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

by Sally Spencer

  ‘I have behaved with the utmost propriety!’ the governor said.

  ‘And I can only hope that you have a private income, and are not dependent on your salary here to keep a roof over your head and food on your table,’ Blackstone concluded.

  It was an empty threat, but if it managed to cause the governor even one sleepless night, then Blackstone considered it had been well worth making.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Having been given more time than they would ever have wished for to study the crude wax figures in the ante-room, the paying customers of the penny sideshow were now ushered through into a second room of the ex-undertaking establishment, where the main event was due to take place.

  In its former days of glory, the room had probably been used for display purposes. There would have been a range of coffins — the more expensive ones placed in the most favourable light, the cheaper ones crammed into the corner — rolls of black crêpe, and all the other paraphernalia of a funeral which the undertaker would have attempted to sell to his less-than-usually-resistant clients. Now that was all gone. A crude and hastily erected wooden stage filled one corner of the room, and the rest of the floor space had been given over to the eager spectators, who were being squeezed into it like sausage meat into a skin.

  The smell of sweat, cheap perfume and poverty was already almost unbearable, Talbot Hines thought, and he determined that if he must endure this humiliation, he would at least emerge from the sideshow with a story which would make headlines.

  Though they had been in the room for little more than a minute, the audience in general — and the gang of hooligans in particular — were already starting to become restive.

  ‘Where’s the Princess What’s-it?’ the hooligan with the dog demanded loudly. ‘I want ter take a butcher’s at ‘er.’

  ‘Why’s that, Rollo?’ one of his friends asked.

  ‘I want ter see if she’s worth me slippin’ a length to ‘er!’ the hooligan with the dog replied.

  The other hooligans laughed, but a man in a good second-hand suit, who was standing next to them, said, ‘Hush!’

  ‘You tell me to ‘ush again, mate, an’ I’ll fill yer face in for you,’ Rollo threatened.

  ‘But there are ladies present,’ the man protested.

  ‘Ladies?’ Rollo repeated. ‘I don’t see no ladies. All I see is a bunch of prozzies an’ scrubbers.’

  The youth had an exceptionally foul mouth on him, Talbot Hines thought, but it would have been difficult to disagree with his analysis of the social composition of the audience.

  A middle-aged man stepped on to the stage. He was wearing a long, faded red coat of the kind normally worn by ring-masters in circuses. As he looked out at his audience, the expression on his face seemed to suggest that he wished that, like a real ringmaster, he had brought a whip with him.

  ‘Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the most exciting sideshow in London, if not in the entire world,’ he said in a voice which was loud enough, yet somewhat lacking in conviction. ‘I will be your master of ceremonies for this performance, and it will be my pleasure to bring wonders to you that, hitherto, you will only have read about.’

  “Oo sez we can read at all?’ Rollo called out.

  Around him, his mates laughed, as if they had suddenly discovered the new Oscar Wilde standing in their midst.

  The master of ceremonies wisely decided to ignore the comment.

  ‘Later in the programme, you will be astounded by the feats of strength performed by Miss Emily Judd, the strongest woman in the world,’ he said. ‘But first may I present an artiste who has travelled all the way from Columbia, in South America, to be with us. She is the only daughter of Mantinus, the paramount chief of the Choco tribe.’

  ‘The chocolate tribe?’ Rollo shouted.

  ‘Will you please welcome Princess Tezel and her troupe!’ the master of ceremonies said, now apparently deaf to any comment that might emanate from the hooligan.

  The Indian, who had been standing out on the street next to the barrel organ, now climbed on to the stage. He was followed by another man, and a woman. The second man was dressed, as he was, in only a loincloth, but the woman was wearing an elaborate gown which seemed to be composed mainly of brightly-coloured bird feathers.

  The most striking thing about all three of them was their faces. They were dark, sharp and lacking subtlety — as if they had been hastily carved from a piece of teak or mahogany — and as expressionless as if they really were made out of wood.

  The men squatted down on the floor. One of them picked up a hand-drum, the other a crude set of pipes. They started to play a tune, though it was not one the audience knew. Indeed, some of those standing watching them began to question whether it was a tune at all.

  The woman did not move for the first half minute or so, then she began to dance as stiffly as a statue caught in an earthquake.

  ‘This is a swizz!’ Rollo called out. ‘She’s the ugliest woman wot I’ve ever seen in my life, an’ I want my money back!’

  His friends needed little encouragement to join in with his criticism.

  ‘Revoltin’ old bag.’

  ‘She’s so ugly that she shouldn’t be allowed out of the ‘ouse ‘till after it’s gone dark.’

  Princess Tezel stopped dancing, and looked at the hooligans with utter loathing. Though she had not understood a word of what they had said, it was perfectly plain that she had caught the tone of their comments easily enough.

  ‘Now she ain’t even shakin’ her nel lies for us no more,’ Rollo complained. ‘Not that they’re much to talk about, even when she does.’

  The master of ceremonies, deciding somewhat reluctantly that the time had come to intervene, stepped back on to the stage again.

  ‘Please be patient,’ he implored the audience in general, and the hooligans in particular. ‘Once she has finished her dance, Princess Tezel will show you one of the most amazing sights you have ever seen in your life — a sight so dangerous that it will chill you to your marrow.’

  ‘Why don’t she show it to us now, ‘stead of borin’ the pants off us wiv this dance of ‘ers?’ Rollo demanded.

  ‘The dance is all a part of the necessary ritual,’ the master of ceremonies explained. ‘Princess Tezel needs to cultivate the proper state of mind before embarking on her dangerous exploit.’

  ‘Yer wot?’ Rollo asked.

  ‘It’s like when you know yer goin’ to ‘ave a fight,’ one of his friends explained to him. ‘Yer ‘ave to get yerself good an’ mad even before it starts, don’t yer?’

  ‘Oh, I see what yer gettin’ at,’ Rollo said. He turned his attention back to Princess Tezel. ‘You just carry on then, darlin’.’

  The dance continued for another two minutes. When it had finished, one of the male attendants left the stage, and returned a moment later carrying a wicker basket in his hands.

  ‘In this simple container lurks one of the most dangerous creatures alive,’ the master of ceremonies said dramatically.

  ‘Is that right?’ Rollo called out. ‘Looks too small to me to be ‘oldin’ a man-eatin’ lion.’

  ‘What you are about to see is the poison arrow frog,’ the master of ceremonies said. ‘This frog excretes a poison which can kill a man in seconds. In Princess Tezel’s tribe, the warriors run their arrows across its back before they go into battle.’

  ‘Let’s see it, then,’ Rollo said.

  ‘The process is not to be rushed,’ the master of ceremonies told him. ‘Anyone who does not handle the poison arrow frogs with the greatest of care is almost certain to die.’

  Princess Tezel’s face was even less animated than it had been earlier, Talbot Hines thought. It was almost as if the woman had fallen into some kind of trance.

  The princess lifted the lid off the basket, and carefully reached inside. She withdrew her hand slowly again, and, with extreme gentleness, placed what she was holding on to her arm. She repeated the whole operation twice more, then held out t
he arm for the audience to see. Clinging to it were three very small, brilliantly yellow frogs.

  ‘Them’s just ordinary frogs like yer might find in any pond,’ Rollo said scornfully. ‘They ain’t poisonous.’

  ‘I can assure you that they most certainly are,’ the master of ceremonies said. ‘They are deadly poisonous.’

  ‘Prove it!’ Rollo challenged.

  ‘And how do you suggest I do that?’

  ‘Let my dog, Butch ‘ere, cat one of the frogs. Let’s see just what it does to ‘im.’

  ‘We can’t do that.’

  ‘Told yer they wasn’t poisonous,’ Rollo told his cronies. He turned back to the master of ceremonies. ‘The ‘ole fing’s nuffink but a swizz, an’ I want my money back.’

  ‘I don’t think you quite understand just how rare and expensive these frogs are,’ the master of ceremonies protested.

  ‘Ow much are they worth. Thruppence? A tanner?’

  ‘Much more than that.’

  ‘The London Evening Chronicle exposes the true shame of the, fake princess,’ Talbot Hines composed in headlines in his mind’s eye. ‘Top reporter Talbot Hines of the London Evening Chronicle exposed the true shame of the fake princess,’ he amended.

  ‘I’ll buy one of these so-called rare and expensive frogs for the dog,’ Hines shouted out. ‘Will a gold guinea cover it?’

  ‘Good for you, mate!’ one of the hooligans said.

  ‘The bloke may look like a bit of a tosser, but ‘e’s a real sportsman,’ another chipped in.

  The master of ceremonies spoke in a soft aside to one of the princess’s retainers. The retainer, in turn, spoke to Princess Tezel. The princess hesitated for a moment before replying, but when she had, her translator conveyed her message to the master of ceremonies.

  ‘You offered a gold guinea for one of the frogs, sir,’ the master of ceremonies said to Talbot Hines. ‘Do you happen to have the money on your person, by any chance?’

  ‘Certainly I have the money on me,’ the journalist replied. He reached into his watch pocket, extracted the coin, and then flicked it through the air in the direction of the stage.

  The master of ceremonies caught it with alacrity, then took a bite at it to establish whether or not it was genuine.

  ‘That seems to be in order,’ he said.

  He handed the coin to one of the Indians, as if it had nothing to do with him. Later, of course, when there were no witnesses around, he would probably demand a substantial share of it back, Talbot Hines thought.

  ‘The transaction is completed,’ the master of ceremonies said. ‘The frog is now your property, sir, to do with as you wish.’

  ‘There is just one thing I’d like to know before we go any further,’ Talbot Hines said.

  ‘And what might that be?’

  ‘I’d like to know exactly what it was that the princess said to her attendant just now.’

  ‘That is surely neither here nor there,’ the master of ceremonies replied.

  ‘Perhaps not,’ Hines agreed. ‘But I’ve just handed over a considerable amount of money, and I’d like an answer.’

  ‘The princess said that we all have to make our own choices in life, and if your friend wishes to feed the frog to his dog, then it’s his funeral. Or rather, to be more accurate, it’s his dog’s funeral.’

  ‘My dog ain’t scared of no little frogs,’ Rollo said. ‘My dog ain’t scared of nuffink.’

  ‘Then, by all means, bring him up on to stage,’ the master of ceremonies invited.

  ‘Be glad to.’

  Princess Tezel returned two of the small yellow frogs to their basket, as slowly and carefully as she had taken them out. While the hooligan and his dog were climbing up the rickety steps on to the stage, she placed the third frog on the floor. And then, totally unexpectedly, her lips curled upwards and her face lost a little of its immobility.

  Dear God, she’s smiling! Hines realized, with shock. The woman’s bloody smiling!

  And suddenly, he found himself wondering if all this had been such a good idea after all.

  ‘There is your one-guinea frog, sir,’ the master of ceremonies told the hooligan. ‘Do what you will with it.’

  ‘Go on, Butch, eat it up,’ the hooligan said jovially. ‘That’ll do for your supper, that will.’

  The dog could see the small frog, but showed absolutely no interest in it. Then the frog made the tactical error of taking a small leap, and the dog swooped down on it, swallowing it in a single gulp.

  Rollo looked at his friends in the audience. ‘Told yer it wasn’t poisoned,’ he said triumphantly.

  But the expressions forming on the faces of his fellow hooligans, as they watched the dog, were already beginning to suggest that he was wrong.

  For perhaps fifteen seconds, Butch shook violently. Then he opened his mouth to bark, but no sound came out. Finally he froze — for perhaps two more seconds — before his legs buckled under him, and he fell to the floor.

  Chapter Twenty

  The piles of books balanced precariously on Ellie Carr’s desk were even taller than they’d been the last time Jed Trent had visited her office, but from the expression of exhausted disappointment on her face, it did not look to Trent as if she had had any more luck consulting the additional volumes than she’d had with the previous ones.

  ‘It was a good idea of yours to say I should consider the possibility of spiders and snakes as a source of the poison, Jed,’ Ellie told Trent. ‘But even good ideas don’t always come to fruition, and I’m afraid this one certainly doesn’t seem to be leading anywhere.’

  ‘There’s an article’ Trent began.

  ‘I’ve tried,’ Ellie said wearily. ‘Goodness knows, I’ve tried. I really don’t know how many species of spiders and snakes there are in the world. Nobody does with any degree of certainty. But I must have read about hundreds of specimens of both, and not one of them — not a single bloody one — can cause the kind of reaction through its poison that I saw on the stage of the George Theatre.’

  ‘Maybe you’ll find the answer that you’re looking for in here,’ Trent suggested, holding up a copy of the London Evening Chronicle for her to see. ‘As I started to say before, there’s an article on —’

  ‘For God’s sake, Jed, do try and talk a little sense,’ Ellie interrupted. ‘If I can’t find the solution to the problem in dozens of books written by distinguished toxicologists — and I can’t — then what chance is there that I’ll find it in the evening newspaper, conveniently located somewhere between the court circular and the classified advertisements?’

  ‘I thought you scientists claimed never to rule out anything,’ Trent said mildly.

  ‘That’s true. We don’t. But we do make a point of looking in the most obvious places first.’

  ‘This is obvious,’ Jed Trent said.

  ‘Really, Jed, I haven’t got time to —’

  ‘Read it!’ Trent said firmly.

  Ellie sighed. ‘All right, if it will make you happy,’ she agreed. ‘Is this what you want me to read? “Terrible Happening in London”?’

  ‘That’s what I want you to read.’

  Terrible Happening in London

  By Talbot Hines

  The Voice of the Evening Chronicle

  The Man whose Opinion Matters

  In the interest of truth and enlightenment, towards which we journalists always strive, I today attended a penny sideshow on the Mile End Road. I had not anticipated enjoying the ‘entertainment’, but felt it my duty to my readers to attend it. I fully expected to be disgusted, but had not expected the horror which turned the stomach of even this seasoned reporter.

  The spectacle commenced with a barely-clad woman who performed a dance clearly designed to ignite the passions of the baser element of the audience. But worse was to follow. The woman then produced a number of slimy poisonous frogs, which she proceeded to allow to crawl up and down the naked flesh of her arm. One of the rougher members of the audience, who had brough
t his sweet little doggie with him, called out that he did not think the frogs were poisonous at all. A lady would have let this comment pass, but the woman then insisted that he feed one of the frogs to his doggie to demonstrate just how poisonous it was. This he did, and the poor dog quickly died in a manner that I will not assault my readers’ sensibilities by describing, save to say that it was horrific indeed.

  The woman is clearly guilty of great cruelty, but she is not alone in this. They say that a dog is a man’s best friend, but this man was certainly not this dog’s best friend, or he would never have allowed the doggie to run the risk of being poisoned. I am a man of moderate views, as my regular readers know, but I feel that no injustice would be committed if both the man and the woman were whipped through the streets.

  ‘Well?’ Jed Trent asked.

  ‘That might be it, you know, Jed,’ Ellie said excitedly. ‘That just might be it.’

  ‘I thought you’d say that.’

  ‘We have to get our hands on one of these frogs. We must go down to the Mile End Road immediately.’

  ‘I thought you’d say that as well,’ Jed Trent told her. ‘That’s why I’ve got a cab waiting right outside.’

  * * *

  Blackstone found Charlotte Devaraux sitting in her dressing room, staring into the mirror.

  ‘I do this every day,’ she told him, when she saw the reflection of him standing in the open doorway. ‘I search for signs of ageing, as if they might have sneaked up on me overnight. So far, I haven’t found anything that I should become seriously worried about.’

  ‘I’m delighted for you,’ Blackstone said, with no trace of delight in his voice at all. ‘But what will happen, do you think, when you do find the signs, Miss Devaraux?’

  ‘I’ll be devastated for a day or two — perhaps even longer than that — but I imagine I’ll get over it eventually. Stage make-up can hide a multitude of sins, you know. And when even that fails to mask the ravages of time, the Scottish play will still need its Weird Sisters, and Juliet must always have a nurse.’