Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 38, No. 13, Mid-December 1993

I hadn’t been meant to hear that. I gave her a squeeze on one shoulder. She winced and moved to her position in line. When I realized she thought I’d squeezed a bruise on purpose, to make her get ready, I had to take three deep breaths. And Laszlo thought this was for his benefit and patted me on the thigh.

The door opened, and we had a job to do. A blast of wind hit us, half ice and half cheers. We put our heads down and shoved out into it, like clockwork figures.

We started with songs from the last war — “Over There,” “Kit Bag,” “Tipperary” — working up, of course, to “We Did It Before and We Can Do It Again.” The crowd could sing along with those, drowning out the fact that very few of us had made it in musicals. They didn’t really care. Life was different out there; we were interrupted by cheers instead of by “Cut! Wrong again!”

They all looked just the same in every depot: the clubwomen, the kids with their autograph books, the old men in old uniforms. Gangling youths gangled on all sides, hoping to get close enough to say something to those of us who had been on magazine covers.

Most of them, though, were there for The Child Star. And she was suddenly there for them. Dimples had blossomed out of a desert. Her smile exposed glistening teeth to the sleet and screaming wind. And when her little fists prompted the crowd through “The Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming,” the wind was drowned out. She bounced, she danced, she spun. She spoke to them all at once, seeming to address each one personally, her hands behind her back and her knees bent over just ever so, lest someone notice that Baby Eloise was taller than she had been in 1938.

I had seen her do all this before. But there was more to it now. When General Lorenzo’s beleaguered battalion was rescued in that silly skit by Special Courier Bevis’s secret weapon (Baby Eloise leaping out of his knapsack to announce that the folks back home were buying lots of bonds, so everything would soon be peachy), my eyes picked up things they hadn’t before. There was the way Bevis held the knapsack. There was the way The Child Star adjusted her pose now and then when Bevis accidentally touched a bruise.

None of that was part of the show; these weren’t the kind of things the audience wanted in French Willow. We were allowed to let our eyes water when the wind hit them, especially during the mayor’s speech about our boys over there and our noble effort to drum up support. And when he helped dump out the fan mail that showed how much the people of French Willow and its environs appreciated our work, some of our squeals were real. He’d let some fall under the train; that was how many we’d have to replace before the next stop. Between the coal and the envelopes, I wondered whether the government was really coming out ahead on this trip. Even the stamps had to add up to something, if only three cents each.

I thought about that. Then I slipped out the sugar bowl warning I’d transferred to the pocket of this coat when I changed, just in case it was an important clue. I cupped my hands to keep it out of sight and out of the wind, and looked it over.

The stamp had been canceled. It was a real one.

Where it could have come from, I had no idea, not having received any real fan letters on that trip. The Child Star probably hadn’t kept any, but Mrs. Marr might have, just to show off when Baby Eloise’s contract came up for renegotiation. If Jewell was right about the studio’s having some spy on board to check the real mail, this warning could have come from the spy, letting me know I shouldn’t mess with the studio’s plans. Or the murderer, busy helping The Child Star with those bottles, might have picked it up anywhere once it had been delivered to the train. Where was real mail delivered on this chain of cardboard boxes?

I looked around at our happy chorus. Somebody there had to be a doer of don’ts; there absolutely had to be someone besides The Child Star involved in the death of Mrs. Marr. Because Baby Eloise could not have lugged that bag of mail to the platform between cars without falling overboard herself.

Laszlo came through, distributing pens as we dragged out the last few songs to allow the crowd to get into lines. The next bit of the show had to be improvised. We would talk about anything, autograph anything, as long as the fan bought a bond, or even a stamp. Sissy and I were motioned in closer to The Child Star. We braced for the onslaught.

They always moved in force, to congratulate us for the fine patriotic effort we’d been ordered to make. Every single one of us — even Laszlo — got autograph books shoved at him. Most of our names were no great treasure, but that didn’t matter much. They didn’t want a souvenir of us but of the occasion.