Chapter 9
Upon my return to the Mayfair Hotel, Mr. Hobart informed me that my cousins wanted to speak to me. I found them together in Flossy’s suite. She let me in, then woke her brother, sleeping on the sofa, by smacking the Ida Gainsborough biography against his foot.
“Ow.” He sat up and rubbed his foot. “That wasn’t necessary. I awoke when I heard you greet one another at the door. You sound like a flock of birds with your piercing voices.”
Flossy sat with a huffy flounce in the armchair. “It may not have been necessary, but it made me feel better. And we do not have piercing voices. We sound feminine and delicate.”
“I’ll concede that Cleo does, but your voice could challenge a fishwife in a calling contest.”
She shot him a withering glare. “You are just not worth the bother sometimes, Floyd. It’s no wonder respectable women avoid you.”
“That’s all right with me. I prefer disreputable women.”
She made a sound of disgust in her throat. “Cleo, please save me from this pig.”
I sat beside Floyd on the sofa. “Speaking of disreputable women—”
“Cleo!” Flossy cried. “Don’t encourage him.”
“This is about the hotel,” I told her. “Floyd, did you know that guest you want me to talk to takes courtesans to his room?”
Flossy gasped. “Who?”
“The tall, dark-haired one. Mr. Janson.”
“The handsome fellow who looks like Harry Armitage?”
“He doesn’t look like him. Harry is much more handsome, and he—” I cut myself off before I gave too much away.
“Janson doesn’t bring courtesans here, Cleo,” Floyd said. “I’d know if he did.”
“Why? Because you can tell by looking at them?”
“Well, yes. Obviously.”
“He would know,” Flossy agreed. “I can spot most, too. Their faces are painted, and their clothes are ghastly.”
“Not all match the stereotype,” I said.
“How do you know, Cleo?”
Before I could answer, Floyd shook his head emphatically. “Janson can bring in his mistress if he wants, but I’m quite sure he doesn’t.”
While ladies of disrepute touting for business weren’t welcome in London’s luxury hotels, including the Mayfair, those who were invited by guests were an exception. Staff tended to turn a blind eye as long as they were discreet and didn’t linger in the foyer or bother the other guests.
“Cleo, how do you know that fellow brings courtesans here?” Flossy asked again. “Is it because he has a different woman on his arm every day? I did notice that.”
“They’re not courtesans,” Floyd said with a roll of his eyes. “He’s just handsome and charming, and that attracts the ladies. As you know, Cleo.”
I ignored the implication, but my response came out rather smug. “I know because Harry told me.”
Floyd snorted. “He can tell, can he?”
“He remembers that guest from when he worked here. Are you suggesting Harry wouldn’t be aware of the goings-on in the hotel when he was assistant manager?”
That silenced Floyd. He knew Harry was very good at his job. Like his uncle, Mr. Hobart, Harry knew everything that happened in the hotel, more so than members of my family.
Flossy made a face again. “That guest has gone down considerably in my view. Honestly, Floyd, why do you think such a man as that would be a good match for Cleo?”
Floyd put up his hands in surrender. “All right, I give up. You don’t have to speak to him, Cleo. I’ll tell my father to strike Janson off the list of potential suitors.”
“You have a list of potential suitors for me?”
“Not just you. There’s a list for Flossy, too.” Floyd caught the cushion his sister threw at him then tucked it behind his back. “We’ll strike Janson off, I promise. Pity though. He really would have been perfect for you, Cleo.”
“Why?” Flossy asked.
“It no longer matters.” Floyd bent to put his shoes back on, having slipped them off to lie on the sofa. “Oh, I found Mathers for you.”
“Is he staying at another hotel in London?” I asked.
Floyd shook his head. “He’s at his mother’s cousin’s house in Hampstead.”
“Why so far out?” Flossy asked.
“Probably penny pinching.”
“Can you write down the address for me?” I asked.
He removed a piece of paper from his pocket and gave it to me. “I already did. I also managed to get us invited to the ball the cousin is throwing tomorrow night. You too, Floss.”
Flossy lightly clapped her hands. “Well done, Floyd. But is Mother up to it?”
“Our parents aren’t coming. I’ll chaperone you both.”
Flossy blinked at him. “And Mother approves?”
“Of course. She thinks I’m very responsible now.”
“How curious.”
Floyd tied his shoelaces while Flossy asked me which of our ball gowns we should wear. Lamenting the lack of time to prepare, she changed her mind four times before Floyd rose.
He walked quickly to the door. “Goodnight, ladies. I won’t be joining you for dinner. My club beckons. Good luck, Cleo. I hope you can escape before my sister kills you with boredom.”
Flossy gave him yet another withering glare. Once he was gone, she turned to me. “Definitely the pink for me, but I think you should wear that soft sage green gown. It’s lovely.”
I knew the one she meant. It was the same color as the dress worn by Ida Gainsborough the day before. I leaned over and picked up the biography from the table. I opened it to the page marked with a blue ribbon three-quarters of the way.
“The book!” Flossy moved to sit beside me on the sofa. “May I?”
I handed it to her and watched as she flipped through the pages.
“I read all day in the library today,” she said.
“That’s where you were hiding! I went looking for you at lunchtime, but no one knew where to find you.”
“I missed luncheon completely. The book was so interesting, I lost track of time. Did you know Ida Gainsborough is not her real name? It’s Edith Gower.
She was born and raised right here in London, in Spitalfields.
She had quite a difficult life as the middle child of five, with a drunk father and a mother who seemed perpetually sad.
” Flossy found the page she was looking for and pointed to a paragraph.
“This is where it gets really interesting. After early success on stage, her popularity grew when she was still quite young. Chester Bradbury writes that the success went to her head, and she became demanding. There were all manner of stories about her prima donna behavior. For example, after the age of thirty, she refused to rehearse because she thought she was already perfect. When traveling around the country, she required a carriage all to herself, furnished elaborately. And at one point, she kept a pet monkey that she’d let roam around backstage.
It used to steal things, and had a particular liking for the conductor’s hairpiece.
Then there was the time she demanded a theater knock down a wall to make her dressing room larger.
Another time, she wouldn’t perform until the stage lighting was changed to be more flattering. ”
“She sounds like she was difficult, to be sure, but none of that is terribly scandalous,” I said. “Certainly nothing to get too upset about, all these years later when it’s included in her biography.”
Flossy tapped the page. “That’s not all. One producer claimed she performed drunk every evening. They had to provide extra props for her to hold onto because she could barely stand.” Flossy turned some pages. “And this bit says she had affairs with her leading men.”
“Which ones?”
Flossy cupped her mouth and lowered her voice to a whisper. “All of them.”
I didn’t know much about Ida Gainsborough’s career, but I did know she’d been an actress for many years. “She must have been in dozens of plays. Dozens and dozens.”
“Exactly! Sometimes the leading men were ones she’d performed with before, but still…
it’s quite a lot.” Flossy’s cheeks pinked and her gaze fell to the page.
“I know some women are quite loose, but usually courtesans who make a career out of being mistresses are loyal to the same gentleman for a few years. Miss Gainsborough is…” She shook her head, unable to think of the word she wanted.
“An adult?” I suggested. “Capable of steering the course of her own life in the way she chose?”
Flossy tilted her head to the side to regard me.
“That’s not what I meant, Cleo. You make it sound like women should be allowed to have dozens of lovers, but we both know that’s not how the world works.
Anyway, it’s not fair that she, or any woman, can do that and I can’t even go to a ball unchaperoned. ”
I indicated the book. “She is being judged for her choice. She hasn’t sailed through life unscathed by gossip, censure, then outright ostracism in more recent years.”
“I suppose. According to Chester Bradbury, Miss Gainsborough has paid for her behavior. When she was young, beautiful and popular with the public, she could get away with anything, and she did. But as she passed forty, she could no longer play the main roles. The one time she did, the reviews were brutal. By then, everyone had grown tired of her demands and tantrums, too, so producers stopped giving her lead roles. That upset her even more, and she responded by being mean. Any friends she still had in the theater industry abandoned her, and she found herself completely excluded. Even the minor roles dried up. Chester Bradbury actually writes rather sympathetically about her at that point, saying she was a victim of success at a young age.”
Clearly Ida Gainsborough didn’t think he was sympathetic. “She was going to take him to court over what he wrote, before he died.”