The Impersonator (Leah Randall/Jessie Carr Novels)

by Miley, Mary

  Mentally noting the possibilities of the Coromandel screen, I replied, “Well, some people use it as an insult, but it isn’t a swear word.” I looked at them both, their fresh faces devoid of makeup and their eyes wide with an earnest innocence, and I knew the answer before I asked. “You do know what a bastard is, don’t you?”

  “Of course. Mother explained it the other day. Someone whose parents had a marriage that wasn’t exactly legal.”

  Geez, Louise. These two girls—sixteen years old—had no idea how babies came into the world. It was hard for me to believe, growing up in the circumstances I did, that anyone over the age of ten could be unaware of sexual relations between men and women, but their world had been more sheltered than mine. They’d been kept close to home, tutored by governesses, with few friends their own age and no babies to help care for, so it had been easy for Aunt Victoria to keep them entirely innocent of things she did not wish them to know. David’s appearance at dinner had jeopardized her conspiracy of silence. She wasn’t ready to let them grow up … if, indeed, she would ever be ready.

  I thought of my friend Angie, almost the same age as the twins yet epochs apart. On her own since she was fifteen, living with Walter at seventeen, Angie might be in a family way by now, even married. Whatever happened, Angie could take care of herself. The twins were helpless as newborn kittens. And for women, helpless was dangerous.

  Maybe I wasn’t the best biology teacher, but five sentences later, Valerie and Caroline had a rudimentary grasp of the difference between male and female anatomy and how the two fitted together. The information struck them dumb.

  Feeling as old as their mother, I waited for them to digest what I’d told them. After an agonizing silence, I continued. “Most people enjoy it, so much so that they don’t always wait to get married. They fall in love and can’t help themselves. A bastard is the child of two people who were never married.”

  “So David Murray is … I mean, Uncle Lawrence, I mean, your father had … oh, my goodness…”

  “He had an affair with David’s mother before he was married to my mother, your aunt Blanche. For some reason they didn’t marry, probably because his parents didn’t approve of her. Your mother didn’t want you to know about that, which is why she was so dismayed when Henry brought David home.”

  “She doesn’t like bastards?”

  “Some people snub bastards, but it’s hardly their fault, is it? I think your mother believes you are too young to understand about sexual relations, or maybe she was too embarrassed to explain these private matters to you, so having David arrive unexpectedly like that threw her off balance.”

  “You’re not embarrassed.”

  What could I say? I’d come to grips early on with my own parentage, or lack thereof, but as Jessie Carr I could hardly say that. People were pretty frank about sex in the theatrical world. Little was said outright, but you’d have to be blind and addlepated not to notice men and women coming together and breaking apart as often as the various acts merged and split up. Heck, sex was the cause of many acts breaking up! Then there were the men who preferred men and the women who preferred women. No one talked about it, but there was a tacit understanding that as long as people led honest lives and were good at what they did, they were welcome in vaudeville. Performers didn’t make a practice of probing into anyone’s privacy, something I was thankful for now that the trustees and their Pinkertons were rummaging about in my past. They would have little to show for their efforts.

  “Me? Why should I be embarrassed? Sexual relations are a normal part of nature. All human beings have sexual relations. So do animals and insects and even plants, sort of, or their kind would die out. Gracious, doesn’t Mrs. Applewhite teach you any biology?”

  “Did you ever—ouch!” Valerie glared at her sister as she rubbed her arm. “What? I wasn’t going to ask that! I was going to say, um…”

  “I’m glad you weren’t going to ask, Valerie, because it’s very impolite. In fact, if you mention any of this conversation to your mother, it will be the last time she allows any of us to go for a walk in the garden unchaperoned.”

  “Do you think Henry and Ross know about this?”

  “Yes,” I said firmly.

  32

  There was no excuse now. I had the bowler hat. I had the linen jacket. I had the jodhpurs. I had the boots. My prayers for rain were answered with blazing sun. It was ten o’clock on Monday morning. Time to climb onto that beast and look like the avid horsewoman I was supposed to be. The ride to the Indian village with Buster had been quiet and unobserved. Today all eyes were on me. Buster gave me a broad wink and held out one huge hand to give me a leg up. I took a deep breath, stretched my lips into a smile, and swung my right leg over Lady’s back.

  “You girls look so smart in your new habits,” said Aunt Victoria. She stroked Lady’s nose as I mounted. “That color highlights your hair, Jessie. You have such lovely hair, my dear. Now Lady, none of your lazy, plodding ways today—you give Jessie a good time.”

  “I wish you would come with us, Mother. We’ll take it slow. Jessie could ride Blackie or Chestnut.”

  My worst nightmare. A spirited horse that was seldom ridden. I took a deep breath and swallowed hard, trying to keep the panic in my stomach. If I threw up now, all would be lost.

  “Thank you, dearest,” replied Aunt Victoria, “but my ankle would prefer a few more days of gentle treatment. I’ll stay home and keep Ross company.”

  Ross had suffered a particularly severe asthma attack that morning. When he discovered he had run out of his regular medicine, Dr. Milner had been summoned to administer an ephedrine injection, and now Ross was resting quietly on the sofa. I was grateful for his absence. He was far more observant than the girls, and I couldn’t afford his sharp eyes on me.

  Confidences usually inspire trust, and what I had told the girls at the ice-cream parlor paid big dividends. Jessie was the Font of All Knowledge, the source of honest information that others had conspired to keep from them. Jessie treated them like adults when others considered them children. I relaxed a bit, knowing there would be no further sabotage from that direction. The boys were my only detractors now, and working on the show seemed to be bringing Ross around. The most I could hope for with Henry was that he would keep his distance until I could make my getaway to Europe.

  “We’ll pick Ross some wildflowers,” offered Caro.

  “Pick them for me, dear, I think we should keep flowers away from Ross for the time being.”

  “All right, Mother. Let’s go!”

  And we were off. The slow walk led to an easy canter through the woods along a well-traveled bridle path that led beneath low branches and over rocky streams until it opened on a meadow spread before us like a tablecloth embroidered with daisies, buttercups, and bachelor’s buttons, and edged with Queen Anne’s lace. The scene would have been enchanting if I hadn’t been concentrating so hard on looking happy.

  Two hours later we were safely back at the stables. All had gone smoothly. I had worried myself sick over nothing.

  “Now let’s play tennis!” said Caro.

  “Good idea,” Val answered. “Come on, Jessie. You’ll play too, won’t you?”

  “What, no lessons today?” I asked.

  “Mrs. Applewhite’s headache excused us for the whole morning.”

  “How do three people play tennis?”

  “Oh, it can work. We’ll show you.”

  “Remember, now, I don’t know how to play. The tennis court wasn’t here when I left.”

  “I know,” replied Val. “But you have that smart new tennis costume, and that’s what’s important.”

  Mrs. Applewhite didn’t come down to lunch, so we continued in the afternoon with our rehearsals and scenery painting. Aunt Victoria let Ross take the velvet curtains from the parlor and rig them across the back of the ballroom where we planned our stage. We hung our painted backdrops on the wall. I tried not to be suspicious of Ross’s motives as he became ni
cer and more helpful.

  And all the while, I fretted.

  It had been twenty days since I had left the Sacramento offices of Smith and Wade. Twenty days since the trustees initiated their investigation of my story. Twenty days since they’d sicced their Pinkerton dogs on vaudeville to sniff out evidence that would corroborate the facts I’d fed them. What in the name of Sam Hill was taking so long? For their investigation to take twenty days, the Pinkertons must have heard something from the Darlings that didn’t ring true. I imagined the worst—they had stumbled on someone who remembered my mother and all they were waiting for was to close in on me. To hedge my bets, I packed my smallest valise with the basics and left it under my bed. Some cash would have been helpful but not essential. I knew how to ride trains without a ticket. I knew how to eat without money.

  I was trying to stay busy. Ross had been stunned to silence when I popped my head in his library one morning and asked for a book about Oregon’s native Indian tribes. Chen was more welcoming when I presented myself for work in the garden. He taught me how to deadhead roses, let me pull onions, and showed me how to distinguish herbs from weeds. Working in the dirt was tonic for my frazzled nerves. Grandmother instructed me in the art of flower arranging. Every day after lessons the girls and I slipped up to the third floor to practice our acts. But my anxieties had grown, and by Tuesday my nerves were strung tight as a high-wire act. I would not have slept at all without the relaxing effect of a glass—or two—of bedtime sherry.

  The only vaudeville person who knew about Oliver and his scheme was Angie. I had forgotten about Angie until recently. She had been on the scene when Oliver mistook me for his niece. She had joined us for dinner at the Blackstone Hotel, and she and I had talked quite freely afterward about his preposterous proposal. Had the Pinkertons stumbled across Angie? Not likely. They had no reason to look for the Cat Circus. But what if the Darlings mentioned her name and told them she and I were friends? They’d go looking for her then, wouldn’t they? The Darlings knew she had joined Walter’s cat act. They might have mentioned it. I reminded myself that Angie distrusted cops, Pinkertons, teachers, preachers, heck, anyone in authority. Surely she’d clam up if anyone started asking questions. Wouldn’t she?

  I had a dream that night. Another Jessie dream. She was collecting agates on the beach, then all at once I saw her huddled in a cave this time, not a cellar, and her feet were wet. My feet were wet. I was there beside her, saving her agates from the grasp of the sea, moving farther into the cave as the water rose. I felt her urgency. Hurry. Then the water receded and she was on the beach again, a beach that sparkled with agates and precious jewels as big as robins’ eggs. Rubies, emeralds, diamonds so plentiful you could hardly straighten up between them. Buster put them in a pretty treasure box and hid it where the cousins wouldn’t find it.

  I refuse to believe in ghosts. This wasn’t a ghost; it was nothing more than a dream brought on by my own guilty conscience. I had taken Jessie’s name. I had taken her room, her house, her clothes, and her relatives, and I was fixing to take her fortune. No wonder I was plagued by dreams!

  I didn’t believe in ghosts, but I did believe in my mother. Ever since her death a dozen years ago, she had come to me in my dreams and spoken to me in my thoughts. She was always close by. It seemed so normal, never spooky or eerie. Perhaps these dreams of Jessie were something like that. If only she could talk to me once! If only she had kept a diary. Oliver said she had not, but diaries, like boxes of treasure, were secret. Could she have hidden a diary?

  Dawn’s glow seeped around the edge of the curtains. I got up and threw a robe over my nightgown. Jessie’s pink robe. I pushed deep into the closet. Rainy and I had emptied it of clothes, but there were still some boxes in the back, heavy boxes of books that we hadn’t emptied. A diary was a book. Where better to hide a book than in a box of books?

  I pulled the boxes out, one by one, and emptied each.

  Books, yes, but there were also school papers and photo albums and postcards of European sights and miniature porcelain animals wrapped in tissue paper and pictures in tarnished silver frames and games and jigsaw puzzles and shell fossils and a Number 2 Brownie camera with no film and a leather pouch full of foreign coins and colored pencils and a collection of silver demitasse spoons and some paper butterflies and … and no diary. But each keepsake had a story; each offered a glimpse into Jessie’s life. I studied them all closely to see what I could learn about her. The postcard of Notre Dame Cathedral told me she had climbed the tower stairs to the rooftop to see the gargoyles up close. The jigsaw pieces spoke of her patience and her determination to solve the puzzle—a characteristic we shared. The camera said how much she had loved taking pictures of her pony. I turned page after page of her album until overcome with the sheer loneliness of the images. Plenty of photographs of prim European nannies in starched uniforms, but no friends, no family, no parents. I had no photographs of my parents either, but it wasn’t due to lack of love. At least I had Mother’s playbills.

  I shoved the last of the boxes back into the closet. No diary. No answers.

  It was not until Wednesday night as the family, minus Henry, sat down to dinner that Aunt Victoria remarked, “Oh, Jessie. I keep forgetting to tell you—I received a letter a few days ago from Mr. Severinus Wade. It seems the agents he dispatched to investigate your past finally turned in their report. Of course, it supported your own information exactly.”

  “A few days ago?” I didn’t mean to sound accusatory, but I couldn’t help it.

  “Oh, my, I’m sorry, dear, I didn’t realize you were so concerned about it. I should have told you right away, but it came while you were in Portland, and I forgot about it. All it says is that you should return to their offices on your birthday to sign some papers, but you already knew that, so I didn’t think it was important.”

  “I wasn’t concerned,” I lied. “I just wanted Henry and Ross to know.” And like a smart-alecky twelve-year-old, I blessed Ross with an I-told-you-so smirk.

  “If you like, I’ll write a letter to Henry with the news … or maybe you can tell him yourself. Isn’t he supposed to be home this weekend, Ross, darling?”

  “He may not make it, Mother. The election is only eight weeks away, after all, and he’s busy kissing babies and pretending to know something about farming.”

  “Yes, I suppose it is a tremendous amount of work, getting elected. He’s so busy. And he has so many friends.” Her vapid smile was starting to grate on my nerves.

  Later that evening Grandmother came to my bedroom and told me she had overheard Aunt Victoria talking with Henry on the telephone, informing him of the trustees’ report.

  “I could tell from her side of the conversation that he offered to make amends by inviting David Murray to stay at Cliff House for a few days. He thought you’d like to get to know your half brother better. Victoria said it was a lovely gesture on his part and suggested the guest room with the cabbage-rose wallpaper. He’s coming tomorrow.” She waited for my reaction and, getting none, added, “A lovely gesture is not something I would expect from Henry.”

  Me neither.

  33

  The next day I became a modern woman. I drove into Dexter, found the beauty parlor, and had my long hair bobbed.

  Back home, I slipped upstairs to change for dinner and paint my fingernails dark red. Rainy helped me out of my day dress and buttoned me into one of my new silk dinner frocks, the coppery one that matched the color of my hair, fussing all the while over my short locks as I applied a little rouge to my cheeks and drew a dark red bow on my lips.

  “Oh, miss, your new hair is wonderful, but it was so beautiful and wavy, all long down your back. Don’t you miss it?” Her hand went to her own long hair, pulled into a bun and topped with a white cap, as if to check that it was still attached to her head.

  “To tell the truth, Rainy, I’m glad to get rid of it.” I blotted my lipstick on a handkerchief. “For so long, it was schoolgirl braids or curl
s tied back with ribbons. Now I am free of all that, I can look my age. And wear those chic cloche hats!”

  A sound from the open door behind us turned our heads.

  “Excuse me,” said David Murray, knocking politely on the doorjamb. Evidently he and Henry had arrived while I was in town. “I was on my way downstairs and heard you talking … and I just wanted to say hello. If I’m not disturbing you?”

  I looked at him warily, this pawn of Henry’s.

  “I’ll take this down to the laundry to brush the dust off,” said Rainy as she ducked out of the room.

  “You’ve bobbed your hair,” David said. “I knew something was different.”

  “Just today, as a matter of fact. I wanted to look older.”

  “You look swell.”

  “Thanks. Aunt Victoria cried out in horror when I walked through the front door. She’s crazy for long hair.”

  “Most older women are. But that makes me wonder why she let Caroline bob hers.”

  “She didn’t. The story I heard was that Caro hacked off her own hair and made such a mess of it that a bob was the only way out.”

  “I knew that girl had spunk!” David chuckled. “And I’d say you accomplished your goal. You really do look young for your age, and this gives you a more sophisticated appearance.”

  “Well, thank you for the compliment. But I can’t complain about looking young. After all, it was my living for many years. Won’t you come in?”

  “No, I’ll just say what I have to say from here.” Reminded of his mission, he swallowed nervously and wet his lips. “I just wanted to say that I am sorry as heck for the trick we played on you. I would never have done it, but Henry told me you were an impostor that he needed to flush out. I know that’s not true now, and I am ashamed I was so gullible to believe everything he said. That’s not me, not usually. I don’t judge people before I get to know them. I should have met you myself and made up my own mind. And now I hope you will forgive me and we can start fresh.”