Cursed in the Act

by Raymond Buckland

  We all tumbled out and ran toward the water.

  “There they go!” shouted Bellamy.

  I could make out four men ahead of us. We watched them climbing up onto the footbridge that stretched across to the narrow island, at the end of which were the locks and the weir.

  As I understood it, the footbridge extended to the island, but in order to complete the river crossing it was necessary to turn and proceed to the lock. There it was then possible to walk across on the tops of the lock gates, a common practice. At this time of the year the river on the Teddington side was frozen, with the exception of around the weir, but on the far side of the island ice had been broken up leading to the lock, to allow passage of boats. The men ahead of us split up, two of them running to the left, to the lock, and the other two to the right, to the weir.

  “With me, Harry!” shouted Stoker, swinging to the left in order to pursue what we saw to be Richland and Ogoon.

  It was Bateman and Willis, then, who had gone the other way, I realized. What they hoped to accomplish at the weir I had no idea, though in the summer months it might be possible to pick one’s way across protruding rocks. I could hear Bellamy panting behind me. Inspector Gulley and his constable went the other way, after the second couple.

  Bram Stoker’s powerful legs drew him away from me and my skinny ones. I saw him gaining on the two we pursued, but I didn’t think he could catch them in time. As I watched, Peter Richland swung himself up onto the top of the lock gates and started across. When Richland got to the middle, where the two gates met, he paused momentarily to look back. Ogoon was close behind him. Perhaps too close, for he slid on the icy wood trying to avoid Richland. The two bumped into each and Peter Richland pitched over the side, crying out as he fell.

  Ogoon jumped over where his companion had been standing and, without a word and not looking back, ran on to gain a footing on the Surrey bank. He still didn’t look back but disappeared behind the lock house. I hoped I would never see him again.

  I ran up to where Stoker now stood on the top of the lock gate, looking down into the icy water. I had a brief glimpse of Peter Richland, floundering as he tried to stay afloat. No one could survive for more than a few minutes in that icy pit. I eased carefully around Stoker and ran to where the life belt hung on its hook, in case of such emergencies. But with the cold and the icy winds that had blown there for some time, the ring of cork was frozen solid to its base. I tugged and tugged until I heard Stoker’s voice.

  “Never mind, Harry. Never mind.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Intermittently since 1705 there had been a so-called Beefsteak Club in London. The first of these had been started by an actor, Richard Estcourt, championing beef. In 1735 the scenery painter George Lambert, together with actor John Rich, formed the Sublime Society of Beefsteaks, who met at Covent Garden. After the Covent Garden fire of 1808, they started meeting at the Lyceum Theatre, in a back room. This had gradually developed into a very private club where the members—mainly actors plus a few politicians—wore a uniform of blue coat and buff waistcoat with brass buttons. The buttons bore the symbol of the club, a gridiron motif, which was also found on their cuff links. The original gridiron, on which the steaks had been cooked, had been rescued from the ashes of the Covent Garden fire.

  The steaks were served on hot pewter plates, together with baked potatoes and onions. Porter and port were served, as was toasted cheese. Nothing else was offered. After eating, the table—one long table at which all guests sat—was cleared and the evening given over to revelry. After a checkered existence this early Beefsteak Club had finally disbanded in 1867, but the Guv’nor, Mr. Henry Irving, had decided to revive it just a year or so ago. It now met sporadically, usually very late in the evening after a Lyceum performance. Mr. Stoker was an enthusiastic member, and on occasion he had even been instrumental in inviting myself as a guest. As such, it meant that I did not have to wear the blue jacket uniform as all the regular members did. I did, however, always enjoy the excellent steaks served, not to mention the porter.

  The day following our adventures in Twickenham, my boss informed me that there was to be a Beefsteak Club that very evening and that he would take me along as his guest. The room was one that had been used for such club meetings for many years, when the original Beefsteak Club was still in existence. It was part of the Lyceum Theatre, though tucked away at the back where it had some privacy. It had its own kitchen, of course, and Mr. Irving’s personal cook prepared the meal. A number of close friends of the Guv’nor were there, though I knew few of them. I did recognize—how could I not?—the prime minister, Mr. Gladstone, a close friend and admirer of Mr. Irving’s. The Beefsteak Club was an all-male preserve, so Miss Terry did not join us.

  After a most enjoyable meal, well lubricated with both porter and an excellent port, I sat back to see what might be the occasion of this gathering. The Guv’nor was there, of course, as was Mr. Stoker. Also present were Mr. Edwin Booth and Colonel Cornell, Sergeant Bellamy and even Inspector Gulley from the Thames Valley Police. I recognized one or two of the theatre critics, including Mr. Matthew Burgundy of the Times and Mr. Horatio Fitzwilliams of the Era.

  “Perhaps you would be kind enough, Abraham, to run over the events of the past few days, for the benefit of those of us who have not yet been privy to all of the details?” The Guv’nor sat back and blew smoke from his cigar toward the ceiling, as he smiled at Mr. Stoker.

  “Of course, Henry, of course.” My boss did not get to his feet, such was the relaxed atmosphere after the repast, and blew his own cigar smoke to the rafters. “And there I think it might be beneficial to go all the way back to the days following your poisoning?”

  There was a murmur around the table, from those who were not conversant with all the many little incidents of which I had been a part. Mr. Stoker then started the history, from the apparent death of Peter Richland through to our discovery of the abduction of young Edward. I noticed that he omitted reference to some few details, such as our digging up the Richland coffin and also the Voudon ceremony beneath the Lyceum stage. In the course of the relating, he did have me fill in many of the details and recapitulate on my own abduction and consequent escape from the house in Twickenham.

  “So you were able to return the young boy to his mother,” said Booth, raising his wineglass to Mr. Stoker as my boss finished the story. “My congratulations.”

  Stoker waved away the praise.

  “And all this led to your rushing out to Middlesex County and the unmasking of the villain,” said the Guv’nor. “How did it go from there?”

  “The death of Mr. Richland was unfortunate,” said my boss. “As was the escape of Mr. Ogoon.” He took a long, ruminative draw on his cigar. “I would have liked to have seen both of them brought to justice.”

  “But you did bring back one of the main instigators, as I understand it?” said the colonel.

  “Yes. In fact our good friend Inspector Gulley, of the Thames Valley Police Force, was instrumental in that.” Stoker turned to the man. “Would you like to take up the tale there, Inspector?”

  Inspector Gulley’s face turned red. He was obviously unused to speaking in front of such dignitaries as he saw about him. I think the presence of the prime minister especially unnerved him.

  “I—er—well, that is to say . . .” He looked desperately to Sergeant Bellamy, who seemed to me to be totally oblivious to any embarrassment.

  “The inspector and his constables did manage to catch and arrest Mr. Ralph Bateman,” Bellamy said. “It seems that he and Mr. Herbert Willis were trapped, teetering on the edge of the weir . . . which we must say can be treacherous at this time of year, with ice covering the rocks. Mr. Willis in point of fact did slip and fall into the freezing water, and we were unable to rescue him. He succumbed to the elements, you might say.”

  “Good Lord,” murmured Mr. Gladstone.

  I
was myself ambivalent about Willis’s death. He was a nasty, scheming character, yet I didn’t feel that he was as close to pure evil as was Mr. Ogoon. Willis had possessed some redeeming qualities, I thought, though I couldn’t for the moment think what they were.

  “What became of this Ogoon?” asked Mr. Booth.

  My boss answered, “It is my belief that he is now already on board a ship steaming for his island home. And good riddance to him.”

  “What exactly was his part in all of this?” asked the prime minister.

  “Ah!” Mr. Stoker paused long enough to pour himself another glass of port. I suspected that he was playing for time to decide just how much of Ogoon’s involvement he should share.

  “We do not know the exact involvement of that individual,” he said, eventually. “He was close to Mr. Bateman, who had been instrumental in bringing him to these shores from his native Republic of Haiti.”

  “But you don’t know exactly why he was here?” The colonel looked darkly through his cigar smoke at my boss. His monocle gleamed, catching the light from the fireplace where a comfortable fire blazed.

  “Exactly? No.”

  I felt uneasy when I remembered Ogoon’s probable involvement in the death of old Mr. Turnbull, though I had to admit that we never had any hard evidence that was the case. And I had a strange feeling that in fact we had not seen the last of Mr. Ogoon. I hoped that I was wrong.

  “What will Mr. Bateman be charged with?” asked the Guv’nor.

  “We think we can come up with a number of things,” replied Bellamy. “Accomplice to murder for starters, attempted murder for another, kidnapping, attempted poisoning, and so on and so forth, sir.”

  “It seems obvious, looking back, that it was Richland who was responsible for the attempt on your life, Henry,” said my boss. “He bamboozled our dear departed Mr. Turnbull at a time when he was most vulnerable, balancing a tray as he entered your dressing room. Almost certainly he introduced the poison into your hot lemonade at that time.”

  “Of course, Bateman pleads that he was only following the orders of your Mr. Richland.” Inspector Gulley had found his voice at last. “Richland, by Mr. Bateman’s account, was the ringleader all along.”

  “Peter Richland seemed such a quiet man,” I said. “Unhappy, I grant you. Dissatisfied with his lot, but I would never have thought him capable of violence. And certainly not infamy of such magnitude.”

  “You can’t tell a book by its cover,” said Stoker, waving his cigar in the air. “And as for Ralph Bateman, as my old granny used to say, An té a luíonn le gagharaibh éireoidh le dearnaithibh.”

  Bellamy almost dropped his cigar. “Lor’, sir, but that sounds almost heathen, begging your pardon, sir.”

  “Far from it,” responded Stoker. “My old granny was more Catholic than the pope. It simply means ‘if you lie down with dogs, you’ll rise with fleas.’ Most apt for our Mr. Bateman, I think.”

  “So Richland was the mastermind, as it were,” I said. “Then Ralph Bateman recruited people like Charlie Vickers and Herbert Willis to carry out their various plots against the Lyceum.”

  “Mr. Richland must have been very bitter,” observed Mr. Gladstone.

  “It seems he saw himself as an outstanding actor held back only by myself,” said the Guv’nor. “If I had only had the decency to be sick, or literally break a leg, thus allowing my understudy to tread the boards, then the public would have acknowledged Mr. Peter Richland as the new star in the firmament. Richland would have gone on to fame and fortune . . . at least in his own eyes.”

  “And those of his mother, I do believe,” I said.

  Stoker nodded. “Indeed. One can but wonder just what part she may have played in all of this. Mothers can be surprisingly forceful, especially concerning their offspring treading the boards in front of the footlights.”

  “She claims ignorance of everything,” said Inspector Gulley. “I questioned her myself.”

  “As did I her neighbors and the local tradespeople,” said Stoker. “It would seem she had a reputation among the latter as a tough person to deal with, not easy to get her to pay her bills.”

  “Was she in financial difficulties?” asked Mr. Booth.

  “She should not have been,” said the prime minister. “I knew something of her late husband Henry Richland. He died two years ago, apparently of a heart attack. He was far from poor.”

  “He was the lady’s second husband,” said the inspector, who now seemed to have overcome his earlier reticence. “Interestingly, her first husband died in a boating accident. He, incidentally, was Peter’s real father and died when the child was only ten. Both men were quite wealthy.”

  “So Richland was not Peter’s real name,” I said. “His stage name, I presume?”

  “Yes,” agreed Stoker. “His actual father was Timothy Bottomley, but Peter took his mother’s second husband’s name for the stage.”

  “Hmm,” mused Inspector Gulley. “Two husbands who died in, shall we say, unusual circumstances? I wonder if we—my department, that is—should look more closely at those deaths?”

  “We wonder what she’s done with the money if they both were, as you say, well-to-do,” pondered Sergeant Bellamy. “The Twickenham house looks rather seedy and neglected.”

  * * *

  The answer to this last question—at least in part—did not come until two days later, when we joined Sergeant Bellamy at the C Division station house. Stoker and I were greeted by the sour-faced policeman.

  “What is it?” asked Stoker.

  “There is no prisoner to be questioned at this time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Bellamy shrugged. “It would seem that Mrs. Richland still has influence, or money to buy it. Your Mr. Ralph Bateman has been granted bail through the actions of none other than Sir Mortimer Dugdale, Q.C.”

  “Dugdale?” cried Stoker. “She must indeed have money. He does not come cheaply.”

  “So does this mean we can’t question him about his actions and those of Richland?” I asked, annoyed and angry at this turn of events.

  “I’m afraid so. At least not until his trial,” said Stoker.

  “No date has yet been fixed for that,” added Bellamy, gloomily.

  “Damnation!”

  I had lost count of the number of times recently that my boss had sworn.

  “But why would Mrs. Richland pay for Ralph’s defense?” I asked.

  “Good question, Harry. My guess is that there was far more to the Peter Richland and Ralph Bateman relationship than is obvious on the surface. Either that or she feels she somehow owes something to Bateman.”

  We once again went over all that we knew, and then my boss and I returned to the theatre.

  “When we first encountered Richland, at the top of the stairs in the Twickenham house, you didn’t seem too surprised,” I said. “In fact you said, ‘I knew it.’ Might I ask what you meant by that, sir?”

  “It was the undergarments, Harry.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The undergarments. The headless body that turned up at the rag-and-bone merchant’s, and that we now know belonged to the unknown gentleman sacrificed by Richland, wore silk undergarments. Richland himself, as you found when you searched his room, wore linen. I had the feeling that we might have been dealing with two different people.”

  “Ah!” I nodded. I thought for a moment. “Who do you think this ‘unknown gentleman’ was? Has nobody missed him?”

  “Another good question.” The big man rubbed his eyes. He looked tired, I thought. “It seems that Sergeant Bellamy is onto that, enquiring as to any missing persons. It’s possible, if not probable, that the man was visiting London from out of town. It could take quite a while to identify him.”

  “Another thing.” I felt that this was a good time to pick my boss’s brains
on everything to do with the events of the past few weeks. He was a wealth of knowledge and most adept at putting two and two together. The benefits of a college education, I presumed. “Why separate the head from the body?” I asked.

  Stoker gave one of his sighs. “My guess is that, having made use of the corpse to make us think that Richland really had died, he simply decided to make further use of it to undermine the Lyceum production he could never be a part of. I’m sure he hoped that by having a severed head pop out of the scenery, he would frighten the audience into leaving the theatre.”

  “Ah yes. Well, happily, the Lyceum audience is hardier and more loyal than that,” I said.

  My boss gave another of his long sighs. “Take the opportunity to get some rest, Harry. It won’t be long now before we are deep into rehearsing for Othello and working our perhaps dubious charm on the two Americans, Mr. Edwin Booth and the redoubtable Colonel Wilberforce Cornell.”

  “I really look forward to that!” I muttered.

  * * *

  It seemed that the trial of Mr. Ralph Bateman would not take place in the immediate future. Sir Mortimer Dugdale was a very formidable lawyer, yet our Sergeant Bellamy could be equally tenacious. He was determined to see justice done, yet the Queen’s Counsel definitely had the upper hand. We all needed to be patient. I was far more concerned over the fate of Mr. Ogoon. Had he indeed fled the British Isles? Was he truly en route to his native Haiti? Mr. Stoker assured me that he believed that to be the case, and I tried to accept it, yet I still had nightmares in which I was the principle participant in a Voudon ritual!

  It was in the morning, two days later, that my boss suggested I go home and change into my best clothes. He was mysterious about why I should do this, but I dutifully complied and returned to the theatre. There he further suggested that I instruct Sam Green to take over my stage manager duties for the afternoon matinee. This I also did. Then Mr. Stoker broke the news that Mr. Irving had agreed to invite his household staff to a theatre performance at the Lyceum. I was thrilled.