A Mask of Shadows: Frey & McGray Book 3 (A Case for Frey & McGray)

by Oscar de Muriel

  The doors to the auditorium opened abruptly and we heard the echoes of Irving’s voice, who’d successfully resumed the play. I was expecting a swarm of attendees to come out, but was relieved to see it was only Bram Stoker and Mr Howard.

  ‘Oh, God!’ both Irishmen said in synchrony.

  ‘We need to clean this up before the interval,’ Mr Howard whispered, covering his mouth and suppressing a retch.

  My attention, however, was entirely on Stoker. He looked white again, whiter than he’d been that morning, and perhaps whiter than he’d been when McGray had found him unconscious on the street.

  ‘What is it?’ McGray asked him.

  Stoker shook his head, as if refusing to let the words sink in.

  ‘What?’ McGray urged.

  ‘I know the sonnet that’s taken from,’ he mumbled. ‘I read it not too long ago …’

  ‘What d’ye mean, ye read it?’

  Stoker’s voice had gone dreamy, and when he exhaled I perceived a slight hint of laudanum.

  ‘Mr Stoker, I hope you are not intoxi–’

  ‘It was written for Irving,’ he let out, his eyes back to reality all of a sudden.

  ‘For Irving!’ I cried. ‘By whom?’

  Stoker looked at the lines again, perhaps still begging for this not to be true. When he looked up, however, there was not a shadow of doubt.

  ‘Oscar Wilde.’

  We burst into the royal box, McGray tossing the curtains aside so violently they almost came off their hoops.

  The cries of Mr Wilde and the two Irving boys were overwhelmed by a booming ovation, for Miss Terry had just appeared on the stage for the first time, holding Macbeth’s letter and displaying her iridescent beetle dress in all its glory. The box was so close she must have seen us, but managed to conceal any hint of recognition.

  As she recited ‘they have more in them than mortal knowledge’, Mr Wilde stood up to confront us. His velvet-lined chair fell backwards and his tall, wide frame nearly lost balance. Had Harry not grabbed his jacket, Wilde would have fallen into the central pit.

  ‘What in heaven is this? I demand that you –’

  McGray grabbed him by the collar as he’d done before and dragged him to the corridor, where we could question him a little less publicly. The Irving boys followed closely.

  ‘Leave him alone!’ cried Sydney. ‘We’ll call the police!’

  McGray slapped him in the back of the head. ‘We are the police, ye silly sod!’ He turned back to Wilde and showed him the piece of paper where I’d hastily copied the sonnet. ‘Did ye write this?’

  Mr Wilde was perspiring. He held the note with his white gloves and took a strand of bushy dark hair from his face, as his eyes flickered on the paper at unthinkable speed.

  ‘Why, I did, my good Scot. But I fail to see how this would –’

  ‘I truly doubt he was involved,’ I said, looking at his snow-white gloves and the sheer incomprehension in his eyes.

  ‘Involved in what?’ Wilde asked, and then his eyes opened wide. ‘Oh! Was that dreadful cry not part of the –’

  ‘Did ye write this?’ McGray jumped in, closing his fist around the crumpling paper.

  Mr Wilde stammered. ‘Well … yes. Yes, I did, but –’

  ‘No wonder I thought it was shite! Why did ye write it?’

  ‘Well, it was all but a little frolic between friends. I did a full sonnet: “With the shrill fool to mock him, Romeo – For thee should lure his love –” ’

  ‘Och, save it! Nae need to recite yer excretions to me. When was this?’

  ‘Oh, dear, it was a good few years ago – for a private party. Only a handful of people kept a copy.’

  ‘Och! Finally! That’s what we needed to hear. Who were they?’

  ‘My goodness, I cannot possibly recall so suddenly –’ McGray raised his fist and hovered it an inch from Wilde’s face. ‘Irving, of course! And good Bram asked me to copy it for him too … And Miss Terry, who commissioned me to write it in the first place … and …’ He rolled his eyes, desperately trying to remember.

  McGray was terribly close to punching him so I had to step in. ‘Did you say Miss Terry commissioned it?’

  ‘Indeed, as a present for Irving, and she was highly delighted by it. Although …’ Wilde tilted his head, his eyes going slowly from side to side. ‘Now that I remember … it is based on a sonnet I originally wrote for her. She later asked me to rewrite it and dedicate it to Irving! May I see it again?’ McGray gave him the paper and Wilde smoothed it out. ‘Oh, yes, I remember, these last two were the only lines I did not change. They were identical in my original for dear Ellen …’

  McGray at last let go of him. ‘Miss Terry’s dad was Irish, right?’

  Harry Irving sniggered. ‘Yes. The wench has a lot of Irish in her.’

  I looked into McGray’s eyes, and he returned the most flabbergasted gaze.

  ‘It’s her!’ he hissed. ‘Miss Terry. The sonnet ends with lines dedicated to her!’

  ‘You’re right!’ I said, and we instantly dashed down the narrow stairs.

  We found Irving in one of the stage wings, chatting with Campbell as joyfully as if they were at a garden party. Obviously, permission to nose around the backstage was part of Campbell’s bargained perks.

  ‘It’s Ellen Terry!’ Nine-Nails blurted out, panting. From there we could see the back of the actress, still delivering her murderous speech.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Irving cried. Campbell looked more embarrassed than alarmed.

  ‘The banshee cry you just dismissed as part of your act,’ I said, ‘was in fact the very thing we have been chasing.’ I looked at Campbell, showing him the sheet. ‘These words appeared in the rotunda, written in blood. This couplet is from a sonnet that Oscar Wilde originally dedicated to Miss Terry. We now think that the omens might have been about her from the very start.’

  ‘Give me that,’ Irving demanded, snatching the paper. ‘Well, this proves nothing!’

  ‘Are ye willing to stake her life on that?’ McGray asked.

  Irving’s mouth twisted in a cruel smile, which made me feel a prickling on the back of my neck. He said nothing, but simply turned on his heel and walked on to the stage, where Miss Terry received him with a deep reverence and exclaiming, ‘Great Glamis! Worthy Cawdor!’

  ‘How can you let this go on?’ I cried out, but Campbell would not be intimidated.

  ‘You two are not supposed to be here! Get out right now!’

  ‘Sod off!’ McGray retorted, about to step on to the stage and end it all.

  ‘Stop right there, Nine-Nails!’ Campbell wielded his walking cane, his eyes bloodshot. ‘Keep off that bloody stage or I’ll have you both incarcerated! In fact, I shall order all the officers out of the building right away.’

  I planted myself in front of him. ‘You will do no such thing.’

  He stared at me in utter puzzlement. ‘What – what did you say?’

  ‘You will do no such thing, Campbell! A murder is about to be committed! Someone is going to die. Die! Are you familiar with the term? That is what happens when the thumping in your chest stops for ever. Is it so difficult for that mouldy slime inside your head to comprehend it?’

  There was an instant of silence. I caught a glimpse of McGray’s mouth, open as a perfect O.

  Campbell’s chest swelled. ‘How dare you talk to me like that, Frey? This will be the end of your career in –’

  ‘Oh I am so sick of your threats!’ I let out. ‘Your hogbeast of a wife has more allure than my poxy, dead-end post in your rotten force.’ I looked at Nine-Nails. ‘No offence.’

  ‘None taken.’

  ‘But someone is going to die, you stubborn dimwit. We know it. And I shall do everything I can to avoid it!’

  ‘Let me through!’ Campbell tried to walk round me but I blocked his way. ‘Let me through, you –’

  He made to hit me with his cane, but I snatched it from his clammy hand and tossed it aside. I felt
exhilarated. ‘Why, if I’d known it would be so easy I would have voiced my opinion of you a good while ago!’

  ‘Get out of my way, Frey! Or I shall impale you, roast you in a pit and eat you for my dinner!’

  I chuckled. ‘Then you’d have more brains in your belly than you do in your head.’

  Campbell was so flushed with fury we could have fried an egg on his face. ‘McGray, get this foppish English flower out of my way!’

  His command was so deliciously laughable I nearly felt sorry for him.

  Nine-Nails looked sideways, pretended to dust his lapel in Oscar Wilde’s nonchalant fashion, and cleared his throat.

  ‘Erm … Nae.’

  ‘I’m giving you a direct order! Do as I say or I’ll see that your murderous slut of a sister –’

  But I never knew what he had in store for her, for Nine-Nails punched him with uncontained wrath right in the centre of the face. As if time itself stretched, I saw Campbell’s nose burst as the man fell on his back, thrown by the blow like a child’s rag doll.

  I looked at Nine-Nails, utterly staggered.

  ‘What?’ he asked with mocking innocence.

  ‘What do you mean, what? You have just assaulted the head of the Edinburgh police force! – Again!’

  ‘And? Did ye want to do it yerself this time?’

  ‘Indeed I did!’

  45

  ‘What now?’ I was saying as we strode away from Campbell’s writhing body. ‘The complete sonnet seems to –’

  ‘Frey, hold yer horses. I’m happy to go on, but ye just heard Campbell. He’ll try to send us to jail. I ken yer soft ways and I’d hate to see ye surrounded by angry convicts.’

  ‘Let us cross that bridge when we reach it. Right now I am rather worried about Miss Terry.’

  ‘Aye. The final part o’ the sonnet pointing at her – and the last loose ends we’ve not managed to tie also have to do with her. The messenger definitely; the burned letters probably.’

  ‘Shall we confront her about those?’

  ‘Aye, but first let’s see if we can find out a wee bit more about the bastard messenger who attacked Stoker.’

  ‘Stoker does not remember –’

  ‘I ken, but we can call that whimsy brat Freddie and see if we can get anything else from him.’

  Stoker had been told about Campbell’s threat to us, so he suggested we waited in Mr Howard’s office. Given the state of his leg, he stayed with us while the theatre manager fetched Freddie. McGray helped Stoker into one of the leather armchairs, the Irishman’s face distorted with pain.

  ‘Could you pass me some water, please?’ he pleaded, pointing at a carafe on Mr Howard’s desk.

  I poured him a glass. As soon as I put it in his hand Stoker produced an amber bottle and added a few drops of laudanum.

  ‘That is highly addictive,’ I warned him. ‘You should stop taking it so liberally.’

  He nodded. ‘I will, Inspector. After tonight, I promise you.’

  He slurped rather anxiously, his eyes shut hard, and I could only hope he would keep to his word.

  A few minutes later Freddie Harwood stormed in, strutting like a small Irving. ‘You do this quickly! I need to get ready for my next scene! And the horse –’

  He stopped mid-sentence, all arrogance gone from his face, his mouth open.

  ‘What is it, Freddie?’ asked Stoker, leaning forwards.

  Freddie pointed at him, his wide blue eyes suddenly alarmed. ‘That’s it! That is the smell!’

  ‘What smell?’ asked Mr Howard, utterly puzzled.

  ‘The man who you saw coming out of Miss Terry’s room?’ I asked. ‘Are you certain?’

  Freddie assented, sniffing the air. ‘Yes, it has to be!’

  Impatiently, McGray snatched Stoker’s glass and put it in front of Freddie’s nose. ‘So this is what he smelled like, laddie? If yer telling us lies, I’ll –’

  Freddie was sniffing at the water, wrinkling his nose, his face distorted. ‘No, no! I swear! This is it! The chemical smell!’

  The boy’s words, for the first time, came out so truthfully we could not doubt him.

  All our heads, in unison, turned to Stoker.

  ‘Ye didnae tell us if ye smelled the man who attacked ye,’ Nine-Nails said at once.

  I looked at my notes. ‘Indeed, he did not. Even though we asked him that very specific question …’

  Now it was Stoker’s mouth that had opened wide. His face moved spasmodically from the little amber bottle, then to the glass, then to McGray and me.

  ‘I was overdosed with laudanum when you asked that!’

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘The doctor who attended you said the first dose did not work on your pain at all. That could have been because of your size – or because you have developed resistance to opiates. Through overuse.’

  ‘This –’ he mumbled, ‘t-this is clearly a misunderstanding! I had not taken laudanum in years! Not since my bedridden times as a child!’

  ‘That’s the smell,’ Freddie said again, all his conceit back.

  ‘Was it Mr Stoker you saw?’ I asked. ‘I understand you have known him for years. Would you have not recognized him?’

  ‘I only caught a glimpse,’ said Freddie, ‘and he could have been in disguise.’

  Stoker was livid. ‘How dare you accuse me of that, you little scoundrel? After all we’ve done for your family!’

  ‘But I don’t know what he could be doing in Miss Terry’s room,’ Freddie added. ‘We can tell he doesn’t really like her.’

  Stoker pushed himself up, but then growled and fell back on the chair, clasping his broken leg with both hands. He could have torn the boy apart otherwise.

  ‘Get out, laddie,’ McGray commanded, and he did not wait for a reply; Nine-Nails simply pulled him by the arm, tossed him out and shut the door. ‘Now, Bram,’ he said, ‘tell us more about yer laudanum.’

  ‘You can’t possibly believe it was me! Miss Terry would have told you so!’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you tried to protect Miss Terry, out of consideration to Irving. Could Miss Terry be doing the same for you?’

  ‘Or,’ McGray prompted, ‘could youse both be partners in crime? Miss Terry bringing the brains in her purse and ye helping keep the affair quiet? Youse two leaving the ball at around the same time for some dubious purpose?’

  ‘You’re talking nonsense!’ Stoker cried. ‘I brought the case to you! Why would I –’

  ‘I might have mentioned it a hundred times now,’ I said. ‘Ticket sales!’

  Stoker stammered for a moment, but then there was a frantic knocking at the door.

  Mr Howard rushed to open it and we saw McNair, drenched in sweat and the fake ginger beard about to fall off.

  ‘Inspectors!’ he panted. ‘We have found Miss Desborough.’

  McNair stood aside as the Second Witch was brought in by two other officers, barely conscious. The poor lady had half her head covered in blood, which had also stained her neck and her extravagant yellow dress.

  ‘Dear Lord!’ cried Stoker, again trying and failing to stand.

  McGray pulled the other armchair over and the men carefully deposited the frail woman in it. Thankfully the laudanum was at hand; McGray still held Stoker’s glass, and he delicately fed Miss Desborough a couple of small sips.

  ‘Ellen Terry’s still on the stage?’ he asked whilst still bent over the woman.

  ‘Aye, sir. They just killed the auld king.’

  ‘Good. I want some o’ the chaps looking after her. Someone follow her ’n’ someone should guard her dressing room too.’

  McNair bit his upper lip. ‘Sir, Superintendent Campbell told us to ignore anything either of youse said – Then again … if the order came from Mr Howard …’

  The theatre manager took the hint. ‘Of course. Do as the inspectors say.’

  ‘And somebody arrange a transport to take this woman to the hospital,’ I said.

  The officers left us and again Mr Howard shut
the door. I looked back at Miss Desborough and gasped when I saw there was now a stain of blood on her chest. For an instant I thought she’d been stabbed, but as I looked down I understood.

  I whispered, ‘Her hands are stained with blood …’ thinking that, ironically, at that precise moment Ellen Terry would be washing fake blood off Irving’s hands.

  ‘Shite!’ cried McGray, thinking what I was thinking: could she have done the writing and then faked her injury?

  I gently tilted her head to have a better view at the splatter of blood. Her grey hair was caked with half coagulated bleeding; there was a genuine wound there.

  ‘Someone gave her a powerful blow,’ I said. She could not have done that writing after being stricken like this.’

  ‘Nae,’ said McGray, ‘but she could have before.’

  Miss Desborough moaned, stretching her bony hand for the laudanum. She had another sip, her face wrinkling like an old prune at the medicinal taste. She was conscious enough to understand she had become a suspect, disappearing at the worst of times, but she was still too stunned and we had to extract the truth from her drop by drop.

  I leaned closer and spoke softly. ‘Miss Desborough, are you able to assent or shake your head at my questions?’ She nodded. ‘Good. Did you write anything at the rotunda?’ She did a vehement shake, her head turning violently from one side to the other. ‘Very well, so this is your own blood on your hands, I suppose.’ She nodded again, a solitary tear rolling down her creased cheek. ‘You were attacked, were you not?’

  She drew air in and moaned, and after a moment managed to speak again. ‘Yes! They hit me! Hit me!’

  ‘They! So more than one? Did ye see their faces?’ asked McGray.

  Miss Desborough looked up, breathing heavily and drawing a hand to her wounded head.

  ‘Two of them. One taller … but too dark …’

  ‘Where was this?’ I asked her.