“Suffragettes!”

The call came from a knot of college boys at the edge of Washington Square as Hetty and I pedaled into the park. It was just a taunt intended to get a little attention, as young men have tried to do with women from the cave days. . .and probably will until the Crack of Doom.

Had they known that my reporter friend and I were almost old enough to be their mothers, they would have run away screaming. But of course, Hetty and I, two unmarried professional women well into our thirties, look nothing like the blowsy “respectable” mamas who clearly brought them up so badly.

My friend and I just shook our heads and aimed our velocipedes down one of our favorite paths. The velocipede is hardly the symbol of the suffragette these days, but it undoubtedly IS the symbol of the New Woman, if only because it enables us to do something other than sit in one place and await men’s orders.

Not that either of us is ever especially interested in men’s orders. The only man Hetty has to please is her editor at the Beacon, Morrison. He, unfortunately, continues to remind her that someone has to write about hats, and since she’s one of two women on the paper, that someone is her. Unless, of course, she turns up with a better story. . .and I keep doing my best to help.

I’m in a good position to do so. As an opera singer of some note, known for performing trouser roles (male parts, like Romeo, sung by women because of the vocal range), I move in rather interesting circles. Certainly things were interesting at the moment, with a British duke wandering about town trying to determine why my most recent Juliet had drunk real poison and died on stage. The poor girl was his cousin, and I was helping him find what answers we could.

As, of course, any ethical and feeling human would do. The girl I’d known as Violette St. Claire was not the best or most pleasant colleague I had ever had, but she was my employee and I was responsible for her. My mother, Malka “Molly” Steinmetz O’Shaugnessy, always said: “If you’ve wronged someone, it’s not enough to apologize to God. You have to make it right with them, too.”

Well, I couldn’t make it right with poor Violette. But I could help her grieving cousin get some answers – on his own terms. Which is why I had set up the tea and interview for him and Hetty. Sooner or later, some gossipmonger was going to see the Duke and start making wild assumptions. Far better a dignified article in a good paper, handled with the skill and sensitivity of my excellent friend.

If that happened to give Hetty a respite from hats, it was simply a pleasant consequence of doing the right thing.

The Duke was rather pleasant too, I thought, as Hetty and I turned down another path. Not the usual run of Peers, who tend to be old, cranky and pretentious, he actually seems to be more of a person, than a personage who must be addressed as “Your Grace.” A passable fencing partner, too, though of course I gave him a draw only as a matter of politeness. And yes, I must admit quite nice to look at. Unlike those scruffy college fellows, he’s dapper and elegant, with enough time on him to make him interesting.

Not too interesting, though. I have a very nice life in the townhouse I share with my beloved cousin Tommy Hurley, former boxing champ and now manager of the Ella Shane Opera Company. Tommy and I have been looking out for each other since we were tenement kids on the Lower East Side, and always will. While Tommy isn’t the marrying kind, he’s lately been urging me to re-consider my views on family life, pointing out that there are a fair number of New Men in the world these days, and I might find a suitable one. Of course, one who passes muster with him — and his best friend Father Michael, and our informal uncle, sports columnist Preston Dare too!

“Hey!” Hetty was pulling out in front of me. “Where ARE you?”

I laughed. “Too far from here.”

“C’mon. It’s too pretty a day to loll along.”

She was right about that. I leaned forward on the handlebars and started pedaling harder. All of the trouble and confusion in my world would be there after our ride. . .and I might as well enjoy a good spin on a spring day.

A Fatal Finale is the first book in the NEW “Ella Shane” historical cozy mystery series, released April 28, 2020.

On the cusp of the twentieth century, Manhattan is a lively metropolis buzzing with talent. But after a young soprano meets an untimely end on stage, can one go-getting leading lady hit the right notes in a case of murder?

New York City, 1899. When it comes to show business, Gilded Age opera singer Ella Shane wears the pants. The unconventional diva breaks the mold by assuming “trouser roles”—male characters played by women—and captivating audiences far and wide with her travelling theatre company. But Ella’s flair for the dramatic takes a terrifying turn when an overacting Juliet to her Romeo drinks real poison during the final act of Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi.

Weeks after the woman’s death is ruled a tragic accident, a mysterious English duke arrives in Greenwich Village on a mission. He’s certain someone is getting away with murder, and the refined aristocrat won’t travel back across the Atlantic until Ella helps him expose the truth.

As Ella finds herself caught between her craft and a growing infatuation with her dashing new acquaintance, she’s determined to decode the dark secrets surrounding her co-star’s fatale finale—before the lights go dark and the culprit appears for an encore . . .

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Meet the author
Kathleen Marple Kalb grew up in front of a microphone and a keyboard. She’s now a weekend morning anchor at 1010 WINS New York, capping a career begun as a teenage DJ in Brookville, Pennsylvania. While she wrote her first (thankfully unpublished) historical novel at age sixteen, fiction was firmly in the past until her son started kindergarten and she tried again. She, her husband the Professor, and their son the Imp, live in a Connecticut house owned by their cat.

All comments are welcomed.