Mask of Silver

by Rosemary Jones

  I said. “I’ll change. Meet you by the car.”

  Fred nodded and ambled over to Betsy to explain our plans. She squealed a little and lit out for the house. No question that Betsy would change into a prettier dress for a dinner with Max. So it appeared her interest in him was on the rise again.

  Neither of us took much time. We both beat Max to the car. Fred finally had to go back to the house to pull him away from changing into a new silk tie for a dinner out. Max and Betsy took the back seat. I rode up front next to Fred so I could get a better look at the gears and pedals. I reminded him that he still owed me a driving lesson.

  “The steering’s stiff,” he commented. “But I knew gals who handled worse, driving ambulances in France. Tell you what, let’s take this car and a picnic basket down some farm lane when we get our next break. You can practice then.”

  “You mean when Lulu decides to halt filming for another dress order from New York?” I said with a laugh.

  Max groaned in the back and Betsy giggled.

  Fred just clashed through the change of gears and grinned. “You can drive back and forth while I eat all the sandwiches.”

  As we rolled into the Easttown neighborhood, the houses started to look friendlier and more ordinary. The high hedges, walls, and locked gates that separated the mansions of French Hill were left behind. We all started to laugh and talk about Lulu’s mishaps. It felt like an ordinary day again, with Max complaining about the waste of money to pamper a New York theater actress, Betsy wondering if Sydney would give her a scene dressing Renee and Lulu for a party, and Fred complaining that they didn’t even know if there would be a party scene.

  “Oh, there’s sure to be a party,” said Betsy. “Sydney knows the audience wants to see a crowd all dressed up and looking lovely. Especially for a story set in a big fancy house.”

  “We’ll need to get more extras from town if we do that,” I said. “I wonder what the society types would wear in a town like this.”

  “Perhaps some girls and boys that we can recruit from the university?” said Betsy. “They’d be thrilled to be in a film.”

  Max brightened at that thought. “You’re right. I suspect we could cast students for little or no wages.”

  “Max!” we all cried.

  “Well, we’ll pay something,” he grudgingly said.

  We parked the car right in front of Velma’s Diner and tumbled through the doors a very merry crew, debating the ethics of making extras work for experience and little else. We’d all had that happen to us. It was a common trick.

  “When I think of all the dollars that I’ve spent on my munitions,” said Betsy, “I used to think that it would be cheaper for me to pay the studio to work. I always hated how the studio kept saying we should invest in our look.” Her moan about the money that any actor had to put out for good makeup or clothes was common. Sydney and many bigger directors were starting to want more control over the look of a film. Some were starting to costume their entire casts and outfit makeup artists. But, as Renee also complained, our studio often operated like it was 1913, not 1923, and we were making serials for the nickelodeon crowd.

  We plopped down into the seats nearest the window. A young woman was adding up her tips behind the till. She headed toward us with menus and stopped when she got a clear look at me. Then she said, “We don’t serve chop suey.”

  Max and Betsy looked puzzled. Fred, who had been out with me before, started to scowl but switched to his biggest grin. “Well, then, that’s too bad. I love chop suey. But can you cook a steak? Or should we try La Bella Luna instead?” said Fred.

  The girl stood there with her mouth hanging open. It was a common reaction to Fred. A second waitress came up behind her and smacked her shoulder. “Suzie, go on back to the kitchen and help Ted with the dishes.”

  “But I don’t wash dishes, Florie,” said Suzie with an edge of whine in her voice.

  “Now you do,” said the older woman. “I’ll finish up your tables and maybe split the tips with you if you don’t break anything. Go on. Scoot. Or do you want me to tell Velma that you tried to chase away the famous stars of the only movie ever filmed in Arkham.”

  Suzie gulped a little and fled to the kitchen.

  “Not the brightest thing,” said the waitress. “But she’s Velma’s niece. We have to keep her or Velma’s sister raises a ruckus. Now coffee’s on the house, here’s some menus. I recommend the fried chicken myself, but Joe does a nice steak too.”

  I buried my head in the menu. Once Suzie was gone, I thought of several things to say in response to such a cheap and common insult. And a couple more things to say to Fred about how he did not have to play knight errant. I could fight my own battles. But everyone was looking at me and it was easier to read through the whole menu twice. I agreed with Florie that the fried chicken sounded like the best choice.

  “Joe makes the best fluffy mashed potatoes to go with the chicken,” she said. “Now, do tell me that you are from the Fitzmaurice place and are making a movie in Arkham.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Fred with a twinkle. “But we are not the stars. Just working stiffs.”

  “Oh, call me Florie, Florie Wilson is my name,” she said. “You’re something new and that makes you newsworthy in this town. The Arkham Advertiser has been writing up stories about Sydney Fitzmaurice coming back to town and making a movie here for months.”

  “Months?” I said. “But Sydney only made this decision weeks ago. Max, didn’t you say that the studio was furious that he changed plans after they’d agreed to the budget for his mesmerist idea.”

  “The studio is always upset,” said Betsy. “That’s why Max is going gray around the edges.” She looked at him expectantly, waiting for Max to respond about how the studio always knew best.

  Max, funnily enough, didn’t trot out his favorite phrase. Instead he just shrugged and asked about the steak, the most expensive item listed. Betsy and Fred picked the chicken.

  “Well,” said Florie, tucking her notepad into her apron pocket after getting all our orders. “Mrs Mayhew got a telegram more than three months ago asking her to open up the house and get it ready. Can’t keep a secret in Arkham, that’s for sure. Now, you leave room for pie. We’ve got both apple and cherry tonight.”

  “Sydney might have said something about Arkham earlier,” Max told us after Florie walked away. “He wanted to do a different approach. The studio said that if he filmed here, he had to deliver on all his promises.”

  “His promises?” I said, wondering what that meant.

  Max pursed his lips. “The hooded man.”

  Fred looked up at that. “What about that gimmick?”

  Max fiddled with his napkin and silverware. Betsy glanced at me, but I shrugged. The hooded man got people talking about Sydney’s pictures, but the appearances never seemed to mean much.

  “You know how the fans have been,” Max said. “A big reveal. The power of the hooded man. Sydney said that the mesmerist picture would do that. But then he said that he had to film here. All the right occult signs and so on. It’s been hard to pin Sydney down. You know what he’s like.”

  Betsy patted his hand. “I’m sure that nobody blames you, Max. Everyone knows how hard you work to stop Sydney spending money.”

  Max shook his head. “It’s not the expenses. It’s the other promises Sydney made to the studio. That this picture will be the one. He had better be right this time. The studio knows that I can keep the money under control.”

  Fred and I both laughed at that. Nobody could ever stop Sydney from spending, certainly not gentle Max with his perpetual lines of worry carving his forehead. Most people thought Max had been with us forever, but he was actually the third attempt by the studio to organize Sydney. The first one lasted through two pictures but fainted nearly as much as Maggie at the sight of blood. Real faints too, unlike Maggie, even thoug
h the blood had been fake. The second kept trying to get Sydney to sign invoices, usually right when Sydney was in the middle of reading reviews out loud or doing other activities he enjoyed more. Sydney banned him from all sets for all time. Max had been a relief. He never argued with Sydney, and he was even mildly useful during filming with the managing of the slate and his perpetual note taking.

  “Enjoy your dinner,” Fred said to all of us, “and don’t worry about Sydney’s plans. He’ll tell us when he feels like telling us.”

  “Excuse me,” said a woman seated at the next table, “but did you say that you are staying at the Fitzmaurice house?” Dark-haired and closer to Florie’s age than mine, she had a careworn face, with noticeable circles under the eyes, and the slight squint of a woman who spent a lot of time with her nose in a book. But there was something compelling about her gaze as well.

  Since I was sitting closest to her, I answered, “Yes, we’re staying there. We’re making a movie with Sydney Fitzmaurice.”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “I knew Sydney. I was teaching a course at Miskatonic University when he directed a play with an amateur theater troupe. A very odd play. It killed one of my students.”

  I blinked, certain that I had misheard her. The woman swiveled away from me to pour cream in her coffee. She stared into the cup and refused to meet my eyes. I had the distinct feeling that she deliberately ignored me. I turned to Fred to ask if he had overheard what she said, but was interrupted by Florie’s return. She thumped down the plates, distracting me from my contemplation of the stranger at the next table. The fried chicken smelled wonderful. Then she turned to the woman who had spoken to me. “Need anything else, professor? How about a little dessert?”

  “No, nothing,” said the woman, standing up. She collected her handbag and moved toward the cash register. As she passed my chair, she looked straight at me again and said, “Be careful.”

  The others didn’t notice, being busy with a debate about how much they could eat and still have room for pie. Betsy declared that she was willing to leave half her chicken on her plate if it meant she could have cherry pie. Fred, of course, said that he’d eat her dinner and his, and manage two pieces of pie. For a small man, he was perpetually hollow. He claimed it came from too many years of trying to eat inedible army food.

  Their laughter and chatter shook me out of the anxiety caused by the stranger’s remarks. I decided that she surely couldn’t have meant that Sydney actually killed someone. She must have mixed up the man with one of his movie plots. People did that, thinking what they saw on the screen was real.

  “Are you going to eat that?” Fred said, pointing his fork at my pile of mashed potatoes.

  “Every bite,” I declared. And I did.

  When Florie came back to clear our plates and take orders for dessert, I asked her who the woman was.

  “That’s Professor Krosnowski,” said Florie. “She teaches at Miskatonic. Knows all sorts of interesting stories.”

  “What kind of stories?”

  Florie shifted the plates around so they rested on her hip. “All types. Quite a bit about the town and the families who built it. People like my grandmother’s great-something granny. She was supposed to have been a Salem witch.”

  “There’s more than a few of those around,” said Fred, recalling Eleanor’s claim when she first arrived.

  “Reckon it’s true,” said Florie. “Women in my family have some peculiar talents, that’s for sure.”

  “So were the Fitzmaurices one of these founders?” I asked.

  “The Fitzmaurice family? No, latecomers they are. Arrived well after the Revolutionary War. Didn’t even send the British packing in 1812,” said Florie.

  I thought about my parents, who hadn’t arrived in Oakland until 1897, and wondered what Florie would call them. “So your family has been in Arkham longer than the Fitzmaurices?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “Earliest was Remember Wilson. She arrived in Arkham by the 1770s. Now there’s Wilsons all over New England. Probably isn’t a town within a hundred miles where I couldn’t find some kin, even if it is only names carved on a tombstone.”

  “Really?” said Betsy. “Imagine knowing your history that far back. All I know is that my grandmother worked in a shirt factory and my mother decided that sewing wasn’t for her. So she married a tailor. Said he could do the hemming at work and at home.”

  “Smart woman,” said Florie. “Yeah, there’s many in Arkham that know their family history. Sometimes a little too well, I think. Old grudges have a habit of lingering, if you know what I mean.”

  None of us had a good answer to that, since we all lived in a city where new people arrived daily, so we gave Florie our orders for pie. Three apples and one cherry for Betsy. The pie came out just as a number of people entered the diner. Suzie was released from her exile amid the greasy dishes. Both women bustled around the tables for several minutes.

  Keeping her promise for coffee on the house, Florie returned to refill the cups and, as she put it, take a breath. She plopped the pot on an uncleared table and swung a chair around. “This is my break and if any of you have a cigarette, I’ll thank you kindly for it,” she said. “I’m fresh out.”

  Max handed over his case. Florie “la di dahed” when she saw the gold-plate engraved with Max’s initials. Like his suits, Max’s cigarette case was the best quality. He kept it stocked with Chesterfields. “Very pretty,” she said, knocking out a cigarette with an expert twist. Fred provided the match. “My mother never did approve of ladies smoking,” said Florie, “but then I never claimed to be a lady. I figured with you being theater type folk, you wouldn’t mind.”

  We all assured her that we didn’t. I never liked to smoke but it was common enough around a set. “Now tell me,” said Florie. “What is Sydney doing back in Arkham?”

  “How long has he been gone?” I said.

  “Oh, it’s been a long time,” Florie answered. “He left in 1912, no, it was later than that. Summer of 1913. I remember that because my mother always claimed thirteen was an unlucky number and an unlucky year it was. Also it was right on a hundred years since the Fitzmaurice family built the first house.”

  “The house was built in 1813?” asked Max. “It doesn’t feel that old.”

  “It’s not,” said Florie. “They cleared the land and started building in 1813. The woods and a little house burned down in 1818. Then the big house went in the 1823 fire. It was the second fire that killed the first Fitzmaurice, the one with the funny name who had been a soldier in Napoleon’s army. They were lucky to save his portrait and papers. One of the maids got the children out with a handful of treasures that Fitzmaurice handed her. He went back for his wife and neither made it out. At least that’s how my family remembered it. Took his son right out of the maid’s arms and filled her hands with things, made his children carry his treasures too, so the story goes. Later the son rebuilt the house. Been Fitzmaurices on French Hill ever since.”

  “But Fitzmaurice died in the fire?” asked Max, clearly fascinated with all this gossip.

  “Oh yes, he never came out. According to the maid, he went running up the stairs with his sword held high to find his wife.”

  “His sword?” I asked, remembering the blackened blade hanging beneath the portrait.

  “Oh yes. They say that’s all they ever found of him and his wife. Just the sword with his hand clinging to it.”

  “Just the hand?” squealed Betsy.

  Florie nodded. “Everything else was burnt clean away.”

  Fred looked at me. “Didn’t Sydney do that in Winter’s Rags?”

  “He did,” I said. Max looked puzzled. I remembered that the studio sent him to us after that film. Sydney had just banished his second assistant and went a little wild over how he was going to tell a story in a new way. We’d filmed most of it on a stage, but Sydney wanted real snow and i
nsisted on a day long drive into the mountains. Where we found mostly rain and rocks.

  Betsy nodded. “That’s the one where poor Selby broke his leg.”

  “He slipped,” I said to Max, “and fell down a ravine. Fred and Jim pulled him out.”

  “And Jeany held him flat in the truck bed all the way down the mountain,” Fred added.

  That had been a true nightmare, with Selby moaning at every bump and me sure that we’d crippled him for life. He did have a nasty limp after that but found work in cowboy movies doing character parts.

  “Well, my heavens,” said Florie. “I never knew that filming was so dangerous.”

  “It can be,” said Fred. “We try to keep it safe. But Selby was a fool, always just following Sydney’s directions and not thinking about what he was being asked to do. I told him that the rocks were too slippery.”

  Fred worked harder than anyone to keep us safe. Besides being a wizard at figuring out the optical illusions that Sydney wanted, he wasn’t afraid to point out when Sydney’s ideas might cause problems. He nearly quit one time when Sydney wanted to send his hero up in a hot air balloon with no ropes anchoring it to the ground. Given that the actor didn’t have any experience with flying, Fred refused to crank the camera unless a rope was attached or an experienced balloonist added to the scene.

  “It’s odd,” said Betsy, “that Sydney would use something from his own family history, something like a dead hand.”

  “Sounds like Sydney to me,” I said. “Renee always calls him a magpie for stories. He picks up pieces everywhere and adds them into his films. It’s part of his extreme realism. Don’t you listen to his lectures?” Of course, Winter’s Rags had been the most extreme of Sydney’s attempts at realism and also one of the few flops that we’d made in the last five years. Renee’s part as the mysterious wife of the lost soldier never made much sense. The audience was confused about the ending too, with the soldier vanishing into a fire while staring at the reflection of a hooded man.