Exclusive interview with Alan Broderick, silent film producer.
Lillian’s heart jumped at the headline, and she quickly skimmed through the article. He was in town, scouting locations for a new movie that wasn’t yet cast. The interview had been conducted at the Plaza Hotel, where Mr. Broderick was staying until the middle of next week, before returning to California.
He was here.
She remained in the corner until Mr. Frick dozed off, and then asked Miss Helen if she could attend to the books. Miss Helen dismissed her, but instead of going to Miss Helen’s sitting room, Lillian went to her own chamber, where she put on a bright slash of lipstick and ran a comb through her hair before dashing down the front stairs.
At the hotel, she pulled her veil low and approached the clerk, asking to send a note up to Mr. Broderick. Told that he was still in his suite, she stated that she’d wait for a reply, and gave the man a tip for his trouble.
She took a seat at the base of a large jardiniere, watching the guests come and go through the lobby. The rococo interior, with walls of rose-and-green brocade, gave her a slight headache after the relative austerity of the Frick house. Right now, Miss Helen was probably stamping her feet, asking Bertha to find Lillian, angry at her sudden disappearance. She was taking a terrible risk.
After ten interminable minutes, the clerk approached her with a note. “From Mr. Broderick,” he said with a bow.
She tore it open, praying for good news. It stated that Mr. Broderick would be pleased to meet with her early next week.
Monday at eleven.
Right when she was supposed to meet Richard.
* * *
The weekend crawled by, with Miss Helen becoming more and more frantic as her father grew sicker, his body swelling with fluid, the doctor administering morphine to keep him comfortable. Mr. Childs and his family had visited his bedside on Sunday, the children wide-eyed and solemn before being delivered quickly out to their nursemaid. Mr. Childs and his wife remained by Mr. Frick’s bedside for an hour before shuttling back home to Long Island.
Miss Helen, not liking the prognosis the doctor had given the family, fired him and brought in another. She hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours at that point, and Mrs. Frick finally demanded that she rest, an unusual surge of motherly sentiment. At nine in the morning on Monday, Lillian sat in her room, two notes in her hand. One to Mr. Broderick, declining his invitation to meet. The other to Richard, expressing her regret. Which to send?
Kitty had bitterly cursed Lillian’s father for leaving them with nothing. As far as Lillian was concerned, men were not to be trusted easily. Not her father, nor Mr. Watkins, and definitely not Mr. Frick, who played with his family like they were puppets on a string. Richard, while he seemed kind, didn’t know who she really was, and would certainly never allow her to work as an actress. That wasn’t ladylike, not in the circles in which he traveled. In the end, he saw only a fantasy of her, as a prim private secretary, which in many ways was no different from the fantasy of Angelica.
The anonymity of being a working girl had been fine, for a time, but Lillian’s power had always lain in her beauty, her appearance. If she didn’t take this chance to be an actress now, she might wonder for the rest of her life what might have been. Looming over her still was the January trial of Mr. Watkins. Even if she accepted Richard’s offer and was a respectable married woman by then, there were no guarantees that she would remain free from the scandal. No, the only way forward was to put herself at Mr. Broderick’s mercy and leave the East Coast for good.
She tore up the note to Mr. Broderick and tossed it in the wastebasket, and handed the one addressed to Richard to the footman on the way out, with instructions to deliver it right away.
At the Plaza Hotel, a little before eleven, she knocked on a door on the fifth floor. A young man with a pronounced overbite but an eager smile showed her into a luxurious sitting room done in a soft yellow, with two windows looking out to Central Park through embroidered organdy curtains. “We’re excited to meet you,” the assistant said as he welcomed her inside.
Mr. Broderick rose from the sofa and held out his hands to her. He was younger than she’d expected, probably in his late thirties, and sported a tan that made his green eyes sparkle. The very picture of health, especially when compared with the wheezing, sickly pallor of Mr. Frick. “Very nice to meet you. Tell me your name, please.”
She looked over at the assistant and back to Mr. Broderick, confused. “Angelica.”
Mr. Broderick gave her a sly look. “Right. Early on, we heard from a number of women claiming they were Angelica. All pretty with long, dark hair. But not a one since the scandal broke. You have quite a bit of courage coming forward, whoever you are.”