Lady in the Lake

Edna Sperry has spent the last 11 of her 30 years as a journalist at the Star. Cultivating trusting, long-standing relationships with union bosses throughout Baltimore, she has achieved such success that the instructions of her superiors are more akin to suggestions than mandates. Edna resents Maddie’s presumptuousness, dismissing Maddie as a housewife. Edna believes Maddie is attracted to the thrill and glamour of working at a newspaper and to the male attention that accompanies such a disproportionately masculine environment. Edna predicts Maddie will not progress beyond her job as an assistant.

Maddie asks Bob Bauer to lunch, seeking his guidance. Bob insists that the best stories are those reporters uncover and pursue themselves. The obstacle for Maddie is that she works at a fully staffed newspaper; any relevant new stories fall under the purview of the reporter assigned to that beat. Because careers are built on relationships, Maddie will sabotage herself if she develops a reputation for undermining colleagues. Maddie, who assumes that Bob has developed a crush on her, wonders whether a story would be considered “poached” if others have already decided it is irrelevant. Bob volunteers to introduce Maddie to John Diller at police headquarters, where she can frame her inquiry into Cleo’s death as a training exercise.

The server at the New Orleans Diner who waits on Bob Bauer and Maddie senses an earnestness in Maddie, though she can’t determine what Maddie wants. The waitress overhears Cleo Sherwood’s name and resists the temptation to tell the pair that she knew Cleo. Cleo had worked at the restaurant where the waitress worked before this New Orleans Diner, but had left because the owner required waitresses to be white. The waitress recalls reading about the discovery of Cleo’s body, concluding it could only mean one thing: “Had to be man trouble. A woman dies young, it’s man trouble” (154).

Maddie feels that the press room at police headquarters is “one of the most masculine places into which she had ever ventured, and not in a good way” (159). From reports, she learns that Thomas Ludlow, bartender at the Flamingo, placed Cleo with a tall, trim, dark-skinned Black man in his thirties who had picked her up from the Flamingo at 4 am on January 1. Diller suggests that Maddie accompany him to the medical examiner’s office to view Cleo’s body. Maddie is horrified by the condition of Cleo’s unrecognizable face, but betrays no signs of distress. The medical examiner claims to have no clear cause of death; without evidence, he posits that Cleo may have wandered into the fountain under the influence of drugs or alcohol and drowned.

Over lunch, Maddie asks why Diller hasn’t written about Cleo. Diller appears uncomfortable, but says he considers the death of people of color routine and non-newsworthy. Further, Diller implies that Cleo’s death is not surprising—Cleo was an employee of the Flamingo, whose owner, Shell Gordon, is rumored to engage in sex work, and Cleo was known to have had an active social life with multiple male associates. Maddie proposes that she could speak to Cleo’s parents if Diller is not planning to do so, but he suggests that she visit the medium they enlisted instead.

At a bar after work, Diller encounters the patrol officer who responded to the scene of Tessie Fine’s discovery. Diller finds the officer to be sanctimonious, hypocritical, and sly. Diller baits him by asking if he knows that the woman who found Tessie’s body is now working at the Star. The patrolman feigns reluctance but is eager to reveal that he believes Maddie is romantically involved with Ferdie Platt. The patrolman adds that Maddie must be involving herself to get information to Ferdie, who will use it to protect Shell Gordon. Diller concludes that Ferdie is the engineer behind the successful scoop that earned Maddie her job, but he decides not to stoop to sharing what he has learned with anyone else.

Cleo is impressed that Maddie did not avert her eyes when faced with Cleo’s body. Cleo wonders what happened to her festive outfit for New Year’s Eve: an emerald silk blouse, leopard-print pants, and a red car coat. Cleo’s clothes were some of her most treasured possessions; her lover had to acquire them for her gradually and covertly, tailoring them himself to ensure they would suit her. She likens herself to Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII; the king was married to Katherine of Aragon when they met and began the English Reformation so that he could procure a divorce. The man Cleo calls her king was also married, and like Anne, Cleo too ended her life dead and discarded.

Madame Claire’s apartment is in the vicinity of Milton’s synagogue and filled with all the stereotypical trappings of a fortune teller. Madame Claire clarifies that it was Cleo’s mother alone who came to see her; Cleo’s father believes Madame Claire is evil. The only factual information Maddie gathers is that Cleo owned an ermine stole, one her mother brought for Madame Claire to use during their reading. Madame Claire claims that the last thing Cleo saw was yellow, then changes the subject, suggesting that Maddie has a secret from her past that continues to plague her and that Maddie presents future danger to others. Maddie leaves convinced that Madame Claire is an exploitative fraud.

Madame Claire does not believe she is a fraud. Though Maddie pays for her services, Madame Claire intentionally avoids delving into what she calls her sight, instead repeating what she told Cleo’s mother. Madame Claire recalls being frustrated during that reading, confused by her inability to connect with Cleo. Madame Claire senses the same eagerness in Maddie that she sensed in Mrs. Sherwood, but while Mrs. Sherwood’s desire was pure, innocent, and driven by love for her daughter, Maddie’s is driven by angst, desire, and a lack of insight into her own capacity for destruction.

In mid-December, Cleo’s lover took her to see Man of La Mancha. As he cried openly during the final tragic moments of the musical, Cleo realized that he was never going to leave his wife. In the early hours of January 1, Cleo dressed for her date, filled with dread: “it was too late. The choice had been taken from me and I didn’t even know it” (187). She made sure that her fur stole was tucked safely in her closet, where her mother would later discover it. “The real green was jealousy and there was no yellow—unless you count the cowardice of the man who decreed. Had to die but would not deign to do the job himself” (188).

Maddie shares details of her inquiries into Cleo’s murder with Judith Weinstein. Judith asks if Cleo is the woman who worked at Shell Gordon’s club. Judith is familiar with Shell Gordon through the Stonewall Democratic Club; Gordon has begun using his money and weight in the community to influence Baltimore politics. Paul, from the Tessie Fine scene, wants to meet at the movies. Maddie attends, but disapproves of Judith becoming involved with someone who isn’t Jewish and sits by herself. During the film, a man next to Maddie puts his hand on Maddie’s knee. She screams, horrified by how thrilling she finds the interaction.

Maddie wonders if her former lover, now approaching his sixties, is still alive. The man promised to move to New York City with 17-year-old Maddie, but instead moved away to that very city with his family. When Maddie met Milton two months later, she leapt at the chance to secure for herself a safe, conventional future. Maddie concludes that Cleo’s fur stole must have been a gift from a married lover. Maddie is determined to discover the man’s identity and confront him as she always intended to confront her own lover’s wife. Maddie had wanted to be known to Mrs. Durst not as the girl her son, Allan Jr., broke up with just before prom, but as the teenager who Allan Sr. had promised, amidst their intense sexual relationship, to leave his wife for.

The offender who touched Maddie without her permission insists he is a good person who has never done anything like that before. He absolves himself of responsibility by suggesting that Maddie’s presence communicated to him a desire for contact. He recalls a pause during which he allowed himself to fantasize that she might reciprocate before she deliberately moved his hand away.