Music Macabre

by Sarah Rayne

  This one showed a long, bleak, windowless room, with sections partly divided by iron bars that almost, but not quite, reached the ceiling. They’re rudimentary cages, thought Phin. In one corner were two troughs, presumably containing either food or water. In another corner of the room was a pile of straw. Anonymous debris was littered elsewhere on the ground – tattered fragments of paper and shreds of rags. But it was not the room that tore at Phin’s emotions; it was the room’s occupants.

  They were ragged and wretched, and in the main it was impossible to know if they were men or woman. They were chained, the ends of each chain embedded in the wall. But the chains were long enough to allow them to reach the troughs and the straw with its all-too-obvious purpose. Some of the figures seemed to be staring straight at the artist, but others sat in huddles, looking hopelessly at their hands or staring uncomprehendingly at the ground. A gaol? thought Phin. A workhouse? No, it’s more likely to be a madhouse. Links, he thought – and I’m positive this is your work – where on earth did you find your subjects?

  He bought the sketch. He did not even look at the price tag on it – he would not have cared if it had cleaned out his current bank balance. He bought the Covent Garden pub sketch as well, leaving it with the manager to be framed for Arabella’s birthday.

  The manager also turned out to be the owner of the shop. He introduced himself as Gregory, and seemed interested in Phin’s purchases. Asked about any books relating to the history of Harlequin Court, he said he would see what he could find. No, it would be no trouble at all; in fact he would enjoy the search. This was an interesting part of London, wasn’t it? His family had owned this bookshop for nearly two hundred years, so he always felt very much part of its past.

  ‘Of course, there’ve been a good many changes since then,’ he said. ‘But people still like books, you know, no matter the format. Once it was clay tablets or papyrus scrolls.’

  ‘And now it’s iPads and android screens,’ said Phin, smiling.

  ‘Life changes,’ said Gregory, philosophically. ‘This is a curious subject for a sketch, isn’t it?’ He was studying the madhouse drawing. ‘I wouldn’t mind knowing who the artist was – it’s only signed with that single initial.’

  ‘Yes. There’s something written in that other corner, though,’ said Phin. ‘It’s just about readable. It simply says, “Thrawl”. Does that mean anything to you?’

  ‘Not offhand,’ said Gregory. ‘Although I think there’s a Thrawl Street in the East End, if that’s any help.’

  ‘It might be.’

  ‘I’d be interested to hear if you turn anything up,’ said Gregory. ‘And I can certainly let you know if we find anything that looks as if it’s by the same artist.’

  ‘I’d be very grateful if you would,’ said Phin, handing Gregory his card.

  ‘The framed one of the Covent Garden pub will be ready midweek – is that all right?’

  ‘Yes, certainly.’

  ‘We’re open until six most nights, and every Thursday we have a book discussion group. Six thirty to seven thirty. My great-grandfather – maybe one more “great” – started it, and the tradition’s stuck. You’d always be welcome to come to that.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Phin thought he might very well look in on one of the Thursday night meetings.

  He went back to his flat where he propped up Links’s sketch on his desk, and looked at it for a long time. Then he opened the book with the Liszten for the Killer sketch, and set it alongside. Both so dark. Both so filled with menace and sadness and fear. At some stage in your life, something dark entered it, he said to Links in his mind. But what was it?

  Had ‘Thrawl’ been a real place? It could only have been an asylum or a workhouse, or possibly a gaol. But if so, what had Links’s connection been to it? People did not wander in and out of asylums or workhouses or prisons, and set up an easel or sit unchallenged with a sketchbook. Could Links have been an inmate? Phin’s mind flinched from the possibility of Links being insane or a violent criminal. Could he have been visiting someone? Working there, even? Or, again, had the place not actually existed – had it been a dark fantasy from Links’s imagination?

  He put a pan of pasta on the cooker, stirred in a ready-made cheese sauce, and while it was all simmering searched for the card that Loretta Farrant had given him.

  ‘Is there,’ he said, carefully, when she answered, ‘any chance that I could be allowed a second look at those old papers in the restaurant?’

  Loretta sounded pleased to hear from him. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘Have you found out anything useful?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet,’ said Phin, noncommittally. ‘One or two small things have cropped up – probably they won’t turn out to be important or relevant, but if I could have half an hour or so to look through those boxes again, I’d be very grateful. I’d be looking for different information, this time, you see.’ He did not want to say he would be looking for Links and an old asylum or workhouse.

  ‘Could you manage a Sunday morning? We’d be closed then and I could get the boxes out ready. We could go down to the office, and you could take as long as you wanted.’

  ‘Thank you. This coming Sunday?’

  ‘Why not?’

  THIRTEEN

  London 1880s/1890s

  Daisy hated going home late at night after a Linklighters evening, or after a night when Madame had been performing at one of the bigger theatres.

  If Madame was with her she felt safe, but there were nights when Madame went out to supper after a performance. At the moment it was often Rhun the Rhymer who took her out, but there were other gentlemen, too. Rhun was apt to succumb to bouts of jealousy about it, but he was never violent or sulky, and Daisy was sure it was only ever supper Madame had with the other men. Whatever else you might say about her morals, she had never, to Daisy’s knowledge, run two men at the same time.

  But there were nights when Daisy had to go back to the Maida Vale house by herself, and those were the nights when she believed that he was watching her – that he was hiding, waiting his chance to pounce. If he ever caught her by herself, he would be on her, and his knives and gouges would come out … After he had dealt with her, he would seek out Joe and do the same to him. The thought of Joe – frail, trusting, infinitely dear – at the mercy of that mad butcher was more than Daisy could bear. But it could happen. He would know that Daisy and Joe could identify him as the Whitechapel Murderer. Leather Apron. Jack the Ripper.

  ‘But could you really identify him?’ demanded Madame, when Daisy said all this. ‘Could you recognize his face again?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Daisy, very definitely. ‘You could as well, couldn’t you? You saw him that night after the Ten Bells. You’d recognize him again, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I would,’ said Madame, softly, and her eyes were suddenly fearful. ‘Oh God, yes, I would. We could both identify him – Joe, too. And the Ripper knows it. That’s why we need to be very, very careful.’

  ‘Should we tell the police? Give a description?’

  But despite the fact that Madame was a lady who feared very little, Daisy knew that they both flinched from telling the police what they knew and what they had seen. It would draw too much attention to them. The newspapers would find out – they were always eager for a story about these killings, and they would write about it with little care for the consequences. ‘Music hall performer and East End girl know who the Ripper is,’ they would say.

  As Madame said, they had already risked enough by taking the ‘Listen’ song around the East End pubs, not that she regretted that. But it was one thing to try to set up an alarm network, and it was another altogether to tell people you knew what the Whitechapel Murderer looked like.

  ‘Even if the newspapers didn’t splash it all over their pages, it would still get out,’ she said. ‘He’s clever and he’s cunning and he listens and watches. He was there that night in the Ten Bells, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’

 
‘And in any case, all we could describe is a tall man with dark hair and eyes.’

  Madame was nervous, Daisy could see that. She worked out a plan for when Daisy had to go home by herself. Daisy was to take a cab from the rank just outside Harlequin Court as they always did. Madame would make sure she always had enough money to pay for it. And before the cab reached the house, Daisy was to have her latchkey ready in her hand, and after the cab had pulled up and the driver was paid, she had only to hop down and run straight up to the front door. And if it looked as if there might be anyone hanging around outside the house, she was to ask the cabbie to wait until he saw her safely inside. None of the drivers would mind doing that, and on those nights Daisy was to give them a small extra payment. The fare was eight pence from Linklighters to Maida Vale and Madame had told Daisy to give ten pence – cabbies worked long hours in all kinds of dreadful weather, and an extra tuppence would be thankfully received. But on nights when Daisy asked them to watch her go into the house, she was to give a whole shilling.

  Once she was inside the house, she always locked all the doors and went round all the rooms. She knew Joe did the same. He still drew everything and everyone around him – recently, he had drawn terrible pictures of a cloaked man stalking his prey by the flickering streetlamps.

  ‘He’s putting his fears on paper,’ said Madame, seeing some of the sketches.

  ‘I know.’ It tore Daisy’s heart in pieces to see Joe’s terrors set down like this, but she would never destroy his sketches. She did not know if she wanted anyone to ever see them, though.

  Madame told Rhun the Rhymer about their encounter with the Whitechapel killer, of course. She tried to make a lively story out of it, but her voice shook several times.

  Rhun had listened, his frown getting blacker and blacker. Afterwards, he said he would summon the shades of his ancestors to lend him the strength to rid the world of this monster. Those ancestors had fought the marauding British and the Irish, never mind a goodly few of the Scots and the Picts as well, said Rhun, his eyes glowing with fervour. They had stormed down from the mountains and across the valleys, scattering enemies as they went, and, possessing such ancestors as those, he thought he would be more than equal to this madman who was prowling around Whitechapel.

  Daisy did not like to say that Whitechapel was nothing like the mountains and valleys of Wales, or ask how the ghosts of Rhun’s warlike ancestors were likely to help if a murderous madman got into a house in Maida Vale. Still, on the nights that Rhun stayed with Madame, it was a comfort to know he was there.

  But Daisy was not at all sure that Rhun would hear anyone trying to get in, because he had turned out to be very enthusiastic when it came to the intimacies of the bedroom. It was a bit embarrassing to have to hear someone you had known since you were a child shouting about climaxes that were going to explode your brains in your skull. Daisy did her best to shut out the sounds, but it was often difficult. There was an awkward incident one night when the people in the flat immediately below came storming up to hammer on the door. Madame forbade Daisy to open it, but the people shouted through the letterbox that Scaramel could spend her entire life bouncing around in beds with half the men in London if she wanted to, but they did not want to listen to her doing it, and certainly not at one o’clock in the morning.

  Rhun stalked out to the landing, and hurled abuse in what Daisy supposed was the Welsh language, and the downstairs neighbours stumped crossly back to their own flat, saying what could you expect from a shameless hussy who waggled her half-naked body at people from a stage. Still, it now seemed likely that the indignant neighbours would hear anyone creeping up the stairs and trying to get in.

  And then came the night when Daisy and Joe found themselves alone at Linklighters, with midnight approaching.

  It ought not to have happened, but it chanced that Madame was going out to supper with some of the other performers straight after the show. Dora Dashington was going, and a pair of tap-dancing twins – Fancy and Frankie Finnegan, who were particular friends of Madame’s, and whose act Daisy always greatly enjoyed. There were several gentlemen, too, who would meet them at the restaurant. At the last moment Belinda Baskerville had somehow got herself into the party. She had not been invited, but Madame told Daisy the Baskerville creature usually managed to push in if she thought there might be a rich gentleman to be picked up during the evening.

  Madame left Harlequin Court shortly after eleven, in company with the Finnegan sisters, swirling a fur-trimmed cloak around her shoulders, all of them laughing about avoiding the rain and swishing umbrellas. Daisy stayed to help Joe and the barman to clear up, but just as they were finishing, one of the linklighter boys came running in with a message for the barman. His daughter in Canning Town was about to give birth, said the boy and the barman’s wife wanted him to go out there at once, on account of the daughter’s husband being useless.

  The barman’s wife was a strong-minded lady with a loud voice and forbidding bosom, and the barman looked worriedly at Daisy and Joe. Daisy said at once that of course he must go – they would all want to hear about the new baby tomorrow anyway, and she and Joe could perfectly well get themselves home for one night. The barman frowned, then delved in his pocket and gave Joe one of the keys that locked the main door leading out to the square. When they had finished washing-up, Joe was to lock the door on his way out, was that clear? He was to return the key later tonight or first thing tomorrow morning, was that clear as well?

  ‘Yes,’ said Daisy and Joe, together.

  The barman went anxiously off to Canning Town, and Daisy said to Joe they would walk to the cab rank together, and get a cab to Maida Vale. Joe could stay the night; he could sleep in the tiny room off the scullery, which he had done before on a couple of similar occasions.

  It always felt a bit strange to see Linklighters empty and silent, although Joe said it was never really completely empty. There were always echoes, he said; if you listened you could hear faint voices and snatches of music. As if all the people who had performed here liked to wander back because they were curious about what went on without them.

  Once he had drawn Linklighters, showing how it looked after the audience had all gone, sketching the shadowy stage and the stacked-away bits of scenery, and the odds and ends of rope and stage weights and wicker baskets of costumes. But then, over it all, he had drawn half-figures and fragments of music – music notes or half-written lines from songs. He had used real songs, too – just fragments of them, but they were readable, and it had made the sketch all the more interesting. Joe called the sketch The Ghost Theatre, and Mr Thaddeus at Thumbprints had liked it so much he was going to frame it and put it in his window to see if somebody would buy it.

  When the two of them walked across the main room between the chairs and tables, a soft echo of their footsteps seemed to walk with them, and when they went past the stage the heavy velvet curtains looped at each side stirred slightly. Joe’s ghosts. To dispel them, Daisy said, loudly, that they would run all the way along the alley because of the rain.

  As they went up the stairs to the main door, Joe was silent, and Daisy knew they were both trying not to think how frightening it felt to be on their own like this, out of sight and sound of other people. But they only had to cross Harlequin Court and run down the alley, and it would not take more than a few moments.

  The streetlamp in the court was burning strongly, showering its flickering light over the cobblestones, and Daisy felt Joe relax a little. He said, ‘One day I’ll draw Harlequin Court, exactly like it is now. Night-time, but with the light coming from the lamp over there, and with everywhere all clean and shiny from the rain. And proper painted bits, too.’

  ‘I’d like that.’ Daisy would save every farthing she could to buy Joe the right paints. She had no idea how much such things cost or where you bought them, but she would ask Thaddeus Thumbprint, who would know.

  They shut the main door and Joe locked it, trying the latch to make sure the lock
had dropped, then putting the key in his pocket. It was only a few yards across the court to the alley, and then a few more to walk down it and join the late-night crowds.

  It was as Joe was turning up his jacket collar against the rain that a feeling of menace crept across Harlequin Court. Fear scraped Daisy’s skin, because something was wrong somewhere. But what? The rain was blurring everything, but surely nothing was different? There was the door behind them, firmly locked, with the Linklighters sign over it. That was all right. The jutting windows of the shops were all right, as well. Thumbprints, which joined on to Linklighters, had the window displays that Mr Thaddeus took such trouble over – books and several small, framed paintings. The jeweller’s and the printing shop were further along and they looked normal, as well. On the far side of the court was the streetlight with its twisty iron post, and the little cage for the gas jets at the very top …

  The streetlight. Daisy’s heart began to thud, because it was the streetlight that was wrong. Standing immediately beneath it, leaning against the post, was the figure of a man. Nobody stood like that, out in the pouring rain, not moving, watching the buildings. He was wearing a long dark coat with the collar turned up, half hiding the face, but the tilt of the head, the extraordinary impression that he wore not a cloak or a coat of ordinary cloth, but one woven out of evil, were all unmistakable. He was unmistakable.

  Daisy’s heart seemed to leap up into her throat, and in the same instant she felt terror course through Joe. The figure stepped out of the pool of blurred light and came towards them, not hurrying, because he did not need to hurry. They could not get past him to the alley and run to the safety of the bustling street beyond. They could probably not fight, either, because even though there were two of them against his one, Joe was little more than a child and Daisy was small and light-boned. They would be overcome with ease. They were trapped …