‘You mean Mrs Irving, do you not?’ I said.
‘Of course!’ she hissed.
McGray poured her a liberal measure of whisky – Miss Terry had a nice stock of decanters. ‘Here. Ye better sit down.’
Miss Terry welcomed the tumbler but chuckled. ‘I can’t sit down in this dress! Mrs Harwood is in no shape to mend it again.’
Instead she paced nervously up and down the room until McGray seized her arm.
‘What d’ye mean when ye say it’s not the first time?’
Miss Terry sniffed the drink and made to have a sip, but did not actually drink. ‘She uses them – her sons. That woman has poisoned her boys’ minds against Irving. They hate him yet they don’t even know him! I would not expect them to like me, of course, but their mother has made them abhor me!’ She realized she was not making much sense, forced a deep breath and gave herself a moment to reflect. ‘When Charles, my second husband, passed away, that woman had the gall to send her boys to the funeral. She sent them to spy on me! I could not throw them out, being Irving’s sons, so they just stayed around, staring at everything like police officers. Charles and I had been separated for a while, but his death did take its toll on me. His drinking worsened as soon as I left him, so I’ve always wondered if –’ Miss Terry rocked her drink so anxiously some of it spilt on the carpet. She held her wrist with her other hand. ‘And on top of Charles’s death – these boys came to judge me as if I were a street woman … Oh, it was a black, black day.’
‘Why would they want to spy on ye?’ McGray asked.
‘I don’t know!’ she cried back. ‘Perhaps their mother wanted to know how miserable I was … or maybe she thought I’d be joyful, finding myself finally free to snatch her husband from her.’
‘Miss Terry,’ I said softly, ‘I need to ask you these questions, if only to understand Mrs Irving’s behaviour.’
She smiled with acrimony. ‘Is it not a little too late for you to ask me whether I am Irving’s mistress? Or are you going to ask me whether I’ll try to instigate his divorce?’ My silence was clear enough. ‘At some point we did love each other, Inspector. Very much. We still do, but it’s a different kind of love these days. I couldn’t live without him and I’m sure he couldn’t live without me – yet I cannot possibly see us married.’
There was no hesitation in that sentence. I had the impression she had either rehearsed it a lot, or had told herself that line so many times she now believed it was true.
‘Did he ever offer to divorce?’
Miss Terry raised her chin but a fraction of an inch, her neck as tense as her lips.
‘No, he never would, but even if he had, I am not a marrying woman any more. Not after what I’ve been through.’
Her tone was sour, but just as earnest, and I remembered Catherine’s gossip. If Miss Terry had been a child bride to a middle-aged man, and then had married an imbalanced alcoholic, it was no wonder she’d lost her faith in the institution.
‘Ye sure?’ McGray asked.
‘What does one marry for?’ she said, sneering. ‘For money? I make two hundred pounds on a working week. To have children? I’ve already raised the most wonderful son and daughter. For love?’ Her smile grew more twisted. ‘Love is a rotten apple; it comes cheap and never lasts.’
‘It might come cheap to the likes of you,’ I whispered, not realizing I’d spoken out loud until it was too late.
‘If Mrs Irving exerts full control over her sons,’ McGray said, ‘then ye think they were here tonight following her orders.’
‘Of course.’
‘And cannae ye think of a reason for that?’
Miss Terry assented. ‘I know they’ve had some frictions recently. Sydney wrote a while ago saying he wanted a career in the theatre, but Irving refused to support him.’
I remembered the old Mr Haviland mentioning precisely that, the first time I’d questioned him.
‘Really?’ McGray asked. ‘D’ye ken why?’
‘He believes they’ll never be respected,’ said Terry. ‘They will always be under the shadow of their father. They’ll always be Irving’s sons. He told me so himself, not two months ago. Many people think he’s being selfish or mean, that he doesn’t want someone stealing attention from him, but I understand him perfectly.’
That struck a chord in my memory. I produced my small notebook and went through the pages, not being quite sure what I was looking for.
‘So all this commotion could be out o’ jealousy?’ McGray said.
I reread the statements of King Duncan; he had mentioned the children’s issues. I pressed the spine of my notebook against my lips.
‘Irving,’ I said, ‘has not shown the same scruples towards your children, has he?’
Miss Terry frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I have been told that your daughter … pray, her name is?’
‘Edith.’
‘Yes. I have heard that she joined Irving’s company last year, and that Irving sent her to Germany to train in costume design. And your son …’
‘Ted.’
‘Ted. Is he not meant to train with Irving in preparation for your autumn season?’
Miss Terry bared her teeth. ‘Why do you even bother to ask me any more questions? You seem to know everything about us already. I was a theatre-child, Inspector. I was happy, but only too late did I realize the disadvantages of lacking a formal education. It would have been hard enough had I been a man, but for a woman on her own … Gosh! It was hell sometimes. My accountants used to trick me and laugh behind my back; so did the tradesmen. They loved making all manner of lascivious jokes about me, and the idiots thought themselves so bloody manly and witty for it. And there is, of course, the disdain and the condescension one gets from the jealous snobs we so frequently have to perform for. I didn’t want that for my children, and neither did Irving for his. We never put ideas about acting into their minds. They have chosen this path on their own and I will not hinder their careers. I’m their mother and I’ll help them, especially since I know everyone in the business.’
‘Speaking o’ help,’ McGray said, ‘Irving seems to be supporting them, instead o’ his own kin.’
‘That is Irving’s choice, not mine. Even if he wanted to help, he is completely cut off from them – and that’s his own wife’s doing! She is the one who hasn’t let him see them; she is the one who’s read every single letter Irving’s ever written to them before passing it on; she is the one who insists on dealing with Stoker instead of Irving.’
Out of habit McGray tried to stroke his stubble, but grimaced at the smoothness of his skin. ‘Where’s yer own children’s father? What does he think of Irving’s – patronage?’
‘Edward Godwin,’ I said, recalling Catherine’s gossip.
There was a dark expression in Terry’s face; one I had not seen before. She made to sit down but remembered the dress, and when she rose again she nearly stumbled. ‘I sometimes forget there are people in the world who don’t know. He died.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said McGray. ‘When?’
‘Not three years ago. Complications from kidney stones; he was very ill for a while.’ She finally brought herself to drink.
‘It seems to have affected you a good deal,’ I remarked.
Miss Terry blinked tears away.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I did not know how terribly it would alter me; for months I knew nothing but rage and despair. I tried to continue my work but it all felt meaningless. I … I should have never left him. He loved me so.’ She shook her head, her eyes fixed on some point on the empty wall, and for an instant I saw Lady Macbeth’s madness taking hold of the real woman. ‘If only the dead could find out how to come back and be forgiven …’
Miss Terry said nothing more for a moment, again her stare lost somewhere, a twitch in her face.
‘I need to have a rest,’ she said, wearily taking the ginger wig off. ‘At least try to sleep. I have to pose for a portrait tomorrow.’
<
br /> ‘Unfortunately,’ said McGray, ‘there’s still one question I need ye to answer.’ He nodded, seeing Miss Terry’s understanding. ‘Aye, the leather bag.’
She hurled the wig on to the floor. ‘Oh, that blasted bag! Do you think I have the clarity of mind to remember something so trivial right now?’
‘Ye better do.’
‘I have no idea!’ she growled. ‘And I couldn’t give a damn. I might have thrown it away or given it to Irving’s dog to chew on, and it would have been so trifling it never even imprinted on my memory. No matter how many times you ask, that’s the only answer you’ll get. Are you happy?’
McGray stepped closer, in that imposing manner of his. Miss Terry would have been undeterred, had McGray not said what he did.
‘Then it’s time ye ken, Miss Terry: the bag in question was found under Regent Bridge right after the banshee appeared. The bag was soaked in blood; the very substance used to write the message. D’ye understand its relevance now?’
With her blonde curls dishevelled, her mascara running and wrinkles suddenly appearing from nowhere, the majestic Ellen Terry seemed to be no more.
She gulped, gently placed the tumbler on the little table, and whispered with barely any breath left in her.
‘I’ll try to remember …’ Then she drew in a deep, rasping inhalation. ‘Please, gentlemen … leave me now. I beg you.’
29
‘That was rather gruelling,’ I said as we left Miss Terry’s apartments. ‘Do you think Irving will want to talk?’
‘Don’t care. I’ll make him if he doesnae.’
We found the ballroom in a gloomy mood. Couples still danced, people still chatted and the musicians still played, but it looked as though they were all tense and simply playing their parts.
Stoker was nowhere to be found, neither was Irving. We were about to inquire after them when Miss Ivor approached us.
‘Inspectors, are you looking for Mr Irving?’
‘Aye.’
She covered her mouth with her fan. ‘I heard one of the waiters say they saw him refill his hipflask and go to the roof. To the roof!’
‘Thank you, madam,’ I said, rushing ahead.
We went up through the servants’ stairs, which were the only way to the roof. They did not resemble at all the luxuriousness found at the front of the hotel: they were narrow, steep and damp, and the paint was falling off the walls and the handrails. There were oil lamps at regular intervals, for all the landings were windowless, except for the one on the fourth floor. Through that window I saw the grimy, battered roofs of the backstreet buildings – a sight the illustrious guests were never meant to see.
Rose Street, which ran right behind the opulent Princes Street, should in fact have been called an alley. It did not even have proper street lamps, and the moon and the weak lights from shabby windows barely described the outlines of narrow, unkempt buildings, crammed against each other like sad people on a frosty train station platform. I was happy to see the white gleam of a bull’s-eye lantern carried by one of our men.
We ascended to the topmost storey, where the servants slept, and from there on to the narrow, rusty steel steps that led to the roof.
We found Irving there, seated on a box, his elbows on his knees and his long, pale fingers interlaced under his chin. He was wearing the black cloak we’d seen the other night, for the evening had become quite cold, and as the fabric waved in the soft breeze it made the man look like a crouching bat.
Very slowly he turned to face us, and I felt an inexplicable shudder. Perhaps it was the brandy, or the recent shock, or something entirely different I would never fathom, but he spoke without us even asking a question.
‘My poor, silly sons … When they attempt to act, they make utter fools of themselves; when they don’t act, they steal the damned limelight.’
There was an entirely different quality to his voice. A certain roughness we’d not heard before. He was not attempting to modulate his speech or exalt his emotions, like he did on the stage. He was being himself. And a hint of his old Cornish accent had also come to the surface.
‘Attempt to act?’ I echoed.
Irving assented, produced a small flask and drank a mouthful of what smelled like brandy. He looked so dejected I thought it improper to bring out my notebook.
‘They have attempted,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘At their school in Marlborough, of course. I secretly went to see Harry’s Hamlet.’ Irving covered his brow. ‘I was expecting him to be raw, but not quite what I saw! The poor boy was abysmal: juvenile, wooden, poor diction … but the worst part is that nobody seemed to notice! There was a review in the local paper. All they did was compare him with me! Damn it, I memorized that bloody line: “His face, figure and especially his walk are more or less those of his great father.” That was exactly what I’d warned him would happen!’
‘Have ye spoken to them?’ McGray asked.
‘No. I went to their suite but they’re not there, and Bram can’t find them. My boys don’t like him; they think he’s my spy. I cannot say Stoker feels too much sympathy for them either, but he’s too loyal to say so.
‘From time to time I sent good Stoker down to Marlborough, to see them, simply to make sure they were coping well in college. What happened during their meetings I do not know; Stoker always came back telling me they were doing outstandingly well, but later we found they were miserable.
‘I visited them once and they were just as insolent as they were tonight. I learned from their professors that Harry and Sydney hated all the school sports – no surprise, they were always glaringly inept at anything that involved moving their limbs, acting included. Other boys hit them and Florence visited so often the boys were the school’s laughing stock. And she’d write to each of them daily – daily! – and addressed Sydney as Wee. Can you imagine the fuss a horde of mocking adolescents would make out of this?
‘I heard that Harry himself put an end to it. He had to ask Florence to write no more than one letter a week and …’ Irving could not hold back a scornful grin, ‘the woman was distraught. Eventually she understood her place and found new ways to entertain herself: parties and’ – a chuckle – ‘I hear she is very fond of attending the criminal courts and public inquests. She yawns at Shakespeare and the Greek tragedies, but adores a good street scandal.’
Irving emptied the hipflask in just a few gulps, and it was perhaps the drink burning his throat that made him say all that followed.
‘I would have divorced Florence long ago. On the very day she told me what she thought about my “foolish” career. But my sons … What I would not do for them!’
McGray cackled. ‘Ye really love the brats? Ye’ve done nothing to prove it! Everyone tells us ye’ve done more for Miss Terry’s children than for yer own!’
Irving punched the box and the tattered wood cracked under his fist. ‘How could I do anything for them? They have been trained since birth to hate me! Florence reads all my correspondence to them; withholds any letters she pleases; makes it almost impossible for me to meet them. And when I do, or when I have a gesture to them, they treat me with suspicion; they send my presents back! They don’t see what I have done for them: paid for the best education, the best housing and the best lifestyle they could have in London – they moan because Ellen’s children are in Germany, but Harry reads law at Oxford and Sydney has been learning languages in St Petersburg, to someday train as a diplomat. I have arranged all that! That’s all I can do from a distance, and I do it gladly. What I’d give up to win them back; to love me but a tenth of how I love them! And I cannot even let them know. Good Lord, my sons who now hate me because of her!
‘But Florence was right in calling me a fool. I was indeed a fool for marrying her. Now I think I wouldn’t have, had her snobbish father not forbidden her to see me for a year. The bastard lived in India, yet he controlled everything and everyone! He had never met me, yet he thought a silly actor wasn’t good enough for his precious daughter!
‘Alas, I was young too, and the prohibition just made the affair the more exciting. Florence would write me letters and used her grandmother as go-between. How thrilling that all was: to have the forbidden fruit, even though the rest of Eden was in my grasp. We even disguised our handwriting and developed codes – I’d forge her father’s hand; she’d forge her cousin’s – in case her mother found our letters lying around. The fool … Th-th – the fool I was …’
He blushed after that sudden stutter, which I instantly recognized as the vestige of an old speech impediment. Irving tried to get the last few drops from his flask, then interlaced his fingers and looked upwards, the bright moon reflected clearly on his dark eyes.
‘I have reached the highest point of my career,’ he said, again in control of his voice. ‘I know it. From now on I’ll just gradually head to my sunset: I shall fall, “Like a bright exhalation in the evening, And no man see me more.” And when I die and I am forgotten, as I shall be, I will have left nothing in this world but a pair of resentful sons, a monstrous wife who only loved my money, a wounded Bram, and an Ellen who never loved me as much as I did her.’
He said no more, as if drained of all energy. McGray and I stood there in silence, but that did not last for long.
There was a howl on the street. Sharp and high pitched, clearly a dog, but McGray lifted his face, his bright pupils moving to where the sound was coming from. Then a second, and almost immediately a third dog joined in from across Castle Street.
‘What is it?’ I asked. There had been other noises from the streets – carriages, men walking to and from the pubs, officers checking on each other – but the dogs had sent Nine-Nails into something like a trance. He pressed a finger on his lips, bidding me to be silent, and then moved cautiously to the north-facing side of the building. He grasped the low brick parapet that encircled the roof, and looked down.
A sudden draught, quite chill even for Edinburgh, hit me just as I joined McGray, and the breeze seemed to send the dogs into a louder frenzy of barking.
A Mask of Shadows: Frey & McGray Book 3 (A Case for Frey & McGray) Page 20