To Davy Jones Below (Daisy Dalrymple Mysteries #9)
PROLOGUE
Caleb P. Arbuckle scowled. His long, bony face, had anyone observed it, would have conveyed extreme dissatisfaction. But his companion in the box at the Windmill Theatre, London, England, was not looking at him. Jethro Gotobed’s entire attention was fixed on the stage.
To be precise, Gotobed’s attention was on the third girl from the left in the front row of the chorus.
He had pointed her out. She was a looker, no doubt of that.
They all were, long-legged dolls with baby-doll faces, white-powdered and rouged, scarlet-mouthed; hair bobbed and marcelled; hemlines not a quarter inch below the centres of their knee-caps; necklines not a quarter inch above the level which would keep the Lord Chamberlain off the management’s necks.
Arbuckle sighed. He was no Puritan. What got his goat was not the sight of twenty-some pairs of bouncing bazooms, or twenty-some pairs of long legs in the latest skin-coloured artificial silk stockings, high-kicking for his amusement—and that of several hundred others.
No siree bob, to that he had no objection at all.
Nor was he dissatisfied with his company, not by a long shot. Gotobed was a mighty swell guy for a Limey, a business
acquaintance who had become a real pal. Arbuckle knew from sad experience that a millionaire has few real pals.
Those few were not to be sneezed at. Besides, Caleb P.
Arbuckle was not the sort to ditch a buddy in trouble, and that Broadway beauty hoofing it on the stage spelled trouble or he was a Dutchman.
As the number drew to a close with a flurry of kicks and a flourish of garters, Gotobed leaned closer to nudge Arbuckle.
“T’lass—Miss Fairchild—has her solo next,” he whispered.
The broad Yorkshire vowels which had at first flummoxed Arbuckle no longer puzzled him any more than a Texas drawl.
“She has a grand voice,” Gotobed continued.
“Might’ve bin an opera singer with the proper training.
O’ course, I’d pay for lessons like a shot, but she says it’s too late.
She doesn’t make any secret o’ being thirty, not to me.
Hush now, and you’ll hear summat worth listening to. ”
The light from the stage reflected off his beaming face, the large, ruddy face of a hick farmer, not the ’cute customer Arbuckle knew him to be.
Gotobed had made his millions in steel, and they were honest to God English millions, at five of Uncle Sam’s greenbacks to the pound sterling.
Yet the Fairchild floozy was jollying the poor boob along just as if he was the rube he looked.
She was getting set to take him for every penny he possessed.
Listen to her now:
“‘Darling, I am growing old,’” she crooned.
“‘Silver threads among the gold …’”
No spoony gaze for Gotobed. She was too savvy for anything so obvious. Nothing but a half-laughing, conspiratorial glance flashed up at the box. No grey hairs yet, that glance said, but you and I know I’m no spring chicken.
And Gotobed, as if on cue, passed his hand over his grizzled head and said defensively, “I know I’m twice her age, but it’s not as if she’s not old enough to know her own mind.”
Old enough to know her days in the chorus line would not last much longer, Arbuckle thought.
If she admitted to thirty, she was probably nearer forty.
A nice little voice, but not enough talent to go it alone, especially with vaudeville dying.
After all, it was 1923 and in this modern age, picture houses were all the rage.
Yes siree, Wanda Fairchild had her eye to the main chance, and Jethro Gotobed was the sap elected to provide for her future. Tarnation, he might even find himself tied up in matrimony if he didn’t watch out!
But not if Caleb P. Arbuckle had anything to say in the matter. A distraction, that was what was needed. The dawn of a plan glimmered in Arbuckle’s mind.