Abracadaver

CHAPTER

11

THE NEWS FROM UNDER the stage had an odd effect on Thackeray. Naturally, he was shocked by the sudden death of such a young and charming artiste. But, sad as it was, the passing from the scene of Lola Pinkus gave a significant lift to his morale. He now had a clear justification for being on the stage, and he could once again think and act as a simple policeman. And what a relief that was! His mortifying experiences as a stage-remover actually began to look like part of an inspired plan. Even that harrowing journey across the stage with Miss Tring took on a heroic quality. In fact, he could picture himself already in Number One Court listening to the Lord Chief Justice: ‘It should not pass unrecorded that this case would never have been brought to trial but for the devotion to duty in the most unimaginable circumstances of a certain Detective Constable . . .’

Once he had satisfied himself that Lola was undeniably dead—and by her expression and attitude the moment of death had been violent in the extreme—he realised that it was not, after all, going to be possible to carry out the duties of a simple policeman. ‘After the finding of a body,’ decreed the Police Code (which all self-respecting members of the Force knew by heart), ‘the Coroner should be informed on the appropriate form.’ That was all right for the occasional corpse you found along the Embankment after an uncommonly cold night, but it didn’t quite meet the present case. He mentally thumbed through the pages of the manual, searching for something more appropriate. ‘When a dead body is found and there is no doubt that life is extinct . . .’ He peered closely at Lola’s mortal remains—‘. . . it should never be touched until the arrival of a constable who should forthwith note carefully its appearance and all surrounding it.’ His hand went to the place where his notebook should have been. No reason to panic, though; he would commit the details to memory. Countenance bluish and revealing unmistakable signs of pain. Eyes bolting open. Teeth bared and clenched. Body contorted, with legs bent unnaturally from the fall. Hands outspread but tensed, like claws. Body found on a straw mattress below the star trap. Pieces of broken glass scattered about nearby. That would do for the present. Time was too precious to waste over details. What next? ‘If he suspects that death was caused by violence he should not move the body or allow any part of the clothing or any article about it to be touched or moved by any person until the arrival of an Inspector, who should be sent for by messenger.’ Devilish difficult. Cribb would pass for an Inspector, of course. He was always telling everyone he carried all the responsibility without the rank. But contacting him through a messenger was next to impossible; the trap-man who had first reported Lola’s death had gone away complaining of dizziness, leaving him alone with the body. What could he do by himself? Stop the show and ask ‘Is there a detective sergeant in the house?’ A question like that in this hall was liable to start a stampede for the exit.

So Thackeray decided to dispense with the messenger and fetch Cribb himself. That meant abandoning the body for a few minutes and taking the risk of someone interfering while he was gone, but really there was no other possibility. What disturbed him more was the prospect of venturing among the audience in his yellow livery.

He opened a door leading to the canteen. From the atmosphere of noisy gaiety it was clear that the news of Lola’s death had not reached there. Girls of the chorus sat as usual on the knees of army officers, one hand waving a glass of gin, the other trifling with regimental whiskers. Thackeray threaded his way through, dreading that at any moment the red-headed Miss who had helped him with his scene-mounting would spring up from somewhere and fling herself upon him. However, he reached the other side unmolested and mounted the stairs leading to the auditorium.

Fortunately the turn in progress on the stage had the undivided concentration of the audience. A young woman he did not recognise was giving a male impersonation. The song was innocuous enough; indeed, he had often hummed the melody himself as he pounded the streets of Bermondsey. But the emphasis the singer was giving to certain words quite distorted the original meaning but delighted the audience, ready by now to see innuendoes in anything. Thackeray could not hope to slip past the tables completely unnoticed in his satin, but at least the entertainment drew most eyes away. His main concern now was whether even Cribb was too caught up in the performance to notice him.

It was when he was almost mid-way through the cluster of tables that he first thought he recognised one of the audience. Bald head, aquiline profile, a good crop of whiskers. Yes, a face he knew from somewhere, though it was difficult to trace the connexion. No friend of his could afford champagne by the magnum and a courtesan dripping with diamonds. Not wishing to appear rude, he looked away— and spotted another face which he recognised at once. Two others at the table were familiar too, though not the female companions they had with them. He now knew all four men from a period he had once spent with B Division, Westminster. What had brought them here he did not like to contemplate, for they were Honourable Members of a quite different House, where music halls were spoken of as dens of iniquity.

When he reached the promenade Cribb was waiting for him, hands on hips, eyes aflame with all the fury of an officer confronting a deserter in the field of battle.

‘Sarge, you’ve got your case,’ Thackeray blurted out, ‘and I think it may be murder.’

Within a minute they were entering the trap-floor, where someone was bending over Lola’s body. Above their heads the boards thundered to the rhythm of the cancan.

‘Step aside, if you please, Mr Plunkett. We are police officers.’

The manager was so startled that he almost tipped forward on to the mattress himself. ‘You are what?’

‘If it’s identification you require, I’ll thank you to wait until I’ve examined this unfortunate young woman. Have you touched anything?’ Without waiting for a reply Cribb put his face close to Lola’s and sniffed at her mouth.

‘I merely cleared away the pieces of glass,’ said Plunkett.

‘Glass?’

‘Yes. She must have still been holding the tumbler as she came through the trap. It shattered on the floor.’

Cribb rounded on him. ‘Where are the pieces?’

‘Why I wrapped them in newspaper and put them on the ledge over there for safety.’

‘If you please, Thackeray,’ said Cribb.

The constable brought the package over. Cribb unwrapped it carefully, without touching the fragments. He sniffed several times at a circular piece that had formed the base of the tumbler. ‘This will need to be analysed. The conjurer’s fluid—what was it?’

‘Water, with a dash of cochineal for effect,’ answered Plunkett.

Cribb sniffed again. ‘It’s got a sickly sweet smell, for cochineal.’

Plunkett dipped his finger towards the glass. Cribb jerked it away. ‘I wouldn’t do that, sir.’

‘Why ever not?’

‘I’m no scientist, Mr Plunkett, but if I see a healthy young woman die in a matter of seconds and I can’t find a sign of a bullet-hole I think of poisons. And when I see the centres of the eyes dilated as these are and the cheeks this bluish colour, I go through the list of symptoms I keep in my head, sir, and I come up with Prussic Acid. If that’s what this is and you get a spot on your finger and lick it, we’ll have two corpses for post mortem tomorrow morning, not one.’

The manager was plainly impressed. He thrust his hands immediately into his pockets. ‘But I know you,’ he told Cribb, ‘and your friend. You were skulking at the back of my theatre during rehearsal yesterday, both of you. I sent you away to get some tickets, but that was for the first house, not this one. How the devil did you get in for this performance? And what is this person doing in the uniform of one of my staff?’

‘Voluntary unpaid stage-remover,’ explained Cribb. ‘If he hadn’t been here I shouldn’t have known what was going on, should I? Your audience out there still don’t know Miss Pinkus is dead.’

Plunkett’s manner changed abruptly. He put a hand on Cribb’s shoulder. ‘No need for them ever to know, eh? We can handle things discreetly between us, can’t we?’ He pulled out his wallet. ‘Dammit, this doesn’t have to be a police matter, does it?’

‘If you’re suggesting what I think you are,’ said Cribb, ‘I ought to warn you that it’s a criminal offence. We’ve our duty to do, sir, and we’ve every right to ask for your cooperation. That’s not to say we’ll stop the goings-on behind the footlights, even though I’ve serious doubts about ’em.’

‘Come, come now,’ said Plunkett. ‘It’s a private performance. Besides, there’s nothing in my show that you can’t see in other halls.’ From his look of injured innocence he might have been staging a temperance concert.

Cribb nodded. ‘I’ll grant you that, sir. Such performances can sometimes be seen in penny gaffs in the backstreets of Cairo. But I ain’t here to reminisce. Where’s the conjurer this girl worked with?’

‘Professor Virgo? I had him escorted to his dressing-room. He was more than a little upset, of course, and I didn’t want a panic backstage. As it is, only a handful of people know about this, you see.’

‘Who would they be?’

‘Why, the two trap-men who work down here, yourselves, Professor Virgo and me.’

‘What about the dead girl’s sister?’

‘Bella? Good Lord, I’d forgotten. Nobody’s told her. She’ll be down here looking—’

Cribb reacted quickly. ‘That sheet, if you please, Thackeray. She’ll be shaken enough at the news, without actually seeing the body. Will you tell her, Mr Plunkett, or shall I?’

‘I’d rather you did, if you’ve no objection.’

‘Very well. You’d better question Virgo, Thackeray. Find out what you can about the man himself, and then go over the performance with him step by step.’ In case the responsibility went to his constable’s head, he added, ‘And get your jacket and trousers on. You look ridiculous.’

Nevertheless it was with a justifiable feeling of importance that Thackeray tapped on Professor Virgo’s door a few minutes later. Constables capable of conducting important interviews were by no means thick on the ground in the Metropolitan area.

The Professor was sitting at a small dressing-table made from a tea-chest, a bottle of whisky in his left hand, and a wand in his right, with which he was moodily prodding a fat white rabbit in a hutch. Thackeray cleared his throat in a business-like way. He knew all about questioning suspects. You had to be in control from the start, establish your official status and then keep the questions going like revolver shots. ‘Detective Constable Thackeray, sir, of Scotland Yard. I have some questions for you.’

‘Questions?’ Professor Virgo twitched in surprise. So did the rabbit.

‘Will you kindly tell me how long you’ve been on the bill at the Paragon, sir?’ A good opening question, requiring a short statement of fact. Get them into the way of repeating facts and they’d be hard put to introduce evasions later.

There was a lengthy pause.

‘You heard me, sir?’

Several seconds later, Virgo spoke: ‘W-when I am nervous I develop an im-p-p—’

‘—pediment?’ God, what appalling luck! His first major interrogation and he had landed a stutterer.

‘About six weeks is the answer to your qu-qu—’

‘I believe you’re a sword-swallower by training?’

Virgo nodded.

‘And you had an accident?’

‘At the Ti-Ti—’

‘Tivoli Garden. Then what happened, sir?’

‘S-s-sore—’

‘—throat. Yes, I can believe that, sir. You was taken to Philbeach House in Kensington, wasn’t you?’ Putting words into their mouths was not the recommended procedure, but this interview was liable to last all night if he didn’t.

Another nod.

‘Someone there offered you an engagement at the Paragon. Am I correct? Good. Now who was that?’

‘Mrs B-B—’

‘Body. Thank you. Now where did you first meet the Pinkus sisters—at Philbeach House? Right. Did the suggestion that they worked with you come from them or from you?’

‘From them.’

‘I see. And when did you first appear with them at the Paragon?’

Virgo held up his fingers. ‘Th-th—’

‘Three days ago? No? Three weeks. Very good. Are you still feeling nervous? What’s the name of your rabbit? Never mind. Look here, Professor Virgo, I need to hear your account of what happened tonight, from the moment you got to the theatre. Are you able to manage that? Have a drop of your whisky. Not for me, thanks. I’m on duty, you see.’

When he had upended the bottle for several seconds, Virgo seemed to recover some of his confidence. He was a decent-looking man, with regular features, but desperately thin. He wouldn’t last long in Newgate, Thackeray reflected.

‘G-got here about eleven. They didn’t want us here while the other show was in p-p—’

‘—progress.’

‘I wasn’t the first turn so I had some time to get my things ready. I put them outside the door here for the p-propman to collect and take downstairs.’

‘That would be your swords,’ recalled Thackeray, ‘and your table, with the wand, your hat, gloves and the glass of magic fluid. What was in that fluid, sir?’

‘W-water, and a little colouring.’ Virgo produced a small bottle of cochineal.

‘May I have it, sir? I’ll see that it’s returned. Now when were your props taken to the stage?’

‘During the m-m—’

‘Monologue. I see. Do you know who moved them?’

Virgo shook his head.

‘So they was probably waiting in the wings about twenty minutes, That’s a long time. Don’t people ever tamper with a conjurer’s tricks when they’re lying about like that, sir?’

‘Oh yes. You get lots of jokers in the theatre. That’s what happened to my swords at the Ti-Ti—’

‘Tivoli Gardens. Yes, sir. Then why did you allow your props to go down there so long before you did?’

Virgo raised his finger confidentially. ‘Ah, there wasn’t much they could do with those few things, was there? They could only add something to the magical fluid, and that’s a chance you take. Why, my assistant once swallowed a glass of d-disappearing liquid and found later it was dosed with ca-ca-cas—’

‘Cascara.’ Both men smiled. ‘So you came into the wings during the transformation scene,’ Thackeray went on, ‘and waited on the side opposite your table, which was brought on by er—a propman.’

‘Yes. I went through the tricks as usual. The swords and the fire-eating. Then I introduced Miss Lola. It’s odd you know. I never s-stutter during a per-per—’

‘—formance,’ said Thackeray. ‘Did anything unusual happen?’

‘Not really. I handed her the drink after she had taken off the cloak. Then I made sure that she—do you know the trick?’

‘She stood on the trap,’ said Thackeray in a superior way.

‘Yes. She drank the water, I shielded her with the cloak and she dropped through the trap as usual.’

‘But she screamed,’ said Thackeray.

‘Yes. That was the moment of her heart-attack, I suppose, poor child. She must have been terrified by the occasion. I don’t think I’ve p-played to such a distinguished audience in my life, either.’

‘What happened then?’

‘I finished the act and when I came off, the man from the trap-floor told me she was dead. I was speechless.’

‘I can believe that,’ Thackeray assured him. ‘A very tragical thing to happen, sir.’

‘A choker,’ said Virgo. ‘I shall have to change my act now. That trick is impossible without twin s-sisters. And s-sword-swallowing isn’t enough to keep a house like this one happy. They aren’t content until there’s a girl on the stage showing a plentiful amount of l-l—’

‘Lower limb?’ said Thackeray.

Virgo nodded. ‘So you see I can’t p-perform with Miss Bella on her own.’ He tapped the wand on his forehead. ‘Perhaps I could saw her in ha-ha—’

‘I shouldn’t,’ said Thackeray hastily. ‘There ain’t much future in that sort of trick, sir. Well, I’m grateful for your answers to my inquiries. I must get back to my sergeant now. If he should want to speak to you, where will you be, sir?’

‘In here for at least an hour,’ said Virgo with a note of self-pity in his voice. ‘I have to wait for the p-private omnibus to convey us all back to Philbeach H-H—’

‘Thank you, sir.’

Finding the trap-floor deserted, Thackeray eventually tracked down his superior in the quick-change room. One of the scene-shifters was stationed at the door to repel intruders. For the rest of that evening quick changes would have to be performed in the wings, a contingency unlikely to cause embarrassment to anyone at the Paragon. Thackeray established his identity by flourishing his notebook—what a comfort to have it on one’s person again!—and was admitted.

‘There you are, Constable,’ said Cribb. ‘I was starting to wonder if you were lost in the dressing-rooms.’

Thackeray returned a sharp look. ‘The questioning took longer than you’d think, Sergeant. The Professor had a defect of speech.’

‘I’m not surprised. If you swallowed swords for a living you’d probably impair your faculties in time.’

‘That’s a risk I don’t propose to take, Sarge,’ said Thackeray firmly, now on his guard against any suggestion of Cribb’s. He repeated Virgo’s story, referring only briefly to his notes. ‘So I can’t believe he would deliberately poison Miss Pinkus,’ he concluded, ‘seeing that he’d only known the girl three weeks. Besides, she and Bella was needed for the disappearing act. It won’t be easy finding replacements. And in case the thought had crossed your mind, Sarge,’ he added, grinning, but still with a certain wariness, ‘I don’t happen to have a twin brother.’

‘Even if you had, Thackeray, I can’t picture him in spangles and tights,’ Cribb reassured him. ‘No, from what I gathered when I questioned our friend Plunkett, the Professor ain’t likely to be looking for replacements. He’s a pure-bred sword-swallower and fire-eater. The disappearing trick was put in at the insistence of the management. The patrons don’t take to any kind of turn, however excellent, without its provision of undraped female flesh. But Virgo only performed the disappearing trick under protest. When you’re shoving swords down your own throat to impress an audience you don’t like to sully your act with conjuring-tricks, or so Plunkett tells me.’

‘That puts it in a new light, Sarge. Now you mention it, he didn’t seem particularly put out that he wouldn’t be able to do the trick again, but I didn’t see no significance in it. I think I was too occupied trying to encourage him not to stutter. I’m rather short on experience of interviewing suspects, I’m afraid.’

It was Cribb’s turn to grin. ‘We’ll remedy that, Constable. I must be off to report Miss Pinkus’s death in the right quarter, but I want you to stay here and collect statements from everyone who was on that stage tonight up to the moment of Lola’s death. You can tell ’em you’re in the Force. Say you’re carrying out routine investigations, consequent upon the sudden decease of Miss Pinkus. It’ll take you most of the night, but don’t let anyone go until you’ve questioned ’em. That’ll give you some experience all right. Oh, and get statements from the orchestra as well, will you?’