‘As a witness? A witness to what?’
‘Would you mind telling me how long you have been person-ally involved with the George Theatre, my lord?’ Blackstone asked.
Bixendale looked pensive. ‘My interest in it began when I first met Miss Devaraux,’ he said. ‘That would make it a little over two years ago, I think.’
‘I see,’ Blackstone said.
‘Does this have anything at all to do with Kirkpatrick’s murder?’ Lord Bixendale asked, his voice hardening. ‘Or is it merely that, like so many people of your class these days, you have developed a morbid curiosity about the affairs of your social superiors?’
Several appropriate responses came immediately to the fore-front of Blackstone’s mind, but he pushed them all away immediately.
‘What my social superiors do with their time is no concern of mine,’ he said. ‘I was merely try to establish how likely it was that you might have come into contact with this man, who we believe may have visited the theatre on more than one occasion.’
He produced the two sketches that Marcus Leighton had made earlier that morning and laid them before Lord Bixendale.
Bixendale studied the sketches carefully. ‘I can’t be sure,’ he said, ‘but they both bear a remarkable resemblance to Thaddeus George.’
‘Who?’
‘Sebastian George’s father.’
‘Isn’t he dead?’
‘If he has died, I’ve certainly not been informed of the fact.’
‘I haven’t seen him around the theatre,’ Blackstone said.
‘No, you wouldn’t have,’ Bixendale agreed. ‘Shortly after I began to develop an interest in this theatre myself, he quite lost his mind. And as far as I know, he has been locked away in a lunatic asylum ever since.’
As far as I know, Blackstone noted. He wondered whether Thaddeus George was still in the asylum, and if he was not, whether he had the temperament to become involved in a murder plot.
‘What are your impressions of the man as a person?’ he asked Lord Bixendale.
‘Now that he’s gone insane?’ Bixendale responded. ‘I couldn’t possibly say — but I assume that he’s not much like a person at all.’
You’re just so full of the milk of human kindness, aren’t you? Blackstone thought.
‘But you knew him before he went insane,’ he said. ‘What kind of person was he then’? Did you like him?’
‘Well enough,’ Bixendale said evasively.
‘No more than that?’
‘We had our differences. I’ll openly admit that.’
‘Differences? Over what?’
‘They mainly concerned Miss Devaraux. As you know, she is now the company’s leading actress, but that was not the case at the time.’
‘Someone else held that position?’
‘Yes, a Miss Sarah Tongue. I thought it was a shame that she should be given most of the leading roles, when it was perfectly obvious that she did not have half Charlotte’s talent.’
‘And you felt that you should do something about it?’
‘I would not put it quite as crudely as that. Miss Devaraux asked me, as her friend and mentor, if I could use my influence to help her to secure the roles that we both knew she richly deserved, and I agreed to discuss the matter with Thaddeus George.’
‘But without success?’
would prefer to say with only limited success. George was a very stubborn man.’
‘And a ruthless one?’ Blackstone asked, his mind very much still on the part that Thaddeus George might have played in the murder.
‘I would not say he was ruthless, so much as obsessed,’ Lord Bixendale said. ‘The George Theatre was his life. He had sacrificed all else to it. So his refusal to grant my request was not born out of viciousness, but came from a belief that he knew what was best for the theatre.’
‘But you think he was wrong’?’
‘I know he was wrong. Charlotte is a much better female lead than Sarah Tongue could ever have been. Nonetheless there was no doubting his sincerity, and I could see that however persuasive I might be, I would never succeed in changing his mind.’
‘What eventually happened to Sarah Tongue?’ Blackstone wondered.
‘She left the company.’
‘And Miss Devaraux took her place as leading actress?’
‘She was the obvious choice.’
‘Can you remember exactly when Miss Tongue left and Miss Devaraux was promoted, my lord?’
‘I can’t give you a precise date without first consulting my journal,’ Lord Bixendale said, ‘but I do know that Miss Tongue’s departure occurred shortly after Thaddeus George went insane.’
Chapter Sixteen
Blackstone found Sebastian George in his office at the theatre. The impresario had his feet up on his desk, and his habitual large cigar planted firmly in his mouth. He looked to the inspector like a man who was more than well-pleased with the direction his life was taking.
‘Had any luck with tracking down the murderer yet?’ George asked, as casually as if he were inquiring about the likelihood of rain.
‘You don’t really care about it one way or the other, do you, Mr George?’ Blackstone asked.
‘It is certainly not my primary concern at this particular moment,’ the impresario admitted.
‘In fact, you’d probably prefer it if he wasn’t caught at all — or at least, not caught in the near future,’ Blackstone said. Sebastian George smiled, but said nothing,
‘Because as long as he remains at large, he’s adding an air of mystery to the whole affair,’ Blackstone continued, ‘and it’s that air of mystery which is selling tickets.’
‘And what a lot of tickets it does seem to be selling,’ Sebastian George said complacently.
‘Doesn’t it bother you at all that there might well be a homicidal maniac on the loose in your theatre?’ Blackstone wondered.
‘A homicidal maniac? I don’t claim to be an expert on the subject of murderers and their motives, but I think — whoever he is — he can scarcely be described as that,’ George replied easily.
‘No?’
‘No. A homicidal maniac, as far as I understood it, hates mankind in general. Isn’t that true?’
‘Normally, yes.’
‘This murderer did not hate mankind in general. He hated William Kirkpatrick in particular — and now that Kirkpatrick is dead and buried, I can see no reason at all why he should wish to strike again.’
‘So the hatred was reserved only for Kirkpatrick? And what do you think was behind this hatred of his?’ Blackstone wondered.
‘I have absolutely no idea.’
‘But you’re still convinced it was a personal hatred?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then would you mind explaining to me how you reached this interesting conclusion?’
Sebastian George took a puff on his cigar, and the area around his head was filled with blue smoke.
‘I’ll gladly explain,’ he said. ‘The murderer did not wish to kill William Kirkpatrick by his own hand, hence the highly elaborate business of switching the two knives around. Agreed?’
‘Agreed,’ Blackstone said.
‘Yet at the same time, he wished to fully savour his moment of triumph. He wished, in other words, to be right there when Kirkpatrick died. That is why he arranged for William to be killed on stage — so he could be in on the death, yet not conspicuously so.’
‘Where was he, then? In the wings?’
‘Possibly.’
‘Or perhaps in the audience?’
‘That’s possible, too.’
Though he hated to admit it, Blackstone thought, George’s theory made quite a lot of sense. But he knew from bitter experience that the obvious and logical answer was not always the correct one.
‘Maybe Kirkpatrick wasn’t his first victim,’ the inspector suggested. ‘Perhaps he’s killed before.’
‘Perhaps he has,’ George agreed. ‘ “But that was in another country, and besid
es, the wench is dead.” ’
‘What?’
‘I was quoting from The Jew of Malta.’
‘Who’s he, when he’s at home?’
‘It’s not a “he” at all. The Jew of Malta is a play by Kit Marlowe, the great Elizabethan dramatist.’
‘Why bring that up?’
‘I was trying to indicate, by means of that particular quotation, that if our murderer has killed before — and I have no idea whether he has or not — it has nothing to do with the life of this theatre.’
Maybe that’s what you were saying, Mr George, Blackstone thought. Or maybe you were just trying to show the thick bobby that you’re well-educated and he’s not.
‘Perhaps his previous excursions into the gentle art of murder aren’t so distant as you seem to think, Mr George,’ he suggested. ‘Perhaps he also killed Martin Swinburne.’
‘Martin’s death was nothing more than a tragic accident. If flying machines ever do become practicable, I’m sure they’ll be responsible for many deaths in the future, but Martin’s will have been the first. He would have liked that — he always enjoyed being first.’
‘Was that meant to be humorous?’ Blackstone asked. ‘It was meant to be wryly ironical,’ George told him.
‘In other words, it was meant to be one of those jokes that’s not really funny,’ Blackstone said, unimpressed. ‘You can’t be sure it was an accident, you know. You really can’t.’
‘Perhaps you’re right,’ George agreed. ‘But if Martin was murdered, he certainly wasn’t murdered by the same man who arranged William Kirkpatrick’s death.’
‘And what do you base that theory on?’
George smiled, superciliously. ‘You really shouldn’t expect me to do all your work for you, Inspector,’ he said.
‘And you shouldn’t automatically assume that because I ask for your opinion on the matter, I’ll accept everything you might say as if it was the word of God,’ Blackstone countered.
‘But in this theatre, I am God,’ George said seriously. ‘I have absolute power over my company. If they please me, I reward them. If they do not please me, I punish them. And the vision of the world which is presented on that stage out there is my vision.’
‘God doesn’t have to play to an audience,’ Blackstone said. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘If God wants to put on a tragedy, rather than a melodrama, he can do it without worrying about what that might do to his box office receipts.’
George laughed. ‘Were you trying to insult me, Inspector?’ Blackstone nodded. ‘Yes, I was — and if I say so myself, I don’t think I made a bad job of it.’
‘No, in fact, it was rather fine,’ George admitted. He took a long puff on his big cigar. ‘You are both more spirited and more intelligent than I first took you to be, Inspector.’
‘And you’re not quite the self-obsessed dolt that I first took you to be,’ Blackstone replied. ‘But now we’ve exchanged compliments, I really think it’s time we got back to discussing the case. So tell me, Mr George, why couldn’t the same man have killed Martin Swinburne and William Kirkpatrick?’
‘Because if it had been the same man, he would have wanted as much recognition for the first murder as he got for the second.’
‘Recognition?’
‘As far as actors are concerned — at least, all the actors I know — there is no point in putting on a fine performance without the public acclaim that follows it. A writer may write purely for his own satisfaction, a painter may paint because he’s driven by the urge to create a perfect vision of the world — but an actor never acts without an audience in mind.’
‘So you’re saying that Kirkpatrick was killed by an actor, and Swinburne was killed by someone who wasn’t?’
‘I am saying that Martin’s Swinburne’s death was an accident, and William Kirkpatrick was killed by someone who is either an actor or wishes he could be an actor.’
‘Interesting,’ Blackstone said. ‘I’d like to ask you a few questions about your father now.’
‘Isn’t that something of a non sequitur?’ Sebastian George asked.
‘And that would be Latin, wouldn’t it?’ Blackstone replied.
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t speak it myself. Never felt much of a need. Now, about your dad. Mr George’
‘Why would you wish to know anything about my father?’ Sebastian George interrupted him. ‘He’s an old man, and extremely frail.’
‘Physically frail — or mentally frail?’ Blackstone wondered. ‘That is neither here nor there. My father could have no possible bearing on your investigation, since he is… is… ’
‘Safely locked away behind the high walls of a lunatic asylum?’ Blackstone provided.
‘Since he is being cared for, in a secure institution, by those people who are best able to care for him.’
‘In which particular lunatic asylum is he being cared for securely?’ Blackstone asked.
‘That is really not your business,’ Sebastian George told him.
‘Perhaps it isn’t,’ Blackstone admitted, ‘but I’m still surprised you’re so unwilling to supply me with the name of the institution. Is that because you have something to hide?’
‘I have nothing to hide, and nothing to be ashamed of,’ Sebastian George told him. ‘If you really must know, my father is being taken care of in the Bethlehem Hospital.’
‘Bedlam!’ Blackstone exclaimed. ‘That’s where you can pay to go and look at the madmen running amok, isn’t it?’
‘That was certainly the case long ago,’ George said, ‘but we are at the dawn of a new century, and the treatment of lunatics is much more enlightened than it was formerly. The days of chaining up the poor madmen are now, I’m pleased to say, far behind us.’
‘Is that right?’ Blackstone asked.
‘It most certainly is. Furthermore, Bethlehem Hospital is a great deal more selective in its admissions than it used to be, and considerably more selective than the county lunatic asylums which would have been the alternative for him. In Bethlehem, a man may rest assured that his former position in society will be both known and respected by the staff, and he may be confident that those with whom he engages in social intercourse will have a similar standing to his own.’
‘In other words, he may be surrounded by stark staring madmen, but at least they’ll be stark staring madmen of his own class,’ Blackstone said.
‘Well, exactly,’ Sebastian George agreed. ‘I couldn’t have put it better myself.’
Chapter Seventeen
The sign over the door said:
R.H. Peabody
Undertaker’s and Chapel of Rest
Mutes and Pure Black Geldings Provided
at Very Reasonable Prices
but even the most unobservant of passers-by would have realized that if Mr Peabody was still in the burial game, he certainly wasn’t running his business from this particular establishment.
Talbot Hines — ‘The Voice of the London Evening Chronicle, the Man whose Opinion Matters’ — stood on the pavement opposite, taking in all the details of the scene for later use in his column.
‘What a cacophony of noise these disgraceful shows are responsible for,’ Hines wrote in his mental notebook. ‘What a disturbance they create in the normally busy-yet-harmonious life of this great city of ours.’
The ‘cacophony of noise’ in question was being created by a barrel organ which had been placed directly in front of the former funeral emporium, and on which one of the showman’s minions was grinding out a succession of relentlessly cheerful tunes.
To one side of the organ stood a young woman in a flesh-pink body-stocking. She was holding up a roughly-painted sign which proclaimed she was the strongest woman in world.
‘Standing there, shamelessly, for all the world to see, she could very easily have been mistaken for a woman wearing absolutely nothing at all,’ Hines composed in his head.
At the other side of the organ was a brown-skinned man, weari
ng only a loincloth. The sign he held up promised that, once inside, the customers would ‘See Princess Tezel dice with death’.
‘The heathen seemed even less aware of his near-nakedness than the woman did of hers,’ Hines wrote in his mental notebook. ‘It was truly a sight to shame both those who were posing, and those watching them pose.’
Not quite right, he told himself, but he could polish it up once he was back at the office.
The queue which had formed at the door was made up of just the sort of people who might have been expected to attend this kind of vulgar entertainment. There were workmen, still covered with their day’s grime, and men wearing patterned waistcoats who had never thought about doing an honest day’s work in their entire lives. There were down-trodden flower sellers and washerwomen, domestic servants and prostitutes.
A few of the potential customers could — at a push — pass as being respectable, Hines supposed. Some were certainly dressed like junior clerks, ladies’ personal maids or small shopkeepers. But, on the whole, it was not the kind of gathering which a man of some education would ever choose to attend willingly.
‘Nor do I choose to attend it,’ Hines said softly, as he willed himself to cross the street to the sideshow. ‘The choice has been made for me.’
For while it was undoubtedly true that his opinion might ‘matter’ — as his by-line proudly proclaimed — it would only continue to matter for as long as the tyrant who paid his wages said that it did.
* * *
A group of five young men joined the back of the queue, just as Hines was about to reach it himself.
Even had they been as quiet and self-effacing as workhouse children at meal-time, the journalist would still have immediately identified them by their manner of dress — dirty neck-cloths instead of collars, heavy belts instead of braces — as being hooligans.
And, in point of fact, they were not being quiet at all! They shouted.
They swaggered.
They slapped each other heavily on the back.
One of them had even brought a dog with him. It was a muscular creature, so battle-scarred that there was no doubt it had already made numerous appearances in the fighting pit, and its owner — showing no fear of its iron jaw and sharp teeth — was taking great delight in teasing it.
Blackstone and the Stage of Death (The Blackstone Detective series Book 5) Page 14