Death of a Showman

by Mariah Fredericks

  Anna was noncommittal. But her silence felt not disinterested. I went on. “I suppose Mr. Murphy was their only specific suspect. And he seems to have vanished.”

  “Yes.”

  “I hope he’s safe, wherever he is.”

  “Let’s say he’s far out of reach of American law enforcement.”

  Canada, I thought. Or Mexico. Or perhaps even Europe. I had the feeling Anna knew exactly where he had been sent and that she had helped him get there in some way.

  “It must be a hard thing, to leave your home knowing you might never come back.”

  “Home—what kind of home brutalizes its children this way?”

  Anna had always been cynical about America, but in the past, it had been a raucous, energized disdain, the exasperated mother of a ne’er-do-well son who could nonetheless anticipate the day when he finally grew up. Now I heard no such hope—just bitterness and contempt.

  “Tell me about Ludlow,” I said.

  There was a long pause. Eyes fixed ahead, Anna said, “I had nightmares about those children. Trapped underneath, choking in the smoke. The more they screamed for help, the less air they had and the more they suffocated. No one heard them. Or they didn’t care. I couldn’t get it out of my mind, what I would do if I were there, how I would comfort them about dying in a world that didn’t care. I couldn’t think how I would do it. I kept imagining them crying because they knew they were about to die. And what could I say? I wondered if the women hoped the children would die before they did so they wouldn’t be alone at the end.”

  “Anna…”

  My hand hovered at her shoulder; she twisted slightly, rejecting it. “Everyone knew: we had to do something. In the past, people had not wanted to listen, but here it was, the proof of what happens when you place your faith in the Rockefellers of this world. But as always, there were some who said, ‘We must be better than them, we must not provoke. We must bring people to our side.’ So we gathered outside the Standard Oil building to mourn. ‘We will mourn in silence,’ they said. ‘Let us everyone see our silent mourning.’ Some wore black armbands. So correct, so dignified. But even that was ‘provocative.’ The police arrested people just for standing outside a building. People were annoyed we were blocking their way. Stores complained. We accomplished nothing.

  “That’s when I decided, silence is what they count on. They murder children and know that the police will arrest anyone who even talks of shooting back. So, you can’t just talk.”

  Hands in her pockets, she met my eye. She had made her confession. Immediately, I thought to say, Well, yes, I understand, of course, but … the timing was wrong, the bomb went off early, and aren’t you relieved, a little, that it did? Yes, Rockefeller, but who knows who might have been in the house with him, the secretary, the maid, one of his children. It didn’t work, you see that, that way doesn’t work …

  But looking at my friend, I understood that we saw different things. People destroyed, we both saw that. But not all the deaths were of equal importance. To Anna, some of the deaths mattered enormously, some not at all. Some were even cause for rejoicing. Still, I could not question the genuine grief that had driven her to that point. And perhaps she thought I also placed more value on some lives than others.

  “Canada is cold,” I heard myself say.

  She laughed, and there were tears in the laughter. “Well … I would miss some things,” she said.

  “I would. Very much.”

  The words “too much” were in my head, but that would be asking for a promise she couldn’t give. In her uncle’s restaurant, they began to turn off the lights. It was time to go home. I realized I did not know where she was headed; I still didn’t know where she lived. Anna was smiling, she had recognized the same thing. Briefly, she glanced down the street and I sensed she was probably headed in the other direction.

  Then she asked, “You’re going to the train?”

  I said I was.

  “I’ll walk with you.”

  * * *

  The following afternoon, William and Louise returned to the city in high spirits. I smiled to hear the Tylers laughing as they came in the door, regaling each other with the more memorable pieces of advice Mrs. Benchley had to offer on the subject of child-rearing; figs it seemed were of the utmost importance. Then I heard Louise say, “Oh, Ethel, would you find Jane for me and tell her we want to see her in the parlor?”

  I descended with caution. If it were bad news, Louise would have sounded anxious, and she had sounded anything but. Still, I sensed change. And happy people are often … unimaginative. So caught up in the contemplation of their own perfect present and future, they are poor predictors of what will make others joyful or miserable. Had Mrs. Benchley’s maid, the Matchless Maude, gone to her gin-soaked reward? Had Louise, anticipating maternal seclusion, suggested me as a replacement? She wouldn’t, I thought, grip tightening on the banister. She couldn’t …

  They stood before the fireplace, swinging to face me as I came in. William said, “Jane, Mrs. Tyler and I have been talking…”

  I braced myself.

  “And we think you ought to go back to school.”

  The switch from dread to education was so unexpected, I could only repeat the word. “School?”

  Louise said, “You’re so intelligent. If Emily can go to Vassar, certainly you could attend something like the Female Normal…”

  “They call it Hunter now, dearest. Or perhaps Grace Institute. They have business courses now, secretarial.”

  Business? Institute? Bewildered, I said, “But I’m … happy here.”

  “And you’ll stay here,” Louise said, taking my hand. “You could take night classes.”

  William broke in. “We would give you some evenings off if you need them. Will you think about it? We’d pay of course, if there are fees. I should have said that up front.”

  “We don’t want to lose you, Jane. But we don’t want to hold you back. We want you to be happy.”

  I had been very proud of not crying over Leo Hirschfeld. But William and Louise’s kindness left me helpless. Blinking tears, I said, “I am happy. Very happy.”

  Louise passed me her handkerchief, even as I insisted, “I am.”

  This made us all laugh. William said, “You’ll think about it?”

  I was about to explain that nothing in my background qualified me for higher education. But they had been so kind, I simply said, “Yes. I will think about it.”

  Epilogue

  After more than one attempt at conviction, Mrs. Florence Carman was found not guilty of murdering Lulu Bailey. There wasn’t much question as to whether she had fired the gun. There also wasn’t much question as to whether her husband had been a philandering cad. Feeling sorry for Mrs. Carman, the jury let her go. She died in 1939.

  Violet Tempest was not as fortunate. She was a mistress, not a wife, and it was not lost on the men of the jury that she had tried to frame her husband for the crime she committed. She was sentenced to twenty-five years in jail, but released after ten. I suspect Leo used his influence, but I have never asked him and he has never said. At any rate, someone bankrolled her tour of the country as the Killer Chorus Girl, which she always ended with “I was too drunk to know the difference—or was I?” and a big wink. In later years, the wink was accompanied by a stumble, the provocative last line slurred. She fell down a flight of stairs in New Orleans in 1928 and did not survive her injuries. A sad end, I thought, for the last of the Flying O’Briens.

  Leo and Harriet married quietly out of town and soon thereafter, she gave birth to twin boys. Their arrival was kept out of the papers until it could be announced at a more decorous time. As twins, said Leo, they were small, so who would notice? It was not until they were forty years old and fathers themselves that Leo bothered to tell them their birthdays were in July rather than December.

  It was a very happy marriage. Leo was often faithful, and when he was not, he was careful. Except once. But that is a difficult story
and I will not tell it now.

  After lunch, we took a walk through Times Square. As we passed by the statue of George Cohan, Leo said, “I remember Warburton telling me with Two Loves Have I that I needed a patriotic number. Flags. I said, ‘I don’t do flags, I’m not Cohan.’ He said, ‘No, you’re not.’ But if I’d known they gave you a statue…”

  “They tried to give you a theater,” I reminded him. Years ago, there was a proposal to rename the Sidney Theater as the Hirschfeld. Leo declined. If they were going to call it anything, he said, better to call it the Biederman. Without his wife, it was unlikely the world would have any interest in naming anything after him. Of Harriet’s many friends and associates, there were several still alive to support the change, and since the name Sidney Warburton was no longer considered important in theater history—even Rector’s closed after the war—Harriet got her theater.

  “The Things Everyone Says” may have been the first hit Leo wrote for Nedda Fiske, but it was by no means the last. The two continued a contentious and highly successful partnership over decades. As he told the Times when she died in 1973, Nedda was never not brilliant and never not infuriating. “I was always either falling at her feet or wanting to wring her neck.” Two Loves Have I saw the triumphant rebirth of Eugenia Hollyhock, who starred in several Hirschfeld shows before settling into the long-running hit Mother, May I?

  But Leo’s first show was the last time audiences saw the Darling Dancing Ardens perform together. Throughout the run, they were flawless, the partnership of dreams, floating in perfect harmony. Night after night, they clasped hands as they bowed to worshipping audiences, Claude always gallantly stepping back to present his beautiful wife. But at some point, they both decided that enough was enough. I do not know whether Blanche’s decision to do a film precipitated the parting or if Claude saw what the height of fame and success was … and that it didn’t hold a candle to Ruth. At any rate, they both headed west, but to different futures.

  To my surprise and delight, Adele St. John also headed west, although not without snide references to sand, snakes, and insect life, the scale of which she imagined bordered on the cataclysmic. The week of their departure, they had lunch with Louise, followed by a walk through the park. As we passed by the Bethesda Fountain, Mrs. St. John smiled up at the bold winged angel, and said to me with sudden energy, “Did you know that was created by a woman? A brilliant artist by the name of Emma Stebbins. Look at the way she’s striding. That powerful front leg and the way the dress flows back as she moves forward. Sleeves pushed up, the wings flaring upward. She’s not some placid, sorrowful guardian. No hobble, no hoops. She’s a woman going somewhere.”

  I never did get the chance to dance with Rodolfo again, as he, too, left New York for California. No one can say for certain whether he is in My Official Wife or no. But as Rudolph Valentino he became the most famous man in the world.

  As Leo and I took our leave of Mr. Cohan, I saw the names of his biggest songs carved into the base of the statue. Briefly, the strains of “Over There” came to mind; my heart became heavy. Then Leo suggested we get a cab. I was looking especially pretty today, he said, did I know that? Not wanting to cast a pall on the day, I said that I did, as a matter of fact.

  The cab stopped first at his building. Getting out, he said, “Dinner tomorrow?” I said of course. Then headed on a few blocks to my apartment.

  Coming home, I was greeted by my favorite photograph, which stands on the hallway table, so that when I return, I can smile hello to the person in the picture, as if he had welcomed me back.

  They are a handsome couple, these two. They are outside, and I can’t now remember whether it was a baseball game or a political event; at any rate, the gentleman regards the camera with wary good humor as if he wants to ask that his picture not be taken, but knows it’s pointless. The lady is smiling, amused by the gentleman’s irritation. It’s hardly the first time they’ve been photographed. His hand is on her back, she leans into him. I can date the image from the clothes. The ’20s had crashed to their terrible end. Waists had returned. Hats were wider. But the gentleman had long ago traded in his derby for a fedora. At his wife’s urging. It was often said that having once been a lady’s maid, she understood the value of a good hat.

  Acknowledgments

  I always enjoy research, but this book let me do a deep dive into the history of Broadway in the 1910s, making it my most joyful experience to date. It brought me back to a place I spent a lot of time as a kid, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center.

  I had an unforgettable day touring the Belasco Theater, one of the few Broadway theaters that date from the late Gilded Age. You don’t just get to walk around a working theater and I am forever indebted to Gretchen Michelfeld for making it happen. Huge gratitude also to Jill Cordle and Brian Aman, my fantastic, informative guide. With the theaters dark, I’m thinking of all of you. What a day it will be when you are all back on Broadway.

  The vision of what a musical was at this time as well as the importance of Rector’s to the theater community comes from Shall We Dance?, Douglas Thompson’s excellent biography of Vernon and Irene Castle. I also consulted Better Foot Forward: The History of American Musical Theatre by Ethan Mordden and A Pictorial History of the American Theatre: 1860–1976 by Daniel Blum, enlarged and revised by John Willis. For the history of anarchists in New York at this time and the Lexington Avenue explosion, I am indebted to Thai Jones’s excellent book More Powerful Than Dynamite.

  As always, Mike Wallace’s Greater Gotham was my bible.

  I also thank the wonderful team at Minotaur, who handle my books with such skill and care—even during a pandemic. My editor, Catherine Richards, puts up with my “But what about that moment on page 183, did that work?” queries. I also thank her excellent assistant, Nettie Finn. Eternal appreciation to my agent, Victoria Skurnick. Thank you to Kayla Janas and Allison Ziegler, David Rotstein for the gorgeous cover, production manager Cathy Turiano, and production editor Chrisinda Lynch. Last but never least, copyeditor Justine Gardner and proofreader Laura Dragonette.

  I would like to thank Karen Odden for reading an early draft of this novel. Gratitude also goes to Sharon Collins and Pearl Hanig for their kind and generous support of this series.

  This may sound odd, but any writer will understand. I thank the characters. They’re their own people who were kind enough to wander into my head and share their stories. They’ve been good company through some pretty lousy times and I am very grateful to them.

  Finally, wholeheartedly, I thank the readers.

  ALSO BY MARIAH FREDERICKS

  A Death of No Importance

  Death of a New American

  Death of an American Beauty

  YA Novels

  The True Meaning of Cleavage

  Head Games

  Crunch Time

  The Girl in the Park

  About the Author

  Mariah Fredericks was born and raised in New York City, where she still lives with her family. She is the author of several YA novels. A Death of No Importance was her first adult novel. Visit her website at MariahFredericksBooks.com, and follow her on Twitter @MariahFrederick, or sign up for email updates here.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapte
r 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Mariah Fredericks

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  First published in the United States by Minotaur Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group

  DEATH OF A SHOWMAN. Copyright © 2021 by Mariah Fredericks.

  All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 120 Broadway,

  New York, NY 10271.

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  Cover design by Rowen Davis and David Baldeosingh Rotstein

  Cover photographs: woman © Ildiko Neer/Trevillion Images; bridge © Circa Images/Glasshouse Images/Alamy; texture © foxie/Shutterstock.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Names: Fredericks, Mariah, author.

  Title: Death of a showman / Mariah Fredericks.

  Description: First edition. | New York: Minotaur Books, 2021. | Series: A Jane Prescott novel; 4

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020047623 | ISBN 9781250210906 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781250210913 (ebook)

  Classification: LCC PS3606.R435 D42913 2021 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020047623

  eISBN 9781250210913

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