Blackstone and the Stage of Death (The Blackstone Detective series Book 5)

by Sally Spencer

  ‘How I have yearned, for so long, to command my flying machine with my own two strong hands,’ he says to himself in a poignant whisper, loud enough for those at back of the theatre to hear ‘And so I would have done, had I not lost my good right arm.’

  He turns, in order to remind the duller members of the audience that where there was once an arm, there is now only an empty sleeve.

  ‘Yet what choice did I have?’ he asks. The building was burning, the child needed to be saved. If I had not responded to her cries, I would have been the lesser man for it, and even the great triumph I am about to observe would have brought me no pleasure. For surely, the life of a sweet child is of greater value than any man’s own dream.’

  The flying machine appears at the edge of the stage, so high in the air that it is just within the line of visibility of most of the audience. It is the shape of a cigar, and half gay down its body there are wings — made of many small pieces of wood, and modelled on the wings of an eagle — which are flapping furiously.

  ‘At last, the miracle I have worked for, so hard and so long!’ Martin Swinburne says.

  He waves his free arm — the one which is not strapped to his side — high in the air

  ‘You fly it like a master, my son! he calls out to the pilot who is supposedly inside the contraption.

  Halfway through its slow journey across the stage, the flying machine begins to shake in a most alarming — and unscripted — manner.

  ‘Hold your nerve, my son,’ Swinburne calls out, improvising wildly. ‘For great glory was never won without first enduring a rough passage.’

  He is so convincing that most of the audience still believe the flying machine is performing just as it was intended to, but even they begin to have their doubts when it hurtles down towards the stage.

  Martin Swinburne has no time to run, and though he tries to lift both his arms above his head — as if that would protect him — one of them remains stubbornly strapped to his side. So it is his unrestrained left arm alone which feels the initial impact. A split second later ; of course, the rest of his body is allowed to share the experience.

  ‘They say it was the weight of the electrical engine that actually killed him,’ Patterson said.

  ‘The engine?’ Blackstone repeated. ‘You don’t mean to say it really was a flying machine, do you?’

  ‘How could it be when, according to you, such things are impossible?’ Patterson asked, with a grin.

  ‘Stop being such a smart alec, and tell me what happened,’ Blackstone growled.

  ‘The engine was only there to make the wings flap,’ Patterson explained. ‘The flying machine itself was suspended from a series of cables which ran along a track. Some of the cables must have come unhooked, and the rest, unable to bear the strain on their own, simply snapped. So the flying machine fell, and Swinburne was flattened.’ The sergeant paused. ‘Do you see now what I mean about Richmond Clay following in William Kirkpatrick’s footsteps, sir?’

  ‘I think so,’ Blackstone said. ‘William Kirkpatrick was Martin Swinburne’s understudy, just as Richmond Clay was William Kirkpatrick’s understudy. Have I got that right?’

  ‘Exactly right!’ Patterson said. ‘Overnight, Kirkpatrick went from being a nobody to being the star of the show. And that’s just what’s about to happen to Richmond Clay. So one of them got his big chance through a tragic accident, and the other through a murder.’

  ‘Or?’ Blackstone said.

  ‘Or they both got their big chances through a murder!’ Patterson exclaimed.

  ‘That’s just what I was thinking,’ Blackstone said.

  * * *

  Jed Trent looked around the empty morgue with the trained eye of a man who had served in the Metropolitan Police for over twenty years.

  Not that there was much to see with his trained eye, he thought. Not at that time of the morning.

  He had been employed by the morgue at University College Hospital since he retired from the police in his early forties. He was supposedly a general factotum, but had heard more than one doctor complain that there was very little ‘general’ about the way he did his job, and that in reality he had become no more than a personal assistant to Dr Ellie Carr.

  He was forced to admit that there was some justice to the complaint. He did spend much of his time working for Dr Carr, partly because he found the kind of research that she was involved in interesting, and partly because… well… because there was just something about the bloody woman which made it very hard to say no to her.

  Trent looked around the morgue again. Nothing had changed in the previous couple of minutes. The building — like its customers — was perfectly still.

  ‘Doesn’t it ever strike you as odd that it’s so often the case that we’re the only people here?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’ Ellie Carr responded absently, her eyes — and her thoughts — still very much concentrated on the body of William Kirkpatrick.

  ‘I mean to say, there are plenty of dedicated doctors who work in this building — dozens of them — but their dedication doesn’t seem to stand in the way of their going home from time to time,’ Trent amplified.

  ‘We go home from time to time,’ Ellie said impatiently. ‘You were at home when I called you.’

  ‘Yes, I was,’ Trent agreed. ‘In bed! Asleep!’

  ‘And I was out at the theatre, enjoying myself. So, since we have both been away from this place for several hours at least, I don’t think that anyone can say that we’re chained to the job, now can they?’

  ‘Well, there are people who might say that the fact we’re here at one o’clock in the morning proves we are chained to the job,’ Trent said. ‘But they’d be wrong, would they?’

  ‘Of course they would.’

  ‘So why are we here?’

  ‘Luck,’ Ellie Carr said. ‘Pure, blind luck.’

  ‘Luck?’

  ‘If I hadn’t been at the theatre tonight, someone else might have got his hands on this body.’

  ‘And that would have been a bad thing, would it?’

  ‘It would have been a very bad thing.’

  ‘Why? Is it because William Kirkpatrick’s famous that you’re getting so much pleasure out of slicing him up’? Are you hoping to get an earl or a cabinet minister on the slab next?’

  ‘You do talk nonsense sometimes,’ Ellie said.

  ‘Or are you hoping a little of his fame will rub off on you’? Do you want to be pointed out in the street as the doctor who dissected Kirkpatrick?’

  Ellie clicked her tongue disapprovingly. ‘I have no desire to be recognized in public,’ she said. ‘Nor am I impressed by the cadaver’s pedigree. William Kirkpatrick was a mediocre actor — at best. He wasn’t half as interesting to me alive as he is now he’s dead.’

  ‘And what is it that makes him so interesting now?’

  ‘The way he died. He was poisoned.’

  ‘Huh, that’s nothing unusual,’ Trent said, clearly unimpressed. ‘Poison’s the weapon of choice for half the murderers in this country. There must be dozens of rich widows who’ve bought arsenic claiming they needed it to keep down the rats — when what they really wanted it for was to feed to their husbands.’

  ‘Some husbands are rats, and undoubtedly get what they deserve,’ Ellie Carr said mildly. ‘But that’s neither here nor there. The interesting thing, as you’ve just pointed out, is that most English poisoners use arsenic — and this one didn’t.’

  ‘How can you be so sure of that?’

  ‘Arsenic’s a powder or a solution. This poison was some kind of paste, which had been smeared on to the tip of the dagger.’

  ‘Maybe there’s some new kind of arsenic that comes in a paste form,’ Trent suggested.

  ‘There isn’t,’ Ellie Carr said dismissively. ‘And even if there were, you’d need much more of it than could be smeared on the point of a dagger to get your result.’

  ‘Maybe this new kind of arsenic’ Trent began.

 
‘Then there’s the speed of the reaction,’ Ellie Carr ploughed on. ‘Kirkpatrick was dead within a very few minutes of being poisoned. Arsenic never works as quickly as that. And neither do any of the other metallic poisons. So we can dismiss the whole lot of them out of hand, can’t we?’

  ‘I suppose we can, if you say so.’

  ‘I do say so. I think that what we may be dealing with here is some kind of vegetable alkaloid. It could be digitalin, which is a great favourite over the water in France.’

  ‘I never did trust the French,’ Trent grumbled. ‘They’ve always been a sneaky lot.’

  ‘Yes, it might well be digitalin — I’ll know for certain when I’ve done the tests — but I’ve got this feeling that it isn’t that at all.’

  ‘And if it isn’t, you’re stumped?’

  ‘Exactly, Jed! Completely and utterly stumped! I’ve no idea at all — for the moment — what else it could possibly be.’

  ‘You don’t sound overly depressed about your incredible ignorance on the subject,’ Trent said.

  ‘I’m not,’ Ellie told him. ‘In fact, I’m very excited. Don’t you realize that this may be a completely new kind of poison — or, at least, one that’s never been seen in London before?’

  ‘Yes, I may not be a sharp-as-a-razor scientist like you, but the thought had occurred even to me.’

  ‘And what are the implications of that, Jed?’ Ellie Carr asked. ‘What does that mean for us?’

  ‘Does it mean that we’re at a total loss to know what to do next?’ Jed Trent suggested.

  ‘Not at all! It means that you and I, Jed, will have to set ourselves the task of tracing this hitherto unknown poison back to its source. Isn’t that thrilling? Doesn’t that set your heart racing?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Trent said, in a dead-flat voice. ‘If you want to know the truth, Dr Carr, I can barely contain my enthusiasm.’

  Chapter Six

  Most Englishmen considered themselves to be experts on the rain, but in Blackstone’s case, there was some justification for this belief. He had travelled widely, and known rain in all its forms — the torrential downpours in India, which seemed to be unleashing all the wrath of the angry gods; the harsh rains of Afghanistan, stabbing like the daggers of a thousand tiny tribesmen; the gentle, caressing showers of an English country spring.

  The rain that early morning was none of these. It was a typical London rain — a fine drizzle which was persistent rather than fierce, and through its persistence managed to penetrate even the most waterproof of clothing, and soak to the bone those who dared face it. The people out on the streets knew this all too well. Those on their way from one place to another hurried along, while those whose business dictated that they stay in a single spot — like the newspaper vendors — sought out whatever cover they could find in doorways and under awnings.

  Despite the depressing atmosphere, the newspaper vendors seemed to be on fine form that morning. And why wouldn’t they be, Blackstone thought, as he hurried along. After all, there was nothing like a good headline for selling papers — and the one they had been handed that morning was a beauty.

  ‘Thespian’s Mysterious Demise!’ one of them shouted from his doorway shelter. ‘Read all about it!’

  ‘Final Curtain for William Kirkpatrick,’ called out another.

  But it was a third, positioned quite close to the George Theatre itself, to whom Blackstone would have awarded the prize for inventiveness.

  ‘The Balloon of Death!’ the man screamed. ‘Read all about the Balloon of Death!’

  Despite the rain — and despite the fact that the box office would not be opening for another three hours — a long queue had already built up outside the theatre. The people who made up the queue had their shoulders hunched up against the elements. They looked a little like the vultures that he had seen in the East, Blackstone thought — and just like those vultures, these people were prepared to tolerate a certain amount of personal discomfort if there was some promise of blood and gore at the end of it.

  The inspector made his way to the stage door, knocked, and was admitted by a porter whose face was covered with so many unsightly red blotches that it was practically impossible to detect the areas of normal skin which almost certainly lay between them.

  ‘Well, well, well, if it isn’t Sam Blackstone,’ the man said. ‘Fancy us meeting up again like this, after all these years. What a turn-up for the books that is, eh?’

  ‘Yes, it’s certainly been a long time,’ Blackstone replied, searching the recesses of his mind for a name to fit to the face. ‘How long is it, exactly, do you think?’

  ‘Must be twenty-five years, if it’s a day,’ the porter told him.

  Blackstone did a quick mental calculation. Twenty-five years! Then they must have met in Dr Barnardo’s!

  ‘Whoever would have thought that any of us poor orphans would ever amount to anything?’ the porter continued.

  ‘Who indeed,’ Blackstone said, still buying himself time to gather up his recollections.

  ‘Yet here I am, in charge of the porter’s lodge of one of the biggest and most important theatres in London,’ the porter continued. ‘And as for you,’ he added, almost as an after-thought, ‘well, you haven’t done so badly for yourself, either, have you?’

  ‘Spotty Wilberforce!’ Blackstone exclaimed.

  ‘Tommy Wilberforce,’ the porter said, with offended dignity. ‘Or Thomas, as I’m better known these days.’

  There’d been all kinds of kids in Barnardo’s, Blackstone recalled. Kids who could be happy anywhere, however tough the conditions — and they could be very tough in the orphanage; kids who were so miserable that they viewed catching a disease — and dying of it — as almost a welcome release; kids who knew how to play the system, and kids who didn’t.

  Spotty Wilberforce, even without his horrendous spots, would not have been an attractive child. He’d lacked the wit to be amusing, the courage to attract admiration, and the empathy to engender love. And yet, despite all the evidence to the contrary, he had been one of the kids who consider themselves superior types, and so made themselves the natural targets for bullies.

  Blackstone, who — even then — had despised those who used their own power solely for their own purposes, had kept the bullies away from Wilberforce for years, though the other boy had never thanked him, or even acknowledged that he was doing it. In the time that had passed since, he had occasionally asked himself why he had protected Wilberforce — getting bruises aplenty himself, in the process — and had come to the conclusion that while it is easy to protect a worthy object, protecting an unworthy one is a real test of character.

  ‘You must think it’s a real stroke of luck, finding me here,’ Wilberforce told him.

  ‘Must I?’ Blackstone replied.

  ‘Of course you must. Half the theatre porters in the West End don’t have the brains to tie their own bootlaces, so I can imagine how you will have been dreading questioning the one who works here. Then you suddenly discover it’s me — a man who really knows his onions — a man who can give you a real insight into what goes on in this place. You must feel like all your birthdays have come at once.’

  ‘Something like that,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘Were you on duty here last night, Sp… Thomas?’

  ‘I’m on duty every night. Mr George wouldn’t trust anybody else to be in charge.’

  ‘So you’ll have been here when the phone call came through for Mr Foster, the props manager?’

  ‘The properties manager,’ Wilberforce corrected him. ‘Yes, I was here. And I ordered the boy to bring Mr Foster to the phone straight away.’

  ‘Who made the call?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘Caller didn’t say. Just said it was urgent.’

  ‘But was it a man? Or a woman?’

  ‘It was… er… a man,’ Wilberforce said.

  ‘You don’t sound so sure about that.’

  ‘It was a man,’ Wilberforce said, more definitely. ‘I’d guess
he was middle-aged. He had a South London accent. I’d say he probably came from somewhere in Southwark.’

  Spotty Wilberforce had always been a liar when it suited him, Blackstone thought, and it suited him now — because, having bragged so much already, he wanted to seem more competent than he actually was.

  It’s understandable, given all the other things you have to do during a show, that you don’t really remember something as insignificant as one phone call,’ Blackstone said, giving the other man a way out.

  ‘But I do remember,’ Wilberforce insisted. ‘As I said, he was thirty-five or thirty-six, and he came from Southwark — possibly from the area quite close to St Saviour’s workhouse.’

  Give him another minute, and he’d be pinning it down to the street — or even the house, Blackstone thought.

  Wilberforce had backed himself into a corner, and could now never admit to the truth without considering that he had lost face. And there was no way he would be prepared to do that in front of a man who he thought had got on in life almost as well as he had.

  So if they were ever to get any leads on the man who made the phone call, they would have to come from the other end of the line, where Sergeant Patterson was currently making enquiries.

  * * *

  Patterson had never overcome his initial awe of the telephone. It seemed to him that it was, quite simply, the greatest invention which had ever been devised in the history of the world.

  It was an instrument which allowed him to indulge in two of his three great passions, his fascination for technology and the love of conversation. He made use of the telephone constantly, and — in his more optimistic moments — even dared to dream that he might someday possess one of his own.

  Thus, while the spring in his step that morning may well have been a reflection — in some small measure — of his recent weight loss, it had much more to do with the fact that he was heading for the building which, in his mind, was the palace of modernity and progress — and in the minds of others was merely the Post Office Central Telephone Exchange in St Paul’s Churchyard.

  The Exchange did not exactly live up to his expectations. The room itself was so prosaic — a large, oblong-shaped space with a supervisor’s desk in the centre, and perhaps sixty switch-boards against the wall. And the operators fell even further below the standards he had been anticipating. True, they looked quite smart in the dark gowns which covered their street clothes. And true, they answered the flashing lights on their switchboards with a brisk efficiency. But where was the flair, Patterson thought forlornly. Where was the magic?