by Mann, George
"I doubt it's really a case for the Crown. I did think I might call in on old Peterson this afternoon; just to run a few things past him, to be doubly sure it's not of interest. But I suspect it's probably one for Winthrop to worry himself with. I never was an expert on the Egyptian arts, anyway." He searched Veronica's face for signs of disapproval. There were none. "Besides, I doubt Peterson will have much to add, either. He's more of a traditionalist. If he'd been interested in the find he'd have been there last night alongside me."
Veronica laughed. "Come now, Sir Maurice! Admit that you're rather taken with the whole affair. It sounds as if there's a story to be had from it. You could write a paper on it."
"Well, I..." There was a high-pitched whistle from the adjoining room. Newbury slapped a hand on his desk. "Ah, good. Time for that pot of Earl Grey." He stood, brandishing his letter to the Queen. "I'll ask Miss Coulthard to have this couriered directly to the palace. And then you can tell me all about your missing girls."
Veronica nodded, clearly amused. Newbury felt his cheeks flush. He circled his desk and went in search of Miss Coulthard. He needed his morning tea. And, he reminded himself, he still hadn't found time for any breakfast.
†
"So tell me about your suspect, Miss Hobbes." Newbury was sitting behind his desk once again, sipping at his tea. He was watching Veronica intently. She placed her sheaf of papers on the desk and folded her arms. She met his gaze, her face serious.
"Potential suspect, Sir Maurice. The man might not have done anything wrong."
"So it is a man?"
"Yes."
"And?"
"And he's a travelling stage magician. He operates under the disappointingly unoriginal nom de plume of 'The Mysterious Alfonso'."
Newbury smiled around the rim of his teacup. "Oh dear, that is rather fanciful. So tell me, how is this travelling magician associated with the missing girls?"
" He's not. Well, at least not directly. But there are a few too manly coincidences to easily rule out his involvement. Firstly, the dates and locations of his travelling stage show coincide exactly with the dates and places that the girls went missing.
And secondly, many of the families of the missing girls reported that the last thing the girls did before they disappeared was attend a travelling show. They were never seen again."
Newbury studied Veronica's face. She was clearly passionate about bringing the case to a successful conclusion. She'd been on the trail of the missing girls ever since Sir Charles Bainbridge, Chief Inspector at Scotland Yard and a close friend of Newbury's, had brought the case to their attention.
A string of young females, aged between seventeen and twenty- three, had been disappearing from towns all over the Home Counties, and as yet, no one had been able to piece together any pattern. It had been going on since Christmas, and the disappearances showed no signs of abating. Many of the families were declaring witchcraft, and it was for this reason that Bainbridge had stopped by to seek Newbury's advice. Newbury, however, had felt that there was no evidence of supernatural wrong-doing, and was himself engaged with an entirely different case involving an infestation of ghostly spirits at a manor house in Cambridgeshire. Veronica had been aiding him on the Huntington case, of course, but for some reason had been unable to put aside her desire to help Bainbridge solve the mystery of the missing girls. Convinced that there were never any supernatural elements involved in the case, she had set to work looking for patterns in the web of disappearances, and since the successful conclusion of the Huntington case she had spent almost every waking hour at her desk, looking for clues in the statements and police reports. Newbury, of course, had been given other assignments to contend with, but he had allowed Veronica to pursue her quest, and now, it seemed, she had finally found something that resembled a lead.
"Are you planning to call on Sir Charles?"
Veronica frowned. "Not yet. Not until I know that the man is definitely involved. It wouldn't do to set Scotland Yard on him unnecessarily."
Newbury placed his teacup down on its saucer with a clatter. “I’m not convinced that is the wisest course of action, my dear Miss Hobbes. We can't have you putting yourself in any danger. This is a police matter. Besides, how do you intend to go about proving this magician fellow is actually involved?"
Veronica smiled. "That's easy. He's here in London. It's my intention to attend his performance this evening."
Newbury looked thoughtful for a moment. Then his face cracked into a wide grin. "Well, Miss Hobbes, you find me at your disposal. I fear I am without a dinner date for this evening, And I've always enjoyed the theatre. Would you mind terribly if I escorted you to the show?"
Veronica laughed. "Indeed not. I have two tickets." Her eyes glittered. "If you can bear to tear yourself away from your Ancient Egyptian mystery, it would be a pleasure to be escorted to the event."
"Then we shall take it in together. A most satisfactory resolution." He glanced at his pocket watch. "But now, I suspect old Peterson will have found his way to his desk, and I rather think it would be opportune to catch him before he allows himself to wander off again."
Veronica laughed. "I knew you wouldn't be able to resist!"
Newbury shrugged. "Well, we can't just leave that young Mr. Purefoy to sensationalise the whole affair in the national press, can we? Someone is going to have to set the record straight. I doubt very much it will be Winthrop." He got to his feet. "Until this evening, then?"
Veronica nodded. "Until this evening."
Smiling, Newbury set off to find Claude Peterson, one of the British Museum's foremost experts on Ancient Egyptian ritual. He had a notion to question the man on the strange carvings he had seen on some of the ushabti statues the previous evening, and to see if Peterson found any significance in the red markings on the outer casket of the mummy.
Then, later, he would return to his Chelsea lodgings to prepare for an early evening trip to the theatre. He wondered what bizarre treats The Mysterious Alfonso would have up his sleeves, and whether he would prove to be forthcoming in his interview. The case of the missing girls was certainly disturbing and had entirely consumed Veronica these last few weeks. He hoped for the sake of all involved that she had finally found her man, and that soon they would be able to bring the episode to a tidy conclusion. Most of all, he hoped that whatever it was that had caused Veronica to become so emotionally embroiled in the case would be resolved at the same time. He missed her companionship. And her support.
Chapter Four
The Archibald Theatre in Soho transpired to be rather more bohemian than Newbury had been expecting. In fact, it was so far removed from the austere splendour of Drury Lane that he could hardly bring himself to consider it a theatre at all. Nevertheless, there was a stage — which, considering the condition of the rest of the building, he assumed had been erected specifically to accommodate the new show — and an auditorium, of sorts, to seat the raucous crowd. The rest of the facilities were a little basic, to say the least, and it was clear the interior decor had seen better days. The floor was sticky, the seats uncomfortable and the smell almost as unpalatable as the stench he had encountered at the train station earlier that day. The space was dimly lit by a series of gas lamps mounted in a row along the rear wall, and whilst the venue was sizeable enough, the conditions still felt cramped and uninviting.
With a sigh, Newbury surveyed the audience around him. The crowd was comprised of a mix of both men and women, workers who had spilled out of the factories and cookhouses just an hour or so before and were now engaged in quaffing extraordinary amounts of gin and heckling the magician with a continuous stream of jibes and cheers. For his part, though, the magician appeared to revel in all of the attention, responding to the cheers of his audience with increasingly impressive sleights of hand. So far they had seen a host of elaborate illusions, ranging from a bunch of flowers being pulled out of a sleeve, to card tricks, to doves being made to disappear and reappear beneath a red silk sheet. The My
sterious Alfonso was a consummate performer who had clearly spent years perfecting his act, and even longer learning how to engage the crowd. His thick Italian accent added a sense of the exotic and his little flourishes at the end of each trick — a roll of the arm followed by a brisk bow to the front row — showed clearly that he understood how and when to give his audience a cue to applaud. Duly, they showered him with praise.
Newbury leaned back in his uncomfortable seat. The show was impressive, yet it offered him nothing that he had not seen before, and whilst he sat in the midst of the noisy audience, jostled from side to side by the people around him, he found himself growing impatient. He was keen for the show to be over so that he and Veronica could attempt to get backstage and interview the showman about his possible connection to the missing girls. He shook his head. He was starting to think like Charles.
He studied Veronica for a few moments. She appeared to be increasingly enraptured by the magician's trickery, and had allowed herself to be carried along by the audience, applauding loudly at each appropriate juncture and generally accepting the show for the entertainment it was. Newbury envied her that. He simply didn't have a mind that would allow him to enjoy such trivial pursuits without first attempting to analyse exactly how the trick had been carried out, what the basis of the illusion was, or how his eye had been tricked into believing something contrary to what had really occurred. He knew the tricks were nothing but illusions — as complex as they may be — and that was enough to dispel any sense of enjoyment for him. There was nothing truly mysterious, arcane or occult in what he was seeing down on the stage. Added to that, he was surprised that Veronica should engage with the show in such a way, given the reason for their visit to the theatre; unless, of course, she were feigning enjoyment as a means of gaining access to Alfonso , after the show.
Newbury's attention was pulled back to the performance. Alfonso had wheeled out a large, coffin-shaped contraption on a trolley and had placed it in the very centre of the stage. It reminded Newbury somewhat of the Ancient Egyptian casket he had seen the previous evening, although this contraption was hewn from plain wood and lacked the gaudy decoration of the Egyptian artefact. Not only that, but Alfonso's box also had a series of thin slits cut into it at regular intervals along the sides and lid.
The magician moved around to stand behind the box, lifted his top hat and gave a dramatic sweep of his arm to silence the audience. A hush settled over the theatre. Newbury glanced at Veronica, whose eyes flashed in the low light.
"Ladies and gentlemen! The time has come. This is what you have come from miles around to see, no? The Mysterious Alfonso offers to you his death-defying sword box!" The magician smiled a toothy grin as the crowd began to cheer again, loudly. He waved them quiet once more. Slowly, as if to punctuate his next few words, Alfonso began to tug his white gloves from his hands, extracting one finger at a time, keeping a watchful eye on the audience all the while. "Now...do I have a volunteer?"
A few tentative hands went up around the room. Alfonso seemed to consider his options, scanning the audience with his outstretched finger. After a moment he settled on a young woman in the second row. She was blonde and pretty, and wearing a pale blue dress: The men to the left of her all stood to allow her to pass. She made her way slowly through the row of seats and approached the stage. Alfonso came forward and took her hand as she mounted the steps, helping her up so that she could take her place beside him. He twirled her around on the spot, showing her off with a wide smile, as if to suggest that she wasn't a plant and that there was nothing unusual or untoward about her person. The crowd clapped appreciatively. Next, Alfonso led the woman forward, towards the coffin-shaped box at the centre of the stage. He left her there for a moment whilst he fetched a small stool, which he placed on the wooden boards before her. Then, lifting the lid to reveal the interior of the box, he stood back and encouraged her to climb inside.
The woman looked nervous. She peered over the lip of the box as if she suspected there might be something hiding within. Then she glanced back over her shoulder, searching out t he face of her companion in the crowd. Newbury watched the man wave at her to continue. Hesitating, the woman stepped up onto the stool and, holding her skirt so as not to trip, she I i fted first one leg and then the other into the box, until she was standing inside it, towering above Alfonso and shaking visibly. Newbury wondered what was going through her mind. Gulping at the air, clearly terrified, the young woman sank to her knees and then lay down inside the open casket, disappearing from view. Alfonso acted quickly. He took the lid he had removed just a few moments before and lifted it back into place, being careful to ensure a snug fit. The audience was almost silent with anticipation. Even Newbury found himself leaning forward in his seat, straining to see what Alfonso would do next.
The magician moved off to the left-hand side of the stage, where a young female stagehand — dressed in a most revealing costume of feathers and sequins - had wheeled on a large wooden rack filled with glittering swords. Alfonso stepped up to this and drew one of the blades. He held it high above his head, showing it off to the crowd. It reflected brightly in the dull light. Then, moving back to stand before the box containing the woman, he slapped the flat edge of the blade against the casket, causing it to clang noisily. Next he took the sharp end of the blade between his thumb and index finger and held it aloft, trying to flex the metal. The audience continued to watch, fully enraptured.
Alfonso moved the casket around a little so that the crowd could see what he was about to do next. He took the point of the sword, found one of the thin notches that had been cut into the sides of the coffin-shaped box, and thrust the blade into it with all his might. The tip of the sword exited the box on the other side through another of the pre-cut slits. Alfonso pushed the blade home until the hilt of the sword was resting against the side of the box.
There was a gasp from the audience. Alfonso didn't hesitate to soak up their admiration. He went back to the rack of swords, took another blade and proceeded to repeat his actions, first proving to the crowd that the blade was real, and then pushing it through the box — and, supposedly, the woman inside it —until its tip was clearly protruding from the other side. He did this again and again until the rack was empty and there were at least ten of the blades perforating the box. Finally, frenetic and short of breath from the exertion, he mounted the stool, placed the tip of a blade against the lid, and thrust it downwards through another hole, so that it slid through the box and burst out of another hole in the base. There was no way the woman inside the box could have survived.
Alfonso climbed down from the stool and stood before the audience. Panting, he rolled his shirtsleeves up to his elbows. The audience were silent and agog. Smiling, Alfonso kicked the stool away and grasped hold of one end of the box. It was still resting on the low trolley on which he had earlier wheeled it across the stage, and he spun it around for the audience, offering them a view of the casket from all sides. Newbury frowned. It was not at all clear what had happened to the woman. There were no obvious trapdoors in the base of the box, and if she had dropped out through a small hatch in the bottom she would have been easy to spot. The only explanation was that she was still inside the box, but Newbury found that hard to believe. The swords had certainly looked real enough, and he couldn't see how Alfonso could have missed her when he inserted the blades, no matter how much precision he had used when cutting the guide holes prior to the event.
"Impressive, isn't it?" Newbury turned to see Veronica leaning in towards him, a smile on the curl of her lips.
"Most definitely. I'll admit I was growing a little impatient with the performance until this most recent development. I haven't a notion of how he has effected the woman's escape from the box. It's really quite intriguing."
Veronica laughed. "Perhaps there will be chance to ask him after the performance has finished. If we're not taking him into custody, that is."
Newbury nodded. "Quite so." He paused. "Look, he's abou
t to get her out again."
They both turned back to see Alfonso removing the swords with abandon, sliding them out of the box and dropping them noisily to the stage. It took him only a moment before all of the blades had been extricated. He hesitated before the box. Then, with one last, grand gesture, he swept the lid from the top of the casket and stepped back, allowing the final scenes of his act to play out before him. There was a gentle cough from within the box, and then the woman sat up, looking around at the audience, her eyes wild with disorientation. There was a roar from the gathered crowd. The front rows stood, their applause deafening. Newbury smiled as he watched Alfonso enjoying the adoration of his fans. The man was definitely growing on him.
Alfonso returned the stool to its place beside the box and helped the young woman to step down, seeing her back to her seat in the second row. The female stagehand came out onto the stage and began collecting up the swords, sliding them back into their housings in the wooden rack. When she had finished, Alfonso, smiling and nodding his appreciation to the audience, made his way back to where he'd left the open casket on the stage. He replaced the lid and then pushed it off to one side, allowing it to roll away on its castors. He turned to the crowd. "One more?" They roared again, loudly. Alfonso waved them to quieten down. "I shall warn you, though. This is no trifling feat of illusion." His voice dropped to a staged whisper. "This time I offer you the chance to glimpse some real magic." There was another cheer. Alfonso approached the very front of the stage. He threw his arms wide. "Then I find myself in need of another volunteer."
This time hands shot up all across the theatre. Newbury turned to Veronica, and was appalled to see she was also offering herself up as a volunteer, her hand raised high above her head. "Miss Hobbes! I feel strongly that this is not the safest course of action to pursue. We came to this place expecting to find a villain."