“Well, I know a publisher in Paris. M. Liseux is always looking for interesting material of that nature….”
“A pornographer? We’ll have nothing to do with him. Good day, Mr. Sackett. Come along, Michel.”
We went back to the apartment and Michel took to his bed. Meanwhile, I began having second thoughts. Perhaps I’d been too hasty with Mr. Sackett. After all, there must be quite a market for books “of that nature.” And an aspiring author can’t afford to leave any stone unturned, no matter how repugnant she herself finds the stone, or the creatures hiding beneath it. My chief concern was that my knowledge of the subject was too limited in scope. The solution to that was to bring in a collaborator. As it happened, in arranging our subterfuge I had mentioned to Michel the thirty-seven acts, and he had extemporaneously invented an episode that took place on the observation deck of the Eiffel Tower. It was quite convincing, and far too graphic to be incorporated into a serious literary work such as the one before you. We had planned that he would recount the event in Mr. Sackett’s office. But Elizabeth’s work with the paperweight had silenced him before he’d a chance to utter a word of it.
Michel had told me earlier he was both willing and able to come up with the other thirty-six episodes. I only wish I had taken him up on this offer immediately. For the very next morning Mary came into my room to tell me Michel appeared to be ill. I followed her into Fanny’s room and found him lying on the floor—quite obviously dead. He was on his back, stiff, and with a look of shock on his face.
“Where’s Fanny?” I asked.
“I don’t know. She wasn’t here when I got up. I only came in when I saw the door open, and his arm lying there on the floor.”
I made a quick examination of his body and found no wounds, but the thumb and index finger of his right hand were somewhat blackened. As if he had fired a revolver, I thought. I made a search of the room, but found no gun. Or bullet hole. And surely a gun fired so near would have woken Mary and me. This was the fourth and final mystery: Who killed Michel? And quite a good one, I thought. I telephoned the police and about five minutes later a patrolman arrived, and five minutes after that Detective Sergeant O’Brien joined him.
“Looks like an accident,” the sergeant pronounced.
“An accident?” I said incredulously. “Look at the expression on his face. It’s a look of horror.”
“You get that with electrocutions. He must have been plugging in that lamp there. See how the cord is frayed? Just beside the plug. And the black spots on the insulation match the marks on his hand.”
“That’s very astute, Sergeant.”
“Thanks.”
“But surely that doesn’t mean he wasn’t murdered.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“By no means. What if someone frayed the cord intentionally?”
“What makes you think it was intentional? You know someone who wanted him dead?”
“I can think of several people, each of whom had a clear motive.”
“And who might they be?”
There was nothing for it then but to inform the sergeant of all the various jealousies exhibited over the previous days and weeks. Fanny was jealous because Michel seemed to be transferring his attention to Mary. Mary was jealous because she feared he was really faithful to Fanny. Captain Ingalls was jealous because he had seen Fanny jealous. And Harry was jealous because he was a fool. That made four suspects, two motivated by feelings of heated passion turned to hate, and two by just plain hate. Everyone but me had a motive. And, if you’re honest about it, dear reader, no one wanted him dead more than you. Weren’t you hoping against hope that something—anything—would occur to justify your sticking with this meandering saga? But I suppose it’s rather unlikely you were in the vicinity of The Margaret apartments on the night of April 3rd, 1902.
Sergeant O’Brien listened to my account, detailed in every way except in regards to Harry. I’d grown attached to him and wasn’t willing to give him up simply on account of his passion for me. But the detective was determined to attribute the death to accidental electrocution.
As it turned out, Fanny had not been home that night, but with the captain. Since she preferred his company, and he had hers, the motives I ascribed to them had evaporated. And since Fanny had abandoned Michel, what motive did Mary have? That left Harry, who I thought had been staying over at the Carleton House in Williamsburg, but in fact had been in Elmira on a new case of fraud. He arrived home just as the sergeant was concluding his investigation.
I imagine you’re feeling misled, what with all the suspects being dismissed. But rest assured, it was indeed murder, and the assassin revealed himself just a few days later. That was the afternoon I found Telemachus chewing on an electrical cord in our bedroom. Harry insisted the bird’s murder of Michel was a deliberate act. I was willing to entertain that possibility, but then, I asked, who was he trying to do away with in chewing on our cord? Harry didn’t have an answer. But the next day he bought a gigantic cage, so Mary wouldn’t feel obliged to let the bird fly about the apartment.
In the meantime, the piece I had planted in Town Topics—the society scandal sheet of New York—had done its work. Much interest had been roused by the story of the Marchioness of Karpolov and the Baron Dampierre. I went back to Mr. Sackett’s office with the expectation the publicity had made his search for a publisher an easy one.
“Oh, it’s out of the question now, I’m afraid,” he told me.
“Whatever do you mean? I’ve seen the references to the marquis and marchioness in all the newspapers.”
“That’s just it. How long did you think it would be before someone determined there is no Marquis and Marchioness of Karpolov? Or a Baron Dampierre, for that matter. Everyone knows now. And they’re making a mockery of it. The World is offering ten thousand dollars to anyone who can prove the existence of the Marquis of Karpolov. And the Journal has a running parody, ‘Bellie Nye Scours Europe for Lost Aristocrats.’”
“I’ve seen that, but surely all publicity is good.”
“Not when you’re the butt of a joke.”
“It’s not all fictional. Madame B____ is real.”
“But who will believe that now?”
“What if I were to reveal her true identity?”
“Well, it would be rather easy for her to prove libel, since so much of the story is clearly fabricated. You’d need her consent.”
“I’d not be likely to get her consent,” I told him. She, no doubt, was relishing my predicament, having been its engineer.
My hopes had been dashed again. But I was not beaten. I spent much of that spring printing the first issue of Psi. The process was absurdly laborious. And filthy. There were ink stains all over the apartment. I quickly decided to reduce the number of pages from thirty-two to sixteen, forcing me to jettison one of my own stories and to condense Fanny’s and my letters introducing the magazine into a couple of brief paragraphs. And even still, I only got three dozen copies printed. We made use of most of the wood-blocks, and then Fanny drew by hand an illustration for one of her Limericks. She traced it from a French humor magazine I’d brought home the year before. I must admit, her renditions came out quite well.
It was mid-June when we hand-delivered the inaugural issue to fellow alumnae living in the city. Twenty-nine altogether, and all twenty-nine subscribed. Even Gloria Bisbee, who was off in Europe, and poor Clara Rockwood, who we belatedly learned had died the year before. Apparently their husbands found my work worthy of further attention, though it might also have had something to do with Fanny’s Limericks. It was our inclusion of those poems that necessitated the hand-delivery of the issue, since to mail it would have risked seizure by the postal inspectors.
I was heartened by the positive response, but even allowing for Fanny paying all the expenses the recompense fell well short of my expectations. So I decided there would be no second issue. When I broke the news to Fanny I wasn’t at all surprised to find her indifferent. But the
more sympathetic captain memorialized the event with a recitation from Much Ado About Nothing:
“Psi no more, ladies, Psi no more,
Men were deceivers ever;
One foot in sea, and one on shore,
To one thing constant never.”
His words were more fitting than was at first apparent. Not long after, he withdrew his attentions from Fanny and focused them on Mary. Fanny, having become bored with all things literary, even the Limerick, took it with equanimity. So, with the matter of her male servant resolved, she moved back to her father’s palatial Manhattan home. I spent much of the summer printing out copies of a short story I’d written. It was an account of how Harry and I solved the case of a missing shipment of gold on the steamer L’Aquitaine, but told from the viewpoint of the ship’s chief rat.
There was an August wedding and once again we were in need of a maid. Neither of us minded, really. It was pleasant to have the apartment to ourselves. Especially with family planning a visit the next month—a visit that would quickly lead us to a new mystery, and a very stimulating adventure.
Something Else Again
As many of you may be aware, I have continued my writing career under the name M.E. Meegs. Now, at long last, my first substantial work, a novella, has been made available to the discerning reader. You will no doubt recognize the lead character as the same perfidious woman who so recently played the role of the Marchioness of Karpolov.
Here is a taste from chapter one of Babes at Sea….
The muffled clatter of rain on slate infused the grubby attic room of the grubby inn with a palpable gloom, while the relentless drip caught by a cracked chamber pot provided an unnecessary reminder of the wretchedness of her state… plic… plic… plic….
For five days, Mrs. Biddle had waited for word. For five days, tension waxed as food and money waned—just as it had throughout the long, wet French spring… plic… plic… plic….
Eight months on the Pas-de-Calais, the last three in another leaking attic room, where for the first time in her life Mrs. Biddle had been compelled to accept charity. And that she resented most of all. Resented the fact of it, if not the cause. Now, in this last week of May, she had come to Cherbourg on a vague promise from a dubious man. And for five days and nights, she waited… plic… plic… plic….
Her mood, never one that could be judged sunny, had turned as foul as the weather. Still, as she sponged herself before the few remaining shards of a shattered mirror, Mrs. Biddle took solace in the resplendent, if intermittent, view. She had recovered nicely from her long infirmity. And what was privation to a woman who fed on adversity as lesser women feed on pastry? Tension for her was simply the unavoidable precursor to action. In this she resembled nothing so much as a coiled spring. A rather good-looking coiled spring, to be sure. Few others sported so statuesque a figure, so clear a complexion, or so blonde and lush a mane. As frequently happened, Mrs. Biddle was cheered by her own superiority. But, speaking honestly, she couldn’t deny she was a coiled spring in dire need of a good bath.
She had just finished dressing when there was a knock.
“Un message, madame.”
Mrs. Biddle opened the door and took a handwritten note from a boy in an ill-fitting uniform. As she read, he waited. She looked down at him in disgust.
“Va-t’en!” she shouted.
He made a face, then spat back over his shoulder, “Gadoue!”
It was with the slamming of the door that the fruit of Mrs. Biddle’s recent infirmity announced herself from her makeshift cradle—a small drawer suspended by cord from the peak of a dormer. Her mother picked her up and brought her to the bed. Then hoped against hope that the well had not yet run dry. For like her mother, Eugenia was not one to give up easily.
The name—meaning as it does well-born—was chosen as testament to Mrs. Biddle’s own opinion of herself. How could her daughter be otherwise? She did, of course, resent the encumbrance on a life which had been kept scrupulously free of encumbrances. Not even marriage was allowed to impinge upon Mrs. Biddle’s devotion to self. But here, at her breast, was an extension of that self, and even if she loved the child only half so much as she loved herself—a daughter’s chromosomal entitlement—it would still be far more than any self-abnegating genetrix could muster.
“Bonjour, little sister!”
A petite girl—no older than seventeen, but last called ingénue at twelve—entered the room bearing a baguette and two pots. She set these on the table, then pulled an orange from one pocket of her jacket and a parcel of soft cheese from the other.
“Where did you spend the night?” Mrs. Biddle asked bitterly.
“Making sure baby sister has some breakfast beside the milk of a witch,” the girl answered in a thick French accent, but nearly correct grammar.
After throwing off her jacket, she tied her russet hair into a loose knot, then pried the baby from her mother—the latter making no protest. She sat down at the table and dunked a finger in the pot of milky chocolate, then let the baby curled in her arm suckle it. Mrs. Biddle rose and rebuttoned her blouse before the broken mirror.
“This is for you to eat,” the girl said, nodding toward the food but not looking upon the woman at the mirror. “I’ve well eaten.”
“Your belly full, is it? Have a care, girl, or soon you’ll find yourself with your own little sister. Or the pox.”
“That makes nothing to me,” the girl told her as she waved the small bottle of holy water she wore on a string about her neck and depended on as spiritual prophylactic.
“Simple peasant. You think that protection enough when you spend the night passing yourself about?”
“I do not pass myself about!” the girl shouted back indignantly. Realizing her tone had unsettled Eugenia, she softened it. “I was with a… éminent man, the husband of the mistress of the mayor.”
“He told you the mayor beds his wife?”
“Yes. And why not? It is a… honneur?”
“Honor. So, I have the mayor’s cuckold to thank for my breakfast?” Her pride temporarily subdued by the aroma of cheese and coffee, Mrs. Biddle took a place at the table.
“No. This is for baby sister—you are the cow it must go through first.”
“Then I suppose I must eat my grass.”
“And say meuh!” the girl added for the benefit of her little sister.
“I’m an American cow,” Mrs. Biddle corrected. Then, in a display that would have shocked any who knew her in the prenatal past, she gave her child a spirited “moo-oo!”
“So the cows talk different also?” the girl asked.
“Yes, and the roosters.”
“No cocorico?”
“Cockadoodledoo!”
While her elders went through their bilingual bestiary, Eugenia, quite reasonably, looked on in stupefaction. Barely three weeks out of the womb, she had not yet learned an infant must pay for her keep by lavishing signs of amusement on her caretakers whenever they chose to degrade themselves. She was grateful for the chocolate her benefactress had provided, but surely she had adequately expressed her appreciation by not immediately regurgitating it upon the girl’s blouse.
In truth, the girl—Mélisande, she called herself—was not even ten years younger than her “little sister’s” mother. Though her exact role was a matter of continuous debate, she was an adjunct acquired during the previous winter. She had arrived in Étaples sometime before Christmas and Mrs. Biddle had made occasional use of her as factotum, with the girl wanting no payment beyond lessons in English. It was, she claimed, with that objective that she had come to the colony of Anglophones on the Pas-de-Calais.
When the money ran low and Mrs. Biddle economized by moving to the hostel’s attic, the artful girl attended her more frequently—like the others at Étaples, she was convinced that sooner or later the proud woman would wire home for passage. For her own part, Mrs. Biddle knew full well the girl was merely ingratiating herself in the hope of securing a berth on t
he inevitable return voyage to New York. And Mélisande knew that Mrs. Biddle knew.
When spring arrived and the pregnancy proved difficult, Mélisande took on the duties of nurse, and her self-serving motives were mildly diluted with something resembling compassion. But the birth of Eugenia changed everything. Mrs. Biddle was completely dependent on the girl for two weeks, by the end of which Mélisande’s devotion to her “little sister” had become fact.
As a nearby bell struck one, the insufferably precious game ended when neither patron nor retainer could remember the call of a rhinoceros. Her dignified demeanor restored, Mrs. Biddle rose from the table and announced they would be sailing that evening.
Mélisande was ecstatic. Six months of attending this contumelious shrew had worn thin even her good humor. Now, at last, she was sailing to New York. And not as an ignorant provincial likely to end up the exotic in some tenderloin house of sport. She had used her time in Étaples wisely, mingling freely with the expatriate poets and artists—in some cases quite freely—and would arrive in New York thoroughly fly.
“I must go off to make arrangements,” Mrs. Biddle told her. “You’ll need to start packing. We catch a boat from the Gare Maritime at five.”
On picking up her jacket, Mrs. Biddle displaced that of the girl. The gold fob of a watch peeked out from a pocket. With a subtle grace born of careful breeding, Mrs. Biddle palmed the watch and slid it into her bag.
Down below, she negotiated her way through the damp, narrow lane, past the broken glass, half-eaten fruit, and filthy progeny of the slum, trying in vain to ignore the over-powering stench of urine. When an inebriated sailor slouching in a doorway made a suggestion she thought demeaning, Mrs. Biddle spat on him without turning her head. Though few would guess it to look at her—especially those unacquainted with her expectorial marksmanship—Mrs. Biddle was no stranger to her milieu. Her first memories were of a street indistinguishable from this in all its essentials, if not its particulars. The drunken sailor, for instance, who now stumbled from his haunt and challenged her with insulting gibes, would have been wearing the uniform of the U.S. Navy rather than that of the French. But if the menace was universal, the methodology employed in confronting it was quite personal. Mrs. Biddle lowered her arm and shook her sleeve. A straight razor fell into her palm.
Psi No More… Page 4