by Mrs Hudson
‘Ah, yes. I see. One of these modern melodramas, you think? Well, it’s all the same to me, so long as it’s not by that Oscar whatsisname. I never seem to get the jokes.’ He pulled out his watch. ‘I think I can see my way to a perfectly good solution here, Flotsam. Mr Holmes apparently has no need of me this evening, and although Stepney’s the other side of town, we can give it a go and try to get there in time for the performance. Very likely we’ll be able to grab a word with this Fontaine woman before the curtain goes up. What do you say?’
What I said was ‘yes’, and ten minutes later Dr Watson and I were rolling through town in a hansom cab. So excited was I at the thought of taking action on Mrs Hudson’s behalf that I had only half an ear for my companion’s stories of strange customs among the Afghan tribes. After all, I reasoned, Fidelma Fontaine was on the stage, and so was Lola Del Fuego, and that was a connection of a sort. Perhaps this might be vital evidence! Inside my shoes, my toes curled with excitement, and I thrilled at the prospect of imminent discoveries.
The cab-driver had been instructed to drop us at the stage door of the Mermaid Theatre in Stepney and, although the request appeared to surprise him, he clearly knew his way and had no trouble finding it. That was fortunate, for the stage door was situated down such a dark and dingy alleyway, a damp passageway so strewn with rubbish it seemed impossible the doctor and I would ever have found it for ourselves. I could see, as he handed me down from the hansom, that Dr Watson shared my doubts, but he too was determined to proceed. As the cab rattled away from us, he advanced to the low door and rapped firmly on its frame.
In response to his knock, a small panel set into the top of the door was pulled back and a pair of eyes, already narrowed with suspicion, peered out at us.
‘What jer want?’ an old man’s voice asked gruffly.
‘We’re here to see Miss Fontaine,’ Dr Watson replied. ‘At her own invitation,’ he added hastily, as the narrow eyes narrowed further. Dr Watson took out his card. ‘Tell her I am calling on behalf of Mr Rumbelow the solicitor.’
After a moment of hesitation, a thin hand was extended and the card vanished. The panel shut hastily behind it.
‘Dashed impudence!’ Dr Watson exclaimed. ‘I can hardly be taken for one of those stage door chappies who hang around and importune young ladies of the cast, can I, Flotsam?’
Before I could respond, the panel in the door snapped open again. ‘She can’t see yer now. She’s gettin' dressed. She says to go round the front. Tell the boy on tickets that Maud says you’re all right. I’ll come and find yer when she’s done an’ bring yer backstage.’
We had little choice but to follow these instructions, for the panel was slammed shut almost before the last syllable was spoken. Thankfully, when we did as we were told and made our way to the front of the theatre, we found a very different face to the Mermaid. The theatre stood on a wide and bustling street, no doubt the heart of Stepney, and despite a clear sky and the bitter cold that accompanied it, the crowds abroad that night were both loud and boisterous. In contrast to her rear, the front of the Mermaid was vibrant with activity, and Dr Watson and I were forced to join a short queue at the ticket office.
‘After you, guv’nor,’ offered a short man in a squashed hat whose arrival coincided with our own. ‘All the fun of the fair, eh? In for a treat tonight, ain’t we?’
‘Indeed,’ muttered Dr Watson rather coldly, and he tightened his grip on my arm.
At the ticket window we discovered that the mention of Maud did indeed secure for us a pair of tickets, for which all payment was refused. Dr Watson’s attempt to ask what time the performance began was met with a knowing grin.
‘Started half an hour ago,’ the ticket man told us. ‘But don’t worry, guv’nor, you’re in time for the good bit.’
By this point I think Dr Watson was already beginning to have misgivings. Indeed it was clear from his increasing pallor as we mounted the stairs towards the circle that he was really quite alarmed, but with complimentary tickets and an appointment to keep, it was nigh on impossible for him to turn back.
‘I trust, Flotsam, that we shall meet nobody we know here tonight,’ he mused as we ascended. ‘And if there is anything in tonight’s performance that is in any way, er, distasteful to you, then we shall leave at once.’
‘Yes, sir,’ I assured him, now more curious than ever to witness the spectacle that lay ahead.
Once we had reached our seats, however, the first acts on stage did a great deal to put Dr Watson at his ease. The first was a fire-eater with an enormous droopy moustache who, once he had tired of fire, turned his attention to swords, daggers, forks and any number of items of hardware. He left the stage to polite applause that the doctor joined in readily, more I believe out of relief than out of genuine pleasure. Next, a small girl appeared and sang a song about meeting the Queen and then dying, which met with rather less applause, but which Dr Watson clapped very loudly indeed.
‘Very good! Very good!’ he repeated warmly. ‘A heartrending performance!’
After that a man appeared with a dog and a tandem and, after many humorous false starts, man and dog together cycled the tandem twice around the stage. Then came a man who made shadows with his hands, and who followed the usual array of animals and birds with some rather rude shadows that I pretended not to understand.
When the shadow man came off, a curtain near the back of the stage was raised to reveal a hanging trapeze suspended between two high platforms. There seemed to be a short pause in proceedings then, for one or two later-comers were admitted right at the front of the stalls. Watching them scurry to their seats, I found that one of them stood out in particular, for she was a young lady of rather graceful and lissom appearance who appeared genuinely surprised and intrigued by the sight of the trapeze on the stage above her. Indeed such was her curiosity that she ventured to take one or two steps up the narrow stair that led to the stage itself.
‘Wrong way, love!’ a voice shouted from somewhere in the stalls, and a good deal of laughter followed it, but although she gave a vague smile over her shoulder, the young woman seemed neither to understand the import of the cry, nor to realise that by now the attention of the theatre was beginning to focus upon her. So unaware was she, indeed, that she tiptoed delicately up the remaining steps until she stood on the very edge of the stage. The sight of the hanging trapeze seemed to fascinate her, and her eyes never left it as, almost in a trance, she moved into the centre of the stage.
By now the audience had fallen silent but for one or two nervous giggles. ‘Really,’ Dr Watson rumbled nervously, ‘isn’t there a stage manager here to rescue that unfortunate woman from this ridicule?’
Apparently there wasn’t, for just then the young lady noticed for the first time the ladder that led up to one of the platforms. It seemed to prompt her to some sort of decision, for she moved towards it with sudden decisiveness, to the accompaniment of one or two ironic cheers from the crowd. At the foot of the ladder, however, her progress was checked, for both her wrap and her skirts stood as clear impediments to her climbing it. Apparently aware of the difficulty posed by the wrap, she reached to her neck without hesitation and unfastened its tie, letting the garment fall to the floor behind her.
If the audience had been silent before, now it was also tense and motionless. Dr Watson’s jaw appeared to have dropped several inches.
Freed from the confines of her wrap, the young lady now made haste to place her hands on the rungs of the ladder, but at the last moment a thought held her back and she began to peel off her long, elegant gloves. A sound almost like a sigh seemed to escape from the audience, as if everyone had breathed at once. Next to me, Dr Watson’s jaw closed and fell open again but words failed to emerge. Only by repeating the exercise could he make himself heard.
‘My word!’ he gasped, limply.
Now with her arms bare to the elbow, the young lady seemed happy to return to the ladder, and tried her first steps upwards. However it was
instantly clear that something was wrong, for she wobbled dangerously and stepped back to the ground with a slight squeal of alarm. It wasn’t difficult to see that the cause of her difficulty lay in her elegant evening shoes, and these she hastened to kick off. But now another difficulty presented itself, for she was looking down with great concern at the pair of fine stockings that were now threatened by the forthcoming climb.
‘My word!’ exclaimed Dr Watson a second time, apparently immobilised by shock. But by now the rest of the crowd had found its voice.
‘Don’t spoil ’em!’ it cried.
‘I’ll hold ’em for yer!’
‘Too good to go climbin’ in!’
Dr Watson’s jaw dropped even lower. Next to him I bit my finger and watched with wide open eyes, too surprised and shocked and fascinated to do anything but stare. I knew I should be scandalised and I was, but I was achingly anxious to keep watching, to see what could possibly happen next.
The lady’s stockings were removed in a trice, very deftly and as discreetly as could possibly be done, but not without offering to the crowd a glimpse of creamy white calves that caused a ripple of almost anguished appreciation to run around the theatre.
‘Come, Flotsam, we must go.’ Dr Watson found words at last, but his eyes were still wide with shock and so fixed upon the stage that they defied all his attempts at moving them. As for me, I don’t think I could have moved if I’d tried, so paralysed was I by a mixture of horror and of glee.
By now the lady was halfway up the ladder, but it was clear to all who observed her that her skirts were a considerable impediment to her. The audience was now not backward with its advice.
‘Watch out! You’ll trip!’
‘They’re in yer way!’
‘May as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb!’
With a grateful glance at her advisers, she began to fumble with the hooks and eyes at her waist and for a moment I thought that Dr Watson would finally cry enough. But the effect of such outrageous indecency on the good doctor was to fix him to the spot as surely as if pinned there by an Afghan lance.
‘My word,’ he said again as the skirts fluttered to the stage.
Needless to say, the remainder of the young lady’s ascent followed a similar pattern, so that by the time she launched herself, with magnificent athleticism and to whoops of applause, on to the waiting trapeze, her remaining garments were so few and so scanty that they could only be said to protect the very last vestiges of her modesty.
It was clear to me that the young lady’s skill as a trapeze artist was very considerable, but I fear that by this stage of the proceedings the crowd was paying scant attention to it. Nevertheless they cheered and yelled encouragement at every move she made and when she finally came to take a bow on one of the elevated platforms, they rose to their feet and cried for more as if no other act could ever satisfy them. Dr Watson rose too, and blinked like one awaking from a dream.
‘My dear Flotsam, I’m appalled… That you should witness such common lewdness is unforgivable…’ He paused to mop his brow. ‘Come, we shall leave at once and complain to the manager. I shall raise a public outcry against what we have witnessed here tonight!’
However, before we could move away from our seats, a tiny, hunched old man materialised at the end of our row.
‘Oi, Mr Watson,’ he called out, gesticulating at us with strange, crab-like movements of his arms. ‘You’re the lucky one all right. Come on! Come on! She’ll see yer now.’
Chapter XIV
A Theatrical Family
The prospect of seeing Miss Fidelma Fontaine at even closer quarters clearly inspired in Dr Watson something very close to panic. When the old man repeated his gesture, causing those seated around us to begin to take an interest, Dr Watson turned to me in desperation.
‘Really, Flottie, we can scarcely call upon her now. After seeing her… After seeing her so… I mean, it’s not to be thought of! We must leave at once.’
‘But Dr Watson, sir, Mrs Hudson is relying on us.’
As I knew it would, the idea had a powerful effect on him.
‘Of course, yes. We mustn’t forget that. I wouldn’t wish Mrs Hudson to think we had let her down… Even so, such a woman! No more than a common hussy. I have met girls like that in India, Flottie. Simply not to be trusted. Ignorant, coarse… Must we, Flotsam?’
‘Just one or two questions, sir.’
‘Very well, there can be no harm in that, I suppose. But then we must certainly leave.’
So saying, he allowed me to lead him to the end of our row, where our guide awaited us rather impatiently. As soon as we had disentangled ourselves from the rest of the audience, he ushered us with a strange, sideways gait out of the auditorium and down labyrinthine combinations of stairs and corridors, until we came to a room crowded with performers. It smelled of hot bodies and greasepaint.
‘Here yer go,’ our guide muttered. ‘She’ll see yer now.’ And with that he disappeared into the crowd, leaving us awkward and embarrassed in the middle of the room. Amid that gathering of show people neither Dr Watson nor I could be described as inconspicuous, but the poor doctor stood out particularly: tall and respectable and hurriedly removing his gaze from a naked thigh here or a plump corsage there.
‘Can I help you, ducky?’ A woman in a dancer’s costume came to our rescue, her body trim as a teenager’s but her face beneath the paint nearer forty than fourteen. Dr Watson, who had been looking down, found himself staring into the depths of a plunging cleavage and had to readjust rapidly the direction of his gaze.
‘Why, yes, madam. We have an appointment to see Miss Fidelma Fontaine.’
The dancer signalled with her thumb towards a door marked ‘Filly’. ‘Maud!’ she shouted at the top of her voice. ‘Admirer come to see you. Old enough to know better.’
‘Why really, madam!’ Dr Watson began, blushing with indignation, but before he could say more I dragged him towards the door.
‘Come on, sir,’ I urged him. ‘Just one or two questions and then we can go.’
I knocked loudly and a woman’s voice called ‘come in’ in a surprisingly pleasant, well-modulated voice.
I had expected a room characterised by decadence, with a central figure sprawling in luxury amid admirers while calmly sipping gin or painting her nails. Instead the room was small and ugly, lined with bare brick, stained in places by damp, and it contained no decoration of any kind, being as spartan as a monk’s cell. The sole person in it was the young lady from the trapeze, and it was clear from her bare feet, and from the bare legs that showed beneath a thick, camel-coloured woollen dressing-gown, that she wore no more now than when we had seen her last. Instead of preening herself in front of a mirror, she was engaged in packing large piles of books into a box.
She turned to us as we entered and gave us the same, lovely smile that we had seen before, albeit in rather different circumstances.
‘Dr Watson, I believe? Oh, and you must be… ?’
Her voice, as I had already noted, had no discernable accent; she might have been welcoming us to a polite tea party at a rural vicarage.
‘My name’s Flotsam, ma’am. Dr Watson was good enough to bring me to see the show.’
‘Was he?’ She raised an eyebrow and turned it on him, then turned back to me. ‘I’m surprised he considered it suitable. I hope you didn’t find it too terribly shocking.’
‘Oh no, ma’am. Well, that’s to say, yes, a little. I mean, perhaps more surprising than shocking, I think. And, ma’am, the way you did it all was so very wonderful! I mean, you were just amazing on that high wire.’
She smiled at that, a smile full of warmth and pleasure. ‘Why, thank you, Flotsam.’ Then she turned to my companion. ‘And you, Dr Watson, are you scandalised?’
Dr Watson, finding himself in a very small room with a very attractive young woman in a state of near undress, was clearly very far from comfortable; but I could see that what unnerved him even more than her bare ank
les or the looseness of her dressing-gown across her bosom was the directness of her question and her total composure in our presence. He had clearly anticipated all sorts of feminine coyness or trickery, perhaps even blushing shame, but nothing like this.
‘I… Well, I confess, madam, that it is not, er, not quite the sort of entertainment to which I am accustomed.’
‘I’m very pleased to hear it, Doctor,’ she replied with all seriousness. ‘You will perhaps credit me with an awareness that what I do is not considered very respectable, not even by the men who come here every night to witness it.’
‘Pah!’ exclaimed Dr Watson. ‘They should be ashamed of themselves! What does that crowd know of respectability?’
‘Oh, I think you wrong them, doctor,’ she replied lightly. ‘Only yesterday one of them caught me by the stage door and insisted that I must repent and seek the Lord, or else face eternal damnation. And he must have been very genuinely concerned for my soul, as I know for a fact that he had witnessed my sinful display at least half a dozen times.’
‘The blackguard!’ It seemed that in his great distaste for his fellow-theatregoers, Dr Watson had temporarily forgotten his own moral outrage. ‘You should have poked him in the eye!’
‘On the contrary, I quoted him something from Thessalonians. I think that startled him rather more.’
It clearly startled Dr Watson too. ‘Thessalonians? I see…’
She laughed at that. ‘Why, Dr Watson, I don’t believe you’ve ever read a word of Thessalonians in your life! Now, please don’t stand there all awkward by the door. I have three chairs, so please make use of one. And you, Flotsam. Here, sit by me…’
Dr Watson, still clearly ill at ease, took the seat that was furthest from our hostess and nearest the half-packed box of books. Almost instinctively as he sat down, he peered at its contents.