"Not quite," one old lady ventured. "There is that Arnold Rothstein thing."
Eva sniffed. "It was me, not Emily, that he stood up that night."
"Is that so?" someone asked nastily. "Then you've been lying about your age all these years. Unless you were dating him when you were twelve years old."
"You have a lot of nerve," Eva countered. "You were in theaters before ladies' smoking rooms were." A murmur of approval ran through the crowd. It had been a most worthy insult.
"Oh, come, come," Adelle ordered them. "Her death is not connected to some gangland murder committed sixty years ago." She looked at Auntie Lil and rolled her well-painted eyes. "Eva here has fantasized for over six decades now that she was supposed to go out on a date with Arnold Rothstein the night he was gunned down."
"I was," Eva insisted. "He stood me up."
"You and a dozen others, sweetie," someone said. "He was not the faithful type."
"We thought, briefly, that maybe Emily had set him up somehow," Adelle told Auntie Lil. "And his gang had taken their time on the revenge. But I don't see how she could have. She didn't even come to New York until 1937 as near as we can tell."
"She was too plain for him anyway," Eva insisted, patting her absurdly black hair primly into place over her growing bald spot. "I ought to know."
Auntie Lil sighed deeply and drummed the table impatiently with her sturdy fingers. "We need to go about this in an organized fashion," she told the table. "You'll just have to trust me on this. After all, I am a professional, practically, and I'm sure you ladies can appreciate the difference between an amateur and a professional."
"Certainly," Adelle allowed graciously. "The show must go on."
"Exactly. So what I'd like to do is ask you some questions about Emily. I know you don't think you remember much, but you never know when a highly astute question from me can reveal the hidden truth."
No one seemed miffed at Auntie Lil's lack of modesty and they all nodded in agreement.
"If you have anything to add, please speak up," Auntie Lil instructed them. "Otherwise, it might be best to try and remain silent. Opinion is not what we are looking for here, just the facts." It was as diplomatic as Auntie Lil ever got and the old ladies nodded in solemn agreement again.
"My first question is, when did you originally meet Emily?"
"I met her in 1939," Adelle answered promptly. "We were chorus girls in Hellzapoppin together. I had a front-row spot and helped her along. She really wasn't a very good dancer, just well endowed."
"I met her right after she came to New York," Eva sniffed, "I think it was late 1938. We shared rooms in the same boarding house on Thirty-Sixth Street. She was already putting on airs about Our Town and going around calling herself Emily Toujours."
"What about the rest of you?" Auntie Lil asked the remaining actresses scattered around the table. After separating the babble of voices that answered, she determined that a few had known Emily briefly in the early forties and the remainder had not known her at all until the last few years.
"Why did you lose contact with her for so many years?" Auntie Lil asked those who had known Emily many years ago.
"I lost contact with her after the show," Adelle admitted. "We hadn't much in common and when the war started, I got a spot with A1 Jolson's revue. We went overseas, you know. The man was tireless. How the soldiers loved him. They loved me, too, of course. I was gone for nearly a year and when I returned, we never renewed our friendship. I saw her around town now and then, but that was all."
One of the actresses looked up sharply and stared at Adelle. Auntie Lil did not fail to notice it.
"I kept up with her," Eva volunteered. "Sort of like you'd keep your eye on a snake." She ignored the protests that met this slur. "We were on speaking terms for a few more years, but she moved away from New York in 1944, I believe it was. To marry some sappy officer in the Air Force."
"You don't know the name of the man she married?" Auntie Lil asked.
"No. He was from Kansas or Missouri or Illinois or Ohio or some place like that," Eva said glumly. "I think his first name was Homer or Harold or Horace, or something dreadfully Midwestern."