‘What?’ Benjamin almost yelled the word.
‘Koller met Throstle in Manchester.’
‘When?’
‘According to Mrs Throstle, about a month ago. You were performing in Manchester at that time, I believe?’
‘Yes. At the Prince’s Theatre.’
‘He met Throstle – we don’t know how – but they struck up what you might call a professional friendship.’
Benjamin seemed unable to take in what he was being told. ‘But how could this Throstle character make Herbert’s fortune?’
Slevin coughed and looked quickly in the direction of Miss Coupe. The indelicacy of what he was about to reveal was not lost on him, but he was obliged to continue. ‘Mr Throstle had, shall we say, made certain modifications to his slide shows. For certain audiences he gave presentations of a rather more salacious nature.’
Shorton pulled Susan Coupe closer to him.
‘Without going into detail, I can say that the slides in such shows were vile and degrading. But there are men in our society who take pleasure in witnessing the subjugation and the humiliation of others. Some of his models were willing participants, it must be said, but most were innocents – young innocents – who suffered greatly at the hands of such a monster.’
Jonathan Keele inhaled deeply, as if he were about to dive into icy water. Beside him, Benjamin stood motionless, gazing not at Slevin nor any of the others, but at the shrouded body of the boy he had once loved. Susan Coupe was sobbing quietly, Shorton’s arm holding her to his chest.
But Slevin could not stop now. Not until the guilty one confessed.
‘One of Throstle’s victims discovered that he was here, in Wigan, showing his gruesome Phantasmagoria at the same time as The Silver King. That victim had suffered greatly, but now it appeared that Fate had sent its message. Throstle was here, and the opportunity might never arise again. So, what to do? How to get close enough to this vile man in order to exact revenge?’
Jonathan Keele stepped closer to Slevin. ‘There’s no need to continue, Sergeant Slevin.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I am now making my confession. I killed Richard Throstle.’
Benjamin lifted his head, which he had bowed low as the policeman had been speaking. ‘What nonsense is this?’ he exclaimed. ‘Jonathan?’
The old actor turned and gave him a smile. ‘No nonsense, I assure you.’ He turned to Slevin and gave a heavy sigh, his shoulders sagging in resignation. ‘It would be best if you took me away from this place, sergeant. These people have suffered enough.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t arrest you, Mr Keele.’
‘Whyever not?’
‘Because you are too old.’
Jonathan Keele raised his eyebrows in amusement. ‘Too old? I hadn’t realised there was a statute in law that precluded the arrest of old men.’
‘No, sir, but there is a statute precluding the arrest of innocent old men.’
‘What?’
‘When I said you were too old, I meant exactly that. In order to get close enough to Richard Throstle to commit the crime, the murderer had to do what actors do every single time they walk on stage.’
‘And what is that?’ Shorton asked.
‘Why, they put on an act, Mr Shorton. Just as you did when you became Mr Jenkins, the travelling salesman.’
As he said the words, Susan Coupe collapsed in a heap. Shorton caught her just before she hit the hard wooden floor, and he laid her down with great tenderness, brushing the hair from her eyes and saying her name over and over again. Gradually, her eyes flickered back to life.
‘What is this?’ Benjamin asked, looking at Jonathan Keele for an explanation he couldn’t give.
Miss Coupe sat up and was helped to one of the chairs from the set. As Shorton made sure she was comfortable, Slevin looked on with a mixture of regret and pity in his eyes.
‘You see, Mr Shorton is deeply in love.’
Both Benjamin and Jonathan now regarded the two lovers, Shorton on one knee beside a now weeping Miss Coupe, and on both their faces a look of understanding was slowly registering.
‘I remember Mrs Throstle telling me that her husband would do anything to help a damsel in distress. A most noble man, she said.’
‘Noble?’ Shorton sneered.
Susan Coupe placed a restraining hand on his arm and spoke for the first time since they had been left alone on stage. Her voice was surprisingly clear, despite an initial hesitancy. ‘It seemed as if I was stepping into the infernal regions, sergeant. My fellow travellers thought it was something akin to an attack of the vapours upon seeing black-faced colliers. I ask you! But the first face I saw when I walked through the station portals here in Wigan was indeed the face of a devil, the face of a man I thought I would never see again. He didn’t recognise me, of course. I was no longer the child he . . .’
She was looking directly at Slevin, and once more he found himself catching his breath. But he wasn’t looking at a young woman whose beauty and whose acting had lit up the world of the stage from Wigan to London. He was instead looking into the eyes of a small girl whose defilement had for ever been recorded on a set of lantern slides, the most heart-rending expression of terror he had ever seen on any victim, alive or dead. He had recognised her doleful eyes immediately, magnified a hundred times for the seedy delectation of depraved men.
Susan Coupe brushed aside the ministrations of her lover now. She held her head high, a defiant and somehow pathetic gesture, and spoke in the steady tones of a well-rehearsed soliloquy.
‘I was introduced to Mr Richard Throstle by his friend and my governess, Georgina Malvern, who was later to become his wife. An unholy alliance! She told me he was looking for photographic models to illustrate a new set of slides he was calling his “Life Model Series”. They are slides that tell a story. You will no doubt have seen similar, Sergeant Slevin.’
Slevin nodded. He and Sarah had sat in the Public Hall and watched such narratives as Beware, or the Effects of Gambling and The Little Hero. They had taken Peter to see the latter, a moral tale of a young stowaway and his wicked stepfather. They were a world away from the contaminated filth Throstle was creating.
‘Once he did what he did to me, he said I was to tell no one, for how could my parents live with the photographs he had taken of me? Would they still love me if they saw what I had been a party to, what I had allowed to happen of my own free will? They said they would shield my wickedness from my parents, and Throstle would ensure my features would be blurred for the final slides, but only if I said nothing.’
Her voice, which hitherto had been controlled and measured, now broke, but she held herself erect and continued.
‘I had told James nothing of this. How could I? But when he saw the way I had reacted that day we arrived in Wigan, it didn’t take him long to reach the truth – there can be no secrets between lovers, can there?’
Benjamin flushed and looked away for a few seconds.
‘So,’ said Slevin, ‘you devised a plan, a plan of revenge.’
‘Yes.’
‘Which involved Mr Shorton here presenting himself at the reception desk of the Royal Hotel in the guise of a travelling salesman.’
Shorton gave a bitter laugh. ‘It was an easy task. I had already played Mr Jenkins in the past.’
Benjamin frowned. ‘Jenkins? The hosiery salesman?’
‘Yes,’ said Slevin, curious. ‘How did you know he was a hosiery salesman?’
‘Two Roses, sergeant.’
‘What?’
‘If you were an aficionado of the theatre you would immediately recognise the character. He appears in the play by James Albery. It was a great success for Henry Irving at the Vaudeville Theatre back in ’70. Irving was a great success as Digby Grant . . .’ His voice trailed off, as if he realised that he had begun to ramble.
‘I affected a rather ponderous persona for the man,’ said Shorton. ‘And with the right application of make-up and a suit
able wardrobe, well, you know how effective they can be.’
‘My compliments, Mr Shorton. Your disguise was, in many ways, perfect. It fooled me.’
Shorton frowned. ‘Then how did you know it was a disguise?’
Slevin shook his head. ‘I knew Mr Jenkins was not only bogus but was probably an actor from this company.’
‘How?’ Despite the situation, there was a note of irritation in Shorton’s voice, rather as if he’d read an unfavourable review.
‘We found traces of asbestos dust on the body of Richard Throstle.’
‘So? That could have come from anywhere.’
‘True. But then we found traces of the same dust on the body of a local miner.’
‘A local miner?’ Now Shorton was alarmed. It was one thing being arrested for crimes you had committed, but to be arrested for a murder you are guiltless of was quite another.
Slevin saw the alarm on his face. ‘Oh, don’t worry, Mr Shorton. Enoch Platt died quite by accident. But he had traces of the same asbestos dust on his clothing, and you – or rather Mr Jenkins – and he had been seen arguing quite violently on the steps of the Royal Hotel.’
Shorton blinked as the memory came back. ‘Yes. He made a lunge for me and began screaming about how I was the Devil.’
Susan Coupe looked up. ‘Was it the same man who accosted us the day we had been along the canal?’
‘Yes, I think it was.’
Slevin took up the narrative. ‘He was heard to mutter something incomprehensible about seeing the Devil, with two eyes and two heads. But of course, if he had already seen you, if he had stared into your eyes, which was one of his most disturbing habits, then he had seen your eyes. The irony is that poor Enoch, or Clapper as he is known generally, was merely checking your eyes – anyone’s eyes – for traces of dust. Not asbestos dust, but coal dust. He was trapped down the mine for three days after an explosion, and when they found him he was cradling his brother’s head in his arms. Brushing the dust away from his eyes. But what really sent him over the edge was the fact that he was cradling only the head – they never found the rest of him.’
There was a heavy silence on stage now as Slevin’s words created their own horrific image.
‘So Enoch saw your eyes. But I’m guessing that what he couldn’t understand was how those eyes of yours, Mr Shorton, could be framed inside two different heads. Seeing those same eyes on a completely different face – the face of Mr Jenkins the hosiery salesman – was something his muddled brain could not take in. So you became the Devil. With two eyes and two heads. I knew, because Miss Coupe had told me when she complained about the dangers on the streets of the town, that you and Enoch Platt had already met. I simply made a reasonable deduction that you and Jenkins were therefore the same person.’
Susan Coupe gave a strangled gasp. ‘Oh James! I . . .’
Slevin went on, his voice low, intense. ‘You booked a room at the hotel but never stayed there. Your suitcase, which of course you had to have with you for the sake of appearances, was empty, and you merely allowed yourself to be seen in the hotel bar, and that’s where you struck up an acquaintance with Richard Throstle. I presume you had an arrangement with your landlady to come and go as you please?’
‘For an extra ten shillings, yes.’ With a sigh, Shorton continued. ‘It wasn’t a difficult task. Throstle loved to talk about himself, although of course he never spoke of the darker side of his business. That would have been too risky, even though I presented myself as a willing companion and someone who was up for a challenge. But I think he liked my company, or rather, the company of Mr Jenkins.’
‘Mrs Throstle said that on the night he was murdered her husband couldn’t find his room key, that she heard him fumbling outside the door. She put it down to mere drunkenness, but perhaps he simply didn’t have it. Perhaps you had already taken it from his coat pocket as you helped him on with his jacket.’
Shorton gave an appreciative nod. ‘You are no fool, sergeant.’
‘So when they go to bed, when Mrs Throstle locks the door with her own key and they settle down for the night, you wait.’
‘Throstle told me his wife had taken a powerful compound. He told me, with a nod and a wink, that he had paid the pharmacist a little extra to ensure it contained enough chloroform to allow her a restful night.’
At this point, Constable Bowery came up and whispered something in his sergeant’s ear. Slevin nodded, and almost immediately two constables, carrying a long wooden stretcher, walked over to the body of Herbert Koller and placed him on it. All eyes were on the shrouded body as it was borne past them.
Once it had disappeared through the wings, Slevin turned once more to Shorton. ‘I won’t of course dwell on the details of what you did in that room . . .’
Susan Coupe gave a bitter laugh. ‘I was his director, sergeant. There’s no need to protect my sensibilities. They were numbed a long time ago. What James did to that man he did under my direction. To the letter. Or rather, to the telegram. From his shrew of a wife. It was cast into the canal. Wrapped around a bloodied knife.’
Slevin gave a small nod. There was a part of him that acknowledged the justice of the act – justice in its strictest, most biblical sense.
‘But why then, Mr Shorton, did you leave Mrs Throstle alive? There she was, asleep and defenceless, and you could have killed her there and then. Why did you leave her?’
Shorton gave a slow shrug. ‘Lady Macbeth,’ he said.
‘Pardon?’
It was Susan Coupe who explained. ‘Lady Macbeth goes to the chamber of King Duncan, whom she and her husband are planning to kill. She finds him in his kingly bed, asleep and defenceless. His guards are drugged. But she cannot do it. That most wicked of women cannot bring herself to plunge the dagger into that kingly throat. “Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done it.”’
Shorton went on. ‘Only with Duncan it was different. He was pure, innocent. To kill him was a vile and horrendous act. The woman who lay there was as guilty, in my view, as the one who perpetrated the foul defilement of a beautiful and innocent creature. No. It was simply a matter of courage. I lacked the courage to kill a woman. In that moment, I failed Susan.’
She reached up and clasped his hand. ‘Nonsense. I had asked more of you than anyone had any right to ask. It was I who later devised the way that foul fiend of a woman should die.’ She turned to Jonathan Keele and gave him the saddest of smiles. ‘I have Jonathan to thank for that. He spent an hour one day regaling us all about his time working for his son-in-law, who is a chemist. Remember how you said it was a poisoner’s paradise, Jonathan? How quickly or how horrifically those poisons acted? “For a delayed death, use phosphorus, my dears. For an instant one, cyanide’s the thing!”’ Her voice had taken on the slow sonorous tones of the old actor. ‘It was I who bought the rat poison and urged James to mix it into her medicine.’
Slevin looked at her afresh. He saw a human being, one of the most beautiful creatures he had ever set eyes on, who had become someone less than human. There was a darkness inside her that had extinguished the glow of life that could have thrived there if it hadn’t been for that evil monster. He saw something else, too: she had become an actress because it gave her a stage on which to perform, where for a few short hours every night she could escape her demons and become whoever she wanted to be.
Shorton went on. ‘I saw Georgina Throstle in the hotel dining room with her brother. That gave me the opportunity to deliver the lethal mixture. The foolish woman had left her door unlocked. When I set foot outside that hotel, I knew that I would never be returning. Even if you connected Jenkins with the murders, you would be looking for an invisible man.’
At this point, Benjamin walked slowly towards him. ‘Can you explain why Herbert had to die? Is there a space in this dramatic monologue for some simple dénouement where Herbert is concerned?’
Slevin placed a hand on the actor-manager’s shoulder and said, ‘I think I can explai
n, Mr Morgan-Drew.’
Benjamin stopped and turned his attention to the detective.
‘Mr Koller knew about the slides, the ones containing those vile pictures of Miss Coupe as a child.’
‘But how could he possibly know of them?’
‘He had seen them.’
Jonathan Keele stepped forward. ‘Herbert was wild, Benjamin. You must know that. Whichever town or city we stopped in, Herbert would be out trying to seek the sort of immoral solace he desired. Those occasions he told you he needed to explore the town? He was walking down very dark pathways, my friend. In both a literal and a metaphorical sense.’
‘But he had me!’ Benjamin cried out.
‘He told me he wanted money.’ Susan Coupe spoke in little more than a whisper.
‘What?’
‘He followed me as I was on my way to meet James in the park. He said he needed a thousand pounds. For an investment. He had the gall to ask me to give him the means to invest in the very business that destroyed my childhood.’ Now her voice had almost become hysterical. ‘He had the means, he said, to destroy my reputation for ever. Certain influential people in London would make sure my past was made known to Irving and whoever else might become my sponsor.’
Slevin saw her eyes grow wide and fierce, and realised how close she was to a complete loss of sanity.
Benjamin gave a hollow laugh. ‘The fool! I had such a surprise for him tonight. After the show. He would have become my partner in the business. I had such a surprise . . .’ He felt Jonathan Keele place an arm around him, and he gave way to the sobs that had simmered for so long.
‘The man was evil. He deserved to die.’ Shorton’s voice cut through the air. ‘So we planned the most public form of death. No actor likes to “die” on stage. He should have breathed his last, as it were, last night, but poor Toby Thomas stepped in to replace him and we had to remove the cigar we had planted in Herbert’s costume and replace it with a harmless one. Herbert’s cigar contained rat poison, incidentally. Soaked for hours, then dried. Not a phosphorus base, mind. We needed something quick-acting so that he would be unable to point any accusing finger. Besides, phosphorus would have provided a link with Georgina Throstle’s death. So I bought a rather more instant compound. Its cyanide base comes highly recommended. Amazing what one can buy in this town.
Act of Murder Page 23