Anatomy of Murder

8

Harriet pushed open the doors at the end of the corridor, and escaping the pandemonium of the auditorium, found herself in the chaos of the backstage. She fought her way past the Roman women of the chorus weeping and fainting and holding each up in small groups. The god she had watched descend from the clouds at the opening of the scene sat on a plaster boulder in his costume, his Olympian wreath bent out of shape and his heavy makeup running. He rocked from side to side. Manzerotti suddenly appeared beside her and took her arm. He still wore gold, though his magnificent plumes he held now in his hand.

“Mrs. Westerman. God be praised.” His black eyes had a glitter to them, and there was sweat on his upper lip. “Come with me.” He took her arm and dragged her through the crowds and across the stage. The auditorium was still breaking under waves of noise. He dragged her just behind the side panel stage right and released her.

Harwood was on his knees, his head in his hands. In front of him, like a mockery of the Pieta, Morgan knelt, Isabella’s body hauled up across her thighs and chest. There was blood everywhere, blackening the blue satin of her bodice and skirts. Only her face and neck were clean of it, though they were heavy with her stage makeup: the skin dead white, her open eyes heavily lined, her mouth wide with red paint. Her natural hair had escaped its pins and fell in black about her temples. Harriet noticed the diamonds in her ears.

Getting down on her knees, Harriet crept toward them, as if approaching a holy and dreadful thing.

“Morgan?”

The old woman’s head flicked up and stared at her. Harriet crept closer and put her hand around Isabella’s wrist. Still warm. “Morgan? It’s Harriet Westerman. What happened?”

Morgan shifted her grip on the girl’s body, holding it still closer to her with a keening whine, and continued to rock her. Her face was flushed and so flooded with tears her skin seemed honey-glazed. She touched Isabella’s cheek with a fingertip, then seeing that she had dirtied the skin with blood, tried to wipe the mark off with her sleeve, smearing Isabella’s rouge.

“Morgan? Can you tell me what happened?” Harriet found herself becoming oddly calm. The other clamor of the place dropped away. There was just her in the world and these two women, one dead, one grieving for the dead. She looked swiftly along the length of the body. Two wounds. One in her belly that had bled hard and fast. The other was a neat straight line above her heart. It had hardly bled at all.

The wood around the lock splintered at the second attempt. Crowther nodded his thanks to Harwood’s man, and stepped into the room. He became still at once. The fire behind them was burning with a fierce light; in front of it, at right angles to the door, was a tin bathtub. Bywater was in it, eyes closed, naked and very white. He had slumped down far enough so that his shoulders were underwater. The firelight swum over it. It was the same color as Graves’s Madeira. One arm hanging over the lip of the tub had prevented the dead man from slipping entirely under the water. The wrist was an angry red mouth. Crowther had time to note that the cut had been made along the artery rather than across it before he was distracted by the sound of Harwood’s servant vomiting in the corridor behind him.

“Molloy? How long will you be at this?”

“Hush, woman. Street door you could open with a fish bone. This one into the family rooms is a little more fancy. . little bit more sophisticated, you might say. Needs more than a tickle and a slap to get this lady to open up.”

Jocasta folded her arms. He felt her look even in the darkness of the lobby and laughed softly. “Patience, Mrs. Bligh. I’m nearly there.”

Crowther waited till the sounds of sickness had passed, drew a handkerchief from his pocket and threw it over his shoulder without pausing in his careful scrutiny of the room.

“Go back to His Majesty’s,” he told the other man. “Tell Harwood and Mrs. Westerman that Bywater is dead. Tell them to send to Bow Street and inform them of what has passed, and to Justice Pither on Great Suffolk Street and tell him Mr. Crowther would be happy to meet him here tomorrow morning early and inform him of developments. Then send two men here to guard the place. I will pay them. Make sure they have stronger stomachs than you yourself.”

He hardly heard the mumbled thanks and apology. The man’s footsteps retreated down the stairs at a pace. Crowther set his cane in front of him and leaned on it. But made no further move.

“There, Mrs. Bligh! You’re in. Just pull it to sharp as you come out, and no one will know different. I’m away and good luck to you.”

Harwood uncovered his face and looked at Harriet. “I must help get the people out.”

Harriet did not take her eyes away from Morgan. “Do. I will stay with them.” She heard him stand and move off. “Morgan? What happened?”

Morgan looked at Harriet again, but this time Harriet thought she did so with some understanding.

“He killed my little bird, Mrs. Westerman.”

Harriet came forward till she could slip her arm around the old lady’s shoulders. The woman leaned into her and wept. Harriet almost slipped under the weight of her.

“Who killed her, Morgan?”

“Bywater! That fool, Bywater! She’d asked to meet him in the scene room after the second act when it would be a little quieter. He’s been strange, the last day or two.”

Harriet put her other arm across them, holding Morgan and the dead Isabella in a loose embrace. “Did she see he was not in the pit?”

“Of course, of course. Though it didn’t seem to surprise her, and she still swore he’d be there to meet her. Said he’d have to be there.”

“Do you know why she was to meet him, Morgan?”

She felt rather than saw the old woman shake her head. “No, no. I thought perhaps he was angry with her. Her all followed and courted, and invited places he ain’t. She smiles at the rich men, but it’s her work. She means nothing by it. Do you, little bird?”

Harriet became aware that she was not alone in listening to Morgan. A couple of the corps de ballet were standing behind them, their heads hanging. Two or three of the chorus singers, the leader of the opera band sitting on the bare stage, his violin dead in his hands. There was a stir in the crowd. One of the servants of the place approached, pale, shaking, out of breath, with Crowther’s soiled handkerchief still in his hand. He knelt beside her, whispering in her ear.

Harriet nodded and said to him, “Let Crowther know what has happened here and say that I shall wait for him.”

Jocasta slid into the room like a cat sneaking into a dairy and pulled the door closed just behind her. Then she made for the gray shadow of the side table. The lip was certainly thicker than it needed to be. She slipped her fingers below it, began to feel along the length hoping her heart would calm enough not to leap out of her chest where she stood. It was not as easy as in the dream. There seemed to be no magic spot to make a secret jump free like a jack-in-the-box. For a second Jocasta thought of turning and running and calling the dreams traitor. But there was something wrong in the make of this. She began to feel along the way a little lower down. Fingering for weakness, for an unhappy joint.

The servant retreated and earnest whispers began to rustle among the groups around them.

Morgan looked drunk, bemused with grief. “What has happened?” she said.

“Bywater is dead,” Harriet said simply.

“Good. By his own hand?”

“It seems that way.”

Morgan held Isabella up in her arms again and kissed her forehead. Harriet looked around them. There was a face that looked familiar, young and tear-streaked in the corner. She recognized the assistant from the scene room.

“Boyle! We are in need of your help. Fetch something to use as a stretcher and two men to carry it.” He nodded and turned to go. Harriet said more softly to Morgan: “Let us take her back to her room, Morgan, where she may be more private.”

Morgan gave no sign of having heard, but kissing Issy’s forehead again said softly to the cooling corpse, “We shall make you comfortable now, my sweetheart. Did you hear all the shouting and Bravos? Did you hear them calling for you even when the ballet was begun? While you hurried off to see that silly man. But we must rest now, my love. Come to your room and we will make you cozy.”

Crowther waited till he was sure that he could draw the plan of the room from memory, then stepped into it. He walked the edges of the space. The arrangement of the place was not unlike Fitzraven’s, though the house had none of the pretensions to civility of Mrs. Girdle’s establishment. A clavichord and desk. The latter was covered in manuscript paper. There were many beginnings, many scratched out or torn. On top of them all lay a sheet which Crowther carefully picked up, read and folded into his pocket.

Jocasta’s fingers almost missed it. Then she paused and set her hands either side of the circular top. She breathed deep, then gave it a sharp twist. With a little judder of protest the top turned, making the bowl that sat in its center rattle in its place. The sides of the table opened up like a flower, revealing four neat drawers, shaped like petals. Two were empty. Two had rolls of paper in them, done up with string. She pulled one out and unrolled it. Writing, and plenty of it. For a moment she was still, then taking two sheets and laying them on top of the table, she curled up the others again and laid them back in the drawer. With a start she noticed the little brooch that Kate had been so pleased with. She was just reaching for it as if she was in a dream again when she went very still. Footsteps. A woman’s and the front door creaking open. She looked about her. The room seemed suddenly bare and small. Her eyes caught on the door. There was a rattle of a key, a pause. The handle began to turn.

Mr. Harwood himself and the leader of the band carried Isabella back to her room. Harriet followed behind, trying to support Morgan. She could hear words whispering around her.

“So much in love. .”

“Jealousy. . it’s killed many a man. .”

Harriet kept her head down and tried to keep the woman at her side moving forward.

When Harwood’s men found Crowther he was stooped over the body in the bathtub. He lifted his head to look at them. One stepped forward and opened and closed his mouth a few times. The lad found himself transfixed. Mr. Crowther removed his hand from the bathwater, and wiped it on the underside of his coat.

“Tell me,” he said.

The man struggled to find his voice, and on discovering it somewhere in the chill of his bones, did so.

The door was beginning to open when Jocasta heard a male shout in the corridor. The voice sounded thick and drunk, but she knew it as Molloy’s.

“Hey, lady! Give a man a drink and a dance! They’ve thrown me out upstairs!”

Now a woman’s voice. “Who are you? Who let you visit here?”

“Come on, sharp-eyes! I’ll sing you a waltz. .”

Jocasta looked about her. There was a room with a bed in it just beyond. She twisted the tabletop again, so the drawers disappeared inside, and tumbled toward the open door. The bowl rattled. With a silent curse, she turned again to grab the papers off the surface and dived back into the bedchamber, starting to wedge herself under the frame and trailing blankets as she heard a sharp slap connecting outside, followed by a laugh and the sound of a man stumbling. The front door slammed, and she heard the door to the main room opening, then closing.

“Freddy! You here? That whore upstairs has had another drunk in the place.” The door to the bedchamber opened wider, and Jocasta felt a body cross the bare light then go again.

“I’ll throw the bitch out on the street,” the voice mumbled. Jocasta tried to breathe easy. There was the sound of the flint striking and a candle flared.

When Crowther entered Isabella’s dressing room, he found the general gloom lit by twin candles set in silver, placed either side of the soprano’s head. Some manner of trestle had been set up in the middle of the room, and she lay there as if in state. Her face had been cleaned of its stage makeup, and she looked shockingly lovely in the soft white light of the flames. A sheet was drawn up to her neck. Morgan sat by her head, but did not look up from the corpse when Crowther opened the door. He saw a shift in the shadows and caught sight of Mrs. Westerman sitting in a deep armchair in the corner of the room. He inclined his head and she stood slowly, and having looked a moment at Morgan, followed him out of the room and into the corridor.

“Has everyone gone?” she said, as the door shut softly behind them.

“Harwood and some of the servants will remain tonight. And there is a constable from Bow Street at each of the entrances to the place. I understand your sister and Miss Chase left over an hour ago.”

“Morgan carried her from the scene room. The blood trail runs all the way to the wings.”

“What was her intention?” Crowther asked.

“I cannot say. I think she was become a little mad. She knew Isabella had to be on stage and took her there. I am not sure she even knew she was dead until she set her down and saw how she was covered in blood.” Harriet paused and bit her lip, then added, “Did he kill himself?”

“We shall talk of that later, Mrs. Westerman. But first there is something I must show you. Something rather strange is happening.”

He led her in silence through the darkened lobby and past Mr. Harwood’s office to the deserted coffee rooms that overlooked Hay Market. Mr. Harwood was at the window. On seeing them come in he moved to one side without comment, and Crowther guided Harriet to his former place. She looked out. There was a crowd outside, largely silent, and any that spoke did so in hushed voices.

It seemed every class of Londoner was represented in the mass of people. There were boys in ragged coats and rag-bound feet, neat-looking servant women, standing with their arms linked. The local watchman, leathery and decrepit, rested his weight on his stick. Women in silk and men in evening dress stood in small groups, and as Harriet watched, two sedan chairs stopped and a prosperous-looking gentleman stepped out of one, and handed his respectable-looking wife out of the other. But it was not this that drew a sigh from Harriet and made her lift her hand to her mouth. The flower women stood with their baskets empty, the boys were curled up across the road cutting paper as fast as they could and putting them into the hands of the men and women who approached them. The pavement was covered in roses; all along the front of His Majesty’s and ankle-deep in places, the pavement was covered in yellow roses.