looking long and hard at the fabric before finding the right place to put the needle. She wanted to be entirely sure that her stitches could be easily undone and replaced, perhaps by more skilled hands, without any trace remaining of her repair.