by Amy Stewart
The very idea of it exhausted Beulah, who was already weary and downtrodden from her weeks in jail. “I’d rather they not write about me at all. I thought you promised to put a stop to it.”
“I promised to manage the press. Honestly, Miss Binford, I believe I’ve managed it quite well. You’re a sensation! Most of the actresses I represent would double my fee if I could deliver this kind of press for them. Do you know how much I’d have to pay to run one of my actress’s pictures on the front page, above the fold like this? Why, I’d have to mortgage my house to do it in one city, not to mention all across the country. This is like gold raining down on you, Miss Binford. You might not see it that way now, but you will, when it turns into real gold. How’d you like a gold bracelet for that slender wrist of yours?”
Beulah thought she might like that very much. “Are you entirely certain that people will pay to see me?”
“Of course they will!”
“And that they’ll want to hear my side of it, and they’ll understand that I’m not the way they say I am in those papers?”
“How could they not understand that, when you’ll put it to them so prettily?” Freeman said.
Beulah leaned back against the wall and squinted up at him. No one had ever shown as much confidence in Beulah’s abilities as Freeman Bernstein did at that moment. She was crushed by shame at the way her name was being bandied about in the press. But no one was standing before her speaking of shame. There was only Freeman, and his promises of redemption and riches.
35
BEULAH CROUCHED SILENTLY in the woods. She knew better than to run directly to the supply shed. It was too close to the center of camp. She would hide here first, and draw Constance out, too.
From her vantage point behind the scraggly pines, Beulah watched her running from tent to tent, searching. Constance was tall enough that it was easy to track her: a hatted figure moving between the dark triangles of tents, going from classroom to mess hall to latrine and back again.
It would occur to Constance soon enough to look for her in the woods. She had only to go and retrieve a lantern—and there were plenty of them about—and then she’d be right here, squeezing through the gap in the fence and clambering up the little trail to the clearing where Beulah and Fleurette had first found Constance and the others doing their nighttime drills.
Would she get up a search party? Probably not, at first. Constance knew how to keep a crisis quiet and handle it herself. All Beulah had to do was to keep an eye on her, and stay out of her way.
The show was by then under way. From the middle of the campground, Beulah heard Clarence pounding away at the piano, and the cheers and applause of the audience. The mess hall glowed faintly from all the lanterns: it was a pretty sight, a warm yellow among the darkened tents.
Beulah should have been there with the others, clapping and dancing and maybe even singing along. But she never was, was she? Her place had always been right here, at the ragged lonely edge of the circle, knowing better than to join in. She saw herself as a wild animal just then, huddled in the undergrowth, the smell of rotten leaves and damp earth beneath her, while in the village, there was fire, warmth, and good cheer.
So she crept like a little animal, away from the trail, just far enough back from the fence that she wouldn’t be spotted, until she’d circled halfway around the camp and had her target in sight.
Just as she’d predicted, Constance turned toward the woods. Beulah expected her to spend ten or fifteen minutes, at least, going up and down the trail and calling her name.
That was more than enough time.
With everyone at the concert, it was easy enough to climb over the fence and make a run for camp. The supply shed sat just behind the mess hall, not far from the tent they’d put up for May Ward. She slipped inside the shed, wishing for a lantern or even a match, and felt around in the dark. It wasn’t hard to find the case. The tent and stakes that usually concealed it had been put to use that night, leaving it sitting on a shelf all by itself.
She pulled it down, which was a battle on its own as it was half her size and nearly as heavy. Once she’d wrestled it to the ground, she settled down to work on the lock. Back in Richmond, she’d had a brief affair with a pickpocket who liked to spend his earnings on Mayo Street. He was something of an amateur lock-picker and thought that the two of them might do a little business together going in and out of the locked rooms at May Stuart’s boarding-house and lifting watches and coins from the men who were sometimes left to sleep off their drink alone. Beulah didn’t think it right to steal from the other girls’ clientele, believing they ought to have that opportunity for themselves. She told him so, but before he went on to find another accomplice, he did show her how much she could accomplish with a hairpin.
“A girl like you might need to break a lock now and then,” he said, with nothing but friendship and goodwill in his voice. She couldn’t see a reason to argue with that, and accepted a few lessons from him.
But none of that helped her now. The case had only a small lock, easily broken, but she was in a hurry and her hands were shaking from the urgent impulse now propelling her forward. Here was the man who insulted her, who ruined her life once and was probably doing it again at this very moment. She might never have another chance at him, and, by God, she was going to take it.
There were tools in the shed somewhere. She gave up on the hairpin and felt around until she found a box of hammers and pliers and other such things. Her fingers hit something flat—a metal file, maybe, or a crowbar. She pulled it out, along with the heaviest hammer she could find.
She sat still for a minute and listened. Could anyone in that boisterous audience hear her? What if someone was wandering around outside? She popped her head out and found the grassy paths between the tents empty. Everyone was watching May Ward.
The case was just wide enough to stand on its side. She propped it up, stood over it with a hammer, and smashed the lock as hard as she could. The hammer bounced off uselessly the first time, but Beulah liked to smash things and felt that she was only getting going. She hit it again, and again, and again, thinking each time about what had been done to her, and how long she’d lived with the humiliation, and how she wasn’t going to live with it anymore.
At last, the wood split and the lock came loose. With all her weight, she pried it open with a crowbar.
The rifles were there, and both of the pistols. Hack and Clarence hadn’t bothered to arm themselves to protect Mrs. Ward. Nobody worried about a thing like that, out in the country.
Beulah took one of the pistols and opened the chamber, just as she had seen the others do, and counted the bullets.
Six. She only needed one.
That cool metal felt awfully good in her hands. Here was certainty. Here was finality. The weight of that gun held a promise. She was just wild-headed enough to believe it.
She didn’t bother to hide the gun. It was in her right hand when she stepped out of the shed. No one was watching. She practiced the stance Constance had shown the others: right foot in front, left planted firmly behind, arm out straight. Check the little notch on the top of the gun to make sure the target’s in your sights. Then squeeze the trigger. Don’t pull it, squeeze it.
There might’ve been some small ripple of doubt that came across her before she struck out, but she pushed that away easily enough.
He ruined her. Now she was going to ruin him.
36
People Like Anything Salacious
NEW YORK, SEPT.7—Freeman Bernstein, a theatrical booking agent, today stated that Beulah Binford, the girl in the Beattie murder case at Chesterfield, VA, will appear at the Liberty theater, Philadelphia, next Monday.
He said that her act probably will consist of a couple of songs, adding: “It does not matter what she does just so long as the people have a chance to see her.”
Bernstein said that later the girl will appear in New York, Chicago, Detroit, St. Paul and Minneapolis with possibly
some dates in other cities.
FREEMAN KNOCKED ON the door of Beulah’s hotel suite promptly at nine. He carried a roll of newspapers under his arm, but when he walked in, he saw that Beulah had already been out to gather the morning papers herself. They were scattered all over the floor.
“‘People like anything salacious’?” she shouted when she saw him. “Is that how you talk about me?” She threw the paper at him, but it only fluttered to the ground in loose sheaves.
Freeman ducked anyway: it was a habit of his. “I can see you’ve never been introduced to that morally corrupt species known as the headline writer,” he said. “He has more poetic license than Shakespeare. I don’t write the headlines.”
“If it doesn’t matter what I do on stage, why have I been learning songs all this time?”
“You’ll sing them! But it’s far better for audiences to come expecting nothing more than to have a glimpse of the famous Beulah Binford, and then to be surprised and delighted by her many talents. If I told them now about your lovely voice and nimble feet, what would be the mystery? People fill theaters to see the unexpected, don’t you know that?”
Beulah arched an eyebrow and shuffled through the other papers. She’d only been out of jail for two days, but the restorative effects of a long bath, a visit to the beauty parlor, and a fresh change of clothing had been considerable. She lounged at that moment in a long pink kimono patterned in dogwood blossoms, furnished to her by Freeman in a box tied in satin ribbon, although she suspected she was not the first wearer of the kimono. It frayed slightly at the sleeves and there was a faint fragrance of curling cream at the neck.
Nonetheless, she mustered as much elegance as she could on that shabby divan. It was a second-rate hotel, but it offered suites, and the desk clerk bent the rules about male visitors to the women’s floors, allowing Freeman upstairs because Freeman paid for so many of those rooms.
“But that was yesterday. Look at what they’re saying today.” She waved another story at him. “Is it true that the mayors of these towns where I’m to perform are saying they’ll pass a law against me even stepping foot in their town?”
“Well—they might pass a law against you appearing on stage, anyway,” Freeman muttered, preparing to duck again.
“Listen to this,” Beulah said, reading in her slow and halting way. “‘The Binford girl did not even figure in the murder trial. She was not an actress. She had no advertisement save as a woman who had relations with the defendant in a murder case. A stage that would welcome a woman of her type would be more degraded than the sufficiently degraded stage that attempted to exploit other women of her type. That there is a limit to the degradation of the stage is encouraging, no matter where that limit is found.’ What do they mean, other women of my type? What type am I?”
“Oh, you know,” Freeman said. “Other women in murder trials. These . . . I’m sure you know what I mean . . . these women who . . . like Nan Patterson, or that Yohe girl.”
“No, I don’t know about other women in murder cases,” Beulah said. “This is my first one. What I do know is that you promised me a thousand dollars a week if I would agree to go on the stage. I’ve done everything you asked. Why am I being cast out of cities when they’ve never even seen what I can do?”
“Oh, they’ll see what you can do. We might just have to make some . . . adjustments.”
Beulah looked at him suspiciously. “What kind of adjustments?”
Freeman jumped to his feet and waved his arms with the air of a showman. “How does a motion picture sound?”
Beulah dropped her paper. “You can’t be serious.”
Freeman went on, undaunted. “We’ll call it ‘Beulah Binford’s Own Story.’ Our tale begins with little Beulah Binford dodging her sixty-year-old grandmother and frequenting roller-skating rinks and similar resorts.”
“I never went to a roller-skating rink. We went to a park, and then we went to Mayo Street. There were no resorts of any kind, not in my neighborhood.”
“People pay to see pretty pictures. We’ll put you at a resort. Then you meet Henry Clay, and it finally winds up with the Beattie tragedy. The last scene shows the bars of your cell dissolving while you step forth, your face wearing the expression of a saint, saying”—here Freeman broke into a falsetto that Beulah found most annoying—“ ‘I wish I could carry my story into every home in America.’”
“I would never say it like that, and I don’t think anyone wants my story in their home. Isn’t that what these papers are saying?”
“It all depends on how we sell it. We have to let the public know that this moving picture is an expression of your desire to make yourself a horrible example.”
“A horrible example? I’ve done nothing wrong. Surely that was proven when they let me out of jail! Why, the trial isn’t even over, and the lawyers already decided they had no use for me. The judge agreed. Henry Clay might yet be found innocent. We don’t know. Why can’t we tell that story on the stage?”
“That’s not much of a story,” Freeman muttered, and went to the window, where the sound of a newsboy calling an extra drifted into the room. “Anyway, I’m afraid it’s not true.”
“What do you mean?” Beulah rushed over to the window. Never had she seen a crowd gather so quickly around a newsboy. An entire corner of Eighty-Second Street was impassible owing to the number of people scrambling for the special edition.
“Henry Clay Beattie found guilty,” called the boy. “To be executed by Christmas. Extra paper, just out!”
The room swam around, and Beulah dropped to the floor. She was in a sweat, and there were little pinpricks of ice up the back of her neck.
“They aren’t going to hang him, are they?” Beulah swore she wouldn’t cry over Henry Clay, but the sobs were coming up from inside of her like water bubbling out of a spring.
Freeman had never looked so eager to get out of a room. “You stay right here, Miss Binford. I’ll just go and see about this.”
He didn’t come back. She sat under that window all day, listening to the cries of the newsboys.
37
A GIRL IN TROUBLE instinctively runs home. For that reason, Constance checked her own tent first. There was no place to hide inside, but she went around anyway, lifting blankets and kicking over the cots. The latrines seemed the next most likely place for a girl in distress to hide, but they, too, were empty.
Inspecting every single tent would take an hour. Nonetheless, she went up and down the paths between the tents, calling out as she went.
“Roxie? You’re not in any trouble. Just let me see you. I only want to know you’re all right.”
Nothing. The concert was starting by then. The cheers and whistles from the mess hall made it harder for Constance’s voice to be heard. She didn’t want to shout over it: that would only scare the girl away.
She ran to the classrooms and looked inside, which wasn’t easy without a lantern, but she ducked into each one and peeked into dark corners and behind desks. There was no sign of her.
It was only then, after a few frantic minutes of searching, that she slowed down enough to wonder how Roxanna Collins and Freeman Bernstein were acquainted. The girl had refused to be a part of Fleurette’s chorus, claiming that she didn’t know how to dance or sing. Was it possible that she did? Had she performed in one of Freeman’s shows? But why hide a thing like that?
Hack was standing guard at the entrance to the mess hall. Constance hurried over.
“Have you seen Roxie?” she asked.
He shrugged. “She might’ve gone in with the rest of them. I didn’t take a head count.”
“No, she would’ve come in late, within the last few minutes.”
“Then I haven’t seen her, miss. What’s the trouble?”
Constance wasn’t ready to alarm anyone. A missing girl, connected in any way to May Ward’s visit, would be a disaster for the camp.
“I believe she’s ill again, that’s all. If you see her, would you keep
an eye on her?”
“Did you check the infirmary?”
“I will,” Constance said, but she didn’t expect to find her there. Sure enough, the infirmary was closed, the medicine cabinets locked, with a note that Nurse Cartwright could be found at the concert.
Roxie had to be in the woods. Constance took one last look around, casting an eye over the entirety of their small campground. Seeing no one about, she picked up a lantern and headed for the trees.
It would be easy enough to believe that the girl had some sort of dispute with Freeman Bernstein. There were probably dozens, if not hundreds, of aspiring vaudeville actresses who had pinned their hopes on Freeman’s promises. Fleurette herself had done so: she’d joined May Ward’s troupe as an unpaid seamstress, hoping to impress Mrs. Ward with her tailoring abilities and somehow win a part on stage.
But that was entirely Fleurette’s idea. As far as Constance knew, Freeman had never promised Fleurette a place in the troupe. She saw an opportunity and took it. Norma always held Freeman accountable regardless, and resented him for misleading Fleurette, but Constance never did. Fleurette went of her own accord and could’ve come home at any time.
But did every girl get away so easily? When Constance had charge of the female section at the Hackensack Jail, she heard far worse stories from the women inmates. Theater owners offered private booths to men on a night out, and those booths came with the promise that girls from the chorus would pay a visit after the show and let the men do whatever they liked to do. The expense of touring was often deducted from an actress’s paycheck, making it impossible to earn a dollar, much less to save up enough to leave if it became necessary. And everyone knew that a vaudeville audition wasn’t over until the girl agreed to a private meeting in the producer’s office.
Any of that could’ve happened to Roxie Collins. But she obviously hadn’t expected to see Freeman. If she’d worked with him before, wouldn’t she have known that he was May Ward’s husband?