Dead Letters

by Joan Lock

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘A message for you,’ announced Chief Inspector Billings as Best, somewhat restored by a cold beef sandwich garnished with creamed horseradish, put his head around the police office door. ‘You’re to meet Miss Franks in the Londesborough Room.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Now. Straightaway. She’s just been in.’

  He glanced quizzically at Best who knew exactly what the man was thinking: isn’t she a bit out of your class?

  The Londesborough Room? That was a strange place to meet at this time. Just as he was about to make some more enquiries regarding Alice’s death down at the fairground – not to mention resume his pursuit of Quicksilver. He shrugged. Helen was a sensible woman. She wouldn’t take up his valuable time unless she had something important to tell him. Well, he hoped she wouldn’t.

  At least the dreaded ‘darkness’, when they guessed Quicksilver would be most likely to strike, was not yet nigh, he thought as he strode through the cheerfully sunwashed conservatory, where the sharply pungent smell of damp earth mixed with the sweeter aroma of plants, flowers and palm trees.

  The Londesborough Room, which housed medieval weapons and armour donated by the baron who gave the collection its name, was tucked just inside the palace’s western entrance.

  Clearly he wasn’t the only person headed in that direction. The doorway into the ornate room was crammed; weary parents, eager for a chance to sit down, were shepherding in their hot, fractious children, anxious to have them diverted for a while.

  ‘Next performance half past six’ said the notice on the door. It was now twenty-three minutes past. Performance of what? he wondered. Another placard answered that question: ‘DR HOLDEN’S MAGICAL ENTERTAINMENT’.

  She imagined he had time for a magic show!

  Chain-mailed and helmeted figures stood frozen guard on each side of the entrance and between the many glass cases which lined the room. Inside the cases glinted sinister medieval daggers, dirks and rapiers, plus pistols of every description. Many also glowed and glittered with inlaid and engraved ivory, pearl, coral and gemstones.

  The walls behind the cases displayed even more ferocious implements hung about as they were with sabres, halbards, broadswords and shields. Were these what Helen wanted him to see? Did she imagine Quicksilver might seize some of them and cut a swathe through the crowds? It was possible, if he was deranged.

  One thing was certain, this place was bursting with artefacts and people. It was just as well, thought Best, that Dr Holden was famous for transporting his illusionary equipment in a small carpet bag, in contrast to some of his rivals who required pantechnicons.

  He could see no sign of Helen among the milling, noisy throng. Mothers were calling out, marshalling the stragglers, while fathers scraped and clattered gilt chairs to accommodate them.

  This was ridiculous. Even if Helen were here, how on earth were they going to be able to talk in all this din?

  Just then he spotted a small, upraised hand fluttering above the back row. He pushed his way towards her. When he arrived, she glanced up at him with a half-smile and that direct, challenging gaze which had so startled him on their first meeting. No flirtatiousness or womanly anxiety to please here.

  ‘Well done,’ she said, lifting her drawing board from the seat beside her and patting the cushion for him to sit down. ‘I was afraid you’d miss the performance.’

  Performance! Here he was, handling a possible murder and trying to track down a homicidal maniac and the woman wanted him to sit down and watch a magic show!

  She laughed out loud at this expression. ‘You are so transparent, Ernest Best! How on earth you hoodwink criminals, I do not know.’

  He couldn’t help grinning back.

  ‘Don’t worry –’ she waved a finger at him – ‘this is important.’

  He laughed. It was almost as if they had never parted. Here they were, instantly singing to the same tune again. He couldn’t wait to tell her about Smith’s balloon escapade. She would adore that. She had a soft spot for John George, ever since they had gone on a desperate search for him following the sinking of the Princess Alice.

  He pulled himself up sharp, sternly remembering that he had found Helen to be a cold-hearted woman in some respects. Hadn’t it been her fault that Joseph had died?

  If she noticed the abrupt change in his demeanour she gave no sign.

  ‘Two things,’ she said as he settled down beside her. She held up her programme and pointed to an item listed as part of Dr Holden’s performance. It read:

  ALABAMAZER’S STYGIAN SURPRISE!

  Far eclipsing the son of Thesis, as the performer Styx at nothing.

  Best groaned at the pun.

  ‘Stygian,’ Helen insisted just as Dr Holden’s slim, elegant figure emerged from behind a screen to take his introductory bow. ‘Darkness blackness, hell, all that …’ She was still talking as the clapping ceased abruptly, leaving her lone voice ringing out.

  ‘Shush!’ demanded a man two rows forward. Dr Holden sent an icy glance in their direction.

  ‘Besides,’ she whispered, thrusting a crumpled piece of paper into Best’s hand, ‘I’ve remembered the other quotation.’

  ‘You are privileged today, ladies and gentlemen,’ said Dr Holden, twirling the ends of his luxuriant walrus moustache, ‘to witness exactly the same amazing tricks as those which recently enchanted Her Majesty at Balmoral. She was –’ he smiled winningly at a woman in the front row – ‘as near to me as you are yourself.’

  While he was speaking, he had extracted a large, red silk handkerchief from his pocket, demonstrated that neither side of it concealed any object, then produced from it a huge bouquet of flowers, to the appreciative gasps of the audience.

  ‘Her Majesty also loved that,’ he flattered them.

  There followed bowls of water containing goldfish and tumblers of wine to be changed into water, and water to be changed into wine. All the while the magician kept up his flow of distracting talk laced with humour and myriad puns.

  Best didn’t much care for sleight of hand, but he was fascinated by the magician’s ability to distract on the one hand and perform on the other. Wasn’t that just what Quicksilver was doing with them?

  He turned his attention to the quotation. Best had always been surprised by Helen’s unruly scribble; seemingly dashed off without a care and out of tune with such an artistic and neat person. He, supposedly the careless, volatile one, could produce copperplate immaculate enough to grace a testimonial for a retiring colleague.

  From the scribble Best made out ‘Blake’ then:

  And I am black, but O! My soul is white;

  White as an angel is the English child:

  But I am black as if bereaved of light.

  He stared at the words while Dr Holden asked a member of the audience to select a card, then transferred its marks to a blank sheet of paper. An illusion which, he claimed, had even transfixed John Brown, the Queen’s wily manservant.

  All the time, diversion, distraction; getting their minds moving in one direction while he moved in another. A smokescreen. Like Quicksilver.

  As they watched, Best became conscious of Helen’s closeness. Her shoulder touching his. Even in this room full of sweaty bodies, including his own, he could detect her fresh citrusy scent. Always, he remembered, she looked and felt cool.

  Theirs had been such a strange relationship. Begun in an icy, bristling atmosphere when she had stormed into the interview room at Scotland Yard demanding to know why he had done nothing to find her missing sister. A sister he hadn’t even known was missing.

  For a time, put off by her unbending manner, Best had even imagined that Helen might have done away with the pretty Matilda herself, out of jealousy and greed. He smiled at the thought now. The girl had surfaced eventually, in company with her fellow elopee and new husband, after nearly causing the death of Helen when she went looking for her.

  While searching for Matilda together, they had grown
close, this unlikely combination of quiet, mousy, independent, well-educated but struggling lady artist, and handsome, hasty, ebullient, half-Italian detective. But she had resisted marriage and kept him waiting.

  Her reluctance was not due to the obvious differences in class and education but because she wanted to be an artist and was convinced that, for a woman, this aim was incompatible with marriage. When she’d finally said yes, he had been so distraught about the death of Joseph and her part in it, that he hadn’t wanted her any more. Now, there was Mary Jane.

  Mary Jane had not exploded into his life like Helen, but crept into his heart by stealth.

  When he had first gone to lodge with her parents after the death of his wife Emma, Mary Jane had been a mere ten year old. He had seen her only as a lively and affectionate child whose impish smile had helped brighten his sad days and who soon began announcing to anyone who would listen that, when she grew up, she was going to marry the lodger, Uncle Ernest.

  It became a family joke, but to everyone’s surprise, even his, her dreams had become a reality after she had grown into a vivacious eighteen year old with a heap of black, curly hair and sparkling china-blue eyes. She’d caught him as he fell from the arms of Helen. No doubt about that.

  He dragged his mind back to the moment and tried vainly to make something out of the words Helen had written on the paper, but they swam before his eyes. What on earth did it all mean?

  Did they mean exactly what they said? Were they to look for a child – a black child? He hadn’t seen any here – and very few in the whole of London, come to that. Maybe a child with a dirty face? No, impossible, there were too many of those.

  Again, were they right to be putting all the words of all these poems together to try to make something out of them? Or should they merely be attempting only to decipher the phrases Quicksilver had used: ‘Darkness will hide my face’, ‘Closed his eyes in endless night’, and ‘As if bereaved of light’.

  Maybe tracking the sources down had not been such a good idea? It had complicated things and confused them even more.

  He began digging in his pocket for his notebook so as to cross-check nonetheless, when Helen tugged at his arm and nodded towards the performer and whispered, ‘Stygian Surprise.’

  The room went dark. A ghostly moaning came from near the entrance and began to move forward. As it reached the front, a skull was suddenly illuminated and it, too, began moving around the room – to the shrieks of some of the womenfolk. It was joined by a skeleton which went in the other direction as the moaning increased.

  This was darkness and distraction! What might be going on under its guise? Murder even? A catastrophe? Best was tempted to demand that the curtains be drawn back and the light restored when, suddenly, it was – and the applause rang out again.

  ‘Any good?’ Helen enquired gently, obviously concerned by his increasingly anxious expression.

  He shook his head. ‘But something is coming back to me.’ He stood up suddenly and exclaimed, ‘I must speak to Littlechild.’

  He began pushing his way along the row, forcing people to struggle to their feet and causing much heated response and hissing from those whose attention he was dragging from a Japanese conjuring trick ‘never before been seen outside the Orient’.

  His progress was abruptly halted by a middle-aged, bespectacled man who sat tight-lipped, refusing to rise and staring up at him defiantly. Instead of getting into a row about it, Best’s hand flew to his mouth and he began retching, as though he was about to be sick.

  The man shot to his feet announcing importantly, ‘Clear the way! Can’t you see, this fellow’s ill,’ as though it were others who had caused the bottleneck.

  Of course, the theatre had to be at the opposite end of the palace. Best, now driven by urgency and a dreadful feeling of impending doom, was breathless by the time he reached backstage.

  He could hear Littlechild out front, in full flow, his rich tenor voice wringing due pathos out of the ballad ‘Angels called her home’.

  Best reached the flies just as his colleague was returning to his seat at the centre of the troupe who were resting in a semi-circle with their banjos, trumpets, guitars and tambourines.

  A rotund gentleman stepped forward and began a rumbustious rendition of the song ‘Nancy Lee’.

  The cheers and enthusiastic applause with which each act was received were as much an appreciation for the support the Metropolitan Police Minstrels gave the orphanage. Without them the place would probably shut down.

  Best dragged out his now crumpled programme. Drat! The man who had now leaped forward was obviously Constable Haines performing his ‘lively American Jig’.

  They’d had their interval and Haines’ dance was to be followed by a farce called ‘The Haunted House’. How long would that take?

  There was nothing for it – he would just have to attract Littlechild’s attention. He began hissing and gesticulating. An angry stage manager appeared at his side.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘I must speak to Inspector Littlechild!’ Best insisted. Unfortunately, his frustration made him appear a little wild of eye. The manager shot a glance towards a stagehand and nodded urgently at Best’s anxious figure. The hand moved towards them but, at that moment, the company began their triumphal exit to the tune of ‘Oh, Susanna’.

  Now they were all around him, Best was unable to make out which of the shiny black faces belonged to Littlechild. Suddenly he was slapped on the back and the unmistakable voice exclaimed, ‘Hello, old fellow. Come to shake a tambourine with us?’

  Best was startled. It was hard to believe this woolly-haired, white-lipped vision was the scourge of the East End thieves.

  Littlechild gave a gurgling laugh. He loved disguise – particularly when it even confused his colleagues and friends. Once, he’d even turned up in it at his local pub after the landlord had bet him he would never be hoodwinked by his disguises – Littlechild had won.

  ‘This is serious, John,’ Best insisted, as they were jostled by the first of the actors to return to the stage.

  Littlechild held his finger to his lips, pulling his obviously anxious colleague to one side. ‘Go ahead,’ he said, lowering his voice.

  ‘That rhymester you arrested,’ said Best.

  Littlechild looked puzzled and shook his head. ‘Rhymester? What rhymester?’

  ‘You know, years ago it must be. You told me about how he kept quoting poetry at you? I suddenly remembered …’

  A roar of laughter drowned out Littlechild’s reply. He waited a moment then repeated it, still shaking his head. ‘Honestly, Ernest, I can’t remember.’

  He took out a large handkerchief and began dabbing gently at the perspiration on his face, taking care not to disturb his make-up. ‘Years ago, you said?’ He shrugged apologetically. ‘There have been so many …’

  It was true. A multitude must have passed through his hands.

  ‘About five years, I’d say …’

  Littlechild was keeping one anxious eye on the stage. ‘Ah.’ He eased the rim of his boater to scratch under his woolly wig. ‘Oh yes. Wait a minute. Something’s coming back – vaguely. Very vaguely.’

  His eyes wandered back to the stage and he leaned forward, listening intently to what the actors were saying. He turned his head quickly towards Best. ‘This is important?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘Look, I’m too distracted to think now – and I’m on.’

  ‘I’ll wait till the end,’ Best whispered just as the Police Inspector 1st class launched himself forward with a whoop. It seemed he was obviously either meant to be a ghost, or someone who’d seen one, thought Best. Pity he hadn’t seen this one.

  Chapter Twelve

  All eyes were riveted on the snugly-leotarded figure perched on the tiny platform way above them in the Central Hall. Robert Hanlon of The Hanlon Voltas was chalking the soles of his slippers. He carefully wiped his hands on a small towel, reached forward to catch th
e bar of his trapeze and tested the ropes.

  There was a collective intake of breath as the famous acrobat rose on his toes. The breath was held while he grasped the bar and launched himself out into the air. He swung back again to increase his momentum and out again. Then he let go, tucking his arms into his sides as he turned two mid-air somersaults before stretching out to reach for the opposite bar – just as it sailed towards him.

  The audience let out a gasp of relief as his hands made contact, clung on, and he swung back to safety. Thunderous cheers and applause greeted his bow from the platform.

  ‘He’s amazing, isn’t he?’ said Littlechild as he appeared at Best’s side. ‘Sorry I’ve kept you waiting so long – lots of encores.’

  The inspector was still wearing his burnt cork make-up and had obviously been hurrying. Rivulets of perspiration now streaked his features into a strange, caged effect. Best regretted his doubts about the man. He was an exceptionally keen officer.

  ‘That’s all right –’ Best nodded towards the flying trapeze – ‘but I don’t think my nerves can stand much more of this.’

  They wandered out into the picture gallery and headed in the direction of the police office.

  ‘I’ve been thinking hard,’ said Littlechild, ‘and I’ve remembered this fellow. It was when I was on division. He was a coiner, or was caught passing counterfeit coin, something like that.’

  ‘And he spoke in literary quotations?’

  ‘Yes. Now and then.’ Littlechild nodded. ‘He was quite an educated man, if I remember rightly. Swore that he was innocent, of course.’

  ‘That’s unusual.’

  Littlechild smiled. ‘Claimed he had no idea the money was duff. Made quite a fuss.’

  ‘What did he look like?’ Best rapped out.

  Littlechild shrugged apologetically. ‘Can’t really remember, Ernest. Sorry.’ He held up his forefinger. ‘Just a minute. I do remember he had a bit of a lisp. He shouted that it was “mishtaken identity”.’

  Well, it wasn’t much help, but Littlechild seemed quite pleased with himself, thought Best.