by June Thomson
The setting also served to enhance her charms. She stood under an arched bower, covered with pink roses, and against a back-drop depicting a garden, full of flowers and blossoming trees.
I can picture her even now, that lovely throat extended as, after singing several ballads, she ended her performance with a thrilling rendition of Godard’s ‘Berceuse’,* before the red velvet curtains closed before her to tumultuous applause.
My palms were still warm with clapping, when Holmes tugged at my sleeve with the prosaic suggestion that we made our way to the bar.
‘A whisky and soda, Watson? If we hurry, we shall be among the first to engage the barmaid’s attention.’
It was Holmes who bought the refreshments, carrying the glasses over to a padded bench in a corner among the potted palms where I was sitting, my mind still captivated by the enchantment of the French Nightingale’s performance.
‘Well,’ said he, regarding me with a smile, ‘are you not grateful, my dear fellow, that I managed to persuade you away from the fire?’
Before I had time to reply, a commotion drew our attention to the far side of the room. A plump, pale man in evening clothes and, by his expression, in a state of considerable agitation, was trying to push his way through the crowd which now filled the bar.
Above the noise of laughter and conversation, I could hear his voice calling out in great urgency, ‘Please, ladies and gentlemen, if I may have your attention! Is there a doctor in the house?’
It was such an unexpected request that at first I failed to respond and it was Holmes who pulled me to my feet, at the same time signalling with his arm.
‘My friend, Dr Watson, is a medical practitioner,’ he announced as the man approached us. ‘Pray what is the matter?’
‘I should prefer not to discuss it here,’ the stranger replied, glancing uneasily about him at the curious faces which pressed in on us at all sides.
Once we had accompanied him outside to the privacy of a corner in the foyer, he continued, mopping his moist face with a large white handkerchief, ‘My name is Merriwick and I am the manager. A most appalling tragedy has occurred, Dr Watson. One of our artistes has been found dead backstage.’
‘In what circumstances?’ I inquired.
‘Murder!’ Merriwick whispered, his eyes almost starting out of his head with horror at the word.
‘Have the police been informed?’ my old friend asked. ‘My name, by the way, is Sherlock Holmes.’
‘Mr Holmes? The great consulting detective?’ It was highly gratifying to hear the tone of astonished relief in the manager’s voice. ‘I have heard of you, sir. It is fortunate indeed that you were among the audience tonight. May I retain your services on behalf of the management? Any adverse publicity could be disastrous for the Cambridge.’ Merriwick was almost gabbling in his excitement and anxiety. ‘The police, Mr Holmes? Yes, they should be on their way. I have sent the assistant-manager off in a cab to Scotland Yard. Only the best is good enough for the Cambridge. And now, if you care to follow me, gentlemen,’ he continued, leading the way from the foyer, ‘Dr Watson may view the body and you, Mr Holmes – and may I say again how relieved I am to have your assistance? – can make a preliminary investigation.’
‘Whose body is it, Mr Merriwick,’ I asked.
‘Didn’t I say, sir? Oh, dear, dear, dear! What a dreadful omission!’ Merriwick cried, rounding his eyes again with shock. ‘It’s Marguerite Rossignol, the French Nightingale. Top of the bill, too! The Cambridge will never live down the scandal. To think that she should be strangled backstage in her own dressing-room!’
‘Marguerite Rossignol!’ I exclaimed, the shock of it bringing me to a complete halt.
Taking me by the arm, Holmes urged me on.
‘Come, Watson. Bear up, my dear fellow. We have work to do.’
‘But, Holmes, only a quarter of an hour ago that exquisite creature was alive and …’
I broke off, unable to continue.
‘Pray remember your Horace,’ my old friend adjured me. ‘“Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam.”’*
Still dazed by the news, I followed as Merriwick led the way to the area behind the stage, down dusty passages, their bare brick walls and stone floors in shabby contrast to the plush and gilding of the front-of-house, and finally through a door into a large and dingy back region where the dressing-rooms were situated.
It was crowded with people, stage-hands as well as performers, the artistes still wearing their costumes with wraps or dressing-gowns thrown over their shoulders, and all of them chattering like starlings. In the midst of this disorder, I have a dim recollection of seeing some iron stairs leading to a shadowy upper region and, immediately in front of us and a little distance away, the stage-door with a small cubby-hole beside it, not unlike a Punch and Judy booth, through the open partition of which a man in a cap and muffler had thrust his head. The next moment, Merriwick turned into another, shorter passage, facing the stage-doorkeeper’s little office, and, taking a key from his pocket, unlocked a door.
‘The scene of the crime,’ he whispered in a sepulchral voice, standing aside to let us enter.
At first, I thought the room had been ransacked, it was in a state of such disarray. Clothes were scattered everywhere – on a shabby chaise-longue, over the top of a folding screen which occupied one corner, while garments of a more intimate nature dangled down from an improvised line slung between two hooks.
To add to my initial bewilderment, the large looking-glass of a dressing-table faced us as we entered, in which I caught a glimpse of our reflections, our black evening clothes very sombre in the midst of all this colourful confusion.
Still seated on a stool in front of this dressing-table but slumped across its surface, amid a litter of jars, spilt powder and sticks of grease-paint, lay the body of a woman with cropped, dark hair; not Marguerite Rossignol, I thought with a surge of relief, even though she was dressed in the same lavender silk gown which the French Nightingale had worn for her performance.
Merriwick, I assumed, had made a mistake.
It was only when I saw, propped up beside her on the dressing-table, the corn-coloured hair, still adorned with its aigrette plume and looking disturbingly like a severed head, that I realized the mistake was entirely mine.
Holmes, who had strode purposefully into the room, was bending down to examine the body.
‘She has not been dead long,’ he announced. ‘She is still warm.’
He broke off with an exclamation of disgust to wipe the tips of his fingers upon his pocket handkerchief.
Coming forward, I saw that the pure white marble of the shoulders was smudged where Holmes’ hand had brushed against the skin and that it was nothing more than a thick layer of white powder and grease-paint.
‘And strangled, too, with one of her own stockings,’ Holmes continued, pointing to the wisp of lavender-coloured silk which had been drawn tight about the throat. ‘She is still wearing the other.’
Had he not drawn my attention to this fact, I might not have noticed, in my dazed condition, the feet which protruded from below the hem of the gown, one clad, the other bare.
‘Well, well!’ Holmes remarked. ‘This is all distinctly relevant.’
But he did not say to what and immediately sauntered off, first twitching aside some curtains to reveal a heavily barred window before peering behind the screen, a brief examination which seemed to satisfy him for he said, ‘I have seen enough, Watson. It is time we spoke to any potential witnesses to this tragedy. Let us find Merriwick.’
Merriwick needed no seeking out. He was waiting for us outside in the passage, anxious to inform us that the theatre was now empty, the audience having been dismissed on his instructions with some specious excuse, and that he was entirely at our disposal. On Holmes’ inquiry if we could question whoever had found the body, Merriwick conducted us to his office, a comfortably appointed room, and then departed to fetch Mademoiselle Rossignol’s dresser, Miss Aggi
e Budd, who had made the fatal discovery.
Shortly afterwards, Miss Budd entered the room. She was a sharp-eyed, elderly Cockney woman, dressed in shabby black and so diminutive of stature that when, on Holmes’ invitation she sat down on the straight-backed chair he indicated, her feet barely touched the floor.
‘I suppose,’ said she, not at all intimidated and regarding us with a pair of little, round, black eyes, as bright as boot buttons, ‘that you’ll want to know about ’ow I came back to the dressin’-room and found Mademoiselle dead?’
‘Later,’ Holmes told her. ‘For the moment, I am more concerned with what happened before that, when Mademoiselle Rossignol was still on stage. You were in her dressing-room, I assume, waiting for her to finish her performance? At what point did you leave the room and for how long were you gone?’
The query was as much of a surprise to me as to Miss Budd who countered it with a question of her own which I, too, was anxious to ask although I would not have framed it in quite the same manner.
‘’Ere!’ she cried, her shrivelled features lively with suspicion. ‘’Ow did you know that?’
Holmes must have seen my expression of astonishment as well as hers for when he replied, he addressed us both.
‘Oh, it was simply a matter of deduction,’ said he, with a shrug. ‘The carpet behind the screen is liberally sprinkled with white dust where no doubt Mademoiselle Rossignol’s shoulders were powdered before she put on her gown. Three sets of footprints were discernible in the dust, all of them fresh. Two were small and belonged to women; yours, Miss Budd, I believe, and Mademoiselle Rossignol’s. The other set of marks were much larger and were indisputably those of a man. Unfortunately, they are too blurred to offer any distinguishing features as to exact size or to any patterning on the soles. However, the inference is obvious. A man, presumably the murderer, entered the dressing-room and concealed himself behind the screen after Mademoiselle’s shoulders had been powdered. As I conclude from his surreptitious behaviour that he had not been invited into the dressing-room, then he must have entered it when it was empty, that is, after Mademoiselle Rossignol had gone on stage and when you, Miss Budd, were also absent. Hence my questions. When did you leave the room? And for how long were you gone?’
Miss Budd, who had been following Holmes’ explanation with keen attention, her bright little eyes fixed on his face, nodded her head in confirmation.
‘You’re a clever one! Not the official police, are you, dear? No, I thought not. They’d have trampled all over them footmarks without givin’ ’em a second glance. Well, you’re right, whoever you are. I did leave the room towards the end of Mademoiselle’s performance to wait in the wings for ’er with ’er wrapper. It was to put over ’er gown when she came off. Filthy them wings are! She’d only got to brush up against somethin’ to get covered with dust.’
‘Was this an habitual routine?’
‘If you mean – did I always do it? – then yes, dear, I did.’
‘So Mademoiselle Rossignol had, I take it from your answer, played at the Cambridge before?’
‘Lots of times. And always top of the bill.’
‘When was the second occasion you left the dressing-room, before your return and your discovery of Mademoiselle Rossignol’s body?’
‘That was later, after she’d come off stage. She sent me out for ’alf a pint of porter from the Crown next door, same as she always did. Liked ’er drop of porter, did Mademoiselle; said it kept ’er whistle wet. She told me she was goin’ to start gettin’ changed while I was gone ’cos she was due on at the Empire* at the end of the second ’alf, where she was sharin’ top billin’ with Jolly Jack Tarbrush, the Saucy Sailor. That’s why she was on in the first ’alf ’ere. She’d worn that lavender-coloured dress there two weeks before and she ’ad a mind to put on ’er pink instead. Ever so careful, she was, about not wearin’ the same gown too often. Anyways, out I popped to the Crown and when I came back, there she was – stone dead. Give me the shock of me life, I can tell you.’
‘And how long were you gone on this occasion?’ Holmes inquired.
‘Not more than ’alf a tick.’
‘How long exactly is half a tick, pray?’
‘A few minutes; five at the most.’
‘What did you do when you discovered Mademoiselle Rossignol’s body?’
‘What do you think, dear? I let out an ’oller and Badger, the stage-doorkeeper, ’eard me and came runnin’ into the dressin’-room. We ’ad a good look round just in case the murderer was still ’angin’ about but we didn’t find no one.’
‘Where did you search?’
‘Every bloomin’ where,’ Miss Budd snapped as if the answer should have been obvious. ‘Be’ind the screen and the curtains, even under the dressin’-table but there wasn’t a blessed soul in the place.’
‘What happened next?’
‘Badger went off to fetch Mr Merriwick and, as I was took bad – the shock, you know, as I’d been with Mademoiselle for these past fifteen years – I ’ad to go outside meself. One of the ’igh-wire ladies, ’er in the silver spangles, took me into ’er dressin’-room and gave me a whiff of smellin’-salts to bring me round.’
‘So Mademoiselle Rossignol’s room was left unguarded?’
‘Well, I suppose it was,’ Miss Budd conceded. ‘But as it was empty, except for poor Mademoiselle’s body, I don’t see it makes no odds. Anyways, Badger was back within minutes with Mr Merriwick and, as soon as ’e’d took a look round the door, he locked the place up and put the key in ’is pocket. And that’s all I know.’
‘Not quite, I think,’ said Holmes. ‘Had Mademoiselle Rossignol any enemies to your knowledge?’
Miss Budd coloured up immediately, two spots of bright red appearing on her withered cheeks.
‘No, she ’ad not!’ she retorted angrily. ‘And anyone as says she ’ad is lyin’.’ Scrambling down from the chair on to her tiny legs, Miss Budd scuttled away across the room, adding over her shoulder, ‘I’m off! I’m not stayin’ ’ere to listen to tittle-tattle.’
‘Please be good enough to send Badger to me,’ Holmes called after her.
Her only reply was the bang of the door as she slammed it shut behind her.
Holmes leaned back in his chair with a chuckle.
‘Quite an indomitable character and obviously fiercely loyal to her mistress. Well, if Miss Budd is not prepared to gossip, perhaps Badger will oblige us. You followed the logic behind my questions, Watson?’
‘Yes, I think so, Holmes. The murderer must have entered the dressing-room and concealed himself behind the screen while Miss Budd was absent, waiting to escort Mademoiselle Rossignol from the stage. As it was part of a regular routine, this surely implies that, whoever he was, he must have known of the habit and therefore is not someone from outside but is more likely to be found either among the performers or the theatre staff?’
‘Well reasoned, my dear fellow! You are becoming so familiar with my deductive methods that I can see I shall have to look to my laurels. We may further deduce that, when Miss Budd left the dressing-room on the second occasion to fetch the half-pint of porter, the murderer emerged from his place of concealment and proceeded to strangle Mademoiselle Rossignol with one of her own stockings. Do make a note of that fact, by the way. It is quite crucial to the investigation. There remains one vital question to which I hope Badger will supply the answer. At what point did the murderer leave the dressing-room? Ah, I think that may be him now!’ Holmes broke off to exclaim as there came a knock on the door. ‘Come!’
At this invitation, a lugubrious man in a cap and muffler entered, the same individual whom I had seen a little earlier looking out from the booth beside the stage-door. Although his hair was grey, his walrus moustache was dyed a rich mahogany shade from a liberal consumption of cheap shag tobacco and, I suspected from the odour permeating the air about him, of strong ale as well.
Badger had plenty to say on the subject of Mademoiselle Rossignol’s
movements in answer to Holmes’ first question.
‘Yes, I saw ’er come off stage, sir, with ’er dresser,’ he said, after giving a few preliminary wheezes like an old harmonium which is reluctant to produce its first note. ‘I can see every thin’ what goes on from that cubby-’ole of mine. Saw ’er go into ’er dressing-room; saw Aggie Budd come out again a few minutes later to go off for her ’er ladyship’s ’alf pint of porter and I saw ’er come back, too.’
‘One moment, pray,’ Holmes said, holding up a hand to stem Badger’s flow. ‘Let us go back to a point a little earlier. Did you see anyone enter the dressing-room between the time Miss Budd left it to wait for her mistress and their return?’
Badger blew out his moustache as he considered this question.
‘Can’t say I did, sir. But I wasn’t watchin’ all that carefully at that particular time. There was too many of ’em comin’ and goin’. Them seals, for one. I ’ates performin’ h’animals!’ Badger exclaimed suddenly in an unexpected outburst of rage. ‘Leavin’ their callin’-cards everywhere for others to clean up after ’em and needin’ fish and raw meat at h’ungodly hours! It h’aint Christian! Give me h’acrobats any day!’
‘Yes, quite!’ Holmes murmured. ‘But pray let us return to the subject, Badger. What happened after Miss Budd came back from the Crown public house?’
‘Well, the next thing I knew, she’d let out this scream – blood-curdlin’, it was, sir – and when I went to h’investigate, there was Mam’zelle lyin’ stretched out across the dressin’-table as dead as a mutton-chop.’
‘I understand you and Miss Budd searched the room?’
‘We did, sir.’
‘But found no one?’
‘No; and that’s somethin’ I’ve been cudgellin’ my brains over ever since. ‘Ooever did ’er in must ’ave vanished into thin h’air, ’cos ’e ’adn’t come through that door to my certain knowledge and ’e wasn’t anywhere in the room neither. So where was ’e? That’s what I want to know?’
‘A most pertinent question!’ said Holmes. ‘And one I shall make it my best endeavour to answer. Now what of Mademoiselle Rossignol herself? French, was she not?’