Vital Secrets

by Don Gutteridge

  Spooner obliged by pushing open the tavern door, eyeing Frank and Cobb with distaste, and strutting over to their table. He remained standing.

  “Is it yes or no?” Marc said.

  “It’s yes,” Spooner hissed.

  EVERY PERSON IN THE BUILDING WHO knew something about what had happened in Tessa’s room had been summoned to the stage area of the theatre. Here they were seated on stools and a bench hoisted up from the pit, all facing Marc. To his evident relief, Wilkie had been posted beside the bar in the tavern to ensure that no one entered through the door there. Frank had instructed his staff to carry on with the regular opening of the pub, then joined his wife and the others onstage. Spooner stood aloof and rigid in the wings, making it clear to anyone who cared that he was not a party to the insane scheme about to be proposed by Lieutenant Edwards and inexplicably approved by an increasingly unpredictable governor.

  It was nearly two o’clock. Cold sandwiches had been delivered to the actors by Madge Frank at twelve-thirty, Mrs. Thedford had been permitted to keep her luncheon date with Owen Jenkin and, then, in a plan worked out between Marc and Spooner, everyone necessary to the scheme had been brought here. It was Marc himself who had led Mrs. Thedford from the dining-room, then returned quickly to explain to Jenkin that he and Hilliard had been given a special assignment by Sir Francis, and would be absent for the next few days. The fact that both Marc and Rick had worked as security officers for the governor last year mitigated the quartermaster’s surprise at this news. Rumours of rebellion had been sweeping through both provinces for the past week or more. Jenkin’s ready acceptance of his explanation was also the assurance Marc required that Mrs. Thedford had kept her word and said nothing about Merriwether’s death. Marc said good-bye to his dear friend, unhappy to have lied to him, but determined to do his duty by uncovering the would-be rebels and their attempt to arm themselves with Yankee rifles.

  “I know you are all wondering why I’ve brought you here,” Marc began. “You’ve been through hell and its chambers since midnight. You are grieving the death of a colleague. You are puzzled why I have not been content to have Ensign Hilliard charged with murder. Perhaps you are even looking at one another and wondering. And to my great astonishment you are eager to carry on with your theatrical commitments. First of all, let me say that the governor himself has asked me to inform you that he wants you to continue your performances, at least until Wednesday and possibly to completion on Thursday evening.”

  “You might have told me sooner,” Frank said. “I been pullin’ my hair out since breakfast.” The fact that the only hairs on his head were in his ears did not diminish his dudgeon.

  “Sit down an’ keep yer trap shut,” Cobb said. “Any questions’ll come after the lieutenant’s done.”

  “But there are conditions attached,” Marc continued, “absolute conditions that must be obeyed to the letter. First, for reasons which have to do with affairs of state and therefore are no concern of yours, Sir Francis Head does not want anyone to learn of Mr. Merriwether’s death until Thursday at the earliest. Do not assume that there will be any attempt to protect his assassin: the prime suspect is in custody and I am to submit my report on the investigation at noon tomorrow. The killer will be charged and hanged. Secondly, you are to be confined to your quarters as you have been today, in particular because we cannot take a chance that any stray remark you might make in the tavern or dining-room or elsewhere might give away the secret we are endeavouring to maintain. In a short while, after I have examined the murder scene, Mr. Merriwether’s body will be taken out to Mr. Frank’s ice-house and kept frozen there until Thursday, when it will be released to the company.”

  Marc paused to study those before him. There was genuine puzzlement on the faces of the actors and a stoical veneer over the strain and fatigue, but nothing beyond expected curiosity. Thea was signing the information to Jeremiah beside her. Tessa, oddly, looked less strained than any of the others, much of the innocence still aglow in a face designed for it.

  “You wish us to present our programs tonight and tomorrow night?” Mrs. Thedford asked, staring at Marc quite intently, it seemed. “We will be happy to do so, as it will provide some relief from the tension and doubt we are now suffering. We also need the funds that such work will bring us.”

  “Does this mean I must play housekeeper for another two days?” Madge Frank demanded, aghast.

  “I’m afraid so, Mrs. Frank, for two reasons: Mr. Merriwether’s absence is sure to be noticed and Tessa’s room is covered with dried blood. The carpet will have to be removed and burned. But I’m sure the actors will co-operate by doing their own tidying up. They have a bathroom up there and a water-closet. It’s mainly their meals we’re talking about.”

  “But Thea hasn’t got a room up there, she’s been stayin’ with us,” Frank said on behalf of his wife.

  “Mr. Armstrong can move in with Mr. Beasley, and Miss Clarkson can have his room. I want to keep the murder room and Merriwether’s empty for the time being. Tessa can bunk in with Mrs. Thedford.”

  “Now, see here—” Armstrong protested.

  “Button yer lip!” Cobb said.

  “I ain’t emptyin’ no chamber pots!” Madge cried.

  “What’ll I tell my housemaids?” Frank said.

  “Tell ’em actors are finicky an’ temper-mental,” Cobb suggested.

  “That should do it.” Marc smiled.

  “There’s still a problem, though,” Mrs. Thedford said.

  “I know,” Marc said. “You are due to perform excerpts from Shakespeare tonight, a playbill in which Mr. Merriwether was heavily committed. And tomorrow night you are to repeat the farce, where, again, Mr. Merriwether is not only a principal player but the entire company is required to make it work.”

  Mrs. Thedford beamed a smile at Marc that discomfited him more than he let on: “You seem intimately acquainted with the ways of the stage.”

  “I have done some amateur acting years ago in London,” Marc said, “and I hung about the wings and back rooms of the summer playhouses and, once or twice, Drury Lane.”

  “You will know, then, that we are capable, at short notice, of rearranging our playbill.”

  “I was counting on that, ma’am.” Mrs. Thedford made a moue at the word ma’am, but Marc continued. “If you could come up with that potpourri or oleo you mentioned earlier, we’ll spread the word that Mr. Merriwether is ill and incommunicado and delay the Shakespeare till tomorrow night, then—”

  “But I have patrons to think of!” Frank cried, almost rolling off his stool. “I’ve put notices in the papers an’ tacked up handbills everywhere.”

  “And I’m sorry for that,” Marc said. “And I’m sorry you’ve got a murdered actor upstairs. But you have little choice. I am relaying here the explicit orders of the governor. If you refuse to co-operate, which is your right, then the Bowery Company will be sequestered elsewhere as material witnesses to a crime, and your brand-new theatre will be darkened, leaving your patrons free to speculate on your reliability as an impresario.”

  “You bastard!” Mrs. Frank exclaimed on behalf of her husband, who winced a smile at her and patted her hand. She jerked it away.

  “We’ll do whatever Sir Francis requires,” Frank said.

  “On Wednesday, then,” Marc said, leaning forward, “and this is crucial, the Shakespeare program must go ahead in some fashion.”

  There was a perplexed pause. “We can most assuredly put together a program of short scenes from Shakespeare using the five remaining members of the company,” Mrs. Thedford said, “but they will not have the power that—”

  “But you miss my point,” Marc said, savouring the drama of the moment. “Sir Francis, for reasons of security that I am not at liberty to reveal, wishes the public not merely to believe that Mr. Merriwether is alive but to observe him in action on Wednesday evening.”

  “Do you intend to bring Old Hamlet’s ghost on stage with us?” Dawson Armstrong snorted. />
  “Not at all. Jason Merriwether will, to all those in the audience, be performing as usual. But the body inside the costume and the face under the makeup will be mine.”

  TWELVE

  Marc himself supervised the surreptitious removal of Merriwether’s corpse. He emptied the trunk in the actor’s room of its costumes and, leaving the rifles secure beneath the false bottom, dragged it into the hall. There Jeremiah and Cobb were waiting with the body wrapped tightly in a canvas sheet supplied by Ogden Frank. They squeezed the near-six-foot figure into the five-foot trunk in as dignified a manner as possible, shut the lid, and then locked it with the key Marc had used Monday night.

  Wilkie was called up from below to help Cobb and Jeremiah lug it downstairs and through the tavern. Fortunately, while blissfully uncurious and lacking entirely in ambition, Wilkie was as loyal as a spaniel. He simply did as he was bid, happy to be relieved of the tedium of sentry duty. The barroom was crowded, but the regulars, having witnessed the comings and goings of such trunks since Saturday, paid them little heed. Then, with Marc keeping watch, the trunk was slipped into the small ice-barn behind the stables. Blocks of ice were freed from the straw and chopped up, and the pieces packed around the corpse. Poor Merriwether would keep until Thursday. The icehouse was then padlocked.

  Marc and Cobb repaired to the dining-room, where they sought out a quiet table in one corner, ordered a flagon of ale and some cold meat with cheese, and reviewed the events of the day.

  “Well, Major, you left them thisbe-ans without a word to spout, that’s fer sure.”

  “Do you think I convinced them that I can pull this off?”

  “Dunno. But they ain’t got a lot of choice, have they?”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  Marc had done his best to persuade Mrs. Thedford and the others that, at five foot eleven inches, Merriwether was a man to be noticed; indeed, he had been noticed during the troupe’s social activities on the weekend. But Marc was just as tall, with a similar build: muscular without being heavyset and very wide across the shoulders. Their colouring was roughly the same except for Merriwether’s dark eyes, but then Marc would be seen, even by those who might have dined with the tragedian on Sunday, only as a costumed figure up on a distant stage under flickering candles and above the glare of footlights, bearded and bewigged. He would have to make a conscious effort at lowering his voice to the basso range, but the declamatory style of delivery and exaggerated gesturing currently in vogue would assist in the deception. And Tuesday’s announced “illness” would be used as an excuse to forestall impromptu requests for backstage visits. It was Mrs. Thedford herself who suggested that the absence of company members from the environs of the theatre be attributed to the news of a death in her family. Her fellow actors would naturally go into mourning in deference to her sorrow.

  It had been at this juncture that the only serious question regarding Marc’s scheme had been raised by Lieutenant Spooner from the wings. Could Mr. Edwards actually act and, if so, could he memorize and sufficiently rehearse his lines and cues well enough to deceive the playgoers of Toronto? To that, Marc had replied: “I’ll know the answer at dinner-hour tomorrow.” And before he had left to oversee the removal of the body, Mrs. Thedford said she would put together the pages of script he would have to learn by rehearsal time at one o’clock the next afternoon. In the meantime, the actors, surprisingly animated, set about preparing something to entertain the sophisticates of the colony later in the evening.

  “I’ll be upstairs while the rehearsal is in progress, having a close look at Tessa’s room and doing a thorough search of the other rooms. Though any evidence there will likely have been hidden or destroyed,” Marc admitted to Cobb.

  “Well, they couldn’t’ve taken it very far. Wilkie’s kept them cooped up there tighter’n a maiden’s purse, an’ he tracked Madame Thedford all the way to the dining-room when she went to meet Major Jenkin.”

  “There are stoves in each room for burning whatever might need to be.”

  “You could grovel through the ashes.”

  “If grovelling will help Rick, I’ll do it,” Marc said, and Cobb, to be polite, chuckled.

  AFTER ASSURING HIMSELF THAT THERE WAS no microscopic trail of blood along the hall carpet—a trail that would have led him to the killer’s room—Marc went to Tessa’s door. The wax plug, replaced by Cobb after he had removed the body, had not been dislodged or tampered with. The room was as they had left it last night, minus Merriwether’s remains.

  The beige carpet had acted like a blotter, recording each spill of blood in blurred but indelible outline. The position of the body, on its back with legs splayed, was thus limned except for the head area. There a ghoulish brown ripple indicated where the skull had been smashed and bled thickly. The slash in the carpet where Rick’s sword had stuck in the wood below was clearly visible, surrounded by a dark crimson parabola.

  What interested Marc much more, however, were the smudges between the feet of the corpse and the settee about eight feet away near the window overlooking Colborne Street. According to the corroborated testimony of Beasley, Rick was standing over the corpse, holding the sword in his hands. Presumably, his jacket, breeches, and boots had been sprayed with blood from the victim’s still-pumping heart, and in order for it to have got all over Rick’s hands and the haft of his sword, he would have had either to bend down and immerse himself in it or to rub it all over himself in some sort of ritual triumph. Neither act befitted the man he knew as Rick Hilliard.

  But the smudges between corpse and settee, indicative of footprints, however indistinct, were very curious indeed. They had been made by a boot, though the size and nature could not be determined. Without question, however, they went in only one direction: from the settee to the corpse. Only toe-prints were unambiguously visible and he could find none of them pointing the other way, though there were, to be sure, enough random smudges here and there to make any firm conclusion problematic. Beasley and the police had regrettably contaminated the scene while the blood was still fresh. Still, if Rick had done the deed, he would have had to rise from the settee at Tessa’s cry, knock the villain down, and skewer him—after which he would have been more or less bloodied, especially around the boots. Then, presumably, he had staggered to the settee, where there were blood-smears on the edge of the seat. The killer had sat down: two fully outlined boot-prints and a palm-print attested to that. Why? To savour his murderous act? Weather the aftershock? Suffer remorse? Whatever the reason, this pause could have lasted mere seconds because when Beasley arrived—say, two minutes after Tessa’s cry—Rick was already back over the body and was still there when Mrs. Thedford and Jeremiah appeared on the scene.

  Looking now at these toe-prints, one must conclude that Rick had staggered backwards after being bloodied, then staggered forward again, leaving more prints in the same direction. Possible, Marc thought, but not probable. There just didn’t seem to be enough prints to satisfy this interpretation. And as far as he could make out, the backward staggering depicted here did not resemble the way any man would actually have done it: the print-pattern was simply too regular. Moreover, Rick had told him that the first thing he remembered upon waking was noticing blood on his tunic. If that were true, and Marc believed it was, then Rick would have struck and stabbed Merriwether while unconscious and with no memory of either act. Besides which, Rick’s jacket had seemed to Marc, when he had examined it closely last night, to be too free of splashes and splatter. The smeared patterns were inconsistent with spouting blood. What that portended he could not guess. All he knew was that, despite the contrary eyewitness testimony, there was reason to doubt that Rick Hilliard had committed murder.

  Until he could come up with a more plausible alternative, however, he recognized that he had little chance of convincing the governor or the magistrates of Rick’s innocence.

  • • •

  MARC NOW BEGAN TO SEARCH THE other rooms. He opened each actor’s trunk
, finding no more false bottoms, went through the pockets, sleeves, and cuffs of every costume, and sifted through any ash left in a stove. Merriwether, Armstrong, and Beasley had obviously not lit fires yesterday evening, so that only a residual ash remained from fires earlier on the weekend. And nothing was to be found there beyond the ash itself. Mrs. Thedford, however, had put on a small fire in her parlour room, and as Marc rummaged about he did find several charred bits of what appeared to be linen paper or the cloth cover of a book. At the moment, though, he could find nothing sinister in the discovery. Mrs. Thedford would have many papers, playbills, script-pamphlets, cue cards, and the like as part of her business. What he was searching for specifically was the container for the laudanum that had been poured into Tessa’s sherry decanter, even if it had been shattered into shards. Chances were it was somewhere on this floor. He even opened Mrs. Thedford’s perfume bottles and sniffed, precipitating several sneezes but no clue. He picked up a candlestick and shoved a forefinger up the hollow stem of it. No vial there.

  Discouraged, Marc went back out into the hall. He put himself in Merriwether’s shoes for a moment: he waits till the others have gone down for supper or later perhaps when they’ve headed for their cramped dressing-rooms to put on makeup. Then he slips across to Tessa’s room, vial in hand, pours the contents into the decanter, and slips out again. He can’t very well leave the vial there, and he would not be foolish enough to hide it in his own room lest something go awry with his plan. But where else? Maybe he had taken it down to the theatre with him; Marc would have to search the dressing-rooms at least.

  It was then that he noticed the ornamental spittoon sitting near Armstrong’s door. It was not used as a spittoon up here, but its brass filigree, when polished, would gleam handsomely. Gingerly, Marc pressed his right hand into the narrow opening and down into the wider body of the piece. He struck sand. Frank had probably filled it with sand to act as ballast. Wriggling two fingers, Marc managed to delve down far enough to strike something harder than sand. Seconds later he drew out a glass apothecary bottle, its stopper in place. He turned it upside down and there, on the bottom, in very tiny type, he read: Michaels. Ezra Michaels operated a chemist’s shop near the corner of King and Toronto Streets. And while this empty unlabelled bottle didn’t guarantee that the laudanum had come from Michaels, containers often being re-used, it strongly suggested that the narcotic had been purchased somewhere in the capital.