A supernatural feline murder mystery tale from the silent movie era.
1
Manhattan, New York
August 24, 1926
Her whole life changed when Rudolph Valentino died.
And judging by the throngs of people who had lined every spare foot of the streets along the way and the mountain of roses that were strewn about the bier as the cortege made its slow progress up West 49th Street in Broadway, it was clear that thousands of other women also felt that their lives had been irretrievably changed. They sobbed and wailed at the knowledge that the light had gone out of those magnificent sultry eyes that they had seen so often on the silver screen. They felt robbed of the love that could never be, of the caress that could never be felt or the kiss that would have stolen their hearts.
Valentino, the Latin Lover was gone at just thirty-one years of age, struck down with peritonitis and taken from the world of his adoring public.
Kay du Maurier was there for the funeral mass at Saint Malachy’s Roman Catholic Church along with her husband, Colonel Fenton Carlyle and her sister, Blanche Fleming. In any other gathering, the three would have stood out; yet, here at Rudolph’s farewell, they were but three among the glittering firmament that had gathered to pay their respects. Clara Bow, Douglas Fairbanks, and Irving Berlin were there, along with an entourage of lesser stars, all standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Rudolph’s family, offering what comfort they could to them. Most visible, however, dressed in black with a felt capeline hat and the cleverest of gossamer veils that highlighted rather than obscured her weeping face, was the distraught Pola Negri. She wore a blood-red rose, which matched the thousands of others that surrounded the white blooms that spelled out POLA, that she had arranged to travel in the hearse with his coffin.
Everyone had heard how she had collapsed over his coffin at the funeral home and had to be helped to her car by one of the four men in black uniforms, supposedly sent as a guard of honor by Benito Mussolini, the prime minister of Italy, his land of birth. And then, on seeing his coffin at the actual mass in church, she had fainted again.
Kay watched the fuss being made of her this time, and felt a wave of nausea almost overcome her. Her heart started to race, and she reached out and clutched her husband’s arm. He responded by patting the back of her hand and giving her one of his sympathetic smiles. He raised an eyebrow quizzically.
“I am fine,” she whispered. “I just…just feel a little queasy.”
He nodded, sure that it was simply the emotion of the event.
Fighting back the sickness, Kay pursed her lips in scorn. Pola’s faints could not have been any more melodramatic if Cecil B. DeMille or George Melford had been shooting a scene with her.
“She’s sticking to her story,” Blanche whispered at her side.
“What story?” Fenton asked, craning his head slightly toward his sister-in-law.
“I told you, darling,” Kay said, wafting her face with the collar of her lynx fur coat. She was aware that fur in August would be hot, but she felt she had to wear it that day. “She’s telling everyone that not only had they made up, but Rudolph proposed to her last week.”
“She’s staking her claim on his fortune,” agreed Blanche, looking directly at him with her good eye, as she adjusted the jewel-encrusted eye patch that she famously wore over her right eye. “She has told the press that she was going to be the third Mrs. Valentino.”
Fenton’s moustache bristled. “Humph! When I was in Africa, I read an article in a week-old copy of the Chicago Tribune about Pink Powder Puffs. All that make-up he wore—they say it’s making men effeminate. Apparently, some public men’s room had a face-powder dispenser installed, because chaps want to look like him. And I read another article that said his two marriages were ‘lavender marriages’, meaning he was covering stuff up. Apparently, he loved cats and let them run free in his apartments.”
Kay unconsciously stroked her lynx fur and felt another wave of nausea.
“Are you sure you are all right, darling?” Fenton asked. “You look flustered. Do you want to take that cat fur off?”
She shook her head. “I’m fine, really.”
Blanche leaned toward Fenton. “And did you read that he challenged the reporter, who hadn’t the courage to name himself, to a boxing match?” she whispered.
“That’s right, darling,” Kay added, forcing the nausea down. “He was having boxing lessons from Jack Dempsey, the world heavyweight champion.”
Fenton shook his head. “I never heard about that. You don’t always get the American newspapers in Kenya.”
“Well, he didn’t fight the reporter,” Kay went on, “but he did fight Buck O’Neil, the sportswriter, on top of the Ambassador Hotel. He knocked him down and O’Neil apologized for an article he had written.”
Fenton clicked his tongue. “So, maybe Pola Negri wasn’t going to be just another lavender wife.”
They saw the actress in question sobbing loudly, her shoulders heaving up and down theatrically. Doug Fairbanks laid a comforting hand on her shoulder.
Kay hated Pola Negri more than anything at that moment. There she was, playing the role of the tragic widow—or the tragic nearly widow. She had no doubt that Pola would capitalize on Rudolph’s death to further her career, just as she had used her first marriage to a Polish count to boost her pedigree.
Pola was famously allergic to cats, so if she had her way and somehow inherited Rudolph’s fortune, his beautiful cats would go; which meant that Kay wouldn’t see them or his apartment again.
She thought of Alfonso the Persian beauty that Rudolph had secretly given her just three months ago, when Fenton was off on one of his big game hunts in Africa. And a week later, he had given her the lynx fur coat. Both were tokens of their very secret love affair. A love affair that no one could ever know about.
Her heart ached for him, but at least she would always have those links with him.
The noise of the wailing crowds of mourners outside the church filtered through, threatening to drown the voices of the choristers.
“Well, he certainly seems to have had his fan club,” Fenton remarked.
“Everyone loved him, Fenton,” Kay whispered, aware of the quaking of her voice.
“That’s right,” said Blanche, closely watching her sister. “We all loved Rudolph.”
o0o
Kay du Maurier and her sister, Blanche Fleming, were born in Massachusetts to Scottish immigrant mill-workers, called Finlay and Flora McDonald. Morag, who would, in later years, change her name to Blanche, was the eldest by two years and was always the practical one. Their father died from lung disease when Blanche was ten, only to be followed six months later by their mother, from a broken heart. From that moment, Blanche became the mother hen to little sister Isabel, who would also later have her name changed to Kay.
The girls worked in the mills and dreamed of escaping from the life of drudgery to become actresses. It was only when Blanche reached the age of seventeen and tragically lost the vision in her right eye in an accident at the mill that she seriously planned to change their lives.
Once her eye healed, they used their meager inheritance and all that they had managed to scrimp together over the years and boarded a train for New York. There, both being strikingly good-looking despite the eye patch that Blanche took to wearing, they managed to get jobs in vaudeville, first as background dancers, then as a song and dance duo, the McDonald Sisters.
Fortune smiled on them when they were spotted by Florenz Ziegfeld who hired them to become Ziegfeld girls in his famous Ziegfeld Follies. Under the tutelage of Anna Held, Florenz’s Polish-French wife, they became skilled and admired showgirls. Both could dance well, but Kay with her copper locks and green cat-like eyes had that extra something—timing. Blanche also stood out, on account of her pirate’s eye patch and her blonde hair, but it was her sister who attracted the most attention.
The break came for Kay when Edwin Thanhouser saw her at a performance and gave her a screen test for a part in a western movie his company was shooting at Scott’s Movie Ranch in Staten Island, New York. Her name of ‘McDonald’ had to be changed, however, since Thanhouser felt a leading lady needed a name that sounded vaguely exotic. One of the camera crew was a Frenchman by the last name of du Maurier, so Thanhouser suggested adopting the name, and Kay readily acquiesced.
Within three more one-reelers, he had made her a rising star of western motion pictures, and before long, she was able to diversify and became the much sought after romantic interest in comedies, melodramas and swashbucklers.
As Kay’s star rose, Blanche gave up her own aspirations and became her assistant, her housekeeper and manager. And she travelled with her when she signed with Mack Sennett at his Keystone Studios in Edendale, California.
It was on the set of Tarzan and the Lost Treasures of Opar, playing Jane alongside Elmo Lincoln as Tarzan, that she met Colonel Fenton Carlyle. The famous English adventurer, big game hunter, and animal trainer had been commissioned to procure and train the two lions used in the movie. No one, it seemed, had such an affinity with large cats as did he. He showed her how to treat them to make them do her will. Because of her athleticism and daredevil attitude to execute whatever stunt was asked of her, she became the star of a series of adventure films about Diana the Lion Queen.
Throughout it all Fenton was there, watching every scene, just in case he was needed. Their closeness made it inevitable that he would pay her court. It was a whirlwind romance that resulted in their marriage a mere four weeks later at the Catholic Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills.
Blanche, by this time, had married, but separated from a movie producer, after finding him canoodling on a studio couch in his office with a would-be starlet. Yet she kept the name Fleming, which she too felt suited Hollywood more than the rustic name of McDonald. And so the newspapers announced to the world that Blanche Fleming, Kay du Maurier’s inseparable sister, was the matron of honor at the wedding.
Ironically, it was the same church where Rudolph Valentino’s second funeral would be held two years later, prior to his interment in the Hollywood Memorial Park Cemetery.