‘Unwind her slowly now.’
Albert’s mother descended, and so did the gauze. Thackeray remained firmly at the winch; others could change this scene. Unbelievably soon, it was time for another couplet:
‘Sometimes, you know, the weather is a menace.
A powerful breeze has blown me over—Venice!’
‘Marvellous!’ exclaimed Thackeray, as the floating city was revealed, complete with moving gondolas.
‘Just turn the handle, mate, or they won’t see anything of it. Blimey, if you think that’s a scene, you ought to go to Drury Lane. They run everything from race-horses to railway-engines across that stage.’
‘It was the transformation that surprised me,’ panted Thackeray, when the fifteen turns were made.
His companion sniffed. ‘Falling flaps. Get a good man up there on the catwalk and you can change a common lodging-house to Buckingham Palace in ten seconds, if you’ve a mind to. Right! Down she comes again, and then you’ll be wanted on the living statues.’
Fifteen turns later, he tottered away to report for his next task. Behind the gauze-cloth, Greece was being constructed, a series of columns secured with stage-braces in front of a cloth depicting the Acropolis.
‘Are you one of the heavies?’ someone asked him.
‘Yes.’
‘Good. This one’s yours. Aphrodite. Keep your head well down, don’t jerk, and watch out for the Thinker coming towards you from the other side.’
‘Aphro . . . ?’
‘Miss Penelope Tring. Get yourself in position and she’ll climb up at once.’
A wooden structure on small wheels, not unlike an upright piano painted white, with two steps on the keyboard side, was waiting for him. Young women with sheets draped about them were standing nearby, ready to go on. He noticed two handles on the back of the structure and gripped them. It moved quite freely. He waited uncertainly.
The last of the footmen quitted the stage and the Grecian maidens arranged themselves behind the gauze-cloth in an arc, leaving free the area ahead of Thackeray. In the opposite wing he could see another of the heavy contingent crouching behind a similar plinth on wheels, but his already supported a white statue. The orchestra stopped playing and Albert’s mother made her final introduction, but Thackeray did not hear a word of it. Miss Penelope Tring was mounting his plinth . . .
Next moment the stage was bathed in light, the orchestra were playing some stately melody and someone was pushing him from behind. Automatically, he began the journey to the other side: automatically, because his mind refused to accept the reality of what he had just seen and could continue to see if he turned his eyes that way. It was manifestly impossible that he, Detective Constable Edward Thackeray of Scotland Yard, was at that moment crossing a stage in a satin suit, crouching behind a conveyance supporting a female person clothed only in white silk fleshings. Never mind the disturbingly life-like male figure being wheeled past on his right; never mind the warmth proceeding from the vaguely rotund areas of whiteness on his left, a few inches from his cheek. Fantasy, all of it. Why, Sergeant Cribb, for all his bullying ways, would never subject a man to such indignities.
‘Hold on, mate!’ a voice at his elbow cautioned. ‘You’ll shove the lady through the wall if you don’t put the brake on.’
As they halted, Miss Tring relaxed her pose and hopped down heavily from the plinth in front of Thackeray, sufficiently substantial to convince anyone else that she existed. Of course he had heard, over pints of ale, of things that happened across the Channel, of poses plastiques and tableaux vivants in Parisian theatres. That unquestionably accounted for the trick of his imagination that had produced the present illusion. Why, if he pinched himself or, better still, reached out a thumb and forefinger to Miss Tring, she would certainly vanish. But something restrained him, and presently the apparition accepted a cloak from someone and walked away to the dressing-rooms.
Above the stage Albert’s mother completed a final chorus of ‘Up in a Balloon’, the curtain was lowered, and so were she and her bulldog, with someone else assisting at the winch. But there was no respite for Thackeray. ‘Carry this to the centre,’ a bystander told him, ‘and place it on the blue spot.’ He found himself holding a species of umbrella-stand made of glittering chromium and containing a formidable array of swords. ‘For the illusionist,’ he was told. ‘Get moving, damn you!’
Swords! His thoughts raced back to the unfortunate conjurer languishing in Newgate, and his abortive trick with the girl in the cabinet. Would the perpetrator of these ‘accidents’ (if there were such a person) have the audacity to repeat his wickedness here? Cribb’s words came back to him: ‘Carry out your orders . . .’ He walked to the middle and found the blue spot. The swords had one good effect on him, anyway: his mind had cleared itself of illusions and was fully alive to the dangers in the present situation. Another order was barked at him: ‘Only the table now. On the yellow square.’ That looked harmless enough, thank goodness. A silk-covered card-table with conjurer’s impedimenta, a silk hat, wand, gloves and a glass containing a red liquid.
The curtain was up again almost before he was back in the wings, and from the other side a performer in white tie and tails had taken the stage. Thackeray recognised him at once as one of the guests at Philbeach House, and it shortly became quite clear why he had been there. The man picked up one of the swords, thrust back his head, opened his mouth wide and slowly inserted the blade until the hilt was six inches from his teeth. The sword-swallower!
He withdrew the blade, and repeated the feat twice, with broader swords, accompanied by drum rolls. In the wings, Thackeray breathed with relief as the weapons came out as clean and shining as they had gone in. Not for long, however. As though sword-swallowing were not spectacular enough, the performer produced a box of matches, lighted a spill and began a demonstration of fire-eating. Really! Did people like that deserve police protection?
‘My Lords, Ladies and gentlemen, for my final trick,’ said the sword-swallower, when the fire-eating was safely completed, ‘and for your delectation, I should like to introduce my charming assistant, Miss Lola!’
She ran on to the stage from behind Thackeray, brushing him with her cloak as she passed. Lola Pinkus, like Miss Tring, had found a new forte in the profession. She curtsied most appealingly, tossing her blonde curls back as she straightened. How refreshing to see at last a young woman decently covered from neck to ankle!
‘Take it off!’ appealed some philistine in the audience.
‘Patience, sir, if you please,’ remonstrated the sword-swal- lower. ‘You may think, my friends, that you have seen all too little of Miss Lola. Soon you shall see less. In fact, she shall vanish altogether, before your very eyes.’ He picked up the glass. ‘In here is the most marvellous fluid in the world—’
‘Gin!’ shouted someone.’
‘No, sir! Not even gin has the properties of this particular brew. Take one draught of this and within seconds you will disappear completely. And I feel obliged to announce that it may not be purchased afterwards by gentlemen wishing to experiment on their mothers-in-law. Now, Miss Lola, would you care to give me your cloak? Our friends in the audience may wish to be assured that you are, in truth, flesh and blood and no mere illusion.’
Even this act! Thackeray noted a depressing sameness in the entertainment. Whatever their billing, the object of the performances seemed to be to display the fair sex in various degrees of indecency. Lola Pinkus was more adequately covered than Miss Tring, but somewhat less than respectability would have required in, say, a swimming-bath for females only. And the audience were behaving intolerably, whistling and shouting as though they had never seen a half undressed woman before. Perhaps they had not. Thackeray sniffed. There were compensations, after all, in a humble upbringing.
‘I shall now invite Miss Lola to drink this glass of the magical fluid,’ announced the sword-swallower, when he could get a hearing. ‘And then you must watch closely, for to see is to belie
ve!’
Lola approached him and took her stance with particular care. Thackeray watched keenly. He already had an idea of how the disappearance might be effected. The drum-roll began. The sword-swallower made some spectacular movements with the cloak. The footlights and the side-lighting dimmed, leaving a single beam directed on the performers from the gallery. Lola held the glass high, lowered it and drank. Simultaneously the sword-swallower shielded her from the audience with the cloak. With a most convincing scream she dropped through the trap-door on which she was standing. The lights came on. The cloak was swept aside to show the disappearance accomplished. Gasps of amazement were heard from the auditorium.
‘To see is to believe!’ shouted the sword-swallower.
‘And here I am!’ a voice came from high in the gallery. Everyone turned to see. There she was in her spangles and little else, waving triumphantly. A thunder of applause greeted her. Few of those present could have realised, as Thackeray did, that they were not looking at Lola Pinkus, but her sister, Bella.
The sword-swallower extended a hand towards the gallery, bowed, took a step back, and bowed again. The curtain was rung down. As he made for the wings one of the stagehands ran to meet him. He seemed to anticipate what was to be said. ‘That scream . . .’
‘That’s right, sir,’ said the stage-hand. ‘We heard it too, from down below, a moment before she came through the trap. She was dying before she hit the mattress, sir. She wasn’t conscious. She twitched once or twice and then went still.’
CHAPTER
11
THE NEWS FROM UNDER the stage had an odd effect on Thackeray. Naturally, he was shocked by the sudden death of such a young and charming artiste. But, sad as it was, the passing from the scene of Lola Pinkus gave a significant lift to his morale. He now had a clear justification for being on the stage, and he could once again think and act as a simple policeman. And what a relief that was! His mortifying experiences as a stage-remover actually began to look like part of an inspired plan. Even that harrowing journey across the stage with Miss Tring took on a heroic quality. In fact, he could picture himself already in Number One Court listening to the Lord Chief Justice: ‘It should not pass unrecorded that this case would never have been brought to trial but for the devotion to duty in the most unimaginable circumstances of a certain Detective Constable . . .’
Once he had satisfied himself that Lola was undeniably dead—and by her expression and attitude the moment of death had been violent in the extreme—he realised that it was not, after all, going to be possible to carry out the duties of a simple policeman. ‘After the finding of a body,’ decreed the Police Code (which all self-respecting members of the Force knew by heart), ‘the Coroner should be informed on the appropriate form.’ That was all right for the occasional corpse you found along the Embankment after an uncommonly cold night, but it didn’t quite meet the present case. He mentally thumbed through the pages of the manual, searching for something more appropriate. ‘When a dead body is found and there is no doubt that life is extinct . . .’ He peered closely at Lola’s mortal remains—‘. . . it should never be touched until the arrival of a constable who should forthwith note carefully its appearance and all surrounding it.’ His hand went to the place where his notebook should have been. No reason to panic, though; he would commit the details to memory. Countenance bluish and revealing unmistakable signs of pain. Eyes bolting open. Teeth bared and clenched. Body contorted, with legs bent unnaturally from the fall. Hands outspread but tensed, like claws. Body found on a straw mattress below the star trap. Pieces of broken glass scattered about nearby. That would do for the present. Time was too precious to waste over details. What next? ‘If he suspects that death was caused by violence he should not move the body or allow any part of the clothing or any article about it to be touched or moved by any person until the arrival of an Inspector, who should be sent for by messenger.’ Devilish difficult. Cribb would pass for an Inspector, of course. He was always telling everyone he carried all the responsibility without the rank. But contacting him through a messenger was next to impossible; the trap-man who had first reported Lola’s death had gone away complaining of dizziness, leaving him alone with the body. What could he do by himself? Stop the show and ask ‘Is there a detective sergeant in the house?’ A question like that in this hall was liable to start a stampede for the exit.
So Thackeray decided to dispense with the messenger and fetch Cribb himself. That meant abandoning the body for a few minutes and taking the risk of someone interfering while he was gone, but really there was no other possibility. What disturbed him more was the prospect of venturing among the audience in his yellow livery.
He opened a door leading to the canteen. From the atmosphere of noisy gaiety it was clear that the news of Lola’s death had not reached there. Girls of the chorus sat as usual on the knees of army officers, one hand waving a glass of gin, the other trifling with regimental whiskers. Thackeray threaded his way through, dreading that at any moment the red-headed Miss who had helped him with his scene-mounting would spring up from somewhere and fling herself upon him. However, he reached the other side unmolested and mounted the stairs leading to the auditorium.
Fortunately the turn in progress on the stage had the undivided concentration of the audience. A young woman he did not recognise was giving a male impersonation. The song was innocuous enough; indeed, he had often hummed the melody himself as he pounded the streets of Bermondsey. But the emphasis the singer was giving to certain words quite distorted the original meaning but delighted the audience, ready by now to see innuendoes in anything. Thackeray could not hope to slip past the tables completely unnoticed in his satin, but at least the entertainment drew most eyes away. His main concern now was whether even Cribb was too caught up in the performance to notice him.
It was when he was almost mid-way through the cluster of tables that he first thought he recognised one of the audience. Bald head, aquiline profile, a good crop of whiskers. Yes, a face he knew from somewhere, though it was difficult to trace the connexion. No friend of his could afford champagne by the magnum and a courtesan dripping with diamonds. Not wishing to appear rude, he looked away— and spotted another face which he recognised at once. Two others at the table were familiar too, though not the female companions they had with them. He now knew all four men from a period he had once spent with B Division, Westminster. What had brought them here he did not like to contemplate, for they were Honourable Members of a quite different House, where music halls were spoken of as dens of iniquity.
When he reached the promenade Cribb was waiting for him, hands on hips, eyes aflame with all the fury of an officer confronting a deserter in the field of battle.
‘Sarge, you’ve got your case,’ Thackeray blurted out, ‘and I think it may be murder.’
Within a minute they were entering the trap-floor, where someone was bending over Lola’s body. Above their heads the boards thundered to the rhythm of the cancan.
‘Step aside, if you please, Mr Plunkett. We are police officers.’
The manager was so startled that he almost tipped forward on to the mattress himself. ‘You are what?’
‘If it’s identification you require, I’ll thank you to wait until I’ve examined this unfortunate young woman. Have you touched anything?’ Without waiting for a reply Cribb put his face close to Lola’s and sniffed at her mouth.
‘I merely cleared away the pieces of glass,’ said Plunkett.
‘Glass?’
‘Yes. She must have still been holding the tumbler as she came through the trap. It shattered on the floor.’
Cribb rounded on him. ‘Where are the pieces?’
‘Why I wrapped them in newspaper and put them on the ledge over there for safety.’
‘If you please, Thackeray,’ said Cribb.
The constable brought the package over. Cribb unwrapped it carefully, without touching the fragments. He sniffed several times at a circular piece that had formed the base
of the tumbler. ‘This will need to be analysed. The conjurer’s fluid—what was it?’
‘Water, with a dash of cochineal for effect,’ answered Plunkett.
Cribb sniffed again. ‘It’s got a sickly sweet smell, for cochineal.’
Plunkett dipped his finger towards the glass. Cribb jerked it away. ‘I wouldn’t do that, sir.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘I’m no scientist, Mr Plunkett, but if I see a healthy young woman die in a matter of seconds and I can’t find a sign of a bullet-hole I think of poisons. And when I see the centres of the eyes dilated as these are and the cheeks this bluish colour, I go through the list of symptoms I keep in my head, sir, and I come up with Prussic Acid. If that’s what this is and you get a spot on your finger and lick it, we’ll have two corpses for post mortem tomorrow morning, not one.’
The manager was plainly impressed. He thrust his hands immediately into his pockets. ‘But I know you,’ he told Cribb, ‘and your friend. You were skulking at the back of my theatre during rehearsal yesterday, both of you. I sent you away to get some tickets, but that was for the first house, not this one. How the devil did you get in for this performance? And what is this person doing in the uniform of one of my staff?’
‘Voluntary unpaid stage-remover,’ explained Cribb. ‘If he hadn’t been here I shouldn’t have known what was going on, should I? Your audience out there still don’t know Miss Pinkus is dead.’
Plunkett’s manner changed abruptly. He put a hand on Cribb’s shoulder. ‘No need for them ever to know, eh? We can handle things discreetly between us, can’t we?’ He pulled out his wallet. ‘Dammit, this doesn’t have to be a police matter, does it?’
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