had surely not expected that showing off his toy would end in a disaster of that magnitude—surging the lights and so on. Perhaps his machine had been sabotaged. By the
Helen sighed and dropped the pencil into her lap. She could not make it make sense.
She went back to the notes she had made earlier, looking through the list of eighteen women Jane had tried and failed to convince. She had reread about half of them when a niggling thought in the back of her mind forced its way out. “Alberta,” she said out loud, and peered at the short list again. Yes. Alberta was on it, right at the top, and halfway down there was a Betty.
Helen flipped back to the journal, to the long list of 99 women that started the book. Down at number 73 she saw Desiree.
“Bah,” Helen said again, and pulled out Frye’s bright orange missive from that morning to check. Those were the names in her PS: Alberta, Betty, and Desiree.
Helen stood, putting down her chocolate and kicking off her slippers. “Oh, bother, here we go,” she muttered, and found herself dressing for a party and heading out the front door.
Frye’s house was not at all like any of the other society houses she’d been to. And of course not; Frye was not exactly high society. Yet she was clearly educated and well-spoken, she had some money—oh, artists were hard to classify. She lived in a medium-sized brick house on a row of other brick houses. But inside, every square inch was covered with artwork and memorabilia. Helen moved down the hallway, looking at the framed sheets of music, signed by their composers; lush oils, charcoal sketches, dashed-off nudes. She thought that Jane should be the one to be here; she would appreciate it. But then, this woman knew Jane, didn’t she? Perhaps Jane had already seen this bounty of art.
The hall began to curve around a central staircase, and the wall decor turned from art to theatre memorabilia. Posters from shows, some framed, some not, some torn, some signed, all the way from cheap printings to elaborate productions with color painted onto them. Some of the newest ones had STARRING MISS EGLANTINE FRYE in bold letters on them. Interspersed were curio shelves with gloves and cups and beads and a wide variety of oddities that Helen could only assume were props, mementos. Behind it all was intricate wallpaper, the pattern of which changed every time it had the slightest excuse of a corner or chair rail.
The wood floors were covered with long runners of carpets in exotic patterns. Flowers bloomed in profusion; birds darted in between them. Helen got so caught up in trying to decide whether there was a pattern to the birds that she only belatedly realized she was still hanging around the hallway, and piano music was banging away at a distance, somewhere else in the house.
Her spirits began to rise with the prospect of dancing. It was emphatically not what she was here for. She was here to talk to Frye, to find those other three women that Frye had lured her here for, to convince them all to see the light, to come to Jane. To find out if they knew anything about Jane. She had done it this afternoon; she could do it again.
But, oh, the dance. Oh, how she missed the dance.
Helen followed the curve in the hallway and there in a burst of light was the party. It was a small room, too small for the number of laughing bodies that filled it. But it was gold and warm and glittering with strings of that yellow electric light. The heady smell of burning clove cigarettes drifted out, and from somewhere else, almonds. The music came from a battered upright piano in the back corner—a long-legged man in fitted sweater and wide slacks thumped out a riotous tune, and three young women in variously scarlet red, bright orange, and deep purple dresses sang with him. The one in bright orange was perched on top of the piano and was dark-skinned, slim, and so lovely that even Helen did a double take.
Well, she’d found one of the women, she thought dryly.
Chairs and stools were pushed back against the wall and in the middle, a messy glut of couples and singles danced the very latest dances, wild affairs with kicks and elbows and enthusiasm. A smile began to curve up Helen’s face. She had not seen these dances since the days at the tenpence music hall. Heaven knows they did not do them in Alistair’s house, or any of the other places she went.
A hand grabbed hers and suddenly she was in the dance, despite all her good intentions to stay on task. A good-looking chap with a riot of curls swung her in and out, and she dredged up old memories from seven months ago to keep pace with him, glad that seven months ago was not hopelessly out of date, that she was somewhat still au courant.
The piano thumped to a stop, and the curly-haired chap beckoned an invitation for the next, eyes sparkling, but she demurred, smiling at him, and threaded her way through the dancers to the doorway. The party spilled out into the next small room, and then to the balcony after that, where French doors stood ajar and brought in welcome relief. She was pleased to see that the time she had spent at her wardrobe attempting to figure out exactly what you wore to an actor’s aftershow party was not in vain; many of the girls were wearing the more up- to-the-minute higher waists and wide shoulders of her own seafoam silk. Some outfits were more daring, and some simply fit no scene that she knew at all, and she particularly studied those girls, watching to see where creativity had hit on something new and desirable.
She fetched up against a trio of giggling girls whose combination of baby fat and gangle marked them as probably too young to be here. She wondered if they were actors, too; she wondered if she had ever been that young. Behind them, a woman in an atrocious purple dress made of scraps of silk and what looked like faux fur looked out an open window into the night. She turned at Helen’s approach, and the perfection of her heart-shaped face made Helen instantly sure she had found a comrade.
You didn’t just
“Breath of air?” she said to the wistful-looking girl.
“Bit stuffy, ain’t it?” the girl said. “It was hot in the theatre tonight, too.” She fanned herself with a discarded playbill and wafted over a cloud of rose perfume. It was the same expensive scent as Calendula Smith’s, which was both amusing and informational. This girl must have a benefactor.
“Are you an actor?” said Helen. She wondered if the girl had chosen the face for the same reason as Frye, to advance her career. But the girl’s dreadful accent would probably hold her back, she thought. Frye could switch in and out of beautiful diction at will, apparently, and Helen had paid attention to her own when she first started working as a governess, trying to eradicate any country from it. This girl sounded as though she had marbles in her mouth.
“No,” the girl said wistfully. “I’m just a dresser for Ruth.” The way she said
“I’m Helen,” she said.
“Betty,” the girl said, confirming Helen’s hunch that she was one of the three she was supposed to meet. “You been in a show with Frye?” Dull envy flashed in her eyes.
“No, we just met last night,” Helen said.
“Oh,” said Betty. “Seems like you could be. I thought this would do it,” and she gestured at the perfect face, “but seems not. Do you think the producers want something else besides face and body? ’Cause I don’t know what else I got.” Her forehead furrowed prettily. “You are like me, ain’t you?”
“Yes,” said Helen. “We are alike.” Betty nodded, and Helen followed up that line of persuasion, adding, “I often feel it didn’t really change anything inside. Do you feel that?”
This philosophical statement seemed to go over Betty’s head. “Inside? I still have the same body, I suppose. I was asleep for the part where the man did it. I was so scared when he knocked me out.”
Helen seized on this admission. “I was scared, too,” she said. “And now when I go outside, because of the fey.”
That was it. Betty’s eyes grew wide and she said, “I didn’t know there was gonna be all this fey everywhere. I have to wear my iron mask every time I leave the theatre or Richard’s flat, and Richard, that’s my man you know,
