I had some doubts about my natural maternal instincts, but when I started to say so, he went on, with those eyes they issue to petty bureaucrats, “That part in Night of Dr. Jekyll is rather motherly; I hope we haven’t been guilty of miscasting.”
“Who’s going to tell Eloise?” Sissy demanded.
“You do that,” our man of decision told her. He jerked a thumb at me. “She can pack your things while you do it; you seem to have more natural instincts.”
“Pack?” Sissy asked.
“You’re going to have to move in here for the duration of the trip,” Laszlo said.
“Ooh, goody!” Sissy clapped her hands. “Be sure to bring my book while I... what was I doing?”
I thought about objecting. Not that I wanted to console The Child Star myself. I just didn’t especially want to have to console Sissy after she did it. But murder upsets Laszlo, and I might easily find myself dropped from the trip, and the company payroll, at the next stop.
Velvet and Olivia were watching from the club car side of the door. When I turned for our sleeping quarters instead, they came charging after me. Velvet’s eyes glittered when she saw me start repacking my suitcase.
“I told you not to write all those things about Jewell in that fan letter,” she said. “I do hope they’re giving you train-fare home. You’d have a terrible time charming the money out of yokels.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I told her. “I’ve already charmed Laszlo into giving me a semiprivate car.”
Velvet’s expression made it all worthwhile. “What?”
Not knowing how much Laszlo wanted to get around, I said, “Mrs. Marr’s the one who’s leaving. Sissy and I are going to escort The Child Star the rest of the way.”
“You?” snarled Velvet. “Why you?”
“My natural maternal instincts,” I informed her.
“Oh well,” said Olivia. “That’ll give us a lot more room. And I’d rather sleep in a bunk here than babysit.” Velvet was showing her front teeth, but she pretended to take this as consolation. “True. I wonder if this will change the panty raid they had on for tonight. I was counting on the... publicity.”
“Yes, if you don’t get a boost soon, you’ll have to put all the pins back in your clothes,” said Olivia.
While Velvet indignantly declared that she had never worked as a stripper and certainly never would again, I packed up Sissy’s things as well. Then I snagged our conductor. “Be a darling and carry these to The Child Star’s car, George,” I said.
George was not inclined to be a darling and didn’t think much of carrying luggage. He was a man in uniform. He did, however, open the door for me between cars while I wrestled the suitcases through. I knew what I would find in The Child Star’s boudoir and braced myself.
Sissy was wailing, “And without my mamma I’d never have met Daddy.” She knelt with her arms around The Child Star.
The Child Star, who had bawled so affectingly over a sick canary in Viva Baby Eloise that four patrons had to be carried griefstricken from the theater, was proving that that stuff was saved for the set. She didn’t try to move, or to stem the flow of Sissy’s mourning. Her expression was that of someone willing to wait out the storm.
I set down the suitcases and jerked my head toward Mrs. Marr’s chair. “They took her out,” The Child Star told me.
I raised an eyebrow. She shrugged. “She was useful to me. But there are plenty of mothers.”
Sissy was trying to pat away The Child Star’s tears, of which there were none. “Oh,” she sobbed, “lots of people in our town are mothers, but you only get one of your very own.”
“Oh, her,” said The Child Star. “She still lives in Fayette.”
“Who was Mrs. Marr, then?” I asked.
“I forget. They told me. Dad’s brother’s wife’s mother or something. Where are we all going to sleep?”
Very practical, these child stars. Well, some child stars. I could not see this one growing up to be like Sissy, who had enchanted audiences with her dimples and her curls in a good dozen movies with lots of tap dancing, just a couple of years too early for her to be any challenge to Shirley Temple. (Maybe I can reveal some back-stage secrets without putting Hedda’s nose out of joint. The curls and dimples were real; the tap dancing was phony. They got another girl in for the closeups of the feet. I don’t know what genius decided to make tap dancing movies before sound came in, anyhow.)
Technically speaking, for that matter, I had been a child star myself. After several years of background bits (if your church group rents King of Kings, I can tell you where to find me way in the back, but don’t blink), I was awarded my first starring role at fourteen. We did not mention to the studio that I was fourteen because they had estimated three years older than that. Talkies were still so new that they were desperate for people who could sing. My parents said I could, and it took the studio seven “Sister Annette” shorts to learn different.
Mrs. Marr’s bed was big enough for the two of us, and it was no real problem to decide, but I let Sissy figure it all out. This gave her something else to think about. The Child Star showed us where we could put our things, but since Mrs. Marr’s things were still in those places, we left ours in the suitcases. Except for one flannel nightgown apiece, which we put on. The Child Star donned a similar garment, and we all settled in for the night.
I was unsettled some hours later by a shrill scream. Sissy does not scream in her sleep, so I knew who it had to be. I turned on the little bedside light and found The Child Star sitting up in bed.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“That’s all right,” I told her. “I ought to know better than to be sleeping at two A.M. anyhow. Are you all right?”
The Child Star sighed. “I’m afraid I’ll have to change.”
I knew the drill; I had little sisters. Get the blankets off before they’re soaked through, toss the sheets into a separate pile, and so forth. While I was doing this, I thought The Child Star was fetching another nightgown. Instead she brought me a long-handled bath brush.
“I don’t think we’d better run a bath at this hour,” I told her, checking the pillowcases.
Grave eyes studied me. “Look,” I said. “In the morning...”
“This isn’t a bathing brush,” she informed me. She set it on the bed and then placed her hands palms down on the mattress, presenting to me the most appalling collections of welts and bruises.
I got the idea. “You’ll have to excuse me,” I said. “We don’t want to wake up Sissy.”
An entire Panzer division couldn’t wake up Sissy. But The Child Star didn’t know that. So she shrugged and went off in search of a nightgown, leaving the brush in case I changed my mind, adults being unpredictable.
“Are there clean sheets?” I asked her when she returned.
The Child Star shook her head. “Not until morning.”
“You’d better bunk with us, then,” I said, doing my best to make this sound pleasant. “We’ll...”
There was a rap at the door. I looked around for a robe, snatched up one of Mrs. Marr’s, and went to see who it was.
It was nobody. But nobody had left us a message. A piece of paper with a skull and cross-bones above the word “Beware” had been tacked to the door.
“Isn’t this a lovely breakfast?” cried Sissy, carrying the tray back to the table.
“Oh yes.”
It was one of the least positive affirmatives I’d ever heard. But perhaps The Child Star was not large enough to have Sissy’s kind of appetite. And maybe she’d never had to go short, either.