The Impersonator Read Online Free PDF

couldn’t help wondering, What really happened to her?
    Firmly I pushed that thought aside. Never mind the heiress. I was in this for the money. Thoughts of the real Jessamyn Carr dimmed, like a fade-out at the end of a sad moving picture.

 
    6
     
    A faint knock at my bedroom door. A creaking noise. The ruddy round cheeks of the housekeeper peeping in once again. Yes, I was awake. Yes, I could see Mr. Oliver Beckett. “As soon as I’m dressed, I’ll come—”
    But he was right behind her.
    I pushed myself up against the pillows and yawned as Oliver lumbered into the room. I didn’t care. Oliver had no interest in women. Besides, I was swathed from neck to wrist to ankle in a maidenly nightgown supplied by the housekeeper herself after I had arrived at the door of the Beckett mansion four days earlier, feverish, incoherent, and “without suitable nightclothes.” As Oliver had promised, an army of servants and two doctors mobilized to wait on me. And I let them.
    He beamed. “I came as soon as I could, my dear. I trust everyone has been taking good care of you?”
    “The heir to the throne could not have received better care, thank you very much. I’ve been bathed, brushed, spoon-fed, and pampered like a French poodle.” The sickness that had started with something I ate had taken a detour through fever territory, keeping me in bed for several days, but I felt better today. I stretched my lips into a smile. No matter what I thought of Oliver, I was going to have to work with him.
    Oliver snapped his fingers at the housekeeper, who bobbed her head and backed out of the room. He smiled at me. “Let me have a good look at you,” he said in a jovial voice, sweeping open the draperies to the four o’clock sun. “I’ve been quite worried about you.”
    A shame if I were to die and ruin his only chance at a fortune.
    “I’ll make it. Lucky you have a house in Cleveland. I was so sick, I don’t believe I could have managed a longer trip.”
    I had come, as he instructed, on the train from Akron, arriving at Cleveland’s Union Terminal an hour after we had exchanged telegrams. A uniformed chauffeur had met me on the platform, lugged my luggage and me to the car, and drove us west along the Gold Coast of Lake Erie. The trip was a blur.
    “But this is not my house! Did you think that? No, it belongs to a dear chum, Randolph Stouffer, who is traveling in Europe. When I realized your dire straits, I thought through my list of pliable friends for one close to Akron. Randy came first to mind. He was delighted to lend me his home for as long as we want it. Keeps the servants out of mischief, he said.”
    So that was how Oliver lived—mooching off rich friends in the best four-flusher tradition. Nice work if you could get it. He pulled a chair over beside my bed and sat. We pretended not to notice the protesting creak.
    “While you have been recuperating, my dear, I have not been idle. I have drawn floor plans and family trees, made lists of what you’ll need to learn, and gathered information and photographs to help you.”
    A pretty young maid stopped at the doorway and cleared her throat. “Excuse me, sir, miss. Mrs. Wisniowolski is wanting to know if you’d care for tea?”
    Oliver barely noticed her. I told the girl we would love tea. And some of those dainty bread-and-butter sandwiches I was unable to stomach yesterday. “So that’s how you say her name,” I mused when the maid was out of earshot. I repeated the unfamiliar sounds softly.
    “Surely you, of all people, are accustomed to foreign-sounding names. I thought vaudeville was full of Polacks, niggers, kikes, and other … well, immigrants.” And he could look down his nose at them because his grandfather had come over on an earlier boat. I had known snooty people like him before.
    “Yep, and they always seem to be the most talented performers too. But on their way through the stage door, they usually trade their originals for something catchy the