The Raven Spell (Conspiracy of Magic #1)(39)
“She’s—”
“A Yank, sure enough, but sings like a right nightingale.” The bartender tossed the rag over his shoulder. “She made a report with the Yard, but I don’t think she’s heard nothing. ’Course she’s all broke up, what with all the headlines lately.”
And yet Ian knew George wasn’t among the listed victims.
“Any chance she’s here now? I’d like to offer my sympathies after my, er, audition. Let her know Georgie’s a friend.” Ian jostled Hob in his arms, selling the ventriloquist angle.
“I swear that’s the strangest-looking dummy anyone’s ever brought in here.”
“Made him myself.”
“But I’m at least a hundred years older,” Hob said, dutifully objecting to seal the illusion.
The man pulled a face, then nudged his head toward the auditorium. “Yeah, go on. Down to the front of the house, hook a left backstage. She’s the third door on the right.” He checked the clock on the wall behind him before turning his attention back to his glass polishing. “She’s usually in there warming up for her routine by now.”
Ian entered the auditorium with Hob still held in the crook of his arm. Inside, the grand chandelier remained dark and the empty balcony seats overhung the space like a looming apparition, but the main floor was vibrant with the noise and action of the auditions. He counted a dozen people who sat scattered among the first three rows of seats, each dressed in costume or brandishing a prop. Some rehearsed while awaiting their turn onstage, but sitting alone in the center of the fifth row was a bald man smoking a cigarette who was clearly in charge of the future of those he presided over. He called out a number, then yelled at the woman standing onstage to begin, while a piano player hammered on a few keys to check for tune.
Even from the back of the house, Ian could make out how tight the woman’s formfitting gown was. The silk was a deep lavender, and she wore a matching hat with a white ostrich feather that seemed to only accentuate her already statuesque figure. The music started and she opened her fan, waving it coquettishly as she began to sing “Come Along, Johnny.” The performance started out quite charming, then grew bawdier by the minute as her leers and gyrations put a different emphasis on the double entendres buried in the innocent-sounding lyrics. The sparse audience howled with laughter, though the bald man merely called out, “All right, Simon. You’re in. Off you go, mate. Next!”
The commotion gave Ian the opportunity he needed to move unnoticed. He skirted the aisle on the left, hugging the shadows along the auditorium wall until he slipped through the unmarked exit leading to the hall backstage. He lingered inside the door as the woman onstage bowed. She thanked the audience with a wave of her fan and a deep-voiced “Cheers, love” before walking back to the house seats to sit beside a petite woman in a tutu. She must be the pixie his watch had indicated, he thought, though there was no telling from where he stood who the witch might be.
Backstage, the theater’s glamorous facade had been stripped away to expose the wires, beams, and rough plank floors holding the place together. A row of costumes hung on a rack pushed up against the wall, and set pieces had been jigsaw-puzzled together and stowed at the end of the hallway. A miller moth danced around a bare electric lightbulb suspended from the ceiling as the smell of sweaty bodies and perfume lingered in the dim passage.
Ian counted three doors down. “This is where I need you to get out of sight,” he said to Hob. The little fellow sprang from his arms, ready to scurry off, but then hesitated. The woman on the other side of the door had begun making nonsense noises while singing notes from low to high to low again. Ian leaned in too. The voice was smooth and practiced with an entertainer’s edge, but he had to admit it was nowhere near as compelling as the lilt of Edwina’s singing. An unprecedented pang of guilt interrupted Ian’s focus, compounded by a disapproving shake of the head from Hob. “Never mind,” he whispered, then nudged his chin at the imp, telling him to go as he knocked gently on the door.
The woman inside stopped singing. “Who is it?”
“Ian Cameron. I’m a private detective. I wondered if we could have a word, Miss Stanfield.”
The door swung open and he found himself temporarily dumbstruck. A woman in a lacy white evening gown stood before him, her deep brown eyes filled with an intoxicating mix of hope and fear. A common-enough expression in his line of work, but her photo had entirely underestimated how beautiful she was in person. He’d been too slow to hide his surprise and had to close his mouth as she invited him into her dressing room.
Hand on hip, Lizzie asked, “Well, have you found him?”
He understood by the way she spoke he’d already had this conversation with her once. “Nae, Miss, I canna confirm I’ve found him yet. And I’m afraid there’s been a complication.”
No correction on the “miss,” so they weren’t married. Mental note number three.
She motioned for him to sit on the velvet love seat while she reached for a newspaper on the side table. “Have you seen this?” It was a copy of the City Journal with the headline screaming about murder.
Ian took the paper from her eager hands and read the paragraph she pointed to about the lone man who’d survived being attacked. Edwina had mentioned the name Elvanfoot was listed in the paper, but he’d been too distracted to understand the implication of what she’d said. His heart plunged into ice water at the thought of what he must tell Lizzie.