Music Macabre

by Sarah Rayne

  Harlequin Court, when they stepped out into it, was quiet and the streetlamp threw gentle shadows on the old bricks and the ground. It was familiar and it almost felt safe – although Daisy was not sure if anything would ever feel really safe ever again.

  But she said, as firmly as she could, ‘We’ll go along the alley and find a hansom cab.’

  ‘No money for a cab.’

  ‘Don’t matter. Madame’ll pay when we get to her house.’

  ‘Long as she’s there,’ said Joe, worriedly. ‘She might not be home yet.’

  ‘If she’s not there, I’ll take money from her box in her bedroom.’

  ‘All right.’ He paused, then said uncertainly, ‘Have we got to tell her what happened?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Daisy, after a moment. ‘We’ve got to tell her. It’ll be all right, though. In any case, we’re covered in mud and filth and stinking to high heaven.’

  Madame was at home. Wearing nothing but a silk robe and flimsy velvet slippers, she ran out to pay the disgruntled hackney driver Daisy and Joe had managed to find, presenting him with a guinea so he could have the cab’s interior cleaned after all the weed and silt Daisy and Joe had trailed into it.

  Once they were inside the flat and the doors bolted against what was left of the night, Madame said, ‘Explanations later – hot water and brandy in warm milk for you both first.’

  She boiled kettles and brought towels, and filled basins for them to wash off the dust and the dirt of the tunnels. When Daisy tried to help, Madame wanted to know if Daisy thought Madame was so posh nowadays that she had forgotten how to heat up a drop of milk? As for Joe being too young to drink brandy, if you could not swig down a measure of brandy for shock and cold, the world was a sad place.

  The fire in the big sitting room was stirred into life, and they sat in front of it. Madame listened, without interrupting, to the story of what had happened. When Daisy told how she had struggled to pull free of the clutching hands, and how, at one point, she had been held against her attacker, Madame shuddered, and reached out to clasp Daisy’s hand briefly.

  Daisy said, ‘We think he ran along to the grid at the other end of the tunnel while we were still down there.’

  ‘And climbed down and waited for you?’

  ‘Yes. St Martin’s Lane or somewhere nearby, Joe thinks it’d be, that grid.’

  ‘We can have a look by daylight, but it doesn’t tell us anything even if we find half a dozen grids,’ said Madame.

  ‘He said he knew all the … the dark places of the City,’ offered Joe. ‘And how cabbies were always glad to earn an extra shilling to get you across London fast.’

  ‘And it’s not very far from Harlequin Court to St Martin’s Lane anyway,’ said Madame, thoughtfully. ‘He could even have walked there if he was quick.’

  ‘He said he knew about Linklighters and the old ditch,’ added Daisy. ‘But please …’ She leaned forward and grasped Madame’s hand again. ‘Please – we don’t want no one told about this. Not the peelers, no one.’

  She had no idea what she would say if Madame said that of course they must tell the peelers, but Madame did not. She said, slowly, ‘I think you’re right. I don’t think we can tell anyone about this.’

  ‘See, if they find him – if he’s dead – we could be branded as murderers.’

  ‘They could find out it was us,’ put in Joe. ‘We’re both part of Linklighters.’

  ‘And never mind it’s the Ripper, we’d be hanged.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I think you could be right,’ said Madame, thoughtfully.

  A shiver went through Joe, and Daisy put her arms round him and hugged him hard.

  ‘Except I ain’t letting that happen,’ she said.

  ‘Nor am I,’ said Madame, at once. She thought for a moment, then said, ‘Will you let me tell Rhun about this? He’ll be entirely trustworthy.’

  Daisy and Joe looked at one another, then nodded.

  Rhun, listening to the story the following afternoon, talked to Daisy and Joe very seriously. They were to do their best to put the entire thing from their minds, he said. They had done nothing wrong – they had defended themselves, as anyone was allowed to do. As for wondering whether that warped monster might die down there – well, to Rhun’s mind, if he did, it would be doing the world a service.

  Daisy said, ‘But if he died, wouldn’t he be found? The – um – the body, I mean?’

  ‘It might,’ said Rhun. ‘But I don’t think it would be for a very long time. I think men do go down there – officials of some kind – to make sure everything’s working as it should. Maintenance,’ said Rhun, in the vague voice of one who has no real idea of how such things work.

  ‘There was the ladder from the grid in the street,’ said Daisy. ‘That’d be for men to get to the tunnel from the street.’

  ‘It would indeed. But believe me, Daisy, bodies will sometimes be found in those tunnels, and it’s a fair bet that nobody thinks much about it. Death by accident, it’ll be. The bodies they find are usually vagrants – people who’ve somehow got themselves into such places and become trapped. Very sad, but there it is.’

  ‘And,’ said Madame, ‘any bodies they do find would simply be brought up and given a pauper’s burial?’

  ‘Indeed they would. No, Daisy, I’m not trying to make you feel better, that’s what will happen.’

  Daisy thought: so if Jack the Ripper died down there, he might end up buried in a pauper’s grave, unnamed, and no one will ever know.

  It was a few weeks after that night that Madame said, ‘Daisy, I’ve got some unexpected news.’

  ‘Yes?’ It would be some ridiculously extravagant and unnecessary purchase, or a wonderful booking at one of the big theatres. Or it might be more serious. Through Daisy’s mind darted the knowledge of the secrets she and Madame had shared. Things that only the two of them knew about.

  But it was not an extravagant purchase or a booking, and it was not anything to do with any of those dark secrets.

  With a light in her eyes that Daisy had never seen before, Madame said, ‘Daisy, your good friend Rhun the Rhymer has proved himself to be a very capable lover. Not only capable, but effective.’ She saw Daisy’s puzzlement, and started to laugh.

  ‘I always thought I was clever enough to avoid it,’ she said. ‘But it’s caught me out at last.’ The light was still in her eyes, but in a more serious voice than Daisy had ever heard her use, she said, ‘Daisy, I’m going to have a child.’

  Rhun was at first disbelieving, then astonished, and finally ecstatic at the prospect of being a father. It had not been intended, he said, but there you were, you got carried away at times. He bought champagne for everyone he knew, and made elaborate marriage proposals every other day – all of which Madame refused.

  Then he said, almost humbly, that he would be able to contribute towards the child’s upbringing. His poems were doing surprisingly well; there was to be a book including a number of them, and he had recently been elected to a rather prestigious society for writers and poets. As a result of that, he was being asked to give talks and readings and lectures, all of which commanded surprisingly generous fees.

  ‘You certainly will contribute to the upbringing,’ Madame said. ‘There’ll be a decent education, as well. I’m not having a child of mine growing up uneducated.’

  Daisy thought Madame never did things by halves, and knew that the appearance of the unexpected, unintended child in their lives would not be done by halves either.

  She was right.

  ‘Twins!’ said Madame, delightedly, reclining in the big bed, a baby cradled in each arm, a froth of lace and silk pillows propping them all up. ‘Isn’t that wonderful, Daisy? Boy and girl. A complete family in one go. I wonder if we might have to move to a bigger flat, because … Nonsense, of course we can afford it.’

  Rhun was overcome with emotion and delight at the birth of the twins. He said they were the most beautiful children ever to enter the world; he would write ream
s of poetry to them, and he would like them to have names from his family. His mother had been Morwenna, his grandfather Mervyn. Good Welsh names, he said, hopefully.

  Madame said, consideringly, ‘Morwenna and Mervyn. The names go well together, don’t they? And they’re sufficiently unusual to be noticeable, which is important. Yes, let’s call them that.’

  So Morwenna and Mervyn the twins became.

  Rhun wrote what he said was a lyric ballad in praise of the twins, using what he called the ancient method of cynghanedd. It had more in common with music than traditional poetry, did the cynghanedd, said Rhun, and he insisted on reading several verses to them that same night. Daisy, collecting their glasses and supper plates, was quite unable to understand any of it, and although Madame said it was marvellous and Rhun was a genius, Daisy didn’t think Madame had understood any of it, either. It was likely that the birth of the twins had gone to Rhun’s head a bit.

  Later, he wrote what he said was a final banishing of the darkness. It was what Rhun termed a satirical poem about Jack prowling the old ghost rivers, looking for prey. Daisy did not know the word ‘satirical’, but when Rhun showed her the poem she understood. The poem told how it was better to stay in your own bed – or the bed of someone you knew – rather than go to the beds of one of the lost rivers – the ghost rivers – and be chopped up and have your guts left in a tangle. It even named some of the rivers, but in a comic way, so you had to read the lines a couple of times to be sure what they meant. Rhun said he would probably not do anything with the verses, but you never knew – one day somebody might find them, and speculate as to what the meaning was, and even whether there had been a mysterious murder that had never been solved.

  With all this, and with the lively twins in the flat, Daisy was starting to dare to think the darkness really might have been banished. She was able to think that it might be possible to forget the sight of the sluice gate descending, and those hands clawing frantically out from under it.

  SIXTEEN

  Roland had been concerned to hear that Phineas Fox had been in touch a second time, and that Loretta had agreed to meet him at Linklighters this coming Sunday morning.

  He thought about it after Loretta left for the restaurant. She had spent the afternoon cleaning out cupboards and washing shelves – she always had so much energy, it often made Roland feel quite tired. He had offered to help with the cupboard-cleaning and shelf-washing, of course, but she had brushed the offer cheerfully away, saying she was better working on her own. Later, she had gone off to Linklighters, saying that Saturday nights were always busy, so Roland was not to expect her until late.

  Roland noticed she had on another new outfit. It looked expensive, but then everything Loretta bought and wore was expensive. Roland had been shocked to discover how much she spent on clothes. When he had asked about this once, in the early days of their marriage, careful to explain that he was not being pinch-penny, but that he was worried as to whether such things could be afforded, what with all the outlay for the restaurant, Loretta said she intended to attract to Linklighters customers who were smart and prosperous, which meant that she had to look smart and prosperous. People responded to that kind of thing, and you could not look smart or prosperous in cheap clothes.

  After she had gone, he ate his supper off a tray. He did not mind being on his own for the evening, which tended to happen at least four nights out of seven. Apart from anything else, it meant Loretta was not forever flopping down on his lap while he was watching TV, or writhing against him in the minuscule kitchen while waiting for the potatoes to boil.

  He did not mind if he had to make his own supper, either – he had cooked for Mother each evening anyway in the last few years – but he had not often had to do that since their marriage. On Sundays, when the restaurant was closed, Loretta often had what she called a freezer day and made huge casseroles or lasagnes and pasta dishes, which she froze in batches and which had only to be reheated. Sometimes she brought food back from Linklighters as well; dishes that could be brought across London in a taxi, and stowed in their own fridge or freezer. Tonight, Roland had a Linklighters meal of jugged hare, which had not gone very well in the restaurant and was going to be taken off the menu, with a cider syllabub to follow.

  As he washed up the plates later, he could not stop thinking about Phineas Fox. Was there really anything in Linklighters’ past sufficiently disreputable or spicy to attract publicity to the restaurant and consequently to its owners? Phineas Fox seemed to think there might be, and Loretta was clearly hoping so. She did not care if she and Roland were dragged into the light; in fact she would help with the dragging. Roland repeated to himself that there was nothing wrong – nothing incriminating or damning – that could ever come out. But he still did not want people delving.

  It occurred to him that it might be useful to find out a bit more about Phineas Fox, on the old principle of, ‘Know your enemy.’ Fox was not an actual enemy in that sense, of course, but still … After a moment, he fetched Loretta’s laptop, which she kept in the flat, because it was a nuisance to lug it back and forwards on the tube, and it was as easy to email attachments of any documents between the two places, or to save information on to a memory stick.

  He entered Phineas Fox’s name in a search engine, hoping there would not be too many results for such an unusual name. There were not, although there was a website, which Roland had not expected. It was very basic, though, almost like a business card, and it merely described Phineas as a music researcher and historian, gave an agent’s name, email and phone number for enquiries, and listed Fox’s published works. It looked as if he was moderately well known in his field; he had written several books which seemed to have received considerable praise. Two were biographies – one on the jazz musician, Oscar Peterson, and one on a nineteenth-century Russian violinist Roland had never heard of. There was also a serious-sounding book on exiled German and Jewish musicians prior to World War II, although – as if to prove he had a lighter side – there was also a frivolous-sounding book called Bawdy Ballads Down the Ages, which Fox had written in collaboration with somebody called Toby Tallis.

  None of this was of very much help, though. It was not Fox’s work Roland wanted to know about, it was the man himself – whether he had any weaknesses, any vulnerable points. How about his background? Had he any family, a wife, children? How old was he? Loretta had said he had remarkable eyes, which she would not have said if he had been a desiccated octogenarian.

  But there did not seem to be anything about Fox’s private life, and Roland closed the website, and sat for a few moments looking at the home screen. It was suddenly dreadfully tempting to look at Loretta’s emails, but he was not going to yield to that temptation. In any case, they would all be business emails, relating to the restaurant. Or might there be anything from Phineas Fox – something he had asked about or told Loretta about that she had not passed on? But it would be like reading someone’s private correspondence, and Roland would not do it.

  He smiled, though, on seeing that Loretta, efficient and organized as always, had sorted all her photographs into separate, clearly labelled folders. They were labelled with things like ‘Wedding’, or, ‘Engagement party at R’s office’, and ‘Scotland’. That one would be their honeymoon, of course; they had taken lots of photos then.

  There was also a folder called Linklighters. During the renovations Loretta had said she was trying to make a pictorial record of the progress of the work; it might be possible to use it as a display sometime. They could call it, ‘From music hall to ruin to restaurant’ perhaps.

  It would be interesting to see those photos. Loretta would not regard them as private, and anyway Linklighters was as much Roland’s as it was hers. More, in fact, because it had been his money that had made it all possible. He clicked on the folder, and the images opened up. In the main they seemed to be a series of shots showing the various stages of the building work. Loretta had conscientiously allotted them titles and d
ates. ‘Demolition of original supper room door’. ‘Dismantling of stage’. ‘Laying new floor’.

  Roland studied them, but men wielding power drills or swinging sledgehammers at walls, and giving thumbs-up signs to the camera, were not especially interesting.

  The earlier ones were a bit better – there were only three or four, but a couple showed the place when it had been Linklighters Supper Rooms. There was a grainy shot of its façade, and another showing the street door half open, and a poster advertising the acts that were appearing. It was a pity the names on the poster were too faded or too indistinct to make out. Loretta had typed in ‘1890s?’ under these.

  Alongside these two shots, however, was one which was slightly different. Again it was of Linklighters in its nineteenth-century heyday, but this looked like a small sketch that had been scanned in. Roland tried zooming it up, but it caused what he thought was called pixelation, sending the edges of the outlines into confusing little squares, so he zoomed it back down. But he had the impression that it had been drawn on the nearest bit of paper – a menu card or the back of a programme, perhaps, while the artist had been waiting for something or someone.

  Linklighters was unmistakable, of course, and Thumbprints bookshop had been drawn in next to it. In front of Linklighters was a small group of figures – three females and a man. The man looked slightly self-conscious. They were all quite plainly dressed – there was even a rather shabby look to them. The women had long coats with slightly bedraggled hemlines, and button boots, but one of them had added one of the extravagant hats characteristic of the era – fruit-trimmed and with several plumy feathers curling over her face. The hat was tilted to a jaunty angle, and Roland smiled. It was rather endearing that someone who had to wear what was clearly a cheap coat and shabby boots had nevertheless managed to brighten her outfit with the addition of a striking piece of headgear.

  Whoever the ladies were, none of them was Scaramel. From all Roland had heard of Scaramel she would never have been seen – let alone sketched – in such dowdy apparel.