I set out through the dwindling snow in the direction of Chancery Lane. My gloomy rooms at Mrs. Bell’s establishment were never an attraction, but I knew that at least I’d find a cup of cocoa waiting for me and perhaps a scuttle full of coal in my room, to bank up a bright, warm fire.
* * *
It was my job to pick up copies of all the major newspapers on the morning following a first night. Although theatre managers, producers, and especially the actors themselves may pooh-pooh the opinions of the critics, those opinions can make or mar a production costing hundreds of pounds. I bought the Times, Morning Herald, Daily News, and Morning Chronicle. The more important Era, Stage Directory, and Referee, all of which focus on the theatre, were all weekly publications, so we would have to wait to see what they had to say. With the newsprint under my arm, I hurried into the theatre and made for Mr. Stoker’s office. I found the big man already there, a copy of the Times spread out across his desk and his gold-rimmed spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose.
“I got that,” I said, indicating the Times. I couldn’t help adding, “As I always do.”
He grunted and stabbed a finger at a column near the top of an inside page.
“Did you see what our Mr. Matthew Burgundy has to say?”
“I haven’t read anything yet, sir.” I was, perhaps, a little testy. “I only just got here.”
He ignored my impertinence. “The old fool says that the Guv’nor ‘was not up to his usual brisk portrayal, making of the tragedy a veritable dirge.’ I ask you!”
“Perhaps he doesn’t know of the poisoning,” I suggested.
“Oh, he knows, Harry! He knows.”
We went through the other reviews. The Morning Chronicle critic seemed to think that the Guv’nor’s hesitations and clutching at his stomach were all part of a new characterization and applauded it. Obviously that gentleman did not know of the poisoning. The rest seemed to share the opinion of the Times’s critic.
“Well, not as bad as it might have been.” I tried to sound hopeful.
Stoker grunted. He seemed to do a lot of grunting. He stood up, slipped off his spectacles, and consulted his gold pocket watch, which was a treasured gift from Mr. Irving.
“What d’you have to do today, Harry?”
I, too, stood up. The review of the reviews was over and there was work to be done.
“I need to go through the properties after last night’s performance—I noticed Arthur Swindon moving things around. Then David wants me to look at the lights for Scene . . .”
“Never mind all that.” The big man cleared a patch of space on the top of his desk and pulled down a ledger from the shelf behind his seat. “I want you to get on over to Sadler’s Wells and have a dig around, Harry. I’ve got a suspicion those people know more about poison than they need to for the sake of treading the boards. You’re on friendly terms with their doorman, are you not?” He opened the ledger and replaced his spectacles.
I tugged at my wispy red mustache and wished, not for the first time, that I could manage to grow a beard. So much more impressive to pensively tug on a beard than on one’s naked chin
“Yes, sir,” I said. “Old George Dale has been around for centuries it seems. Everyone knows George. I’ll get on over there.”
I would much have preferred to stay inside the Lyceum. Drafty as it was, it was still warmer than outdoors in the winter wind. The snow had stopped falling just before dawn and there was even a slight hint of sun, somewhere high up above the ever-present mist that forever blew and drifted off the river. I felt in my pocket for change and, finding a little, decided to take a cab to Rosebery Avenue, Clerkenwell, the home of Sadler’s Wells Theatre.
Clerkenwell is on the border of Islington, a neighborhood that is not the most salubrious yet is not bad enough to detract the theatre-goers from attending Sadler’s Wells, when their productions are of note. The theatre had, in the distant past, presented such luminaries as Edmund Kean and Joseph Grimaldi, but it had fluctuated between being a legitimate theatre and being a home for pantomime and variety. It had finally been condemned as a dangerous structure in 1878—just three years ago—but it was then refurbished and reopened the following year with Mrs. Bateman, and now Mrs. Crowe, at the helm.
At that hour of the morning the roads were busy with the comings and goings of the gentlemen of the city. Hansoms and growlers were now supplemented by lumbering horse-drawn omnibuses, wagons, drays, delivery carts, and private carriages. The hansom I obtained seemed unable or unwilling to overtake any other vehicle, no matter how slowly it was moving, and I sat behind the leather apron tapping my foot on the floor and inwardly cursing at the time we were wasting. I was sure that Mr. Stoker had good reason to send me on this errand—the poisoning of the Guv’nor was surely cause enough—but I could not clear my head of the one thousand and one little jobs that I knew awaited me back at the theatre.
Eventually my vehicle pulled over to the side of the road and the trapdoor above my head opened.
“’Ere you are, guv. Right as rain!”
Even from where I sat, I felt assaulted by the breath of the cabdriver. Surely he must have breakfasted on beer and garlic—a fearsome combination. I paid him and jumped down to the pavement as he cracked his whip. The elderly nag lurched away back into the line of traffic.
I found George Dale as ever, eyes half closed as he peered through the dirty eyepieces of his pince-nez, looking at me and at the world passing by his little window over the top of the morning newspaper. Unlike our Bill Thomas, George was not especially conscientious as a doorman. He observed those who came and went but did little to verify their authority to be in the theatre.
“’Arry Rivers, as I live and breathe,” he said, when his eyes finally focused on me. “Thought you was dead and gorn these many years.”
“Oh, come on, George,” I said. “Why, I saw you only a month or so back. In fact I bought you a drink, if you recall?”
He squinted his eyes and tugged at an earlobe. “Well, maybe you did and maybe you didn’t. I won’t let it stop you from buying me another.”
“Can you leave your post for long enough to kill a porter?” I asked. “Or a Reid’s stout? As I recall that was always your poison of choice. I would like to have a word or three with you, if I may?”
Explaining that he was never missed unless there was an emergency, George pried his large frame out of his cubbyhole and let me lead him across the street to the Bag o’ Nails tavern, a favorite of the Sadler’s Wells’ employees. He breathed laboriously and wheezed as though it were a great effort. I was always afraid that he might suddenly drop dead, but he had been that way as long as I’d known him. We had no difficulty finding a corner table at that hour, and he slumped down into the chair. Soon the two of us were sipping on large glasses of a good, dark stout. George finally looked up at me, a line of froth across his hairless top lip.
“So, what is it you’re after, young ’Arry? You don’t go buying me no liquid ’freshment without there being a reason.”
I studied my drink for a moment before answering. “Quite right, George. Not that I don’t enjoy your company . . . occasionally. But I was wondering, what can you tell me about the Sadler’s Wells’ scuttlebutt? We opened Mr. Irving’s new production of Hamlet last night. What was the reaction here? I can’t believe Mr. Philius Pheebes-Watson doesn’t have some comment.” Mr. Pheebes-Watson was to Sadler’s Wells what Henry Irving was to the Lyceum. He played the lead in all of their Shakespearean productions. To my mind Philius was a faint echo of the Guv’nor . . . and far too full of himself. He imagined himself the Guv’nor’s equal, but his command of the stage was sadly lacking.
“Oh!” George allowed himself a broad grin, displaying a mouthful of rotting teeth. “Old Philly ’ad a comment or two, believe me! ’E’s such an ’am, that man. Considers ’isself one of our nation’s premier Shakespearean traggy . .
. tragedy . . .”
“Tragedians?” I offered.
He nodded. “That’s it. Mind you, ’e was beside ’isself at the thought of old Irving being poisoned.”
I sat up straight. “He knew about that?”
George nodded and took another mouthful of Reid’s. I waited.
“Ev’ryone knew about that,” he said, finally. “The old lady—Mrs. Crowe—could talk about nothin’ else. She fairly crowed.” He chuckled at his weak joke.
I set down my glass and leaned forward. “Listen, George. And this is important. Just when was it that Mrs. Crowe first made mention of Mr. Irving’s problem? Think carefully. Exactly when did she first say something about it?”
George’s rheumy eyes fastened on mine and he was silent for a moment. He could see that I was being very serious. He even allowed the hand gripping his glass of stout to sink slowly down to rest on the table. He squinted his eyes behind his dusty spectacles.
“I can’t be absolutely certain, of course, but I’d say I over’eard ’er tellin’ Mr. Pheebes-Watson and Miss Stringer in the lunch break yesterday. She—Mrs. Crowe—always takes a spot of lunch at a card table in the OP corner when re’earsals is going. Bit o’ pork pie, as I recall. She was sayin’ as ’ow they couldn’t relax just ’cause Mr. Irving was going to be taken ill. They still needed to do a good job with our Twelfth Night.”
“Mrs. Crowe regularly sits in the Opposite Prompt corner? And you’re certain that was at lunchtime yesterday?”
“Oh yes . . . well, fairly certain.” His glass was up at his mouth again, but finding it almost empty, he waggled it at me. “Throat’s getting a mite dry with all this talkin’, ’Arry. Oh, and a dozen oysters would slip down real easy.”
I waved for the girl.
* * *
“The Guv’nor was not taken ill until the tea break. Am I not right, sir?” I asked.
Stoker acquiesced.
“How, then,” I continued, “could Mrs. Crowe have known about it an hour or more before?”
“A very good question, Harry. One that we must pursue.” He looked at me pensively. “Unless, of course, she is blessed with the sight.” I didn’t respond. It seemed to me that my boss frequently tried to lure me into discussion of his Irish superstitions and, especially, of his old granny’s supposed second sight. When I didn’t comment, he continued. “By the way, Dr. Cochran now is of the opinion that it was arsenic that laid low our star.”
“Rat poison!” I said. “Found in every house in London, I don’t doubt, and most certainly in all the theatres.”
The big man allowed himself a faint smile, something I seldom saw.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he replied, and then smiled again. “I was just thinking back to that performance of Macbeth . . . when was it? 1879? About late autumn, was it not?”
I remembered and chuckled. “The rat?”
He nodded. “Act Two, Scene One. There was the Guv’nor, with John Saxon as I recall, as Banquo, when this huge rat comes scuttling onto the stage.”
“Ah yes! What was it the Guv’nor said?” I asked.
“He pointed at the creature, swinging his arm across as it made for the prompt corner, and cried, ‘Art thou for Duncan?’”
“I recall that half the audience believed we had trained a rat to play that part.” I laughed.
“Well,” he said, suddenly somber again, “there is certainly good reason to keep the rat poison on hand. The question is, Harry, how did it get into the Guv’nor’s food and who was it who put it there?”
There was a tap at the door.
“Come!”
The door opened tentatively and Bill Thomas’s worried face peered in. I knew something important must have happened to pry Bill loose from his cubicle.
“Well?” snapped the boss.
“Begging your pardon, Mr. Stoker. But we’ve just received word that the understudy, Mr. Richland, has been killed.”
Chapter Two
I didn’t know Peter Richland very well. He was the understudy to Mr. Irving for all of the Lyceum productions. Everyone knew that the Guv’nor would never fail to appear, so there was really no chance that Richland would ever have to stand in. If he had, I would hate to think of the reaction there would have been from both the audience and fellow thespians. It would have been a major disappointment not to see Mr. Irving as Hamlet, and to top that, Mr. Richland could never carry the part in anything like the manner of the Guv’nor. Exactly why Mr. Irving kept him on in that position I have no idea.
The man was—had been, I suppose I must now say—a pale-faced introvert whose only intercourse with his fellow actors and actresses was to complain that he was “ill used.” He did, I must admit, somewhat resemble Mr. Irving in stature, which I’m sure is why he was first employed, but his voice had nowhere near the quality nor the carrying power. He would stand in the wings, dressed appropriately for the part being played by the Guv’nor, and mouth the words as Mr. Irving uttered them onstage. He even made gestures as he mimed the character. Then he would hurry off to his dressing room to change for the next scene and return to stand beside the prompt and continue his solitary work, just in case the Guv’nor should collapse in mid-performance.
Peter Richland was the only understudy employed as such. Other parts were understudied by other players—minor characters ready to take over for major players if necessary. Peter Richland had nothing else to occupy his time. I could see how that could wear on a man. Especially when Mr. Irving might meet with some slight injury—or even a major setback, as with this poisoning—and then, just as Peter Richland believed his chance at glory had come, the Guv’nor would shake off the pain and, in true theatre tradition, go on to give his usual outstanding performance, leaving Richland once again standing in the wings.
Mr. Stoker called the cast together onstage an hour or so before the next performance. Along with front of house staff and stagehands, I sat down in the front row of the stalls and listened to what he had to say. Above me, the gaslit chandeliers burned in wine-colored shades. The auditorium and front of house were still lit by gas; only the stage lighting had been changed over to the new electricity. I was surrounded by the myrtle green and cream and purple background of the gilt moldings, frescoes, and medallions. A truly beautiful auditorium giving an atmosphere of great luxury, it seemed to me. I was always impressed by it, as I’m sure were most of the patrons.
I was not a little surprised to see Mr. Henry Irving himself stride onto the stage. His face was pale, but then it was always pale without his makeup. He held himself up straight, as though to prove that he was not affected by the poison. I did, however, notice that he carried a tumbler of water, from which he sipped repeatedly.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, his face turning to look directly at his loyal cast. He always appeared to me to be acting a part, even when just being himself. He could be very dramatic on the most ordinary of occasions. But this was no ordinary occasion. “You have by now, I am sure, heard of the passing of our fellow thespian Mr. Peter Richland, a stalwart member of our company for some time. Some of you may not be aware of the fact that this good fellow served his time in theatres about this great country of ours, his formative years spent with the late, great Mr. Ronald Foxit’s Shakespearean Company.”
We all knew that Foxit’s company was a ramshackle affair that operated on a threadbare budget and played only the smallest of provincial theatres. Mr. Irving made it sound as though it had been grand and noteworthy. I thought I saw some of the people onstage—John Saxon for one and Guy Purdy for another—smirking and winking at their neighbors. Mr. Irving seemed not to notice.
“How did he die, Henry?”
Miss Ellen Terry had joined the cast onstage, unnoticed by most, and now she stepped forward. Brought into the Lyceum to be Mr. Irving’s principal actress when Mrs. Bateman left as manager, she
had distinguished herself in the classical dramas. She was loved and adored by all: her fellow thespians, the Lyceum audiences, and even the critics. I had heard Mr. Stoker comment on her beautiful voice and claim that she was “endowed with one of those magnetically sympathetic natures, the rarest and most precious quality a performer can have.” She now stood quietly, in a simple white dress with her long blond hair piled up on her head, and looked directly at the Guv’nor.
“He was run down by a carriage,” said Irving, tossing off the line as though part of a theatrical scene. “I need not distress you with details of the trauma he apparently suffered, my dear. It would appear, from the Metropolitan Police report, that he may have left the theatre after last night’s performance and then spent time—perhaps some considerable time—in our neighborly tavern, the Druid’s Head.”
There were murmurs and smiles, with heads nodding, since all at the Lyceum were familiar with that particular watering hole.
“From there,” continued the Guv’nor, “he would seem to have blundered out into the late night traffic and . . . met his fate.”
There were further murmurs and muttered comments.
“I understand that there will be a service of sorts on Saturday at St. Paul’s Church, between the matinee and the evening performance.”
John Saxon held up his hand, like a small boy in school trying to attract the attention of his master. Irving looked his way and inclined his head very slightly.
“Er, will there even be a matinee performance, I was wondering, Henry?”
Irving looked perplexed. “And why would there not be?”
“Oh! Er, I don’t know. I suppose . . .” His voice trailed off.
Irving’s steely gaze swept the theatre. “Any other questions?” No one said anything. “Then I would encourage you all to attend the church service . . . your duties allowing you to do so. That is all.”
He turned on his heel and, with Miss Terry close beside him, strode from the stage, dismissing us with the wave of a hand.
Cursed in the Act Page 2