"This is no time to let our pride get in the way," T.S. suggested pleasantly, though he felt like spanking more than a few of them. The old ladies followed in a tentative bunch, inching forward as suspiciously as a flock of wild ducks confronted with a bread-toting stranger. They approached the small crowd of policemen and the two groups stared silently at one another. T.S. was reminded of the dreary school dances he'd endured as a young lad in Catholic prep school.
"Well?" Officer King demanded after a moment of antagonistic silence had passed.
"Well, what?" T.S. asked back innocently. If he could seize control before Auntie Lil jumped into the fray, there was a chance they could get somewhere.
"No one knew the dead lady?" the cop asked skeptically. "Not one of you? It looks to me like she was part of your club."
"We told you," Adelle said indignantly. "We called her Emily."
Officer King fell silent and his partner stepped forward. "Ma'am," she explained patiently, "one name is not going to get us very far in New York City. Out of all of you, not one of you knew her last name?"
"She liked being called Emily Toujours," a small voice piped up from the center of the pack. "Because she'd been an understudy to Martha Scott in the original Our Town. Back in 1938."
"She said she'd been an understudy," another voice objected. "I never saw her in it."
"Oh, shut up, Eva," someone else suggested. "You're the one who lied about being in Sailor Beware! for about thirty years and went around calling herself Eva La Louche until we checked the playbill and found out you'd only been an assistant stage manager." An excited murmur ran through the crowd of old ladies in response to the obvious insult.
"You mean Emily Toujours wasn't even her real name?" Auntie Lil interrupted, ignoring the incipient pandemonium brewing behind her.
"It was real to her," Adelle insisted.
"Perhaps Actors' Equity would have her real name on record," T.S. suggested.
This produced a round of titters from the old women, who giggled at his layman's ignorance until Adelle explained. "She wasn't in Equity, love. She hadn't worked in over forty years and none of us can afford the dues."
"It's her own fault for running off and getting married," Eva's persistently dissident voice interjected. "Imagine. Abandoning Broadway in 1945. What a fool she was."
"You haven't worked in that long either," someone pointed out. "And you didn't even get married, Eva."
Another young cop stepped forward into the fray and the old actresses were momentarily distracted as they examined this handsome young personage and admired his uniform. He stood, totally surrounded by them, scratching an ear and trying to decide the best way to deal with a pack of demented old ladies. "It's just that she had no identification on her," he finally explained kindly. "So we have no way of knowing where she lives, or who in her family to contact."
"Hah!" Adelle sputtered. "That's easy enough. She has no family;"
"Well, where did she live?" Officer King interrupted brusquely, elbowing the young pup of an upstart patrolman aside. This time, both the assembled old ladies and the other officers glared. Clearly, he was not scoring points on anyone's popularity meter.
"In a shelter, we think," one of the actresses admitted reluctantly. "We're not really sure, because she was rather a private person."
"Definitely a shelter," one old woman confirmed, pushing her way to the front. She was obviously Eva of the discontent voice. She was plumper than the rest and wore her hair in a badly chosen pixie haircut that was dyed jet black and made even wispier by the fact that she was going bald and her pink scalp peeked through. T.S. decided she was stuck in the Audrey Hepburn era, which was unfortunate, since she lacked about three feet of the required height.
"She'd have put on airs, if she had her own apartment," Eva added, crossing her arms defiantly when no one responded.
"Now, Eva, that's just not true," Adelle chided gently. "You really must get over your feud. For heaven's sake, she's dead now. Let it go."
"I should have been the one asked to 20th Century," Eva said sourly, folding her arms even more tightly across her ample chest. "I'm the one that Mr. Zanuck noticed first."
"But nothing came of it," someone in the middle of the pack protested, voice dripping with exasperation. "It's not like she became a star and you didn't."