The heavy ring of keys rattled and clinked about Mrs. Mortimer’s waist as she made tea at the little stove and counter in one corner of her spacious office. Well, of course, Lulu thought absently. The housekeeper would have to get into every room in the house. She bet that big one was the key to the elaborate front door, which had been pulled from a Spanish church. Others were small and pedestrian, no doubt room keys. One brass key had a lion’s head on it. She tried to remember where she’d seen that before.
Mrs. Mortimer bustled with things Lulu couldn’t see while the tea steeped. Lulu was anxious. Why were they wasting so much time here when they should be telling someone about Paul Raleigh? What if he regained consciousness and escaped?
As she tapped her fingertips impatiently against her leg, Lulu began to replay the scene with Paul. He’d been emotional, verbally aggressive . . . but had he actually threatened her with that letter opener? “You know,” she said to Mrs. Mortimer, “the more I think about it, the more I think maybe Paul didn’t actually mean to harm anyone. Is that crazy? I was so scared at the time, but now that I’m calm I wonder if . . .”
Mrs. Mortimer turned and looked at Lulu sharply. “Wondering will get you into trouble, girl.”
“Yes, but what if he’s not the murderer? Maybe it really is John Emerson. Or someone else entirely. I always thought maybe a woman . . .”
The housekeeper fixed Lulu with a long, strange look. Then she gave a little sigh. “You’re better than the others,” she said. “What a shame. Still . . .”
To Lulu’s frustration, Mrs. Mortimer returned to her tea preparations. She scooped a heaping spoonful of pale crystals from a pink-flowered porcelain bowl and sprinkled it in one of the cups. Lulu opened her mouth to tell Mrs. Mortimer she didn’t care for any sugar but then reconsidered. The mandates of her nutrition coach shouldn’t matter at a time like this. So she didn’t say anything as the stoic housekeeper set down two matching teacups, the sugared one in front of Lulu, the other across the intimate round table.
As she set the teacups down, Lulu noticed that the housekeeper’s large, square hands were shaking slightly.
There was a soft knock, and a look of annoyance crossed the housekeeper’s face, but she unlocked the door and opened it a crack. Lulu heard her talking to one of the maids about whether she’d found the missing judge, Paul Raleigh.
For whatever reason, most likely the nagging voice of Lulu’s nutrition coach relentlessly ringing in her ears, she used this opportunity to switch the identical flowered teacups. The vain, actress obsession with keeping her figure didn’t even dissipate in the face of mortal danger, she noted wryly. This seemed less fuss than asking the gravely shaken Mrs. Mortimer for a fresh cup. Lulu took a sip of the plain oolong, sighing as the soothing brew warmed and calmed her. The English have it right, she thought. A nice cup of tea can help almost any trouble.
Mrs. Mortimer closed the door and sat down across from Lulu. “Drink up, my dear,” she said, and Lulu obliged. Mrs. Mortimer didn’t touch her own tea, but watched Lulu intensely. Probably expecting me to break into delayed hysterics at any moment, Lulu thought. But all the young actress felt was relief, and a strong desire to leave Hearst and his Ranch behind.
“You really are an interesting girl, Lulu Kelly,” Mrs. Mortimer said. “I happen to know that Anita was quite gung ho in your favor. She thought you’d be ideal for the role.” Her breath made ripples on the surface of her tea as she lifted it to her thin lips. “You’d think, being a more mature woman, Anita would have the sense to see that pretty little chits like you will never have the experience, the passion to be great actresses.”
Lulu frowned slightly and started to rise. “Shouldn’t we . . . ?”
“Sit down!” Mrs. Mortimer snapped, and half rose herself. The ring of keys jingled, and suddenly Lulu remembered where she’d seen that lion-head key before. It was the key that opened all of the carnivore cages in Hearst’s menagerie. But the keeper said he had the only one.
And then Lulu froze. No, it couldn’t be. She couldn’t have been wrong twice.
The maid bringing in the shoes she’d just cleaned, saying she got off all the mud.
The rip in the shoulder of the black dress, torn after great exertion.
Ginnie looking for her supervisor after hearing the argument, but she was nowhere to be found . . . right at the time of the murder.
Mrs. Mortimer had the keys to the tiger cage, keys to every locked door in the Ranch.
She was big, powerful. Look how she’d hit Paul with that heavy marble lamp, how easily she’d dragged his limp body to the chair.
It fit. But why would Mrs. Mortimer kill Juliette and Dolores? It couldn’t be possible. Unless . . .
She remembered the snippet Freddie had told her about the housekeeper’s long connection with Marion. Lulu had been thinking the murders were crimes of passion, or insanity. What if the motivating factor was not just a combination of those two things, but above all, an act of loyalty?
Lulu realized she’d been staring at the lion-head key, and tore her eyes away, but not, she thought, before Mrs. Mortimer noticed what she was looking at.
I have to be calm, Lulu told herself. She can’t suspect I know. Right now she thinks I’m convinced Paul is the killer. And maybe he is. Probably he is. It can’t be Mrs. Mortimer. Can it?
“I see you admiring my menagerie key. It’s quite beautiful, don’t you think?” She smiled and took a long sip of her tea.
“Too clever for your own good,” the housekeeper murmured. “Smart enough to get into a fix but not quite smart enough to get out of it again. I was so pleased when you put together all the clues that led to Emerson as your chief suspect. The police and Mr. Hearst’s own investigators should have done it long before you.” She gave a little chuckle that made shivers creep down Lulu’s spine. “After all, I set up the evidence so neatly for them.”
That nonchalant confession made Lulu more frightened than Emerson’s paranoid ravings, more terrified even than the moment Paul brandished the deadly sharp letter opener. This woman killed two young actresses! And here she was, sitting calmly across from Lulu, brazenly admitting what she’d done.
Lulu glanced desperately toward the door. Confessing in a locked room—a room with a row of knives, from fillet blades to heavy cleavers, hanging on the wall.
But Mrs. Mortimer made no move.
“Of course,” she went on calmly, “Emerson incriminated himself with his own foolish ties to Juliette. I just helped it along. Do you have the love letter I stole from Juliette’s room and hid on her body? When it wasn’t with the personal effects you gave me, I had high hopes that the police would close in on him fast. But those incompetent fools didn’t even find Emerson’s tiepin I left at the scene of Dolores’s death. That was you again. You were meddling so helpfully . . . for a while.”
She held her teacup in both hands, warming them.
“But I don’t understand,” Lulu said gently, once again relying on her acting experience. “Why did you kill them?”
The housekeeper jumped to her feet, setting her teacup down so violently that half the contents sloshed out. Even in her fury, she scooped up a cloth from the counter and blotted up the spill. “Those little tramps were taking my lady’s place!”
“You mean . . . Marion?”
“Marion Davies is a great star. You little snot-nose pretenders can’t rightfully even breathe the same air as her. She is more than a legend, though. She is the noblest, kindest, most beautiful woman in the world. That role should have been hers! A custom creation from the great Anita Loos and some cute little nobody of an ingenue gets it? Over my dead body!” She chuckled. “Or theirs, I should say.”
“You killed them so that Marion could have the role?” Lulu asked.
“Juliette was blackmailing Emerson with that letter he wrote to her, promising to divorce Anita. Juliette was a clever girl, too. She didn’t want marriage from Emerson. She wanted the role of a lifetime. In that argument the maid overheard, he had all but agreed to force Anita to join him in naming Juliette the winner.”
“Would she have agreed?” Lulu didn’t think the strong-minded Anita could be so easily convinced.
“Oh, my dear, you still don’t understand what a precarious life we women lead. Even with all of Anita’s fame, do you think the studios take her seriously without a man’s name attached to her? Emerson gets her into the meetings. Even at the peak of her success, no one would read her scripts unless they were a Loos-Emerson affair.” Despite her terrified state, Lulu was indignant on Anita’s behalf.
“During the fight, Emerson accused Juliette of infidelity. He’d seen the wrapped present on her bed and snatched it up. He thought that scarf—the one all the actresses were supposed to get—was a present from a lover. He threw it at her. They screamed and fought, they made up, and amid tender whispers that the maid couldn’t hear, he promised her the part. I had followed that little tramp, and I heard everything. When he left, it was a simple matter to strangle that insignificant nothing right out of the running.”
The housekeeper made a twisting motion with her meaty hands.
“And you dragged her into the dining room? But there were no muddy footprints.”
Mrs. Mortimer raised her eyebrows and regarded Lulu archly. “When you’ve cleaned floors for a living, you leave your muddy shoes outside. Even if you have others to clean up after you.”
The motivations beginning to click, Lulu said, “And you must have found out that Sal Benedetto had made a deal with Hearst to give Dolores the role after that.”
“Those powerful men are always scheming. You’d think Hearst would have insisted Marion have the part. But no. I think he was afraid. He’s kept her in roles that are beneath her all these years. What if she won an Academy Award? Maybe she wouldn’t need him anymore. He’s supremely selfish, but he loves her. That’s the only reason he’s still alive.”
She’d kill Hearst? Lulu shivered.
“So you drugged Dolores and . . . and . . .”
“It was easy pinning the first on Emerson, but he had no real connection to Dolores. I set up the evidence implicating him, but I made sure that at first glance it would look like an accident, a foolish whim of a silly, drunk actress that went horribly wrong. The police would have left it at that, if it weren’t for you.”
Lulu glanced at the door. “I admire your loyalty, Mrs. Mortimer. I won’t tell. I promise.”
Mrs. Mortimer chuckled. “Of course you won’t, my dear. Do you think I would have spilled the beans otherwise? You won’t reveal my secrets, and you won’t be Anita’s pick for the role of a lifetime. No, you won’t tell anything to anyone ever again.”
“You’re . . . you’re going to kill me?” Lulu asked, wondering if she could get to the knives before Mrs. Mortimer, and if she’d have the fortitude to use one.
The laugh grew wilder. “You poor child, I already have killed you!”
Lulu felt a sick dread in the pit of her stomach. “What do you mean?”
“I tried it before, but you spilled the coffee. Oh, that time I only wanted to make you ill. I figured if you were vomiting and fainting, you’d be in no state to continue your investigations.”
“You poisoned my coffee?”
“Just a bit,” she said coyly. “This time, though . . .”
The spoonful of crystals in one cup, but not the other.
And then Mrs. Mortimer smiled calmly, picked up her cup, and swallowed the rest of her tea. “This time I gave you enough poison to finish things off. Can’t taste it, can you? These deadly crystals are sweet, and dissolve quickly. Though even if it tasted off, you’re such a polite little thing you probably would have drunk it all down just to spare my feelings.”
With a surge of relief so strong it made her woozy, Lulu thought, I just have to wait. When the poison Mrs. Mortimer accidentally swallowed herself took effect, Lulu would take the keys and . . .
Then she saw the housekeeper’s face twist in disbelief . . . then rage . . . then pain. She doubled over, clutching her stomach. “You . . . What did you do? How did you know?” She staggered to her feet, shoving the table hard against Lulu, who tumbled backward and hit her head on the floor. Momentarily stunned, she blinked heavily, seeing stars. Dimly, she was aware of Mrs. Mortimer staggering across her office, not toward Lulu, but toward the little kitchen section. The part of the room where the knives were hanging.
Lulu managed to get to her knees, but her head was ringing, and she felt unsteady and sick. She saw Mrs. Mortimer pull the biggest knife off the hook and then reject it for the long, thin, deadly sharp filleting knife.
All at once there was a commotion outside the door. Snuffling and barks. A girl’s voice. And then the dearest sound in the world.
“Lulu!” Freddie called. “Where are you?”
“No!” the housekeeper shrieked. “They can’t save you. I won’t let you be the hero, the darling who solved the murders.” She lunged unsteadily toward Lulu, who started to crawl under the table. “If you live, your picture will be in all the papers. You’ll be bigger than ever, and my Marion will fade into obscurity. Come out from under there, you insignificant wretch!” She slashed at Lulu, but the poison must have been taking hold, and she fell to her knees too.
Lulu heard pounding on the door. “Freddie, I’m in here!” she called at the top of her lungs as she desperately tried to scuttle out of the way of the flailing knife.
She and Mrs. Mortimer were both kneeling now, facing each other. But Lulu, recovering from the blow to her head, was getting stronger. The housekeeper, succumbing to her own poison, was weakening. The door juddered as Freddie threw himself against it again and again.
“Freddie, help me!” she shrieked as Mrs. Mortimer lunged for her, slashing at her face. She threw herself backward and felt a strange sensation across her chest, as if she’d been struck by an icicle. Then there was a huge crash and the room was a blurry, roaring confusion of snapping dogs and shouting as Freddie hurled himself on top of Mrs. Mortimer so that they both went down with a mighty thud. Lulu crawled backward until the table was between them, so she couldn’t see what happened next. But Freddie was here! He’d saved her!
The housekeeper shoved Freddie off and somehow managed to stand, breathing hard, clutching her gut with one hand. In the other she still held the knife. It was slick with blood, which dripped down her hand.
Freddie was on the ground, pale and unmoving, a bloodstain slowly expanding on his chest.
“Not in the script,” Mrs. Mortimer said, “but I can certainly work with improvisation. I used to be a great actress, you know.” She staggered toward Lulu again, but the frantically yipping dogs wove around her feet, bringing her down to the floor.
She didn’t get up again. Lulu saw bloody foam bubble from Mrs. Mortimer’s lips as the housekeeper glared malevolently at her. Then, slowly, the hateful glare faded and her eyes were blank and staring.
Lulu all but threw herself on Freddie. “My darling, my own love,” she said, kissing him. “You saved me!” She pressed at the stab wound. “You need a doctor. Patricia, stay with him!”
Freddie tried to call her back, but she was desperate to get help. She ran through the Ranch, but it was strangely deserted. Then she remembered—everyone was gathered for the competition, even the staff. She raced toward the theater where the show was taking place. The structure was a massive maze of corridors and doorways, but she was certain the entrance was close. Was that the sound of applause somewhere to her left? She threw open the unfamiliar door in front of her.
Bursting through, she found herself in a glaring spotlight. She was on the stage, looking out over an audience of all of her friends and Hearst’s guests.
“The . . . the murderer! I caught her!”
But the entire packed theater just sat there, mouths agape.
“Help! Someone! Anyone . . . Why are you all just sitting there?” she shouted into the darkness, blinded by the searing light, hot tears running down her face.
“You’ve got to help me! He’s dying!” she pleaded through her sobs to the mute, unmoving mass of bodies. “What’s wrong with you? Have you no compassion or humanity?” She fell to her knees, whimpering. “Why are you just staring at me? Please do something! I’m begging you!”
And then she stood again, disheveled, frightened, determined, and lovely, blood dripping from a slash across her chest. She looked like every great heroine of stage and screen come dramatically to life.
The audience, until then silent, suddenly leaped to their feet and erupted in thunderous applause.