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

by Sally Spencer

  ‘I… I don’t know.’

  ‘I think you do. His failing was that he wanted to remain in charge here long after it was time for him to retire and let someone else take over. And since he owned the theatre, you see, he thought there was nothing I could do about it. But he was wrong — very wrong. Wasn’t he, Miss Simmons?’

  Tamara Simmons was beginning to turn quite pale. ‘I… I… ’ she said, gasping for air.

  ‘You remember what happened to him, don’t you?’ George asked. ‘Or do I need to remind you of it?’

  ‘No, I —’

  ‘Perhaps I’ll remind you of it anyway. One morning, two men with black bags appeared at the theatre door, didn’t they?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And where did they go?’

  ‘I don’t —’

  ‘Where did they go?’

  ‘They… they went to your father’s office.’

  ‘And when they left again, did they do so alone?’

  ‘No. Your father left with them.’

  ‘He didn’t leave with them at all. Leaving with them would suggest he had some choice in the matter. And he had no choice at all.’ Sebastian George paused for a moment to let the words sink into Tamara’s woolly brain. ‘What actually happened was that they took him away, didn’t they?’ he continued. ‘And why would they have done that?’

  ‘Because they thought he was —’

  ‘Because they thought what I paid them to think!’ Sebastian George said, slamming his hand down violently on the desk. ‘And they will think the same again — about another person — if I instruct them to. If it were my wish, they would think it about you.’

  ‘Please… ’ Tamara said, clearly distressed.

  An unexpected smile replaced the angry look on Sebastian George’s face. ‘Don’t get upset, my sweet Tamara,’ he said. ‘I did not wish to sound as if I were threatening you, as I’m sure you did not wish to sound as if you were threatening me earlier. You weren’t threatening me, were you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You have a great future in this company, if you are only prepared to be a little patient. Do you understand that?’ Tamara nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good,’ Sebastian George said. ‘Then I’ll see you tomorrow, and we’ll both pretend this conversation never happened. But keep in mind, Tamara, that there are many worse stations in life than the one you currently occupy — as my father has undoubtedly already found out.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  The telephone company did not provide meals for its staff, but it did employ a cook who prepared the food that the operators themselves had either ordered from the butcher’s or else brought with them from home. These meals were eaten in a civilized-but-plain dining room, which was bustling at meal-times, but was completely empty when Patterson shepherded a reluctant Henry Woodbine through the door.

  Woodbine looked desperately around the room, as if searching for some kind of escape hatch, and when he heard Patterson close the door loudly behind him, he almost jumped out of his skin.

  ‘I… I think you must have made some kind of mistake, Sergeant,’ the operator said. ‘I don’t know why —’

  ‘Sit down!’ Patterson ordered, pointing to a bench which ran along one of the long tables.

  ‘If I’d been the one who put the call through to the George Theatre, I’m sure that I’d have remembered it,’ Woodbine protested — but he reluctantly sat down anyway.

  Patterson took a seat on the opposite side of the table. It was much easier lifting his leg over the bench now that he had started to lose weight, he thought.

  ‘Tell me, Henry, have you ever been in trouble with the police before?’ the sergeant asked casually.

  ‘No, I… ’ the operator began. Then the implications of Patterson’s words sunk in, and he said, ‘What do you mean — in trouble before? I’m not in any trouble now.’

  ‘Oh, how I wish that that were true, Henry,’ Patterson said mournfully. ‘I really do. Still,’ he continued, brightening some-what, ‘let’s not be too pessimistic about the situation you find yourself in. If you’re totally open and straightforward with me now, I suppose it is just possible I might be able to find a way to get you off the hook.’

  ‘I’m innocent!’ Woodbine said.

  ‘Of what?’ Patterson wondered. ‘Of putting a call through to the George Theatre?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I didn’t know that was a crime,’ Patterson mused. ‘I had rather thought, in my own simple policeman’s way, that it was the job you were paid to do. Yet you say you’re innocent of it.’

  ‘That’s not fair! You’re twisting my words around,’ Woodbine complained.

  ‘What I still don’t see is why you’d want to deny putting through the call,’ Patterson continued, as if the other man had never spoken. ‘It doesn’t make any kind of sense at all to me.’

  ‘I did not put that call through,’ Woodbine said firmly. Sergeant Patterson’s stomach rumbled loudly. ‘What’s the food like here?’ he asked.

  ‘The food?’ Woodbine repeated, as if suspecting this was yet another clever interrogator’s trick. ‘You want to know about the food?’

  ‘Don’t you understand plain English?’ Patterson demanded. ‘Yes, I want to know about the food! What’s it like?’

  ‘It’s all right.’

  That wasn’t nearly good enough to satisfy even mental hunger, Patterson told himself.

  ‘What do they normally serve you with?’ he pressed. ‘A joint of meat and three veg? Side of beef? Leg of lamb? That kind of thing?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘With onion gravy?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘You suppose so!’ Patterson repeated, contemptuously. ‘I wouldn’t need to suppose if I was in your situation! And is there a sweet to follow the meat dish? Jam roll with custard, for example?’

  ‘Usually.’

  Patterson shook his head, despairing of all non-dieting humanity, and Henry Woodbine in particular.

  ‘The trouble with most people is that they never appreciate what they have until they’ve lost it,’ he told the other man. He paused for a second, as if reliving tastes past and flavours long gone, then said, ‘Tell me, Henry, do you know anything about Random Shellac Flat Disc Sound Retrieval System?’

  ‘Never heard of it.’

  Which is hardly surprising, since I just made the whole thing up, Patterson thought.

  ‘It’s a system of recording telephone calls on to a flat disc. They invented it in America,’ he said. ‘Don’t you, as a telephone operator, find that absolutely fascinating?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, you certainly should. It has all kinds of interesting possibilities, you know. In America, for example, they’ve been using it as a way of finding out whether their employees are doing their jobs properly. And your own company has been so impressed with the results they’ve had over there, that, on a purely experimental basis, it’s introduced the same system itself.’

  ‘They’re recording all the calls?’ Henry Woodbine asked, starting to look alarmed.

  ‘No,’ Patterson said. ‘Remember, Henry, it’s the “Random System”. If they recorded all the calls, they’d have to refer to it as the “Universal System”, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘But let’s concentrate on the calls they have recorded — like the one you made to the George Theatre last night.’

  ‘Have you… have you heard it yourself?’

  ‘Indeed I have. And a very fine recording it turned out to be, from a technical standpoint. Having listened to it just once, I would have recognized your voice again anywhere.

  This new information seemed to worry Woodbine, but it also seemed to perplex him.

  ‘If you’ve heard it yourself, why are you asking me who placed the call?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Patterson admitted.

  ‘Well, if you’ve heard the recording, then you’ll know that no
body placed it, won’t you?’

  ‘I… er… yes, I know that, of course I do,’ Patterson said, extemporizing wildly.

  ‘Then why did you?’

  ‘It was a trick question, Henry.’

  ‘A trick question?’

  ‘I was testing you, to see if you’d lie to me again. It’s one of the first things they teach us to do when we’re at the police training school.’

  ‘So you’re saying that you do know that there was nobody on the other end of the line?’

  What! Patterson thought. Nobody on the other end of the line?

  ‘Yes, that’s what I’m saying,’ he agreed.

  ‘Well, then, why — ?’

  ‘I’d still like you to tell me, Henry — in your own words — exactly what happened.’

  ‘But if you already know —’

  ‘There are strict procedures which must be adhered to, whether I know or not,’ Patterson said solemnly. ‘That’s the second thing they teach us at police training school. So let’s have it!’

  ‘I was told to ring the George Theatre at exactly half past eight last night,’ Woodbine said. ‘I was to ask for the props manager, and say that there was a caller on the other end of the line with an urgent message to deliver to him. But there was no caller.’

  ‘No caller?’

  ‘I wasn’t connecting anybody at all. The only line that was operating was between the switchboard and the theatre.’

  ‘Go on,’ Patterson said.

  ‘I was told to keep the line open until the props manager picked up the phone, then I was to break the connection. And that’s exactly what I did.’

  ‘And you were paid to do this?’ Patterson asked accusingly. ‘I didn’t know I was doing anything wrong. I swear I didn’t,’ Woodbine babbled.

  ‘Which means you were paid!’

  ‘He came up to me on the street. He said that he knew I was a telephone operator, and he also knew how little we got paid by the exchange. He said I could probably use a bit of extra cash, and he was willing to provide it. He told me that all he wanted to do was to play a practical joke on this friend of his.’

  ‘And you believed him?’

  ‘Yes. After all, he looked harmless enough. You’d never have thought somebody like him was up to no good.’

  ‘Somebody like him?’ Patterson repeated.

  ‘I mean to say, if you can’t trust a little old man, who can you trust?’ Woodbine whined.

  * * *

  The book was called The Power Struggle Within the Ottoman Empire from a Purely Toxicological Perspective, and its author, Ellie Carr had already decided, must have been one of the most boring men who had ever lived.

  She had so far skimmed over two hundred pages of the writer’s dreadful, laboured prose, and she had learned — in gruesome detail — that it was not always good for the health to be a member of the Turkish ruling family. As far as her own personal quest went, however, she was no closer to an answer to her questions than she had been at the start.

  ‘I thought you might like yet another cup of black coffee,’ said a voice behind her.

  Ellie turned in the direction of the speaker. ‘Are you still here?’ she asked Jed Trent.

  Trent patted his powerful chest, as if to check. ‘So it would appear,’ he said. ‘I take it, from the look of pure annoyance on your pretty face, that you’ve haven’t had any luck in finding what you were looking for yet.’

  ‘None at all,’ Ellie admitted. It’s the speed of the reaction that’s creating the problem. All the metallic poisons and vegetable alkaloids I’ve come across so far are lethal in the long run — some of them can even kill within the hour — but none of them is capable of producing the effect that the poison administered to William Kirkpatrick did.’

  ‘Then maybe it’s a different kind of poison altogether that you’re looking for,’ Trent suggested.

  ‘Brilliant!’ Ellie said sarcastically.

  And then — almost immediately — she felt guilty.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jed,’ she continued. ‘I’d never have said that if I hadn’t been so exhausted.’

  ‘Which is why I’ve been telling you, for the last three hours, that you should go home,’ Trent pointed out.

  ‘But how can I leave, when I feel in my bones that the answer’s here in one of these books, if I could only put my finger on it?’ Ellie asked. ‘Do you have any ideas, Jed?’

  ‘You must be really desperate, if you’re asking my opinion,’ Jed Trent told her.

  I am, Ellie thought.

  ‘Do you?’ she persisted.

  ‘Well, I did have one idea,’ Trent said cautiously. ‘But as I’ve no training in any formal kind of —’

  ‘I’d like to hear it.’

  ‘You’re not just saying that, are you?’

  ‘Why would I?’

  ‘To make up for being so sarcastic with me earlier.’

  Ellie smiled. ‘You have quite a sensitive soul lurking somewhere beneath that bluff exterior, don’t you?’ she asked.

  ‘I wouldn’t go as far as that,’ Trent said, beginning to look distinctly uncomfortable.

  ‘I truly do want to hear your idea,’ Ellie said. ‘I’d want to hear it even if I hadn’t been so ungracious to you earlier.’

  ‘Well,’ Trent began reluctantly, ‘you’ve already examined mineral poisons and vegetable poisons, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘So why not animal poisons’? I got bitten by a viper once. It didn’t kill me — I wouldn’t be here now, if it had — but it was distinctly unpleasant. And from what I’ve heard, there are snakes much more poisonous than vipers. Of course, like I said earlier, I’m no expert on’

  ‘A snake!’ Ellie interrupted, discarding her book on the Ottoman Empire, and reaching for another volume from the top of one of the tottering towers. ‘Why couldn’t it be a snake? Or a spider?’ She flicked the book open, and impatiently scanned the index. ‘You’re a genius, Jed,’ she said. ‘Did you know that?’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ Jed Trent confessed. ‘As a matter of fact, that particular piece of information comes as something of a surprise to me.’

  * * *

  Blackstone had lodged with Mrs Huggett for years. He paid her a little more than anyone else would have been willing to offer for the tiny back bedroom he occupied in her terraced house, but he knew she needed the money, and he was happy enough with the arrangement.

  The other lodger, Mr Dimmock, was a commercial traveller in patent tooth powder. He spent most of working life outside London, but on the nights he was back at his base, he announced his presence with snores which would have penetrated the walls even if they hadn’t been quite so paper-thin.

  Dimmock was there that night, but it was not the sound of his snoring which was keeping Blackstone awake. It was not the investigation, either, though thoughts of that would normally have been quite perplexing enough to keep sleep at bay for a while.

  Instead, he was thinking about Dr Ellie Carr — or rather his own relationship with the woman.

  If, indeed, they had a relationship.

  If, indeed, he wanted them to have a relationship.

  The problem was that Ellie Carr was so very passionate about her work, and that was almost bound to lead to difficulties.

  Twice before, he had made the mistake of falling in love with women who cared more about what they saw as their mission in life than they did about him, and he was not sure he wished to run the same risk a third time.

  And yet…

  And yet love was not a tap, that a man could turn on and off at will. It came uninvited — an unwelcome guest — and stayed, however uncomfortable its host tried to make it feel.

  The quality of Mr Dimmock’s snores had changed. Previously, he had been snorting like a bull that had just been presented with a red rag. Now the snores were less confident — almost apologetic — like those of a weak old man.

  Where did the old man in this investigation fit in? Blackstone found
himself asking.

  He had commissioned the knife, but that single action did not, by any means, put him at the very centre of the murder plot. It was more than possible that he was a harmless dupe, a pauper whom the killer had picked up on the street, and had used to muddy the trail.

  Yet Blackstone’s gut instinct told him that this was not the case at all — that the old man had somehow played a much more vital part in the death of William Kirkpatrick.

  In the other room, Mr Dimmock had changed position again, and had now embarked on a symphony of snoring which could have filled a space the size of the Royal Albert Hall.

  Blackstone felt the urge for sleep coming over him — and this time he gave way to it.

  * * *

  As Tamara Simmons watched the two unsmiling men with black leather bags enter the theatre, she knew that none of it was real. As she saw them walk towards old Mr George’s office, she understood that this was all no more than a dream. Yet she still dreaded the drama which was about to unfold.

  It is five o’clock in the evening. The cast will not arrive for another hour, and the only reason Tamara herself is in the almost empty building is that she forgot to take her script home after rehearsals, and has come to retrieve it. Now standing in the corridor which leads to the dressing rooms —and invisible to anyone who is not actually looking in her direction — she watches the men walk purposefully up to old Mr George’s office door, and knock on it loudly

  Old Mr George comes to the door ‘Why are you making such a noise?’ he demands. ‘What is it that you want?’

  ‘They’ve come to examine you, Father,’ replies Sebastian George, who has joined the men in the doorway.

  ‘Examine me?’

  ‘They’re doctors.’

  ‘But I’m not ill.’

  ‘Perhaps not physically’

  ‘Not in any way!’

  ‘We’ll see about that. Both these doctors are very, familiar with mental illness. One of them has even trained as an alienist.’

  ‘I don’t want to see them,’ the old man says.

  ‘You have no choice in the matter They have the authority of the Lunacy Commission to conduct this examination, which means that the law is entirely on their side.’