by Radha Vatsal
She hurried out and searched the avenue for Rao. Touring cars were parked on both sides of the street, and in the darkness, they all looked identical. Fortunately, the chauffeur spotted Kitty and drove over.
She climbed in, and they set off for home. There was no doubt about it, she was wading into murkier and murkier waters. Unwanted pregnancies…foundling homes…a sickening possibility occurred to her. She wanted to shrink away, but she willed herself to face facts. Elspeth Bright could have wandered lightly clad into the dark, cold night because she was pregnant. Kitty felt the full force of the Misses Dancey prohibition against so much as pronouncing the word and recalled their habit of skirting around it with euphemisms. If Elspeth had found herself in such a situation, she may well have decided to end her life. She would have known that her somnambulism would provide the perfect cover. No one would ask any further questions.
Even the most particular girls from the finest homes made mistakes. Hadn’t Mrs. Vanderwell said that there had been talk about her and the dashing, yet shifty Mr. Emerson?
Chapter Twenty
The curtain rings slid across the wooden rod with a drawn-out swish, and light poured in as Grace opened the drapes in Kitty’s room.
Kitty blinked in the brightness. Her navy-blue suit had been brushed and hung on its hook, ready to be returned to the closet. No, she hadn’t dreamt it. She had gone to the Brevoort last night, bumped into Sylvia Lane, and conjured up all kinds of scurrilous scenarios about a dead schoolgirl with whom she had a very tenuous relationship.
Kitty sighed. She was finished. There was no way around it. Once her father found out where she’d been, he’d probably pack her off to a convent.
“How was last night?” Mr. Weeks said when Kitty came in to breakfast.
It was now or never—and she wasn’t ready. “It was fine.”
“What are your plans for the day?” Her father nodded absently.
So he hadn’t yet spoken to Miss Lane. “Workwise, you mean?” Butter scraped against toast. “I’m to observe the rehearsals for Mrs. Belmont’s operetta.”
“You’re moving in exalted circles.”
She forced a smile.
“On a more mundane note, I’ve invited the Lanes for dinner.”
The room started to spin. “When?”
“This evening.” He folded his newspaper. “I’m hoping that Miss Lane… I was thinking that you and I, we might like another woman’s presence in the house.”
Kitty pushed back her chair. She couldn’t stay here anymore. “I really can’t afford to be late today. I should be off.”
“Oh.” Julian Weeks sounded both hurt and baffled. “Well, see you later then.” His voice followed Kitty as she left the room.
She couldn’t believe it. For twenty years, he hadn’t bothered to remarry—and she could have used a mother when she was a child. Now, when she no longer needed one, when she was forging her own path to independence, making a life for herself, he was springing Sylvia Lane on her.
• • •
“Court of Inquiry for E-2!” a newsboy cried.
“Could you stop for a minute, please?” Kitty asked Rao. She beckoned to the newsboy and bought a copy of the paper through the window. In her eagerness to leave the house and blot out her father’s words, Kitty hadn’t even stopped to glance at the headlines.
There had been another casualty as a result of the weekend’s submarine disaster, and Secretary Daniels had convened a special court to conduct a sweeping investigation “to cover all matters pertaining to the explosion or cause thereof.”
He also announced that henceforth, all batteries, engines, and other vital parts would be subjected to more rigorous laboratory tests before being installed in submarines, with a view toward preventing future accidents. Currently, due to the lack of adequate laboratories and research facilities, there had been no other way to test Mr. Edison’s invention.
And all the while, Mr. Edison’s representative, Dr. Miller Reese Hutchison, continued to insist to the press that the batteries were flawless.
The story had become more and more perplexing. Why would Hutchison tell a deliberate falsehood when the facts were stacked against him and the truth was about to be determined once and for all? Despite all evidence to the contrary, Kitty wondered whether Mr. Edison’s man might not be as wrong as he seemed. Phillip Emerson could have been hired by some outside party to create trouble.
The car pulled up in front of Alva Belmont’s offices, and once again, Miss Baehr brought Kitty to see her employer.
“Come in.” Mrs. Belmont stopped frowning at her papers, and for a moment, she stared at her visitor blankly, then recalled who Kitty was.
“Oh, you’re here to cover the rehearsals, Miss Weeks. Well, you’re in good luck. Our two professional actresses, Miss Marie Dressler and Miss Marie Doro—I’m sure you’ve heard of them both—who are to play Mrs. Pepper and Melinda, are in, as well as the debutantes. And our boxes at the Waldorf are selling like hotcakes.”
“And individual seats, madam?”
“Those are flying away for a mere ten dollars.”
There was nothing mere about the sum to Kitty, although it might have been pocket change to Mrs. Belmont.
“I’d like you to convey the spirit behind this performance,” Alva Belmont instructed. “The importance of suffrage. Talk to the actresses and debutantes, and allow the public to learn their views as well.”
“I’ll do my best,” Kitty said.
Mrs. Belmont’s eyes narrowed, and Kitty thought she might be in for it. Had that been a weak response? Was she about to witness Mrs. Belmont’s legendary temper?
But instead, the suffragist simply said, “Women in this country suffer under unjust conditions against which they have no means of protection. And all about us, we have evidence of the futility of attempting to get results without the ballot to enforce our demands. As Miss Laura Clay of Kentucky has said, ‘the forward movement of either sex is possible only when the other moves also.’ Do you understand what that means?”
“I think so.” Mrs. Belmont waited, so Kitty clarified. “Men can’t improve their lot until women’s lot improves.”
“Exactly,” Alva Belmont said. “There is no more pernicious form of slavery in the world than the subjection of women to men, Miss Weeks. It’s all the more degrading because women don’t understand the extent of their subjection.” She shifted gears. “Who sent you to me?”
“Do you mean the Sentinel or Miss Busby, my editor?” Kitty still felt as though she were walking on hot coals and that she couldn’t afford to put one step wrong.
“No, no. You came to me somehow. You were recommended.”
“By Mrs. Bright.”
“That’s it. How is Effie Bright holding up? That daughter of hers was quite a firecracker. I like girls of that sort. One day, she would have been quite an asset to our cause…” The suffragist glanced at her papers. “Ask Miss Baehr to give you the cast list for your story, would you?”
“Yes, Mrs. Belmont. Will that be all?”
Kitty went to find Miss Baehr, who escorted her to the room being used for rehearsals. The playwright, Elsa Maxwell, a buoyantly large woman who looked like she could have been whipped up by a jolly French pâtissier, was in the midst of directing a group of young women in song:
“For a thousand years or so,
Since many moons ago,
Men have ruled us women East and West.
From the caveman in his lair,
To the flyer in the air,
To keep us women down, they thought was best.”
Miss Baehr whispered, “Miss Maxwell tells a funny joke—she said that Prince Christian of Hesse saw her swimming off the coast of Eden Roc and mistook her for a rubber mattress!”
“But turned now is the tide,
And we cannot be denied—�
�
“No, no, no,” Miss Maxwell interrupted. “C’est terrible. Let’s take a break. Everyone, go get a drink of water before we start from the top.”
“I can’t believe we have to do this for the whole day,” one of the young ladies in Kitty’s earshot said to a cast mate.
“And every day,” the other complained. “I thought it was all supposed to be good fun.”
Miss Baehr introduced Kitty to Elsa Maxwell.
“A pleasure to meet you, Miss Weeks.” She had a slight British accent.
“Are you from England, Miss Maxwell?”
“Oh no! I’m just a piano player from Keokuk, Iowa, who found fame and fortune in England.” Elsa Maxwell chuckled. “And now I’ve crossed the Atlantic to come home and work on Melinda.”
She excused herself, explaining she had to check on music to help the cast hit the notes right.
Kitty approached the two professional actresses, who would be playing Mrs. Pepper and Melinda Pepper. She had seen them both in the movies but never in the flesh. Not surprisingly, she had the disorienting sensation that she knew both ladies intimately and, at the same time, not at all.
She first spoke to Marie Dressler, the big-boned comedienne whose performance she’d thoroughly enjoyed alongside the funnyman Charlie Chaplin in Tillie’s Punctured Romance.
“I’m giving six weeks of my time to the cause,” Miss Dressler said. “Time that I wouldn’t sell to anyone. I’m making my own costume. Green train and all.”
“I didn’t know suffrage meant all that,” the dainty Marie Doro told Kitty, describing how she felt after she first read her libretto. “It appeals to the very highest and best there is in me. I love the part of Melinda.”
The debutantes, who seemed excited to be questioned by a reporter, giggled and said that suffrage was “just the thing.” Kitty watched the women rehearse their songs and lines for another half an hour and jotted down her notes. It occurred to her how strange it was to hear Miss Dressler and Miss Doro speak. On screen, she saw their lips move and read snippets of their dialogue, but until today, she had never heard their voices.
• • •
“A young man came looking for you,” Jeannie said to Kitty when she returned to the office. “Do you have a new beau I should know about?”
“I have no idea what you mean, Jeannie.” It was one thing to speculate about Miss Busby’s affairs, but when it came to her personal life, Kitty preferred to nip all teasing in the bud.
“Don’t tell me you don’t know. Six foot tall”—Jeannie threw Kitty a sidelong glance—“curly haired, a little nervous. Walks like a friendly giraffe.”
“How does a friendly giraffe walk, Jeannie?” Kitty said, but Jeannie’s description did the trick. “Do you mean Mr. Mills?”
“Ooh, Mr. Mills.”
“Come on, Jeannie. What did he have to say?”
“He wants you to speak to him. Up at the newsroom.”
Kitty turned to leave.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t,” Jeannie said.
Kitty didn’t look back, so Jeannie couldn’t see her laughing. Jeannie Williams was unstoppable. What she would say if and when Kitty had a real beau—now that would be hard to imagine.
The whole rigmarole of knocking on the glass partition and waiting to be noticed was becoming tedious, but Kitty still hadn’t reached the point when she was ready to barge right in. She sometimes wondered what would happen if she did. Surely, all hell wouldn’t break loose.
Mills emerged from the smoke-filled enclave. There was something nervous and shambling about him. She had to give Jeannie credit for being observant.
“Miss Weeks.”
“You were looking for me, Mr. Mills?”
“I went over my notes like you asked.” He held a worn notepad in his hands. “There’s no mention of a Mr. Emerson being at the Brights’ home the day I was there, the day they found her body. But would you know, he seems to have been present at the dinner.”
“With her friends, the night before?”
“That’s right.”
Kitty was astounded. Why hadn’t Mrs. Bright said something? She’d only mentioned the Marquands and Georgina Howell. “Do you have the names of everyone who was at the house the night Elspeth died?”
Mills found the correct page. “Here it is… At dinner on Christmas Eve: Dr. Bright, Mrs. Bright, Elspeth Bright, the Bright twins, Miss Georgina Howell, Miss Prudence Marquand, Mr. and Mrs. Marquand, and Mr. Phillip Emerson. Does this mean something to you?”
“It does, but I’m not sure exactly what at the moment.”
“If you’re planning to write something,” the young man said, “you will tell me?” It was half statement, half question.
“I’m not writing anything yet, Mr. Mills. I still have to finish my assignment for the Ladies’ Page.”
Kitty would have loved to have been a fly on the wall at dinner the night Elspeth wandered out into the snow. She needed a complete picture of the evening in order to make sense of it.
Georgina. Georgina Howell would be able to tell her, and she was supposed to be in town yesterday or today.
Kitty raced down the stairwell. She hoped with all her gadding about she hadn’t missed the schoolgirl.
“Sorry, Miss Weeks.” The guard in the main lobby shook his head. “No one has come by asking for you these past two days. And not a young lady. I’m sure of that.”
Kitty slowly made her way back upstairs to the hen coop.
“How is Mr. Mills?” Jeannie smiled at her, unwilling to let the joke die.
“He’s fine,” Kitty replied drily. “By the way, has a girl by the name of Georgina Howell stopped in or telephoned?”
“No need to get uppity… But no, not that I know of.”
Kitty sat at her desk, agitated, then got back up.
“Something the matter?” Jeannie looked up from her work.
“I should speak to Miss Busby.” Kitty made her way down the hall.
The Ladies’ Page editor had just finished reading Kitty’s notes from the rehearsal. “Lovely, so colorful. The mattress bit is a nice touch, but we can’t put it in.”
“Why not?” Kitty thought it sounded perfectly fine.
“Well”—Helena Busby scrambled for an explanation—“a woman mistaken for a piece of furniture? That’s most unorthodox.”
“I thought we were aiming for a new Page in the new year and so on.”
“Not so new, Miss Weeks. I have my limits.”
Reluctant to go home and face the prospect of dinner with the Lanes, Kitty hung about at work until four in the afternoon. But to her dismay, Georgina Howell didn’t make an appearance.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Be careful. It’s hot, Miss Kitty.” Mrs. Codd opened the cast-iron pot herself. A marbled cut of meat garnished with herbs simmered inside, quashing Kitty’s hopes that dinner would have to be canceled. Instead, the inevitable would happen: Mr. Weeks would propose to Miss Lane, Miss Lane would reveal her sighting of Kitty at the Hotel Brevoort, and any trust Kitty and her father had established between them would be ruined.
Four or five years ago, Kitty had come across Mrs. Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters at her school library. In it, the well-meaning widower Mr. Gibson remarried with devastating consequences for his only daughter. His second wife, Miss Clare, was kind but thoughtless and self-centered. And like Sylvia Lane, she was a member of the teaching profession: Miss Clare had been a former governess to aristocracy.
Kitty groaned and flung herself onto her bed. She had devoured the novel, drawn to it by the parallels between Molly Gibson’s situation and her own. But unlike Molly Gibson, Kitty was now an independent young woman of the twentieth century who held down her own job. Her life didn’t have to be turned topsy-turvy by the wind of her father’s affections.
It
wasn’t long before the Lanes arrived, and after some small talk between all four, Sylvia Lane took a seat beside Kitty on the couch.
Any moment now, Kitty thought, the woman would plunge the dagger.
“That’s a very pretty dress,” Miss Lane said quietly.
“Thank you.” Kitty braced herself. Here it comes.
“I don’t pretend to know you.” Miss Lane spoke softly so the men couldn’t overhear. “But I believe I understand your predicament.”
Kitty colored despite herself.
“The world is changing rapidly,” Sylvia Lane continued. “We’re living in a modern age whether we want to or not, and you like to be in the thick of things. I’m similar to you in that regard.”
Kitty backed away. Nothing was worse than Sylvia Lane cozying up to her, suggesting they had interests in common.
“We won’t tell Julian that you went to hear Mrs. Sanger speak.” Miss Lane patted the cushion between them. “That will be our little secret.”
The nerve of the woman. Kitty jumped to her feet. “My father and I tell each other exactly what we need to know. Now, if you will excuse me, I must check on dinner.” Kitty rushed to the kitchen and held a glass of ice water to her forehead. She waited until she felt calmer before returning to the living room, where Sylvia Lane regaled the men with stories of the overzealous saleswomen at Bergdorf Goodman.
“Capability prefers B. Altman,” Mr. Weeks said.
Miss Lane turned to Kitty. “I’ve never been. Perhaps we could go together?”
The buttons on Kitty’s dress felt tight, constricting her chest. “Miss Busby keeps me very busy. I must check my schedule.”
“I understand, you’re a working girl,” Miss Lane said as Mr. Weeks frowned.
“Capability will take you one day. She knows the place like Livingstone knew Africa.”
Kitty didn’t reply. She couldn’t help herself. She didn’t see why she must go out of her way to be nice to this woman. Miss Lane might marry her father, and she, Kitty, would be polite. That was all.