Murder in the Limelight Read online

  Florence went white. How could they, just before a performance? She summoned up all her courage. ‘I’ve got to sing it,’ she said firmly. ‘And you hardly slowed it at all last night. You can’t do it faster still. Not after’ – there was a catch in her voice – ‘not after all I’ve been through.’

  ‘Just a little,’ said Percy Brian persuasively.

  ‘No,’ said Florence obdurately. ‘I’ll do it like last night, if I have to, but not like you want it. It’s too fast. I’ll lose the feeling. “If you could but hear”,’ she trilled, ‘“what I sing to you . . .” It should be slow, slow, slow—’ To her horror, she found herself stamping her foot.

  ‘We’ll tell Mr Archibald how we feel. Both of us.’

  ‘Tell him,’ said Florence recklessly. ‘See what he says when his leading lady resigns as a result. Because someone is carrying out a vendetta against me. First this song, now the dolls. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were connected, would you?’ she said with a viciousness that appalled her.

  ‘Do you mean—?’ Hargreaves gaped. Bloody woman! Women were trouble, he knew that, not like men. They couldn’t be relied on. ‘As if Percy and I—’

  ‘Not me, my dear, not me.’ Percy was strangely quiet.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, you never asked me. I think dear Florence is perhaps right, wanting it slower.’ His bright eyes were innocent, his face angelic, but he carefully avoided looking at Edward.

  Hargreaves stared at him.

  ‘But, Percy – you—’

  Florence smiled. Percy was on her side. Quite rightly. He would defend her against that horrid Hargreaves. Graceful, restored, reassured, Miss Penelope swept out, billowing wafts of perfume, closely followed by the dresser, still vainly attempting to adjust the folds of the dress gathered over Florence’s retreating victorious backside.

  The two men faced each other.

  ‘You’ve betrayed me, Percy,’ said Edward Hargreaves hoarsely.

  ‘Just because we live together, Edward,’ said Percy softly, ‘it doesn’t mean you’re right all the time. I’ve got my integrity as a pianist to think of.’

  He was like a stranger to Hargreaves, this boy he’d lived with, loved, for three years.

  ‘Percy, take care,’ Hargreaves said suddenly. ‘Don’t let this go on. You persuaded me to come up here. Now you’re stirring things up. Take care. If this gets to Archibald, if he finds out about us—’

  ‘Phooey,’ said Percy, tossing back his hair petulantly. ‘He’d never take any action. It’s all the rage in London now. The police don’t care. You’re just a fuddy duddy.’ And he walked off.

  ‘But what about those dolls?’ Hargreaves called after him.

  Florence tripped happily down to the stage. Percy had been an unexpected ally. Now everything was all right. The last little thing had been attended to.

  ‘We’ve won, Herbert,’ she said gaily, seeing him in the wings.

  ‘Won, Florence?’ he replied, his expression unreadable under his clownish make-up.

  ‘The song, silly. We’re going back to the original tempo. Slow, all the time. Percy supports me, so now it’s three of us against Mr Hargreaves.’

  ‘No,’ said Herbert, matter-of-factly, his expression strangely remote. ‘Two.’

  ‘Two,’ said Florence, puzzled.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, not looking at her. ‘I told Mr Hargreaves I liked it faster. Like this: “Pom, pom, pom, what I’d sing to you. How I’d sing to you, my dear”.’

  She stared at him, speechless.

  ‘You never asked me, you see. I do have to sing a verse too.’

  ‘But I thought—’ She stopped. How could she say she took his devotion, his acquiescence in what pleased her, for granted? So in the normal way she could. But not tonight. Herbert, in his own way, intended to pay Florence back.

  The performance flagged. Perhaps this was inevitable after the triumph of last night. It was not noticeable to any but the cast; to the audience it would seem another triumph, perhaps a little pale by the side of Lady Bertha. But to the cast, and more particularly to Robert Archibald, it flagged: it was lifeless, it was uncoordinated; a chorus girl was out of step here, a beat missed there, the orchestra’s playing a trifle ragged, a wrong note on the piano, a top note insufficiently held, a humdrumness about the comedy. But not noticeable to the audience. Not, that is, until Florence’s solo at the end of Act 2, in which she was joined by Herbert for the last verse.

  Miss Penelope clutched her marionette to her, and gazed fondly into its wooden face. She was riding on a pinnacle of exultation; she was adored by the gods, by the stalls, by the pit. She had forgotten she was apparently not so adored on her side of the Galaxy footlights.

  ‘If you could only hear what I’m saying to you,’ she whispered to the puppet’s calico-clad body. ‘If only he could hear—’ throwing a wistful glance towards Lord Harry, at present lingering in the wings beside Edna Purvis. ‘If only, if only . . .’ A tinkling note sounded on the piano. A chord from the orchestra.

  ‘If you could only hear,

  What I sing to you—’

  Alas, no one could hear. Least of all the audience. For Florence, having reverted trustingly to the slow tempo set by Percy at the piano, was completely drowned and overtaken by the orchestra reverting to the fast tempo of Edward’s choice, a tempo in which Herbert joined with gusto, advancing two verses early from behind his toyshop counter.

  It was disaster. Florence, overwhelmed, stood open-mouthed, still automatically singing on. The orchestra leader, belatedly remembering his duty to his audience, increased the volume to drown the piano, then since Florence’s mouth was no longer moving, softened it for Herbert to finish the song in triumphant solo while Florence stood like a dumb thing.

  Watching from the stalls, Robert Archibald permitted himself to relieve his feelings with one single oath culled from his Hoxton childhood.

  With masterly presence of mind, Lord Harry swept on one scene early, took his wife by the hand and gazed fondly into her eyes. Then he bravely began to no accompaniment whatsoever his final love song, to a Miss Penelope about to reveal to the audience, for the sake of their delicate susceptibilities, that she was after all no shopgirl, but the daughter of a viscount.

  The episode had lasted perhaps two minutes, but it was a lifetime for the Galaxy. Twenty years of patient tradition-building might never have been.

  Not for nothing was Robert Archibald a theatre manager. With great self-control he merely sent round a note by the call-boy, requesting the presence of certain principals and musical staff in his office the following morning.

  ‘Let them stew in their juice, eh, Didier?’ he said thickly, mournfully mulling over his problems in the kitchen of the restaurant.

  ‘That is generally a good thing, monsieur,’ said Auguste. ‘But there is one problem – the meat is tough if allowed to stew without great care. You must be careful, hein?’

  Robert Archibald regarded him balefully. ‘Might have known you’d drag the kitchen into this.’

  ‘La cuisine is the epicentre of the world, monsieur. As Brillat-Savarin so rightly says: “The destiny of great nations is directed by what they eat”.’

  But Archibald was in no mood for Brillat-Savarin. He could not bear even to walk through his beloved theatre that night so, locking the communicating door, he donned his bowler hat and ulster, and walked out into the gaslit night.

  ‘I saw you,’ shouted Florence. ‘I saw you laughing with her – with that show girl in the wings. Laughing at me, your own wife.’

  ‘Dearest, I wasn’t laughing,’ said Thomas patiently. Indeed he wasn’t; he was horrified. His muttered aside to Edna (who had indeed been laughing) was for her to mind his gloves while he rushed on to save Florence from ignominy. He gazed, helpless and aghast, at his wife’s pretty face now distorted with an anger he had never seen on it before. Was this the quiet girl he had married, whom everybody loved? He tried to reason with her.

 
‘Everyone’s against me. Mr Archibald, Mr Hargreaves, Percy – because he only wanted to get back at Mr Hargreaves – even Herbert, and now you. It’s too much. Making eyes at a show girl while I’m in trouble.’

  ‘I wasn’t—’

  ‘Yes you were. You can’t wait to get near her. Touching her, cuddling her.’

  It was so unfair. ‘I wasn’t—’

  ‘You were. You know you were. Just like you were with Christine Walters. If you prefer them to me, just tell me. Just tell me.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘I daresay she’s waiting for you now. Waiting for you to take her out to dinner. Then you’ll see her home. And then you’ll – you’ll screw her.’

  Appalled, Thomas gaped at his wife as if seeing her for the first time. That she even knew these words. His gentle Florence. He was shaken and hurt by the injustice of it all. After all, he hadn’t yet taken Edna to bed. She’d refused him – so far.

  ‘Very well,’ he managed to say coolly, ‘if that’s what you think of me, I will take her out to dinner. Edna thinks more of me than you seem to . . .’

  Alone, Florence burst into tears. She wept for a long time. How could they? Nobody loved her. They played horrible jokes on her. Now they’d gone and left her alone. All was quiet in the corridor. Deathly quiet. She must be the last one left. She called out to the girls but there was no reply. She looked at her little French clock. Even Obadiah would have left now. The night watch should be here, but suppose he wasn’t? She might be alone in the building.

  She was suddenly scared. Usually Thomas was with her. He came to the theatre with her; he went home with her. They had dinner when they got home. Now she’d have to summon a hansom and go home alone. Could she do it? She’d never summoned one before in her cosseted life. She supposed she could. It was just a matter of pulling herself together, of getting out of this horrible empty place. Just a matter of walking down that corridor, down the stairs, and finding her way out.

  She began to wipe the paint from her face, then to bathe her eyes, to remove the tearstains so that she could leave. She realised she was still in her costume. Rapidly, illogically nervous, each sound she made seeming magnified in the empty room, she stripped off her costume. Fool to tell her dresser to go home, because she couldn’t bear to face her after the disaster! She slipped the mauve woollen day dress over her head and began to fasten the many buttons, fingers nervously fumbling. She pulled on her boots, picked up the long button hook, her stays digging in viciously, and began the tedious task.

  She stopped and straightened up. Quite clearly through the door, which was ajar, she heard the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. Heavy footsteps. Her heart in her mouth, she tried to subdue her rising panic.

  ‘Watch?’ she cried out interrogatively. It must be the fireman who kept guard during the night once Obadiah had gone home. ‘Watch?’

  But there was no reply.

  The footsteps advanced along the corridor. A male shadow fell across the doorway. Petrified, Florence sat there, steel button hook in hand, and watched the door slowly open . . .

  An early morning butcher’s boy whistled cheerfully through his short cut from Newcastle Street to Wych Street at the back of the Olympic Palace Theatre, a favourite route since he often found old programmes amongst the trash thrown out by the theatre. There was an extra large pile this morning. Kicking it in the way of all errand boys, he felt something hard and, curious since the litter was generally paper, bent down to find the reason for this hardness.

  It was only relatively hard. It was a woman’s body.

  He gurgled, then gagged. At his feet, eyes bulging in a purple face, was the body of a woman. Her hands, neatly folded across her chest, were tied into place with thick rope.

  Chapter Four

  Robert Archibald had risen on this Thursday morning with a new determination. A night’s sleep and the calm ministrations of Mrs Archibald had restored to him his sense of proportion. One mistake in a performance did not mean the end of the Galaxy. Something was undoubtedly wrong in the state of Denmark, but it should not be beyond his powers to discover what and put it right. There was a bad ’un somewhere, but close questioning of those involved should reveal who it was. You could always trace these ripples back to their source. With these cheering thoughts, he entered the Galaxy with more or less his usual sprightly step.

  ‘Morning, Mr Archibald.’

  ‘Good morning, Bates.’

  ‘Gentleman waiting to see you.’

  ‘What?’ Irritation replaced geniality. ‘Good God, Bates, you know my rule. Not before eleven, and particularly not today.’

  ‘Police, sir,’ replied Bates with some relish.

  It says much for the state of Mr Archibald’s preoccupation with the problem of Miss Penelope’s marionette song that it was a little while before his brain could diagnose any possible reason why the Law should wish to see him. Then, as he strode along the corridor to the office, he recalled the disappearance of Christine Walters and the subsequent routine call by the police.

  His worst fears were realised as he entered his office to find Egbert Rose studying the photographs of Daisie Wilton (in her tights) adorning the walls, his bowler laid carelessly on the desk on top of the box office returns for the first night. Two things came to Archibald’s mind: this was clearly not a police constable, and it was clearly going to be a bad day.

  Just how bad neither he nor Egbert Rose could possibly imagine, but Rose’s present mission was quite enough for the moment.

  ‘Murdered?’ Robert Archibald was aghast. ‘Poor girl, poor girl,’ he said, shaking his head sadly. He felt it as a personal loss. The girls were his concern, his family. After they left the Galaxy he might lose all interest in them, but while working under its portals everything about them – their health, their happiness, their private lives – were all part of the Galaxy so far as he was concerned. And if she had died while in Galaxy employ, then Christine Walters was most definitely his concern.

  ‘When?’ he asked abruptly. He thought of the dreadful probability that the girl must have gone straight from the Galaxy to her death.

  ‘Can’t say, sir. Been in the water, you see. About the time you reported her missing, though. That was’ – Rose glanced at his notebook – ‘30th September, and you said you last saw her on the 27th.’

  The 27th, the day after the opening of Lady Bertha’s Betrothal. Such had been the excitement, the ferment at the Galaxy at the unexpected popularity of this new piece, of the possibilities for an entirely new kind of entertainment, that so far Archibald had scarcely spared a thought for the missing girl. To him she was an empty place in the show girl line. Even though he reported it as a matter of form, since she had sent no explanation of her disappearance, he had assumed that she had gone off with a man. She was a flighty little filly. Lived in lodgings on her own. He always discouraged that among his girls. But all that time she had been dead. Strangled. There was a pause while Archibald’s mind conjured up unpleasant pictures.

  ‘I’ll have to talk to your staff, the cast,’ said Rose, watching conflicting emotions run over the manager’s face. His hand was absent-mindedly stroking the large drooping moustache, the pride of his life after the Galaxy and Mrs Archibald, carefully preserved with Oldridge’s Balm.

  ‘It’s changed,’ said Archibald. ‘We’ve a new show now. But you talked to them at the time.’

  ‘Not me,’ said Rose. ‘Different department. Missing girl, thousands go missing every year. They don’t all end up murdered in the Thames though,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘And since bodies tend to go into the Thames at night, and it’s a noticeable fact that the old river runs mighty close to this theatre, we’ll have to do a bit of investigation. Talk to the men in particular. And I’d like a list of any of the gentlemen who were here then, who aren’t here now. Any you remember as being special friends of hers, if you get my meaning.’ He stood up and clapped his bowler on his head. ‘One more thing, Mr Archibald. Do you k
eep rope around this theatre?’

  Archibald blinked. ‘Rope?’

  Rose produced a short length of rope from his pocket. ‘She was tied up, you see. Hands bound across her chest.’ He glanced up to see Archibald’s face slowly turning paler. ‘Ah, I see that means something to you, sir.’

  Half-an-hour later found Rose walking gloomily along the Strand. It was a mild day and the pavements were crowded with workers and shoppers. Ah, he could remember the days when the Strand really was something, a majestic sight with the old Temple Bar dominating it. He was just a young police constable then, all eyes, long gangly limbs, and far from the heftiest lad in the force. But Williamson had spotted him. ‘An eye for the villains, you’ve got, lad,’ he’d said when Rose proudly brought in that bit faker.

  Now Temple Bar was long since gone, and the Strand was losing its dignity to progress – traffic, traffic and more traffic. Mind you, St Mary’s in the early morning was still worth a dawn rising to enjoy its quiet before the rush of London’s workers poured out from Charing Cross. What was it Dr Johnson had said? “The full tide of existence is at Charing Cross.” His eyes would have popped out of his head if he could have seen Charing Cross Railway Station today. But the Old Thames never changed . . . Rose brought his mind back to the unpleasant case ahead of him – the girl, poor lass, and now these dolls.

  They might just be dolls, but it was too close to what had happened to Christine Walters for his liking. Archibald seemed to think them just a joke directed against Miss Lytton. His superiors might scoff, but all the same it didn’t look like a joke to Rose. In a sense it made his job easier, though, for it looked like someone inside the theatre. A nasty business. Menacing. Something not quite sane about it. He greeted a crossing sweeper with surprising cheerfulness considering the nature of his thoughts and made his way to the Yard.