“It's been a pleasure,” I told her in all honesty. An unexpected pleasure, I could have said, but did not. “Thank you both for coming with me.”

“You did look pretty down. On Friday, I mean. I don't know what was wrong, but you looked like a real flat tire before you got some bubbly into you.”

She was too polite to ask, but I could see no real reason not to tell her why I'd been troubled—after all, I'd told a relative stranger that same night. “I had some bad news, Friday morning. An old friend of the family died.”

“Criminy, Mary, why didn't you say—”

“Oh, she died a long time ago, it's just that I only found out on Friday.” Flo's expressions of distress faded to a more appropriate level—after all, how close a friend could this have been, if it took me so long to hear about it? A question, indeed, that I had been asking myself. “She was the doctor who helped me, after the accident. A, well, a psychiatrist. I was in pretty bad shape then, mentally as well as physically, and she helped a lot. I'd hoped to see her, but I discovered she actually died within a few weeks of the time I went back to England in the winter of 1914. She was murdered.”

“Murdered! How absolutely dire! What was her name?”

“Ginzberg. Leah Ginzberg.”

“But—wait a tick. That sounds familiar.”

“She was famous, wasn't she?” Donny asked. “That was just after I came out from Chicago, and I remember a buzz about it. She was killed in her office, wasn't she?”

“That's right,” I said. “I wouldn't have said she was famous, but your friend Jerry knew of her. Or was it Terry? Terry, right. He and I were talking while I was resting my feet at the dance, and it came up.”

“Gosh, yes!” Flo exclaimed. “I remember now, she was famous—the Lady Mesmerist, they called her.”

“She did use hypnosis sometimes,” I agreed.

“There was some trial, wasn't there?” Donny's voice went thoughtful as he searched his memory. “She'd helped some girl come up with a memory, and the cops were making a stink, saying she was turning the courtroom into a vaudeville stage.”

“Really?” I said doubtfully. Flo chimed in.

“Wasn't that the girl claiming she had been assaulted? Mummy wouldn't let me see the papers, but I snuck them out of the trash. Yeah, they were saying the only reason she was making the charge was because she wanted to be an actress and thought it would get her noticed. Like the Fatty Arbuckle case, only that was later. And this girl didn't die.”

“She was a dancer—chorus line, not ballet,” Donny added, for my sake, “and told everyone she'd been knocked cold during the attack, and forgot the details. And your doctor friend helped her remember them—only the police said it was all hooey, that she'd just helped the girl come up with a story for why she hadn't made the charges when the attack happened instead of waiting nearly a year.”