We got through the first act with no incidents. I remembered where I was supposed to be and got a good laugh when I was left onstage after the other girls ran off and had to be summoned by Miss Lovejoy. In the dressing room during the interval, the mood had changed. We arrived to find the whole place full of flowers. Some had cards on them, several of them for Lily. Others were addressed more vaguely. “To the pretty little brunette at the end of the line.”
“That’s you, Jewel,” someone said and handed out the bouquet. The girl blushed. “I wonder who it is,” she said with a giggle.
“Hey, Lily, you could quit being in show business and open a flower shop with this lot,” someone yelled.
“One of them’s not from that English duke, is it, Lily?” one of the girls asked.
“Not that I can see,” Lily said.
“Do you think he’ll show up again?” someone else asked wistfully.
“If he does, then he’s mine, so hands off,” Lily said. “I always did fancy myself as a duchess.”
“You? A duchess, that will be the day!”
“You don’t know how to drink tea with your pinky up!”
Lily looked haughty. “Those Florodora sextet girls all married well, didn’t they?”
“Yes, well, they were the stars. We’re only chorus,” someone reminded her.
“But take a look at our leading ladies and gentlemen,” Lily said triumphantly. “All over the hill, long in the tooth, and nothing special to look at. We’re the ones they’ll be waiting for tonight. You’ll see. They’ve already seen our ankles in the tennis scene. You wait until they see us in our bathing suits!”
There was a great burst of laughter at this.
“I wish the censor hadn’t cut that cancan number,” Lily went on. “Then we could show them our bottoms, too.”
“Lily, you are the living end,” someone exclaimed.
“Oh, don’t you go acting the prude with me, Connie Sharp. I know what you do in your spare time, and it ain’t embroidering pillows, neither.”
Elise caught my eye and shook her head. “Don’t let them upset you, Molly. Most of us are good girls, just wanting to earn a living, same as anyone else. And if we happen to strike pay dirt and catch the eye of a rich young man after the show, then who is to blame us if we do what we can to make sure we hang on to him?”
“I’m not blaming anyone,” I said. “But it seems to me as if Lily is courting trouble.”
“She is, Molly. She knows she’s a looker and has got what they call sex appeal, pardon my language. One day she’ll go too far.”
“So you all hope to meet a duke standing at the stage door, do you?” I asked as I reapplied makeup to my lips.
“Doesn’t everyone? Of course not all the stage-door Johnnies can be trusted, you know. Some of them want too much in payment for a nice dinner, and some of them—well, they’re just twisted, if you know what I mean. They don’t just want normal things. I worked with a girl last year who went off with a young man she met at the stage door. He looked harmless enough but her body was found floating in the Hudson with signs of horrible torture all over it. They never did find the guy responsible, or if they did, his family was powerful enough that they paid off the investigation. So stick with me after the show and I’ll let you know if I see a wrong’un.”
“Thank you,” I said.
I had no time to hear more as we were summoned down to the stage for the second act. The girls ran down ahead of me eagerly, already thinking ahead to exciting post-theater parties and glamorous dinners. The orchestra started playing and the curtain went up. We were on. As predicted the bathing scene was a great success. There was a gasp of horror (or was it delight?) from the audience when the girls appeared in their bathing suits with their legs exposed from the knee downward. If only they’d seen me swimming in the ocean at home, I thought. Then they’d really have had something to be shocked about!
I sensed the audience too had settled down in the second act. The laughter no longer had that tense, nervous quality to it. They applauded often and loudly, clearly enjoying the show. We reached the ballroom scene and I heaved a sigh of relief. The wind machine had been removed from the stage area. The wings were empty. In ten minutes it would be over. The band struck up the waltz number and the partners whirled around. “The waltz, the waltz, most romantic of dances, the mood that entrances, just as if we were in Vienna,” they sang.
Then Arthur, the male star, led Miss Lovejoy out onto the floor. The couples moved to the side as they began to waltz—first, fast to the tempo and then slower and slower, until they were rooted to the spot, staring into each other’s eyes. I was watching them so intently that I only caught the movement out of the corner of my eye. Then someone shouted, “Look out!” Someone else screamed as a pillar toppled across the stage. Miss Lovejoy leaped aside at the last second and the pillar crashed onto the stage, exactly where she had been standing.
The audience was in an uproar. Flashbulbs went off from reporters’ cameras. Some people were still screaming, already fighting their way to the exits. I slipped off stage and rushed around the backstage area, keeping one eye on the pass door, through to the front of house, and the other on the stairs that led up from the stage. All I saw were stagehands and prop boys, standing wide-eyed.
“Did you see anyone back here?” I demanded. “Was there anyone here who shouldn’t have been? Anyone out of position?”
“No, miss,” they answered. “There was nobody here at all but us.”
“And you could see each other? You’d have noticed if one of you slipped away to give that pillar a good push?”
“Oh yes, miss. We’re not allowed to loiter in the wings unless we’ve got a job to do and then we have to stand in a particular spot, so that we’re not in the way of the actors’ entrances and exits.”
Over the tumult I heard Blanche’s powerful voice. “Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats again. I’m sorry for the interruption, but we won’t let it spoil our evening. We are professional performers. We won’t let a little accident prevent our grand finale, will we? The show must go on.”
There was huge applause at this.
“Maestro?” Blanche indicated the conductor who lifted his baton, glancing around shakily. “From the last reprise if you don’t mind.”
The band struck up again and Blanche began to waltz with Arthur as if nothing had happened, leaving everyone onstage staring at her in open-mouthed admiration. I was staring at her, too, because something was wrong. I had watched her through the rehearsals and something struck me as different. Then I realized what it was. When I watched her before, I could see her absolutely in profile. Now I could also see the back of her head. Someone had moved her mark.
As soon as the curtain came down and we lined up for our curtain calls, I went over to examine. I could see where the first chalk mark had been erased and the new one put in. For the first time I knew what I had suspected all along: this was no ghost. Somebody had a personal vendetta against Blanche Lovejoy!
Up in the dressing room there was chaos. Some of the girls were in tears, almost hysterical.
“She was almost killed,” Connie was wailing. “And it almost hit me, too. It slammed down right beside me. If I’d been off my mark, I’d have been a goner as well.”
“Don’t be so dramatic, Connie,” Lily said. “It missed you by a mile. And it probably wouldn’t have given you any more than a nasty concussion either. It’s only a stage prop, not real marble, you know.” She took the pins out of her hair and let it fall over her shoulders. “I don’t know about you, but I’m in serious need of champagne. Some guy outside better have a jeroboam with him, and it better be chilled and waiting in an ice bucket.”
I took off my makeup and changed out of my costume while beside me Elise was doctoring her feet. “Have you worked with Miss Lovejoy before, Elise?” I asked her.
“Yes, once, three or four years ago. Miss Lovejoy hasn’t had a show for the last few years. The public seems to want sweet young things these days, ever since Florodora.”
“But you’ve been working in the theater here?”
“Oh yes, I’ve been in quite a few shows now.”
“So can you think of anyone who hates Miss Lovejoy?”
“Hates her?”
“Yes, hates her enough to kill her or at least to frighten her?”
Elise looked shocked. “Molly, you don’t think . . .”
“That the pillar wasn’t either an accident or a ghost? Yes, I do.”
“Oh my goodness. But it couldn’t be one of us. The whole cast was onstage for the ballroom scene. And the stage manager would have spotted anyone who wasn’t supposed to be backstage. And besides, Henry would never have let them in. He’s really strict, especially now with all the young men at the stage door trying to sneak up to the dressing rooms.”
I sighed. “I know. It does seem impossible, but I’ve witnessed three of these incidents myself now, and nobody has seen anything suspicious, or anybody where they shouldn’t have been.”
“Then maybe it is the phantom after all,” Elise said. “I did feel cold again tonight, didn’t you?”
“That’s because you were in a ball gown that was very décolleté,” I said. “And I don’t believe in ghosts.”
The dressing room was beginning to thin out, girls hurrying down to latch onto the best catches among guys waiting outside the stage door.
“Come on, Molly,” Elise called. “You don’t want to be the last.”
I gathered my own belongings and followed the throng down into the street. To tell the truth, I was anxious to witness the scene for myself. I also thought it might be rather nice to be enticed away with the promise of champagne drunk from a slipper, although I couldn’t think that any young man would have noticed me with my severe spectacles and thick braids.
I could hear the uproar going on beyond the stage door and Henry’s raised voice. “Just wait patiently, gentlemen. They’ll be out any second now. And no, you’re not going up to meet them. I don’t care who you are. If you were President Roosevelt himself I’d still keep you waiting down here.”
We came out to popping flashbulbs, eager reporters, and a whole army of young men dressed in white tie and tails, watching for us expectantly. Suddenly it was as if I was having a vision. I pictured John Jacob Halsted going off to the theater and then calling his friend to tell him that he’d arranged supper and a pleasant surprise. JJ Halsted was a stage-door Johnnie!
I had barely had this thought when Elise tugged at my arm. “Watch out for that one over there,” she whispered. “He likes to play rough.”
I followed where she was pointing and almost couldn’t believe my eyes. The young man in immaculate evening dress was none other that my Mr. Roth!