Cursed in the Act

by Raymond Buckland

  “None other. An’ ’oo might you be?”

  I introduced myself. “I understand that you reported the finding of a headless body?”

  “The bluebottles ’ave been ’ere already,” said the boy.

  “I know,” I said. “It was the police who told me. And you are William, I take it?”

  “’Ere!” He looked anxiously to the man.

  “It’s all right,” he said.

  “Nothing is wrong,” I hastened to assure them. “I just have one or two questions.”

  “You wif the gavvers?” asked William.

  “Indirectly,” I said. “Sergeant Bellamy directed me here.” I turned to the man. “Now, Mr. York, how was the body dressed, when you chanced upon it?”

  “‘Chanced upon it’? It weren’t no chance. It just sat there at the side o’ the road in a bag full o’ rags.”

  “It weren’t dressed,” chipped in William. “Just in ’is unutterables.”

  “S’right,” agreed York. “Looked as though ’e’d been stripped of anyfing worfwhile by someone. Which is wot I’d ’ave done if’n I’d been the first to find it.”

  “Do you still have the undergarments?” I wondered if there were any clues to be found in them.

  “Oh yes! Them was tofficky togs nefer mind bein’ unutterables. Should bring a pretty penny in the right quarters, I’m finkin’.” He waved at the boy. “Dig ’em out, Will. Show the gent. ’E might even be interested in buyin’.” He looked hard at me.

  “I very much doubt that,” I said, then indicated my height. “I’m probably far too short for the clothes of most gentlemen.”

  The boy scrambled away over the piles of clothes and rags—the two indistinguishable to my eyes—and soon returned with a bundle wrapped in newspaper and tied with string. He handed it to York, who carefully unwrapped it.

  “’Ere you go,” he said, holding up a suit of combination underwear.

  It was remarkably clean, I thought. I reached out and fingered it.

  “Silk,” I said, very much surprised.

  “Din’ I say as it was tofficky?”

  “You did indeed. Was this all there was?”

  “That’s it,” cried William. “Just a body wifout an ’ead dressed in them very unutterables. Stank to ’igh ’eaven as well. Cor! Give me a right turn an’ no mistake.”

  “There is no blood on the garments around the neck,” I murmured. “Only a little where the chest was caved in from the horses’ hooves.”

  “Why’s that, then?” asked York.

  “To my understanding it indicates that the head was not removed from the body until after death,” I said. “But I’m no expert. I may be wrong.”

  “Cor!” said William.

  “Well, I thank you,” I said, and turned to leave.

  “What ’appened to the crossin’ sweeper?” asked York. “I’d be ’appy to take ’is clothes since ’e won’t be needin’ ’em no more.”

  I paused. “Crossing sweeper?”

  “’Im as was run down.”

  “I’m not sure I follow you,” I said. “This is the one who was run down, and he was an actor, not a crossing sweeper. And this happened about a fortnight ago.”

  William threw up his hands in disgust and stomped off out of the shop.

  “Just after we picked up the bag wif the ’eadless body in it,” explained York, speaking slowly as though explaining to a child, “an ’ansom come swingin’ around the corner, off Gravel Lane Crescent onto Southwark, and sent a kid sweeper flyin’. This was days ago. ’E never did get up. I fink the bobbies took ’im off. I’m surprised they din’ tell you. We couldn’t ’ang about. We’d got work to do.”

  * * *

  I found Stoker deep in conversation with a man unknown to me, when I went to report my findings. I slipped out again for a quick lunch at the Druid’s Head and they were still in conference when I returned. I got on with my work, and it was after the matinee before I was able to sit down with my boss.

  “Silk undergarments?”

  “Yes, sir. That surprised me, too.”

  I could almost see the wheels going around in Stoker’s head. He had a brilliant mind, or so it appeared to one such as myself.

  “Tell me, Harry. Did Mr. Richland appear to you to be the sort of man who would affect silk undergarments?”

  “It’s difficult to say, sir,” I said, scratching my head. “One just never knows what a man might be hiding under his outer wear.”

  “True,” he conceded. “But my question was, did he appear to you to be the sort of man who would affect such wear?”

  I paused only a moment. “No, sir. He did not.”

  Stoker nodded. He remained in thought for a while, and then said, “I was just in conversation with Dr. William Wynn Westcott.”

  “I thought the Guv’nor was pretty much over the poisoning?”

  “He is, Harry. Recovering remarkably well. But then the Guv’nor is a remarkable man. No, Harry, Dr. Westcott was not here as a medical man. He has earned a reputation outside that of his medical practice. He is considered to be one of the leading authorities on the occult, and I was apprising him of our own findings relating to Voudon.”

  “Sir?” I was not too certain what was meant by the occult, though it gave me an uneasy feeling.

  Stoker glanced down at a piece of notepaper where he had apparently been making notes about his visitor. “A decade ago William Westcott became a Freemason. As you know, many prominent men today are of that brotherhood.” I nodded. “In fact the Guv’nor is desirous of entering that fraternity at some point. But, from University College Dr. Westcott had gone on to become a partner in his uncle’s medical practice in Somerset. Two years ago his uncle died and the good doctor took a suitable retirement at Hendon so that he might devote some serious time to study of the Qabalah, Hermetics, and alchemy.”

  He was losing me, but I remained with my attention fixed on his face and hoped he wouldn’t notice any glazing of my eyes as I tried to follow him.

  “He has just completed that study and was kind enough to visit me, at my request, before returning to the West Country.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” I had to say. “I don’t quite see . . .”

  “Just bear with me, Harry. Among the many disciplines with which Dr. Westcott is familiar is the West Indian religion of Voudon. I went over my own thinking with him and, in fact, took him below stage to see the inscription on the wall of the secret room there.”

  “What did he think of it?” I asked.

  “He agreed with me, Harry. The fact that the vévé drawn on the wall is that of Guédé would seem to indicate that the rituals performed here are of the black magic variety. Negative, Harry. Of no benefit to the theatre; in fact quite the reverse.”

  “I think we gathered that, did we not, sir, from witnessing that ritual?”

  “Oh, undoubtedly, Harry. And I am still not comfortable with the apparently inexplicable death of our dear Mr. Turnbull, since Dr. Cochran attested to his previous good health. That was just the sort of thing that might—and I do say ‘might,’ Harry—have been caused magically. There are many examples of such murders in the literature. Dr. Westcott concurs. It is not, however, the sort of conundrum that I believe our Metropolitan Police friends are capable of solving.”

  I was uncertain what to say. Here was my boss, a university-educated man, talking blithely about magic as though it were an everyday occurrence. Did he really believe in it, or was he letting his Irish superstition get away from him, I wondered?

  “So, what does all this mean, sir?” I asked.

  He looked at me in his characteristic pose of one eye closed and a forefinger alongside his nose. “What indeed, Harry?” he said enigmatically. “What indeed?”

  “There’s something you’d like me to do?” I asked, still uncertain o
f his intentions.

  “I don’t think there’s anything you can do, Harry. Not at present. We will have to see where all of this leads us. No. I think that for the moment we will continue to focus our energies—outside the theatre performances, of course—on tracking down our poisoner and determining exactly why Richland’s body was removed from its coffin and the head deposited on our stage.”

  “But you do think there was some connection between that body snatching and any mumbo jumbo performed under our stage?” I persisted.

  “I do, Harry. But before we can connect all the dots, we need all the facts. Now! You say that there is no absolute answer on whether or not the head and body were a match?” I shook my head. “Very well. We’ll just try to keep everything in mind.”

  He reached for some papers and I felt dismissed.

  In fact I didn’t have the time to do any more extracurricular activity that day. Someone had managed to step on Yorick’s skull and crush it. It was not a real skull but one made of papier-mâché, constructed in our props department. When John Whitby had earlier dropped it onstage—not the first time he had done that—it hadn’t helped. It was time to build another fake skull and I got someone busy doing that. Other small crises kept me busy till the evening curtain-up.

  * * *

  The following morning, a Thursday, Mr. Stoker was out of the office on some business of his own and I was able to spend time catching up on my paperwork, plus double-checking the properties list and going through Miss Price’s prompt copy.

  At lunchtime I took a cab to Little Vine Street and the St. James’s Division police station to see if Sergeant Bellamy had any further news. As I had half expected, I found him to have gone around the corner to the Stag’s Head to have his lunch. I went there to join him.

  “How’s the bread today, Sergeant?” I asked, as I slipped down onto the chair opposite him. “Stale again, or is it a fresh batch?”

  He didn’t look up but answered as though we had been in conversation for some while.

  “They’ve got a good ham they’re slicing, if you fancy something other than cheese,” he said. “The bread is all right. But then just about anything is all right if you wash it down with enough ale.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” I said with a chuckle. I nodded toward his newspaper. “Still checking the horses?”

  “The horses are running well enough to pay for this ham sandwich, Mr. Rivers. Now we’re sure you didn’t come here to chitchat. What can we do for you?”

  “I was wondering about the headless corpse,” I said, waving down the serving girl and giving her my order. “It has been intimated that there was a possibility of it not being Peter Richland’s body, based on the absence of greasepaint under the fingernails.”

  “‘Possibility,’ Mr. Rivers. That was the word used. There is the possibility that it is not your Mr. Richland’s body, but there is also the possibility that it is.”

  I sighed and cut in half the thick sandwich the girl placed in front of me.

  “If not Richland’s, then whose? Do you get a lot of headless corpses, Sergeant?”

  “No, sir, we do not. Most unusual, in fact. All the more reason to believe that it probably is the late Mr. Richland. We do get a lot of unknown corpses though, we must admit. There are a great number of crimes committed in the East End, with bodies left in alleyways, stuffed into privies, and dumped in the River Thames. But very few of them—in fact we can’t think of one other one—that are without the head.”

  “Your Dr. Entwhistle said that you had disposed of the head?”

  “Yes, sir. Possibly we were a mite hasty in that, but you can only sit for so long waiting for a body to turn up.”

  “I suppose so,” I said. I took a bite of my sandwich. Bellamy was right; the ham was excellent. “I went to see the rag-and-bone man,” I said. “He showed me the underclothing that the corpse had been wearing. I don’t think there’s any doubt in my mind that the body had been trampled by horses.”

  “There you are correct, sir. Yes. It most certainly had that appearance.”

  “Then surely that would confirm that it was Richland’s body?”

  “As we said, sir, there is still that possibility.”

  I took a good drink of the dark ale and then shook my head at the cautiousness of the police. They would admit to nothing and deny everything, if it suited them. But it was a shame that we couldn’t match up the head and the body. I’m sure Mrs. Richland would wish for a complete corpse to rebury.

  “Do you know anything of Voudon, Sergeant?” I asked, on impulse.

  His hand stopped halfway up to his mouth. He looked at me over the edge of his bread.

  “Hoodoo and mumbo jumbo?” he asked. He took a bite from the sandwich and chewed thoughtfully for a while. “No, we don’t get much call for that. Now the yellow men in Limehouse, they’ve got their own sort of mumbo jumbo. Very mystical and very ancient, so we’ve been told. Why do you ask?”

  “No reason,” I said, not willing to draw the sergeant into everything going on in the Lyceum. “Just wondering.”

  He fixed me with his police sergeant eye and continued chewing thoughtfully. I turned my attention to my own lunch. Then I was struck by a thought.

  “Sergeant, if someone was run down by a hansom, much as our Mr. Richland was by that growler, where would the body be taken?” I was thinking of the crossing sweeper that the rag-and-bone man had mentioned.

  “Where did this accident take place, Mr. Rivers?”

  “Off Blackfriars Road, just south of the bridge.”

  “Well, normally the body would go to Lambeth Division—L Division—on Kennington Lane, but we happen to know that they are ‘indisposed,’ we think the term is, at the present time. Their drains have all backed up. Nasty mess!”

  “So where would the body go?” I persisted.

  “On to our own excellent premises at Little Vine Street, sir. Why do you ask?”

  I thought of the morgue I had recently visited there, with its two corpses. No sign of any other victims. No sign of a young crossing sweeper. Something was not right. I decided not to immediately pursue it with the sergeant.

  We exchanged remarks about the weather, the amount of traffic on Oxford Street, and the unreliability of racehorses before the sergeant, with a belch and a sigh, got to his feet and bade me farewell. I finished my own lunch, drained my beer glass, and thought about where I should next direct my feet.

  Before I could leave, a well-dressed figure stopped at the table, pulled out the chair recently vacated by Sergeant Bellamy, and sat down. It was Mr. Ogoon, the West Indian friend of Ralph Bateman.

  “Mr. Rivers,” he said. He removed his top hat and laid it on the table. He ran his hand over his smooth scalp and glanced about him. “My sources tell me that this is a worthwhile eatery. Good food and honest ale, I am told.”

  I said nothing. What did he want, I wondered?

  “One cannot exist for any length of time on nothing but scraps,” he said, his dark eyes suddenly boring into me.

  Was he referring to the feeding of zombies, I wondered?

  “You are strangely silent,” he said. “Yet but moments ago you were conversing freely with one of the Metropolitan Police’s officers. Why now this reticence?”

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “Who said that I wanted anything, Mr. Rivers? No. As a visitor to your fair city I am but enjoying all that it has to offer. I understand that the entertainment here is exceptional. The theatre district is one of the best in the world, I understand.”

  “That it is.”

  “Yet theatre-going is not without its risks, I hear?”

  What did he mean exactly?

  “The Holborn Theatre. The Grecian. Astley’s. The Olympic. Covent Garden. The Royal Coburg . . . all destroyed by fire. Your own Lyceum, Mr. Rivers, burned to the groun
d less than fifty years ago. The Royal Brunswick a few years earlier, with many people killed and injured. The Elephant and Castle just three years ago. Tragic! And how easily these theatre fires start, Mr. Rivers. But you must be well aware of that, are you not?”

  “Are you threatening us, Mr. Ogoon?” I asked. I tried to remain calm, but my heart had started to race. Did this man plan on setting fire to the Lyceum? Surely not. Then I had a thought. “Is your magic not powerful enough, then, Mr. Ogoon, that you have to resort to incendiaries?”

  He again ran his hand over his head, and he smiled at me. “Magic, Mr. Rivers? Do you believe in magic?”

  I didn’t know what to say. Suddenly he replaced his hat on his head and stood up.

  “I think I was misinformed,” he said, looking about him. “I think that this establishment is not as salubrious as it had been made out to be. I fear I must go in search of other means of satisfaction. Good day to you, Mr. Rivers.”

  He strode away and I was left with an empty feeling in my stomach, despite the meal I had just finished.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I was greatly disturbed at Ogoon’s suggestion that the Lyceum might experience a devastating fire. It was true that a number of English theatres had suffered such a fate. The Lord Chamberlain, the statutory authority over theatres, had never bothered much with such matters as sanitation and fire protection. He was the one who licensed all theatres . . . all except Drury Lane and Covent Garden, which were under royal patents. But just three years ago the new Metropolitan Board of Works had been given authority, by Parliament, over new theatre construction, and they did emphasize fire safety. Gas lighting had been a major factor in several of the fires. Now many theatres, as with the Lyceum, were converting to the new electricity, which was much safer. Indeed, later this year the Savoy Theatre was to open as the first London theatre lit entirely by electricity.

  The main objection to this new source of lighting was the noise of the steam engines and dynamos used to create it. Each structure had its own, and these were usually housed outside the theatre rather than inside, though not always. Happily, they were so placed at the Lyceum.