Fey? An alias? Stage name? Ian made a mental note, wishing he had his notebook.
“That’s right. We did a gig together last year. Thought I’d look him up again. Heard he ran into a little trouble.”
“Yeah, odd story, that. Supposedly went missing about three weeks ago. Lizzie’s been broken up about it ever since.”
“Lizzie?”
Lizzie. Short for Elizabeth? Elvanfoot Senior never mentioned a woman. Mental note number two.
The bartender pointed toward a poster on the opposite wall. It showed a sepia-toned photo of an attractive Black woman in a lacy dress perched on a swing embellished with gardenias. The tagline called Lizzie Stanfield “a mesmerizing chanteuse of unequal measure from across the pond.”
“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.