by Myers, Amy
‘Randolph is well, thank you, Nettie.’ Gwendolen correctly translated Plate as Mate. She ignored the jibe. ‘May I introduce Mr Auguste Didier, Nettie?’
For an instant, Auguste was aware of being appraised by the sharpest eyes he’d seen since he first met Egbert Rose, then the impression vanished, as she asked conventionally, ‘Enjoy the show, did you, Mr Didier?’
‘Who could not, with you topping the bill?’
‘Will and me.’
‘Has he waited for us?’ asked Gwendolen.
‘We’re playing the Empire, Gwennie, not five halls a night. ’Course he’s still here. Have you met Will, Mr Didier?’
‘No, and I’d very much like to. He is a great artiste.’
‘There aren’t many nice people around in music hall,’ Nettie said soberly. ‘Many of us start out nice, and the higher we get on the bill the less nice we become. Will’s the exception. He’ll always do anyone a good turn. Money flows into one hand and jumps out of his other. He’s a bloody marvel. Most of us depend on a whole troupe of agents, writers, publishers, to prop us up. Not Will. He’s got an agent who looks after the business side, but as for the rest, he needs no one but himself. He writes his own material, the patter, the song, the whole act. His head’s full of music. He’s always scribbling; if he don’t want the stuff for himself, he’ll give it away. He let me have my Donkey Song, the one I did tonight.’ She winked, wriggling her body suggestively in her chair, bursting out with ‘Everybody pats me, everybody strokes me, oh give me a carrot, oh do.’
Auguste blushed, and seeing this she roared with laughter. ‘That’s how I do it down East. But you didn’t blush out front tonight, did you?’
He laughed. ‘I did not.’
‘That’s better,’ Nettie said, relieved. ‘You’d better get used to our ways.’
‘Why?’ Auguste had a sudden foreboding.
‘You’re going to be Will’s personal detective.’
For a moment Auguste thought he’d misheard, but from the way in which he appeared to be the cynosure of both Nettie’s and Gwendolen’s eyes, he was greatly afraid he hadn’t. ‘I have had some success in solving crime,’ he began firmly, ‘but—’
Nettie blithely disregarded him. ‘Ever heard of the Old King Cole?’
Auguste racked his memory. Something came back to him, something Egbert Rose had once said, and not a polite something. ‘A music hall in the East End?’ he inquired cautiously.
‘Right. In St George’s Street, Wapping, down near the docks. Will and I both started our careers there. The owner’s an old rogue who sees bailiffs round every corner and no wonder. Percy Jowitt he’s called. This time he’s really in a bad way, and looks as if they’ll get him this time. He asked if we’d go back there for a week’s run to save him from the workhouse a bit longer. Will being a generous soul, too bloody generous this time, if you ask me, agreed.’
‘That was indeed kind of him,’ Auguste said.
‘In this instance, not so bloomin’ kind, in fact. There’s an attraction who sat in the scales to add weight to Percy Jowitt’s arguments – he sent her to do his dirty business for him. A lady called Mariella Gomez. An auburn-haired English beauty married to a Portuguese juggler.’
‘She too is an artiste?’
Gwendolen caught Nettie’s eye and burst out laughing. ‘Adorable little doggies in frilly collars, sliding down a chute into a water tank.’
‘Come on, Gwennie. You’re not being fair,’ Nettie roared. ‘She’s a serio-vocalist.’ She relapsed into her stage persona as she piped out mockingly:
‘What’s a poor mermaid to do
When she’s only got a tail?’
‘She’d find out soon enough,’ Gwendolen snorted.
‘Provided it’s not with Will.’ Nettie sobered down. ‘He was crazy about her ten years ago, at the Old King Cole, but he was a four-foot-nine no one then, so she chose Miguel. She might have made the right choice in some ways –’ she caught Gwendolen’s eye in unspoken understanding – ‘but not the way Mariella chiefly cares about. Money.’
‘And that is why he needs a nursemaid?’Auguste was appalled.
‘No.’ Nettie instantly sobered. ‘He’s convinced someone’s going to murder him.’
Will Lamb’s dressing-room was a stark contrast to Nettie’s, a plain working room with not a personal object to be seen. Yet the room didn’t seem empty, not with the nervous energy and personality of Will Lamb in it. He was sitting staring into the mirror, removing the last of the greasepaint from his eyebrows, but even at this mundane task he had the air of a bouncing ball merely awaiting the slightest touch to be back in play.
Nettie sailed in, wasting no time. ‘Will, I’ve brought your personal detective.’
Will leapt up, hurried towards Auguste, and pumped his hand warmly. ‘That’s really very generous of you, Mr Didier, very kind.’ He beamed.
‘I have explained, Mr Lamb, I am a chef,’ Auguste tried to protest, ‘and though I have experience of detection, I do not feel I am the right person to protect you.’
The two women exchanged a look, and Gwendolen grinned. ‘You could cook,’ Nettie said brightly. ‘We’ve arranged all that.’
Panic was replaced with cautious interest. ‘Cook?’
‘The Old King Cole serves food in its bar – quite a famous local eating-house it’s become,’ Nettie said airily. ‘They need a cook, and Will needs someone to protect him.’
Auguste looked at her suspiciously. ‘But how can I do both?’
‘There’ll be staff there, of course, Percy says. I’ll see Will to the theatre, then you nip backstage and keep an eye on him. You can watch the acts if you like. Rubbish, most of it. The regular turns Percy can afford to put on don’t keep him in bangers and mash.’
Will looked anxious. ‘Harry?’ he murmured.
‘Oh yes.’ Nettie roared. ‘Harry Pickles. He’s my husband, not that you’d notice. We don’t see much of each other. Fancy your remembering, Will. Husband number three,’ she explained to Auguste. ‘I told him if he don’t keep his name clean, he’ll be out and Will here can be number four.’
‘That will be nice, Nettie,’ Will said valiantly.
‘Don’t worry, old cock. I’m too fond of you to wish that on you.’
For a moment Auguste glimpsed the pain behind the bravado. It was common knowledge. None of Nettie’s marriages had given her happiness. ‘Mr Lamb, why do you think someone wishes to murder you?’ Auguste asked firmly, getting back to the heart of the matter.
Will looked anxious. ‘Dreamed it,’ he told Auguste apologetically.
‘Dreams are not real.’ Auguste said with relief.
‘Will’s are,’ Nettie remarked glumly.
It was then he remembered that Will Lamb had had several breakdowns and was always in fragile health. Yet after all, there could be nothing to a mere dream, so the job of protecting Will would not be onerous, and the temporary job of cook would be an adventure. He was not sure Tatiana would approve of either task, let alone His Majesty, but after all, neither, he told himself, would ever know.
‘He dreamed of Bill Terriss. He was a friend of his,’ Nettie explained sombrely.
Auguste understood immediately. The murder of the famous actor William Terriss a few years ago, at the stage door of the Adelphi, committed by a crazy super who imagined his path from crowd scenes to leading man had been blighted by Terriss, had shocked the theatre world and public alike. Who in their right mind would want to murder Terriss – or Will Lamb?
As if following his thoughts, Nettie said robustly, ‘I’ve told him it’s ridiculous – isn’t it, Will?’
‘No.’ Will Lamb’s large eyes looked dolefully at them. ‘On the morning of the day Bill died, his understudy told me he’d had a dream the previous night of dear old Bill lying on the stairs with a group of people round him, one of whom was his leading lady. He died. And that evening his dream was re-enacted in real life. So you see, dreams can be warnings.’
Will Lamb stared at him blankly. ‘Oh no, I must go. I must. Don’t you see?’
‘No, I don’t, Will,’ Nettie said forthrightly. ‘If it’s just because of that woman, then arrange to meet her somewhere else, for cripes’ sake.’
‘No, Nettie,’ Will said gently. ‘I have promised, you see. You don’t understand. We—’ He broke off, but his face was as excited as a child’s watching the curtain rise on a pantomime.
‘These dreams are your only evidence?’ Auguste asked gently, curiosity aroused by that sudden excitement. A child – but a child with a secret.
Will shook his head sadly. ‘No.’
‘And what else has happened?’ Auguste’s spirits sank.
‘Communications.’ Will fished in the pocket of his overcoat, and produced a crumpled piece of paper with letters cut out from some form of print and stuck on. Its message was stark.
‘Keep away from the Old King Cole.’ And it was signed, ‘The Raven.’
‘I’ve had one every day this week,’ Will told him dolefully.
‘And when did you have your dream?’Auguste asked carefully.
‘Tuesday, or perhaps it was Wednesday. Yes, it must have been Wednesday because of the pickled egg. Tuesday’s my night for caviar, or is it oysters, at any rate my cook won’t give me pickled egg and oysters, so it must have been Wednesday,’ Will informed him brightly.
‘I see.’ Auguste was quite sure he did. ‘So the dream could have been sparked off by the letters.’
‘You mean Bill wrote the letters?’ Will was puzzled.
‘No, you associated Bill’s murder with the threat to murder you.’
‘But he was here tonight.’
‘Who was?’
‘Bill.’
Auguste glanced at Nettie, who came to his aid.
‘Will, old chum, you’ve been on the beer.’
‘No, no, he was here. You heard him, you must have done.’ Will looked appealingly from one to the other. ‘I heard him calling out, “Horrible, terrible,” that’s what he said. That’s what poor Bill said to his wife a few days before he was killed, he said it about being killed with a knife. And he was.’
‘But, Mr Lamb, that is mere coincidence,’ Auguste soothed.
‘And the letters?’ Will asked anxiously, eager to be convinced.
‘Warning from a friend,’ Gwendolen said heartily. ‘Reminding you that Percy’s an old rogue. Or someone jealous of you.’
‘Signed “The Raven”?’ Auguste asked. If there was cause for concern, then Will should be on his guard, not lulled into false security.
Will pumped Auguste’s hand again. ‘I like you, Mr Didier,’ he assured him earnestly.
‘“The raven himself is hoarse”,’ Auguste quoted almost to himself, as three pairs of eyes fixed on him in horror. ‘From Macbeth,’ he explained, startled. ‘It’s a reference to your act.’
‘You quoted!’ Nettie’s voice was grim.
‘Of course, you’re French, Mr Didier,’ Gwendolen said kindly. ‘You cannot know there’s a superstition that it is very bad luck to quote from or even name that play offstage in a theatre.’
‘Don’t worry, Mr Didier,’ Will reassured him gaily. ‘It reverses the curse to say it backwards. You see? Esraoh si flesmih nevar eht. Never ate? Now what a foolish thing. No wonder the poor bird feels a little cross. Talking of which . . .’ He chattered on, giving Auguste time to recover, then picked up his stage dagger with its retractable blade. ‘I’m armed, you see, and now you have agreed to be my detective and cook, I defy any murderous chop to get past this. Chop meet dagger, dagger meet chop.’
Had he agreed? Even as he laughed, Auguste reflected, he couldn’t remember doing so. Yet after all, it offered great possibilities. What could he cook? How could he educate an entirely new and receptive clientele in the joys of dining with Didier? He would offer them such delights as they had never tasted before. Just as Alexis Soyer had both cooked and set down his recipes for all men, whether rich or poor, so now would he. A whole new area of cuisine might be revealed to him. True, His Majesty had forbidden him to cook for profit, after his marriage last year, but this job could be said to be a form of charity, and even if it wasn’t, it was unlikely Buckingham Palace would ever hear about his adventures in Wapping. Excitement welled up inside him. Tatiana would not be returning for at least ten days from her road race in France, and the boredom of ten days without her was banished. He could cook.
True, he had also to ensure that nobody murdered Will Lamb, but this, he managed to convince himself, was a simple task. Somehow those communications did not have the ring of a serious intent to murder. Indeed, given Will’s disposition, they might even have been composed by Will himself to give substance to his dreams. Splendid though Workers’ Educational Classes were, it was unlikely that anyone at the Old King Cole would be up to quoting from Shakespeare. Auguste managed in his optimism to ignore two facts. Firstly, that since Will’s most famous songs and lines of patter were based on Shakespeare, the notes were, to say the least, relevant. And secondly, that St George’s Street, where the Old King Cole was situated, was a name only a few decades old. Before that, the street had another name, the Ratcliffe Highway, at one time notorious for murder.
An anonymous figure in cap and rough jacket threaded his way through the costers’ stalls of Whitehorse Street, having emerged from the London and Blackwall railway into the Commercial Road. Egbert Rose whistled thoughtfully as he made his way towards St Dunstan’s Church and Stepney Green; then, having ensured no interested eyes watched his progress, plunged off to the right, into a network of narrow streets, alleys and courts. Some of them appeared in dark blue or black in Mr Booth’s poverty map of London. That had been charted in 1889, but the colours hadn’t changed much in thirteen years to his way of thinking, as he got deeper into the warren. Still pretty nearly as bad as you could get, whole families in one stinking room in some of these places.
He crossed Eastfield Street and strolled past the identical small houses, controlling his impulse to look down to see what he was walking in. He needed his eyes on the level. He was observed all right, by children playing in the gutters, by women glaring at him from doorsteps. Strangers were noticed and remembered. He clutched his battered suitcase, the passport for his presence. He dived off through one of the alleyways and when he emerged, walked quickly back the way he had come, and then into one of the small courts that peppered the street. He had arrived.
‘Morning, Ma,’ he roared. The damp heat was immense, and steam curled under an inner door. As Ma Bisley waddled through, it hissed then billowed in triumph round the hitched-up serge skirt and curled itself around the broad beaming face.
‘Yer oughta know better than to come here on a Monday morning. Boiler time. I got a living to make,’ she told him amiably.
He shook his head firmly. ‘Too much at stake not to, Ma, even for the sake of your washing.’ Around him were ticketed bundles, the mangle, washing boards and flat irons arranged in orderly fashion, the paraphernalia of her business. One of her businesses, in fact; the other was providing information to him through a team of runners, within strictly observed guidelines.
‘What is it this time?’
‘I don’t know yet, Ma. May be nothing, may be a can of stinking worms.’
His Majesty had taken the bad news of the disappearing Lisboa surprisingly philosophically for him. Rose had emerged with his head, and even his job, which was more than he had expected. The British ambassador to Portugal would be informed, the Portuguese ambassador to Britain would be informed, and, somewhat less enthusiastically, the British public would be informed that the cross had disappeared without trace, and that it was unlikely in the extreme that the Portuguese royal family were in any way involved, since the theft from Windsor Castle had
been carried out by bogus representatives of their government who were doubtless anarchists in disguise. Staff had been reprimanded for not checking credentials, and the Metropolitan Police for failing to apprehend the villains.
Rose had inwardly seethed, and commented mildly that Special Branch might wish to be more actively involved if anarchists were the villains; he had earned himself a glare and the ruling that ‘politics were politics, but property was property’. In his relief at still finding himself employed, it was not until Sunday that he had realised he was smelling something unsatisfactory – and that it was not for once Edith’s burnt roast beef. He had foregone his evening glass of ale at the Queen’s Arms in order to eradicate the smell. ‘Any news on that corpse?’ he shouted through the telephone at the unfortunate Grey.