A Fatal First Night

by Kathleen Marple Kalb

  Until very recently, I had seen no reason to pursue the matter further. Still didn’t, really.

  In any case, these were thoughts I had absolutely no need to entertain just then. I collected my library books, stacking them in the usual spot so I could find them easily when it came time to return them, returned the checkerboard to good order from Tommy and the Father’s last grudge match, and bustled through several other little tasks that I would never notice or care about on a performance day.

  After a simple luncheon of Mrs. G’s admirable mulligatawny and equally esteemed steamed brown bread, I went upstairs to the studio for a light vocalization session with Montezuma, who likely got more out of it than I did, because I was being careful of my voice. On dark days, the point is merely to move the muscles and keep everything in working order. And, of course, to please Montezuma with a few scales.

  Only as teatime approached did I finally retire to the chaise and take up my letter. Montezuma perched on a shelf behind me, occasionally squawking to remind me of his presence.

  Gil, as I’ve come to think of him, is an excellent correspondent, sending regular letters with vivid and amusing descriptions of his life in London and the North of England, accounts of events and happenings on his side of the ocean, and always, lists of interesting and improving books he’s reading, often new works of history. Tommy and I are great admirers of Lincoln, and so, too, is Gil.

  Today’s letter followed the usual pattern, with an adorably oblique discussion of the uproar over the Prince of Wales’s latest indiscretion, of which he took a very dim view. He had a much better opinion of one of Hetty’s earlier articles on the Van Vleet case, which I’d included in my last letter, and very good things indeed to say about a new volume of Lincoln’s legal correspondence.

  Since he trained as a barrister, or trial lawyer, before several relatives in the line of ducal succession obligingly died, he no doubt took a far greater interest in legal letters than I did. But since it was Lincoln, after all, I thought I might see if my library had a copy.

  All interesting enough, of course, but a man does not trouble to send transatlantic letters to a woman he plans to court merely to share thoughts on newspaper articles and improving books. The last paragraph of the letter was always where he allowed himself a hint of the sweet talk one might expect and, I admit, I’d come to appreciate.

  He did not disappoint.

  The moon is very bright tonight, and I find myself thinking that it is shining on you, as well, if very far away. Perhaps casting a silver gleam on your lovely eyes. I am still uncertain if they are greenish blue or bluish green, and have come to the conclusion that the matter will require much close study when you come to London. One hopes you will have matters of your own to study, as well.

  Yours, with much esteem,

  G

  British aristocratic reserve being what it is, I knew that was actually a passionate and rather lyrical way of saying what I was feeling, too. I wanted to stare into his eyes and see if what I’d seen before was still there, and if it meant what I thought it did. At that exact moment, I wasn’t especially concerned about the consequences.

  There is something to be said for having your swain an ocean away. If he had been there right then, I would not have been thinking about my happy and settled life, but of my unsettling and rather amazing feelings for him.

  “A letter from abroad?” asked an amused voice.

  I looked up to see Father Michael standing at the pocket doors.

  “Miss! The priest is here!” Sophia, Rosa’s little sister, announced, scrambling in behind him, her tawny hair slipping out of her cap, and her hazel eyes a little wild. Rosa was busily training her to take over as housemaid, and she seemed to be adopting Rosa’s habit of announcing everyone, necessary or not.

  “Hello, Father.”

  “Holy Father!” Montezuma greeted him, at least cheekily if not actively blasphemously.

  Father Michael rolled his eyes and nodded to the missive. “You know, you probably should just put that poor man out of his misery and marry him.”

  “Only if he’ll move over here and pitch in with the company.”

  “He certainly looked like he’d sign on to be your loyal second.” The priest laughed as he sat down.

  I shook my head. “That one is no supernumerary.”

  “A supporting player isn’t worthy of you, anyway, Miss Ella. And you two will find a way.”

  “I wish I shared your optimism.”

  He shrugged. “What God has brought together . . .”

  A line, of course, from the wedding service. I looked sharply at him.

  “You know a little Hebrew, I think.”

  “Just enough to light my candles and pray for my mother’s soul.”

  “Do you know the word bashert?”

  For a moment, I just stared at him, barely breathing. I did know the word. It means “meant” or “fated.”

  My mother always used it to describe her meeting with and marriage to my father. Frank O’Shaughnessy’s ship came in the same day as hers, and they were both at Immigration together. His Irish accent made his English almost unintelligible. Her English was almost nonexistent. But when their eyes met, the world changed.

  My mother wasn’t the only Malka to leave Immigration as Molly, but she might have been the only one named by her future husband. She was laying out her papers and trying to explain that she was Malka Steinmetz, coming to live with her cousin, and the overwhelmed official, for some reason, got stuck on the name Malka.

  As he struggled to pronounce it, a friendly, teasing voice rang out, offering a solution. “Just call her Molly.”

  The comment, coupled with a smile I’m told was a lot like Tommy’s, broke the tension and made everyone chuckle.

  Malka Steinmetz smiled back at him, suddenly pretty and happy enough to charm the functionary, having already stolen Frank O’Shaughnessy’s heart, and nodded. “Molly is good.”

  They wouldn’t see each other again for months, when they passed on a street on the Lower East Side, both rushing to work. That was when they actually began courting . . . but everything started that day at Immigration.

  Bashert.

  “You know what it means,” Father Michael said.

  “I do.”

  “Well, I think it may apply to you and your duke.”

  I took a breath. He couldn’t know how large and important that word was to me. I never talk about my parents, not even with Tommy or him, and they understand why.

  My father died of typhoid when I was just weeks old. My mother lasted until I was almost eight, doing piecework and whatever else she could manage with the consumption that ultimately killed her. I took up some of the piecework as she faded, but it was never enough. The poorhouse was a real possibility before she died, and the orphanage a certainty if Aunt Ellen hadn’t taken me in.

  Tommy and the Father both had hard times, but they shared their struggles with large, warm families. I spent most of my first eight years alone with my mother in a tiny, cold tenement room, except for the time at the public primary school she made sure I attended.

  “You’re an American girl, Ellen,” she would say in her still-accented soft voice. “You’re going to be educated like one.”

  My eyes were suddenly damp. How proud she’d be of my book-filled home.

  Father Michael touched my hand. “Are you all right?”

  “Bashert.” I took a breath. “It’s the word my mother used for her marriage to my father.”

  “Oh.” He nodded. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring back sad memories.”

  “It’s all right. You couldn’t know.”

  “I still think you and your duke are meant to be together. If you can find a way to stay on the same side of the ocean.”

  I smiled a little. “And if he doesn’t mind my singing when we are.”

  “You’re not giving him enough credit.”

  “Perhaps.” I put down the letter and tried to shake
off my sadness. “Did you come here to help me with my Hebrew?”

  He chuckled wryly as he shook his head. “I wish I had.”

  “Oh?”

  “Albert Reuter wants to see you.”

  “Me? In the Tombs?”

  “Yes.” He had the tight, small smile I knew meant he wished he could tell a soothing lie instead of the uncomfortable truth. “You probably shouldn’t—”

  “Of course I’ll go.” Perhaps seeing him in jail would make it easier to believe him as a killer. Or at least make me stop wondering why Cousin Andrew seemed to have doubts.

  “Are you sure?”

  “When are visiting hours?”

  “Saturday for anyone other than clergy.”

  I cringed at the exhausting thought of dragging myself down to the Tombs at the end of a performance week, but there was nothing for it. “Saturday it is.”

  “I know that’s a difficult day for you, but I am sure Albert will be grateful.”

  “It’s what we can do.” I shrugged.

  “Is Thomas about?”

  “Paying respects at the Eaggers’.”

  Father Michael’s eyes narrowed in concern. “Are the boxers having a bit of the creature in memory of Jamie Eagger?”

  “I believe they are.”

  He nodded. “It’s likely what they need.”

  “The Irish grieve as they do.”

  “Too true. He will not be happy about you going to the Tombs.”

  “I’ll tell him, in a very quiet tone of voice, in the morning. He’ll accept anything to get me to leave him to his headache powders.”

  The priest and I shared a smile, but then his handsome face turned troubled.

  “Is Tom all right?”

  “This is a hard loss. He thinks it could’ve been him.”

  “If you hadn’t brought him into your career, it could have.”

  “But it’s not.” I sighed. “He’s feeling guilty that he’s so lucky when Jamie wasn’t.”

  Father Michael nodded. “It isn’t always easy to be the person who escaped when so many did not. Nothing new to you, or me, either.”

  “True. We’ll just have to give Toms some extra care and feeding for a while.”

  The priest’s serious mien melted to a boyish grin. “I hope that means I’ll get some feeding too . . .”

  “Trust you to bring it back to dinner.”

  “Mrs. G’s meals are the greatest pleasure available to a man who’s taken holy orders, Miss Ella.”

  We laughed together. “Well, since Tommy’s out, perhaps you’d like to stay . . .”

  “Really?” His face lit up.

  “Really. But I’m going to throw you out after dessert because I have to wash my hair.”

  “Entirely fair.”

  Chapter 7

  In Which We Make a Visit to the Afflicted

  The performance week was uneventful, at least at the theater. That turned out to be a bit of a gift, since there was fair cause for concern at home. Jamie Eagger’s funeral came on Thursday, and Tommy spent much of the week uncharacteristically quiet and thoughtful.

  The service itself was wrenching. It’s said that Catholics mark death well, and I suppose that is true. But this was not the celebration of a long life well lived. It was the cold comfort offered for a young man gone too soon in a senseless and inexplicable accident.

  No one to blame. No one to help. No real consolation for his mother and sisters.

  I stayed unobtrusively at Tommy’s side, in a simple dull black dress and veil, like those of every other Irish woman in the church. Tommy held my hand for most of the Mass, jaw tight, throat working as he choked back tears, which I suspected were as much for the guilt that he wasn’t the one in the coffin as for the man who actually was. Neither of us is unfamiliar with loss, but Tommy seemed to be taking this one harder than I would have expected.

  As painful as it all was, I had one small blessing: unlike Tommy, who was grown when Uncle Fred died, I have no memory of my father’s funeral, since I was just weeks old. My mother, of course, was buried by a rabbi, so a Catholic service holds no memories of either loss. At least I could concentrate on comforting Tommy without fighting my own demons.

  Finally, it was over, and Tommy returned to the Eagger house for the funeral luncheon. I lit a candle for my father and went home alone. There I stretched out on my chaise, hoping to find a bit of rest before another arduous night. Of course, with the funeral hymns still echoing in my head, it was impossible.

  The next day, on my way to the theater, I stopped off to see Aunt Ellen and the youngest cousins. She was worried about Toms, too, and we agreed among ourselves to give him as much extra care and feeding as he would let us.

  She was, as always, a little concerned about me, too, but that was more easily handled with a promise that I was eating enough and doing my best to rest in my off hours. As for her other usual worry, that I was, as she put it, “really too solitary, acushla,” I reminded her that I had a very acceptable beau waiting for me in London, and thanked my lucky stars that I could leave it there for now. Aunt Ellen, like most smart Irish ladies, believes that a woman should not marry until she’s good and ready . . . but she also thinks I should have been good and ready at least five years ago.

  I never argue. I love her too much to hurt her feelings. After the previous wrenching day, too, it was very comforting to have the usual light back-and-forth about my future and her desire to see beautiful babies with my father’s smile.

  That night I was very glad indeed to set up my mother’s little pewter candlesticks to bring in some love and joy. Before we lit the Shabbat candles, I lit a small yahrzeit votive for her. It’s traditional to light them only on the anniversary of a death, but I often do so when I need to feel closer to Mama.

  The visit to Aunt Ellen and the candle lighting went a long way to lifting the darkness that night, but Saturday morning, the darkness was, of course, back in force as we made our visit to the afflicted. Naturally, if I was to go see Albert in such a horrible place as the Tombs, I was not to be allowed to go alone.

  The men had planned to go as a delegation, but Preston was prevented from accompanying us by the need to discipline a junior sports writer who had distinguished himself in entirely the wrong way by challenging a bantamweight contender to a fight in a pub. Since the writer was promising and quite contrite, not to mention bruised, Preston planned only to terrify him into behaving well in the future. The chastisement, however, was both early and time-consuming, so he had bowed out of our trip downtown.

  I was more than adequately defended by Tommy and Father Michael, neither of whom really approved of my meeting with Albert. Tommy was also noticeably annoyed with his best friend, apparently believing that he should not have passed on the message from Albert or, at the very least, should have lied and informed me that female visitors were not allowed.

  “When have I ever lied to anyone about anything, Thomas?”

  “Never. And it’s one of the finest things about you,” Tommy growled as we paid off our uneasy cabbie. “But this would have been a very good time to start.”

  “We’re here now, boys,” I said with a calm I didn’t feel, straightening my simple dark blue hat and smoothing down my midnight-blue wool coat. I had worn the plainest and least remarkable things I own, hoping to be unobtrusive. What I did not realize until I walked inside the forbidding stone fortress was that the simple fact of my sex made me stand out more dramatically than even on the stage.

  Tommy and Father Michael planted themselves on either side of me, and one or the other had a hand on my back or arm the entire time we were in the prison. Later, I would chuckle about that, but it was deeply appreciated reassurance during our visit.

  The prison was everything I’d imagined, only worse. The books that describe such places are unable to capture the chill, the loudness, the cavernous stone echoing with the howls of inmates. And out of delicacy, they make no reference to the smell. It’s probably best I
leave that to your imagination.

  The guards who let us in and guided us toward the visiting chamber were gruff but polite, but the man in charge of the room itself was less so. Perhaps not used to respectable ladies visiting his charges, or just not raised properly, he started to leer at me. Tommy cleared his throat. I don’t think the guard recognized him as the former champ, but it didn’t matter. He recognized that it would be very bad for his health to continue the leer, and he merely nodded.

  “Here for Albert Reuter, then?”

  “Yes,” Father Michael replied. “His employers wish to speak with him.”

  “You’re his employers? What’s he do?”

  “He’s a bass-baritone,” I said.

  Not surprisingly, the guard gave me a blank look.

  “A singer, sir,” Father Michael explained. “They run an opera company.”

  The guard’s gruff glare melted into a smile. “Opera? My wife loves the opera. Are you singers, too?”

  “I am.”

  “Would she know you?”

  “Perhaps. I’m Ella Shane.”

  Another blank stare. So much for international acclaim. “I’ll tell her I saw you.”

  I smiled politely.

  “How is Albert doing?” Father Michael asked.

  “Hasn’t been any trouble. That’s all I know.”

  We nodded and walked into the ugly little room. It wasn’t a cell; it was larger, with a table and three chairs, but the small window was barred, and the walls were the same blackish stone as the cells. I took a deep breath, immediately realized that was a bad idea, and forced down a shudder, keeping my face calm. Toms and Father Michael, I was absolutely sure, were watching for any sign of upset.

  A door at the other end of the room opened, and a guard led Albert to the single chair on that side of the table.

  “Miss Ella!”

  He started to take a step toward me, but the guard, a younger, tougher-looking fellow, put a hand on his shoulder, and he stopped immediately, with a clank. I realized he had shackles on his ankles. Poor man.

  Albert slowly sat. The guard gave a grim nod and stepped back to the door, where he stood with his arms folded. He glanced at Tommy and Father Michael and then glared at all three of us.