Trumpets Sound No More

by Jon Redfern

  “Are they capable of murder?”

  “We are not certain, sir.”

  “Conjecture, then. And what of this Cake and his associates? Who had motive to take a stick to him in the first place?”

  “It turns out he was often mistrusted, sir. He was ambitious, ruthless.”

  “So are many men in London, Endersby. I cannot tie up Stott and Birken for much longer.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  “In fact, Endersby, the whole business seems watery to me. The coroner decided it was assault. Well, find a ruffian and arrest him. Get one of these foreign men into Fleet and question him.”

  “If we can find him, sir. He has gone into hiding.”

  “How did that happen? I thought this was under your control.”

  “Men run in fear, sir. Their sister has sworn to protect her brothers at all costs and will not divulge their whereabouts.”

  “Wretched. Let Caldwell take this one over. He’ll be on his feet in a day or two.”

  “A delay will cause us to lose the conviction, sir. Lose our grasp on possible suspects.”

  “You move too slowly for me, Endersby. I am sorry to say it. But this seems a straightforward matter of revenge. You have articulate witnesses. Let your sergeant run after them. We have seventeen bodies before us here and two madmen ready to burn down half of St. Giles.”

  “Is this your opinion, sir, or that of the Chronicle?”

  “You are impertinent, Endersby. I consider your callousness reprehensible.”

  “I cannot allow you to dismiss the case of Samuel Cake, sir. The efforts we have put forth are leading us toward finding his killer. It would be folly to stop now.”

  “I did not counsel you to stop, Endersby. But to pass the damned matter to Caldwell. Please do so at your earliest convenience. And tomorrow, I want you and Stott to begin the hunt for the torch-bearers.”

  Borne headed back to the office and paused out of the rain under the arch. “I want a report on this lodging house catastrophe as soon as next Friday. Just a sketch of the matter, the coroner’s findings and a plan of attack. You can also write up a short description of the Cake business, so we have a record to hand to Caldwell.”

  “He has been assisting all the while, sir.”

  “All the better, then, that he take over.”

  Endersby wanted to cut out his own hasty tongue. Borne had manoeuvered him into the very corner he wanted to avoid. The puzzle of Cake was to fall apart before his eyes.

  The rain began to fall more heavily, as if it were in an accusatory mode, an extended arm of Endersby’s impatient superior. Owen moved under the arch. Sergeant Stott appeared before him in the courtyard as if that same crashing rain had conjured up his burly form. “I got your message, sir. Signor Fieno is in custody, and he wrote out his confession.”

  “Now, Stott. We have precious little time left us. Ride, fly, swim if you must, but get up to Gray’s Inn station and find the beadle. Get Cake’s clothes from him, even if you have to berate him. Then go about the houses near Number 46 Doughty Street and rap on doors and tell them who you are. Go after the neighbour next to Number 46 and talk to his servant. I need a refreshing glance at this case before I lose it.”

  “Lose it, sir?”

  “Never mind, Stott. Ask at Gray’s Inn of Mr. Rance, their superintendent. Tell him you want stories of similar crimes in the area, if any. Take sharp note of what he says. I want to know whether schools of thieves and bully gangs are common up there—though I doubt it. Then spend the rest of your afternoon at Eleazar the Jew Lender on the Strand. He is well-known in the theatre circles. Find out what he knows of Miss Priscilla Root. Tell him this matter concerns murder, that it concerns justice, and it also concerns his neck if he does not provide us with a lead or two. I have a vague notion he knows something. Once you have succeeded in all of this, meet me at the tavern across from Vinegar Yard at the hour of the farce.”

  Stott blinked at his superior. There was no time for him to ask for clarification, as Endersby had turned and with an uncharacteristic speed walked off in the direction of the Thames.

  * * *

  At the age of eight, Owen Endersby had been taken by his father to see a public hanging. This was done in the father’s belief that all events contained in themselves a kind of justice. And it was up to man and woman alike to seek that justice out, to see the world as a rational place. Owen Endersby never forgot that outing with his father. He ardently believed it had helped to shape his way of thinking and prepare him for his vocation as a policeman. Owen desired reason and balance above all things, searching out miscreants sometimes to the point of exhaustion.

  The case of Samuel Cake was resting on conjecture. Worse, it was to be taken from him, and all its horrific mystery left in limbo while the murderer still breathed the cold holiday atmosphere of London. Endersby pushed his way through wet, grumpy fellow city-dwellers, their “pardon me’s” lost on his ears. London was full of brutes, he thought. All of them wearing top hats and fine coats. All unaware that his mind was set on finding one responsible for a young impresario’s death.

  Twenty minutes of walking found him at the river’s bank. Endersby had shuffled the Cake murder puzzle around, and like any man in a hurry, he had occasionally miscalculated one piece fitting in for another. But he sensed he would soon find a clearer picture. There was, after all, Cake’s clothing still to examine. The cloak, for instance, had blood spatters. It also had deep pockets, but Endersby had not taken enough time to look at them all thoroughly. “Must be done, old gander,” he scolded. Fifteen minutes later, after walking through more busy streets, the rainy sky now clearing above him, promising sunshine, he stood at the stage door of the Italian Opera in the Haymarket. He asked for the singer, Miss Elisabetta Mazzini, and was delighted by the warm reception he subsequently received from a fine-looking woman. “Most kind of you, Madame Mazzini.”

  The woman was in her late thirties, round, blithe in gesture, her voice deep and smooth, and when she began to speak, she astonished the inspector, who stood for a moment with his mouth open. “Yes, from Manchester. Last name of Stork. Not a proper name for an opera singer. So, I trained in Naples and dyed my hair and married a Mr. Mazzini who has passed on and left me comfortable. Clara is my real English name, but London knows me by Elisabetta.”

  “A fine ruse indeed,” Endersby finally said. “You are truly an actress.”

  “Well, there are many of us who must play at disguises in order to earn our suppers, Mr. Endersby. Come into my private rooms. I am sure you will be wide-eyed on hearing about Mr. Samuel Cake. A man of mask and mystery much more than I.”

  How fortunate Endersby felt to find Elisabetta Mazzini so accommodating; how delightful to see her in her chamber at this late afternoon hour, meeting her pianist, listening to her voice trill and play in the realms of Mozart and Bellini. Elisabetta Mazzini poured him hot coffee and allowed him to listen to her for a few moments as she was learning a new part. Afterwards, she led him into a small room and sat down across from him.

  Endersby asked her first about Friday last and why she had dressed and gone to visit Henry Robertson Dupré at Old Drury. “Vanity, Inspector,” she answered frankly. “I am getting older. My singing voice is fading. The great Malabran knew of this aging, although she died too young to suffer its consequences. I dressed and agreed to take supper with Dupré—a difficult but sly man—on the hopes he might consider hiring me to act at Old Drury.” Endersby pondered her story. “But then, I met up with Samuel Cake. By accident. He told me he was to be the new manager and superintendent of the theatre. Mr. Dupré was no longer in a position to hire. Indeed, Samuel Cake was kindly and offered to meet me for supper later on and discuss a possible post for me under his new management.”

  “I am certain Mr. Dupré was not pleased with the outcome.”

  Elisabetta Mazzini smiled then moved on to talk about Mr. Samuel Cake. “These facts are known by only a few—Samuel Cake swore me to secre
cy. But now that the dear man has been buried, it is time I told you all.” For the next twenty minutes, Elisabetta Mazzini astounded Endersby even more than when she had first opened her mouth and revealed she was an Englishwoman born and bred. She freely told him things which from now on would make the murder puzzle a tighter fit.

  “Dear Samuel was a gentleman of sorts, sir,” she explained. “I dare say he had a problem, however. He was charming, seductive and yet, after a time, one realized that all he wished for was companionship. If you catch my meaning.”

  Endersby found himself somewhat bewildered. “Was he diseased? Forlorn?”

  “Perhaps the first…we never moved in any intimate manner to consummate our relations with physical pleasure—if you catch my theme.”

  “Was he then incapable of indulging in manly pursuits?” asked Endersby.

  The vivacious woman broke into a sharp laugh. “Such pride you men carry about when it concerns your performance—what we women consider to be but the brief crowing of the cock—a strutting about, a shove or two followed by a loud sigh, then a tumble into sleep.”

  “I see,” said Endersby, his professional smile betraying a sudden hesitation at the woman’s frankness. Elisabetta Mazzini’s eyes sparked with merriment, and there was no hint of cruelty in her voice. “I cannot say if it were by choice or hindrance or even the ‘French itch’—which may have been the reason. But dear Samuel was not excitable in that way. I have heard he was never intimate with any of the women he met nor even with the boys and gads of lower Great Windmill Street. Many of our older tenors here at the opera often indulge in that particular taste of meat—if you see my picture—but dear Samuel, oh, no, I think not.”

  The woman’s face then changed; a cool, shadowy expression of seriousness removed the merriment Endersby had seen earlier on. “But there is more,” she whispered. She leaned closer to him. Endersby listened and nodded and joined fact to fact, hearsay to gossip, forming a new picture of the motives and events surrounding the Cake murder. A feeling of relief—much like one has in recovering from a bad cold—began to suffuse his mind. Elisabetta Mazzini had given him new direction.

  “Your discretion, Madame Mazzini, has been most appreciated.” The woman stood and put out her right hand, prompting the inspector to take it, bow and lightly kiss the ring on her middle finger. “A pleasant gesture from the Continent, do you not agree, Inspector?” Endersby agreed, and with his mind chock full of ideas and names he bid the diva adieu.

  Soon after, Endersby indulged in a brisk walk through Covent Garden, then a ramble northward along High Holborn. Steeples and rooftops wavered in the damp air. At an open ground, the gate he pushed screeched from lack of oil. Before him he found headstones, carved dates and names. He studied the stones for a while and came to a conclusion. On leaving the graveyard, he decided to ponder his findings in a small tavern outside the gates. After a hot gin, the hobbling Endersby hired a hansom then presented himself to the stage-door keeper of Old Drury and made a polite, but firm demand. Hartley sent off a messenger; the young lad returned and led the inspector down halls and toward doors. Within moments, Endersby was met at the parlour entrance of Miss Priscilla Root’s dressing chambers. A tall woman dressed in a man’s black frock coat and trousers peered at him. Her hair stood spiked in short strands, its coif having been disturbed by the recent removal of a beaver hat.

  “She is drunk and asleep.”

  “Wake her, then,” Endersby commanded. “And be quick about it.”

  The tall woman did not move. “I can tell you all you want to know. I am her sister.”

  Behind her sat another woman dressed in the same manly outfit. Her boots were removed, and her feet rested on the arm of a sofa. A spaniel circled the room, panting.

  “Take cold water and splash her,” Endersby ordered.

  “You are an old bulldog,” the woman snapped. She flicked her cheroot, and ash floated to the carpet.

  “I have run out of polite requests,” Endersby said. “I have no time left to brook tantrums.”

  The woman gave in; she stepped aside and extended her arm as if she were a hostess welcoming Endersby into a dining room. The door shut quietly behind him, prompting the other manly woman to rise from the sofa. She jerked her head and led the impatient Endersby into an inner room, its color and furniture grey and wan in the late afternoon’s gloom. “Here, Inspector,” the woman whispered. “But she is in a sorry, sorry state.”

  “I do not know what to tell you, Inspector,” the sister then said, stepping gingerly into the room bedside her look-alike companion. “I don’t know what is proper.”

  Endersby stared at the prone figure before him on the rumpled bed. He pulled from his satchel his ear trumpet and placed it on Miss Priscilla Root’s chest. “She is breathing, at least.” He could make nothing more of her state, given the dimness of the chamber. “Light a candle,” he said. Both the sister and the other woman scuttled and scurried and returned with a massive light in a brass holder.

  “Close, close by,” Endersby ordered.

  Twice the flame flickered on a face lined and crumpled by fitful sleep and worry; the cheeks looked desperate with rouge and smudged rice powder, as if messed by a violent hand. Endersby had feared a suicide, but the smell of rum on Miss Root’s moving lips convinced him otherwise. Miss Root’s hair matted her forehead, and with a tenderness even he found surprising, Endersby lifted the mass of wet curls away. With his arm under the actress’s neck, he placed Miss Root into a sitting position against a stack of cushions. The manly sister handed him a wet sponge. Endersby dabbed lips, forehead and lower neck, and soon with only silence and curious eyes about her, Miss Root surfaced from her stupor.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Arthur Summers,” said Owen Endersby.

  On hearing Endersby’s voice, Miss Root tried to raise her arm to push him away. Her heavy shawl prohibited her from reaching the point where she could strike. Miss Root gazed at her attendants with weary eyes. “You again, sir?”

  “Inspector Endersby, Mrs. Summers.”

  “You have come to take me to Newgate Prison?”

  “Are you indeed worthy of a visit there, I wonder?”

  “You do not lack charm, sir.”

  “I thank you, Mrs. Summers. You, in your turn, tend too much to dissembling.”

  “That is my métier, dear man.”

  The inebriated woman tried to lift her hand again, but it fell back with a plop on the cushion. “Let me be, please. Let me have a moment to myself.”

  “I have precious little time, Mrs. Summers.” Endersby’s foot was aching. He was wet and very tired; he knew he must not falter. It was an awkward situation, yet he must drive her into soberness. Endersby took the nearby basin and splashed water onto Miss Root’s face. She turned from side to side. “Oh, please,” she wailed. He took the sponge and dipped it lightly, then squeezed drops onto her wrists. Endersby placed the basin on the floor, dragged his chair closer, and with his face next to London’s great tragédienne, he began the first of many thrusts and parries in the process of finding the truth.

  As he spoke, his voice was calm, as if he were conversing with a stranger on a coach ride.

  “What do you see here?” He held up the promissory note with the signature, P. Summers.

  “Paper and ink.”

  “And what else?”

  “Naught else, dear man.”

  “You can see a bribe, of sorts, can you not, Mrs. P. Summers?”

  “Can I? How you twist things, sir.”

  “Yes, this is a promissory note signed by you for money lent. It was money easily got by you, got with a low interest, much lower than Cake demanded from others. And we know why.”

  Endersby let his face break into an encouraging smile. Always with Miss Root, he figured, there was a need to cajole. Some game to amuse her, then trap her.

  “All I know is I needed money,” she answered in a languid manner. “Dear Samuel lent it to me. I tried to repay him, but he was s
elfish and cruel and kept after me, after me, oh, you do not know, sir, how pressing and unreasonable that man could be.”

  “The cruel and selfish one was you, Mrs. Summers. You were a liar as well. You told all of theatrical London you carried the baby of a man you knew could never have given it to you.”

  The sister leaned down to Endersby’s ear. “Not worth your trouble, Inspector. Believe me, it won’t hold water with her.”

  “Blood, perhaps,” he retorted, and demanded again of Miss Root what he believed was a truth held close in the hardest hearts of that darkened room.

  “Take my word, dear man,” Miss Root said. “You can claim no truth in that.”

  “Admit it. Cake was no more than a capon. A man who could not fulfil his manly duties, no matter how he was tempted, even by you.”

  No response. Then a sigh. Then a hand raised to strike, and that same hand dropped. “Falsehoods, all of them.”

  “And Mrs. Summers, the truth of your lost baby. You wanted Cake to love you. You held him in thrall, threatening to tell London he was not a true man, and so you lied to keep him by your side. You also borrowed his money and forced him to give you special, lower rates of interest. All for the sake of revenge and foolish pride. Your own bitterness at being rejected by the poor man.”

  The actress turned her face away, as if Endersby’s words were flames burning away her protective skin. A sob convulsed her chest. “The son you bore and lost was not Cake’s. It was from none other than Mr. Arthur Summers, your erstwhile husband and your occasional bedmate, even though he had officially abandoned you. Oh, yes, to spite him, too, you preened and cooed as if Cake were his bed rival, until the business came crashing down. Until the poor babe was stillborn, and you were left in shame by the husband who despised you.”

  “There was no baby,” Miss Priscilla Root insisted, her voice quavering.

  “I am deeply sorry for your loss,” said Endersby, his voice genuinely sympathetic. Strengthening his resolve, however, he set aside his emotion and continued. “In High Holborn cemetery, Miss Root, there lies a headstone, a tiny grave. On it, the name of Master Lewis Summers.”