The Masque of the Red Dress

by Ellen Byerrum

  This just took a turn. “Did it bother her that Saige Russell had worn it?”

  “At first. But she, and I have forgotten her name—” Lacey was sure this was a lie. “She was the one who decided she could turn her luck around by wearing it. And in a small way, it kept Saige alive for me.” He breathed softly, almost sighing.

  “The dress took on a life of its own?”

  “Perhaps. It became a sort of a tradition for someone to be allowed to wear the Kinetic Theatre’s red dress. There are always more than enough actresses who need a spectacular dress to wear.”

  Lacey remembered what the two actresses who had worn the dress had told her. “Do they have to compete to wear it?”

  “No, no. I just choose the woman who I think will wear it the best. The one who would show off the dress to its best advantage. Now, this way.”

  Sokolov opened another door for her at the far end of the lobby past the balcony doors. They entered a long narrow hallway, at the end of which a tall stained-glass window let in colored sunlight. There were doors lining either side.

  “Yet, you don’t mind that the red gown was sold?” she asked.

  “I wasn’t going to wear it,” he said with a smile.

  “Was this costume different because of Saige Russell?”

  Sokolov stopped and leaned against the wall at the end of the hallway.

  “Saige is gone now and the dress is gone as well. And I have no more tears to weep. The other actresses transformed her dress. They improved its history.” That’s one interpretation. He straightened up and indicated the door to the right of the stained-glass window. “This is the wardrobe closet. At least the beginning of it.”

  CHAPTER 36

  “It’s enormous!” Lacey couldn’t see the end of it. Behind that door was a maze of storerooms, closets, cabinets, more doors, mannequins, piles of clothes, fabric, and sketches.

  “As I said, we own the townhouse next to the playhouse. The upstairs have been combined. It makes quite a lovely labyrinth.”

  “You don’t rent the space, then?”

  “Renting is the kiss of death for a theatre. You have to own your building to survive. Once a neighborhood has a theatre, the playhouse improves everything around it. New shops come in, new restaurants, new people. It becomes more desirable. That’s when the developers swoop in, like the vultures they are. They can’t wait to throw you out, tear down the theatre, the thing that brought in all the people.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “The joy of the theatre. But Kinetic is smarter. We bought the buildings.”

  “We’re in the townhouse now?” Lacey turned around and around, looking at the labyrinth of rooms and doors.

  “Yes. There is also a connecting door downstairs, and a few others. Some of the offices are on the first floor, so we can pop in and out. We can thank our donors for helping us buy the two buildings, back when the neighborhood was much cheaper.”

  Lacey wondered about those donors. Would those be foreign governments, or simply wealthy patrons of the arts?

  The “closet” seemed to go on forever, with room after room full of nooks and built-ins that sheltered wardrobe items such as hats and bags. Yet even with all the space, and the hanging rods for dresses and coats and suits and jackets, and shelves for shoes and gloves and other accessories, it was still packed to the walls with clothes.

  “You can see why we need to occasionally downsize our collections,” Sokolov said.

  “It must be hard to keep track of everything.”

  “It is not easy.”

  A rainbow of something overhead caught Lacey’s eye, and she looked up and gasped. At least a hundred silk kimonos were hanging above their heads, exploding in a sumptuous show of shimmering colors.

  Sokolov glanced up. “Yes, the kimonos. One of our patrons recently decided this theatre was in desperate need of her collection of silk kimonos. Yuri took them in. You don’t say no to big donors. You say thank-you and write them a receipt for their taxes. However, it is not likely that Kinetic will be mounting a production of The Mikado anytime soon.”

  “And you couldn’t get rid of them in the sale?”

  “If only. What if our very wealthy donor had spotted them there?”

  “They are beautiful.”

  “Perhaps I should consider them an art installation.” He smiled at the notion. Or possibly at her. Walking further into the room, Lacey realized this first space was set up in aisles. Sokolov pointed out the contents of each aisle as they passed through them.

  “Outerwear. Period underwear. Leotards in bins by sizes, though most of our dancers prefer to wear their own. Sometimes we have to order something special for someone.”

  “The things you donated to the sale were just a drop in the bucket.”

  “As you can see.”

  “The Masque of the Red Death was one of your first shows, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. Kinetic had done several full seasons before that. But it was The Masque where everything finally clicked, if you know what I mean.”

  “It put Kinetic on the map.”

  “Exactly,” Sokolov said. He turned to face her. “I will make you a deal, Lacey Smithsonian. I will tell you what you want to know and you will tell me how you found the Romanov diamonds. You want to know about The Masque? I want to know about the lost corset of the Romanovs.”

  He sounds like Kepelov. Why does this always have to involve some mind game?

  “Okay, it’s a deal. A question for a question?”

  He winked at her. “Works for me.”

  “You’ve already read about the diamonds. There were rubies too.”

  “Lacey Smithsonian, everybody in Washington has read about you and the diamonds and the rubies. In your reports, however, you did not mention the instinct that brought you, step by step, from America to France, to New Orleans, Louisiana. Your EFP.”

  “As I say, my alleged powers are way overrated. The truth is I had a friend who was convinced the corset really existed, because of information she’d inherited from her family. Very incomplete information, as it turned out, but it was a start. We were planning a trip to France together. She would hunt for the corset, I would write the story. When she died, I decided to follow her dream, at least for a while. Besides, I’d made her a promise.”

  “It is good to have such friends. I hope we can be friends.”

  She smiled at him. Didn’t he know reporters were never friends with their sources?

  “It was over a year ago when I met Magda Rousseau, a corsetiere here in the District. Through a friend. She told me that theatre costumers have a superstition, that if a costumer pricked a finger and spilled a drop of blood on a costume, it meant she was putting her heart into her work, so her blood would bring good luck for the show. ‘Bloody thread, knock ’em dead.’ That was one version of it.”

  “Fascinating. I have never heard of that superstition. But I like it. I was familiar with Magda’s work,” Sokolov said. “She was very good, very precise, very imaginative. An untimely end, as I recall?”

  “She was murdered. Magda was descended from one of the Latvian guards who attended the execution of Czar Nicholas and his family. The Latvians refused to shoot the children, so instead they were ordered to strip the bodies.”

  He tented his fingers and brought them to his lips. “And like many soldiers, one of them grabbed a bloodstained souvenir. But unlike the other drunken Bolsheviks, they managed to hide their booty.”

  “Yes. Well, one of them did, with the help of his friend.”

  Nicky Sokolov picked up a stack of gray and black fedoras and started rearranging them by size. “And that began the strange odyssey of the diamond-filled corset.”

  “My turn. Other people have told me you and Saige Russell were in love during the production of The Masque.”

  “That is true.” He dusted off a hat and took a moment before answering. “I made her the most elaborate costume I had ever made up to that time.”
r />   “Yet the character of Death is not the largest role in the play.”

  “No, yet perhaps the most important role. A pivotal role.” Sokolov leaned against a wall and folded his arms. “I wanted everyone to be impressed by her. To see what I saw.”

  “There was some jealousy and bad feelings about Saige, I heard.”

  “You must have talked with Katya.” He grimaced at some memory. “The understudy. She thought she should have the role.”

  “She mentioned that.”

  “Katya was the better dancer. The part didn’t call for the best dancer. Only the most magnetic presence. That was Saige. Ultimately, it was Yuri’s decision.”

  “Influenced by you?”

  He inclined his head in acknowledgment. “Perhaps. Tell me, why did you go to France to search for the corset, the diamonds?”

  “Magda was convinced they were there. She had part of an old family diary. I didn’t want her dream to die with her. I was curious.” Lacey gazed at him. “I’d never been to Paris and the tickets were bought. I did think it was probably all a pipe dream. There was no reason to think the corset still existed after all these years. The Russian Revolution was a century ago. But if I went on the hunt with Magda, or with her memory, I’d always have Paris.”

  “Yes, it was the only thing to do.” He seemed impressed, or perhaps merely amused.

  “My turn again. So Katya was jealous of Saige. But others had issues with her as well?”

  “Ah, now you must be talking about Gareth Cameron? I’m afraid it’s true. She could not learn his lines. To be fair, the script was bad. Cameron was very young. She blew most of her lines, most of the time. She couldn’t remember her blocking. She insisted her instincts were better than the director’s. She drove Yuri out of his mind. Cameron seemed positively homicidal. You would have thought he was an actor.”

  “And yet you loved her.”

  “Love is blind. And foolish.”

  “Saige died sometime after the last show. Are you sure it was an accident?”

  “I was wondering when you’d get to that. It’s a reporter’s question,” Sokolov said. “Saige died that night. It was tragic. A tragic and stupid incident.” He closed his eyes briefly. To shut out the thought? Or to relive it? “What else could it be but an accident? She was alone in the theatre. Put your mind at rest, Lacey. The mystery is why she returned to the stage after the last show. I will never know that.”

  Maybe to savor her moment of triumph all by herself? “One more question, please.”

  “You are wearing me out,” he said, but he didn’t seem annoyed.

  “Nicky, did you go to the cast party for The Masque?”

  “Of course. It would have been rude not to go. As it turned out, I was late, because of Saige. She was supposed to meet me right after the show and we would go together. She was changing, and I was making sure all the costumes were accounted for, including the Death costume, so they could be cleaned and stored. We agreed to meet in the lobby. She didn’t show up.”

  “Did you look for her?”

  “Of course I did.” He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “She wasn’t in her dressing room. I checked the balcony. I went into the theatre. The ghost light was on, but no one was there. At least, I didn’t see anyone. I called her name. She might have been already dead, lying on the floor beneath the scaffolding, the platforms. It’s haunted me all these years.”

  “What then?”

  He took a deep breath. “I thought she had left without me. I went first to her apartment, it was nearby. I thought maybe she wanted a different outfit for the party. She was always changing outfits. I didn’t know what to think. No one there. I kept calling her phone. She didn’t answer.”

  “So you went to the party?”

  “I thought she might have gone ahead, because I had taken so long.”

  “She didn’t answer her phone?”

  “If she was already at the party, I thought it would have been noisy, maybe she didn’t hear it. Then I thought she must be mad at me, for some obscure reason, or because we missed connections after the show. She could be temperamental that way.”

  “And Saige never showed up?” Lacey had wondered whether Saige had never left Kinetic, or if she went to the party and then returned to the theatre.

  “To be honest, by the time I got to the party and she wasn’t there either, I was a little irritated with her. I had a drink, and then another. Everyone was getting drunk, dancing, celebrating. I figured I would eventually get a sob story from her later, some elaborate excuse. But we found out the next day she was dead.” There was pain in his face. “Why do you make me remember all this?”

  “I’m sorry.” Her instinct was to reach out and comfort him, but she couldn’t. Sometimes she had to fight to retain her objectivity. Reporters don’t hug sources, she reminded herself. And it could have happened that way. Sokolov’s story sounded logical, internally consistent, even a little polished. He’s had twelve years to polish it. Lacey would have to find out what the others recollected about that night, if anything. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “You haven’t.” He stared into her eyes and took her hand. “Really.”

  She took back her hand. What should she make of Nicky Sokolov? Although Saige was disliked by several others in The Masque cast, she sparked something in him. And in the director. It was a romantic gesture to fashion a fabulous costume so she would seem to be a better actress than she was. Wasn’t it? A funny thing about death: It could bestow sainthood on the unlikeliest people.

  “Saige was very lovely. Not a great actress, but she had a great presence on stage.” His thoughts seemed far away. He brought his attention back to Lacey. “It was all so long ago. There are days I have trouble recalling her face. Now tell me, why did you go to New Orleans after Paris?”

  “It was one last crazy chance. I found an address written on a slip of paper in France, in the place where Magda thought we’d find the corset. The corset wasn’t there, but this one little clue was.” The slip of paper that Kepelov never discovered. “I thought the address was in Paris, but that number didn’t exist. But the French Quarter in New Orleans has some of the same Parisian street names, even the same street intersections. That was where the address was. I’m sure I wrote about all of that in my articles.”

  “I’ll have to read them again.”

  “Whatever happened to the mask that went with the dress?” she asked. “I’ve seen pictures of it. It was gorgeous.”

  “I couldn’t say. Despite all my careful planning, many little things went missing when we moved to this location from the old playhouse. It’s probably hanging over someone’s dressing table somewhere.”

  “The mask was lost?” She felt deflated without knowing why.

  “I told Yuri it was a mistake to rely on volunteers.”

  “Volunteers moved the whole theatre?”

  “Not everything. Not the office furniture and files, but they moved a lot of things, costumes, props, tools. They were so happy to help. But it was chaos.”

  “You don’t like chaos, Nicky, do you?”

  “That would be correct. My flaw. My turn. How did you finally figure out where in New Orleans the diamonds were hidden?”

  Magda had left a hidden note for Lacey, which told her cryptically to look between the stitches. That small fact was not mentioned in her articles in The Eye, and she wasn’t about to mention it to Sokolov. After all, she’d found the Lenin medals hidden between a different set of stitches.

  “Dumb luck,” she said.

  “I doubt that very much, Lacey Smithsonian. However, if I ever find the missing mask, through dumb luck, you will be the first to know.”

  “What about Amy Keaton, did you get along with her?”

  “Interesting question. I got along with Amy very well. She was efficient, well organized. We weren’t buddies. I am not a buddy kind of person.”

  I can see that. “A friend?”

  “
Not really. She was a coworker. I didn’t know anything about her life.”

  Lacey wondered if he had any friends, but she didn’t ask Sokolov that question. It would have radically changed the tone of the interview. “What did you think when you heard she died?”

  “Are you really writing about Amy Keaton? She was not really a fashion subject, was she? Forgive me, but she was more like one of your Crime of Fashion victims.”

  “I was just curious. She didn’t leave much of a footprint.”

  “It is sad, but the majority of people, my friend Lacey Smithsonian, leave no footprint at all.”

  CHAPTER 37

  “Find out anything?” Mac asked over the phone.

  “Nothing that merits breaking out the Maalox,” Lacey told him.

  “Good to know. Don’t get in any trouble.”

  “Nice talking to you too.”

  After winding down her interview with Nicky Sokolov and leaving the theatre, Lacey called Mac to advise him she was going in search of lunch before her second interview of the day, the one with Maksym Pushkin. She clicked off and dodged traffic, crossing the busy streets near Dupont Circle, a green oasis inside the double roundabout of careening vehicles.

  Lacey spied a free spot on a shady bench by the central fountain, dedicated to Admiral Dupont, and claimed it. It was tempting to stay there and pretend she had all the time in the world. Unfortunately, she had another call to make. Her perch under a towering tree with a view of the lovely beaux arts fountain was as good as anyplace.

  “Katya Pritchard,” the woman answered. Lacey apologized for disturbing her. “No problem. I’m up to my eyeballs in this boring brief. What’s up?”

  When Lacey explained she was interested in precisely who had attended the cast party for The Masque, Katya just said, “Wow. Really?”

  “You don’t remember?”