With a grunt and nod, Quint indicated that, on consideration, he would.
‘So, what is the question your master wishes to put to me?’
Quint retailed in his own particular way Adam’s request for further information and the theatre manager paused for thought.
‘Yes,’ he said, after a few moments, ‘yes, now I think of it, the girl did say she was coming back. I should have said as much to your master. She seemed very eager to do so. Yes, I think we’ll be seeing her again before too long.’
Quint leaned back on his stool and stared at his boots, muddy from the York streets. That had been easy, then, he thought. His task was done. His master’s additional question had been answered. It seemed as if the dollymop might still be in the city. He could say his farewells to this Timble cove and be on his way. But he was comfortable in the Punchbowl and the weather outside was not pleasant. He looked at the half-bottle of gin, which was close to empty.
Timble noted the direction in which his new companion’s eyes had strayed. ‘Time for another modest quencher, Mr Devlin?’
Quint, who rarely turned down the offer of alcohol, nodded. ‘That bottle’s a dead ’un, mind,’ he said.
The theatre manager stood and walked to the bar. After a brief colloquy with the barman, he returned with another half-bottle.
‘A fine-looking gent your master,’ Timble said, as he settled back into his seat. ‘Couldn’t help but notice his bearing when he come to visit. An ornament to any company, he’d be.’
Quint, who was more interested in the gin than the conversation, said nothing, but looked meaningfully at the bottle.
The theatre manager poured another glass. ‘The fact is, Mr Devlin, we’re in a bit of a pickle at the Grand at present. Skeffington don’t know it yet, but one of our young men has run off with one of our young women.’
Quint picked up his glass and rolled the gin around it before throwing the liquid down his throat with one sudden movement. He still said nothing.
‘Yes,’ Timble went on, not, it seemed, discouraged by his fellow drinker’s silence. ‘Mr Bellingham and Miss Devonshire have both gone. Last seen heading for the railway station with a couple of portmanteaus and an engagement ring.’
Quint slammed his glass down on the table with unexpected force. In the quiet of the pub even the barman was surprised and looked across at him. Timble did not blink.
‘That’s about the gauge of it,’ the theatre manager said. ‘All very well for them, and who would want to stand in the way of young love? Well, youngish love. Not Horatio Timble. But it leaves us in the lurch. Last night of The Skeleton in the Cave soon. We can manage somehow, get through a few performances without them. But we open The Spectre Bridegroom in less than a week, and now we’ve got no bride and no bridegroom.’
There was a silence for a moment.
‘Skeffington will be in a fearful wax. Ranting and yelling like we’re all as deaf as posts. And he’s been in such a good mood of late. As merry as a mouse in malt.’
There was another pause as Quint shuffled in his seat and Timble toyed with his glass.
Eventually, the theatre manager leaned across the table. ‘Your Mr Carver’s a genteel-looking chap,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose he’s ever taken to the stage, has he?’
* * * * *
Cyril Montague’s rooms were very close to the theatre, in a ramshackle building in a courtyard off Goodramgate, almost opposite the east front of the Minster. The door was already open when Adam climbed the rickety staircase to the attics and found them. He called out Montague’s name and heard a faint, inarticulate response from inside. Assuming it to be an invitation to enter, he did so.
The room was in half-darkness. Curtains of crimson damask had been hastily and incompletely pulled across the only window, and a thin shaft of light from a gas lamp outside shone through the gap that had been left. Dust danced in this light. There was little furniture in view, and even less ornament.
Montague was sitting on a black horsehair sofa pushed against one of the walls, a long-stemmed pipe in his mouth. An opium lamp stood on a small table beside him. The sickly smell of the drug hung in the air. It was potent but not, Adam noted, unpleasant. Montague took a long pull on the pipe and sent the smoke furling from his nostrils with a deep sigh of satisfaction, watching it drift across the room.
‘Have a whiff, my dear,’ he suggested companionably, offering the pipe. ‘There’s paradise in these plumes.’
Adam shook his head, taking stock of the man he had come to ask about Dolly.
The actor was wearing a blue smoking jacket and a red smoking cap in the shape of a Turkish fez – a tassel on the top flicked back and forth as he moved his head. Montague’s lips, Adam noticed, were rouged and his face was lightly powdered. He did not seem particularly surprised to see his visitor, nor did he seem troubled by Adam’s unheralded arrival.
‘A thousand and one apologies for the austerity of my humble lodgings, my dear,’ the actor drawled. ‘The grumpy old thing who owns them took away most of the furnishings last week. I do declare I haven’t a seat to offer you.’ He smiled beatifically and put the pipe to his lips once more.
‘It is of no account, Mr Montague,’ Adam said, ‘and I am sorry to intrude. Mr Timble suggested that I should call upon you.’
‘Ah, the worthy Timble.’
‘He thought that you might be able to help me with some enquiries I am pursuing.’
‘I would be deliriously happy to help, of course.’ The actor had turned to the opium lamp on the table and was making some adjustment to it. He was clearly more interested in that than in his visitor. ‘But what do I know of enquiries? Absolutely nothing, I would venture to say.’
‘I am looking for this young lady.’ Adam held out the cabinet card which showed Dolly beneath her parasol.
Montague turned and squinted at the photograph. He held it up to what light there was. He seemed to be having difficulty focusing on it. ‘Delightful creature,’ he said eventually. ‘A friend of yours?’
‘According to Mr Timble, she claimed to be a friend of yours.’
‘Never seen her in my life, my dear.’ Montague returned to fumbling with the paraphernalia of his drug.
‘Her name is Dolly Delaney. She told Mr Timble that she knew you from London. That she danced in the chorus at the Gaiety.’
‘Ah, the chorus!’ Montague said, now abandoning both pipe and bowl and turning bleary eyes towards his visitor. He spoke as if this explained all. ‘So many pretty little poppets, forever shaking their curls at a man. No use to me, of course. They all blur into one after a while. Perhaps dear Dolly was among the dancers at the Gaiety . . . or the Princess’s? Could it have been the Princess’s? But I don’t remember her.’
‘She has not been to see you here in York?’
‘In York?’
For just a moment, Adam glimpsed a hint of something other than amiable stupor in Montague’s expression, but it was gone as swiftly as it had appeared.
‘Nobody comes to see me in York, my dear. Neither here nor when I tread the boards. Have you seen the houses Skeffington gets? Not enough to pay for milk for the theatre cat. “What’s the crowd like tonight, Timble?” I ask each evening. “Bad, Cyril, bad,” he says every time. I should never have left the smoke.’ His voice was full of self-pity. For one moment, Adam feared that Montague was about to cry. Indeed, the actor made a show of wiping a furtive tear from the corner of his eye. Then he clasped his hand to his brow like the wronged husband in a melodrama of adulterous love. ‘That an artist like myself should have to work with such poor players as strut and fret their hour upon the stage here,’ he said, now looking around for his pipe and then falling upon it. ‘You wouldn’t credit the people old Skeffington has working for him,’ he went on. ‘There’s Kitty Devonshire takes th
e ingénue roles and I swear she’s forty if she’s a day. As for Bellingham, the man’s shameless. He pads his calves, you know.’ Montague patted one of his own lower limbs. ‘The wretch will do anything to make his legs look better in tights.’
‘And what of Mr Skeffington himself?’
Montague said nothing but puffed furiously at his opium. His eyes closed and Adam began to suspect that the actor, his outburst over, was drifting off to sleep. He was about to speak again when Montague opened first one eye and then the other. The tassels from his red smoking cap were hanging over his face and he pushed them to one side.
‘Skeffington?’ he said. ‘He’s a regular barnstormer, ain’t he?’
There was another silence. Montague’s eyes closed and again Adam wondered if he had fallen asleep. Again, the actor came slowly to life.
‘Alfred ain’t a bad sort, I suppose. Although he brought me here under false pretences.’ Montague now sounded petulant. ‘According to him, I was to play Romeo, Hamlet, the great Shakespearean roles. And, once I exile myself to this uncouth city, what do I find?’
Adam made a gesture to indicate that he had no idea what had awaited Montague in York.
‘The Miller of Mansfield and His Maid.’ The actor, who had briefly put aside his pipe, spat out the words as if they were curses.
‘I do not think I am familiar with the work,’ Adam said.
‘Then you are a lucky man, sir. Thank the Lord that we are now finished with it. Such a teacup-and-saucer sort of a play.’ Montague twisted his face into a moue of distaste. ‘Frightfully respectable. If we can’t have the Bard, I prefer something with a little more blood and thunder.’
‘Like The Skeleton in the Cave?’
‘Well,’ the actor conceded, ‘our present production is at least a little more lively than that wretched miller and his sickly maid.’
‘You are playing Eugene Aram, of course.’
‘Of course,’ the actor said, with some complacency. ‘Who else in this raggle-taggle band that Skeffington has gathered together could do justice to the role? That man Bellingham and his padded legs? I think not.’
‘I am sure that you are magnificent in the role, sir.’
Montague bowed his head in acknowledgement of Adam’s outrageous flattery, as if to concede that, yes, on consideration, ‘magnificent’ was exactly the word to describe his performance.
‘But I wonder if I could ask you, as a favour, to look again at the photograph of Miss Delaney. She has gone missing and her family is eager to find the girl.’
Adam held out the cabinet card once more. Montague had returned to his opium pipe and was blowing spirals of scented smoke across the small room. He reached out a beringed hand and took the photograph. He stared at it for a few moments. For a second time, Adam thought he saw a gleam of something more than drugged indifference in the actor’s eyes but it was almost immediately gone again.
Montague gave back Dolly’s picture. ‘The poor poppet,’ he said. ‘Do you suppose something awful has happened to her?’
‘I do not know, Mr Montague. What do you think?’
The actor shrugged. ‘I’m sure I don’t know, my dear. As I say, I have never met the girl. But awful things do happen to such creatures all too often.’ He took another, final pull on his pipe and blew the smoke upwards. His eyelids began to droop. ‘And now I am beginning to feel most devilishly tired.’
Cyril Montague, with the precision of a man who had undertaken the task in all kinds of states and conditions, began to dismantle his opium kit. He dowsed the lamp and laid his pipe, which had ceased to smoke, carefully on the table. Adam watched him. Once the actor had finished the job to his satisfaction, he took off his tasselled cap and curled up on the horsehair sofa. Within seconds he was asleep.
The room was so full of opium fumes that Adam had begun to feel light-headed himself. With one last glance to ensure that, this time, Montague really was asleep, he made his way down the rickety staircase and back to the fresh air of the city streets.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
‘I am certain that Montague knew more than he was telling me.’
‘Thought you told me he was so sillyfied with the pipe that ’e didn’t know how many days make a week.’
‘He was. But he was still crafty enough to keep something from me. I would swear on a stack of bibles that he has seen Dolly recently. But why was he reluctant to admit that he even knew her? Did he think that I intended her harm?’
‘Maybe he thought you was ’er sweetheart. Come to take ’er back to the smoke. And ’e doesn’t want you to know where she is ’cos ’e’s after ’er ’imself?’
‘An interesting theory, but Cyril Montague is, I think, more likely to be “after” the gentlemen of the cast rather than the ladies.’
Quint said nothing. Adam looked over to where his servant was standing. The older man had pulled back the curtain on the hotel window and was peering into the street below.
‘I hope I do not shock you with that suggestion, Quint.’
The manservant turned back into the room and shrugged his shoulders. ‘It ain’t no concern of mine,’ he said tolerantly. ‘If a molly boy fancies other molly boys, what’s it to me? More judies for them as does like them.’
‘A very wise remark. Live and let live, say I.’ Adam reclined further in his chair and, clasping his hands behind his head, stared up at the ceiling stucco. ‘Cyril Montague is a man whose path in life is heading relentlessly downhill,’ he said after a pause. ‘Once he was the toast of Drury Lane, a star shining in the dramatic firmament. Now he’s playing to empty rows of seats in a small provincial theatre.’
‘Ain’t that always the way,’ Quint remarked mournfully. ‘Rooster one day, feather duster the next.’
‘You’re quite the philosopher today, Quint, are you not?’
The manservant made a sound in acknowledgement that was halfway between a wheeze and a snarl.
‘So Timble believes that we should audition to tread the boards, does he?’ his master said after a pause.
‘That’s what he sez to me in the Punchbowl. Job for you and job for me.’
‘Was the man drunk when he made this suggestion?’
‘He’d been pushing the bottle about a bit. But ’e weren’t that far gone.’
‘So it was not the drink talking.’
‘’E sez they need a new man for the company. On account of this Bellingham cove ’aving legged it with a tart. And they could always find something for a cully like me.’
Adam stretched out his legs in his chair and examined his shoes as if he was debating whether or not to summon the hotel boots to polish them. ‘Could we join Skeffington’s motley crew, do you think?’ he asked. ‘What are your accomplishments, Quint? Can you sing? Can you dance? Can you strike a theatrical pose?’
Quint looked doubtful. ‘I knows “Villikins and his Dinah”,’ he said after a pause.
‘Well, then, we must prepare our audition pieces. Yours can be a verse or two of that moving tribute to doomed love.’
‘It ain’t me as Timble’s chiefly int’rested in. I told you. ’E wants summ’un to take Bellingham’s place. ’E reckons you’ll fill the bill.’ The manservant paused and looked at his master. ‘What you goin’ to do? Ain’t no point you doin’ “Villikins and his Dinah” as well.’
Quint sounded distinctly possessive of his chosen audition piece.
‘I couldn’t hope to compete with you, Quint. But I have strings to my own bow. Perhaps a speech from the Bard? Skeffington is clearly a great Shakespearean. A soliloquy by the gloomy Dane would probably be just the ticket.’ Adam sprang from his chair and stepped into the centre of the room. Tugging briefly at the collar of his shirt, he cleared his throat and began to declaim:
‘O,
that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d
His canon ’gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!’
Adam’s face went blank and he ceased speaking. ‘I am afraid I have forgotten the rest. Something about an unweeded garden and things rank and gross, but the exact phrasing escapes me.’ He looked at his servant. ‘What do you make of brother Hamlet’s words, Quint?’
Quint merely grunted. ‘Dull as a sermon,’ he said. ‘Ain’t a patch on “Villikins”.’
* * * * *
In the event, neither Adam nor Quint were required to perform an audition. The following morning found the company at the Grand so desperate to fill the gap left by the departing lovers that, when the two men arrived to volunteer their services, they were greeted with open arms.
‘Fate must have sent you,’ Timble said, as all three men stood in the dingy lobby. ‘I said to my friend Mr Devlin here, I said a genteel-looking man like yourself, Mr Carver, was just what was required in the circumstances. Did I not say exactly that, Mr Devlin?’
Quint agreed that he had.
‘I regret that I have very little experience of the stage, Mr Timble,’ Adam said. ‘I worry that I may not prove so welcome an addition to your number as you imagine.’
Timble waved away his concerns. ‘If you can remember your lines and not fall over the scenery,’ he said, ‘you will be doing as well as most of your fellow thespians. Rather better than some, if truth be told.’
‘I shall do my best, sir.’
‘I am convinced you will.’
‘The play will open next week?’
‘In five days. But there is time enough to prepare you for your role.’ Timble paused and looked at Adam. ‘The young lady you were looking for,’ he said. ‘Miss Delaney? I suppose it would be too much to hope that you have found her?’
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