The Proper Treatment of Bloodstains

16

Bunty woke me with one of her most luxurious yawns, one which slid down several octaves from a whine to a growl, and I was glad to be wakened; my sleep had been plagued by the kind of unpleasant dreams one cannot quite remember but cannot quite shake off either. Alec called my name and I opened my eyes and gazed around the little room. It was awash with morning light and alive with dancing dust motes at which Bunty started snapping, trampling over the bed without regard to the tender parts of her mistress under her paws.

‘One moment,’ I called back and sat up, shoving Bunty off the bed with my feet. Perhaps it was not a dream, this thing that was nagging at me, but rather something I had forgotten or something I had to do and deep down was dreading. I looked around the room for clues, but I knew even as I did so that it was not that sort of a something, not a watch I had not wound nor a letter I had to answer. After all, I thought, shaking my head, I did not even know if this nagging something was in the past or the future. It was, somehow, neither. It was, in a very odd way, somewhere else entirely. It must, I decided, be a dream after all.

Besides, my work here at 31 Heriot Row was done. It had not been my finest hour. I had suspected Stanley from the start, had watched him, had become more and more sure of his guilt every day and yet had done nothing about it until it was too late to bring him to justice. Even if I had really been Miss Rossiter, Mrs Balfour’s new maid and nothing more, I should have spoken up and told Superintendent Hardy that very first morning to take Stanley in and press the truth out of him. As a so-called detective, supposed to be helping, I could not account for how I could have let it end this way.

There was a soft knock on the door and Alec put his head around it.

‘Dan?’ he said. ‘Are you all right? I can hear you sighing from out here.’

‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Well, of course, actually, no, I’m not fine. I’m kicking myself.’

‘Can’t think why,’ Alec said, ‘but – having slept on it all – have you at least accepted that the mystery is solved and the case is closed?’

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ I said. ‘I mean, yes, of course.’

‘So we can go home?’

‘Home?’ I repeated. ‘Yes. Yes, I think perhaps I should. This place…’ I looked around myself again. What was it?

‘This place what?’ Alec said.

‘I don’t know,’ I answered. ‘I feel rather odd this morning, that’s all.’

‘Bad dreams?’

‘That’s probably all it is.’

When he had gone, taking Bunty and Millie with him for a turn around the garden, I made every effort to shake myself. (Nanny Palmer, in full epigrammatic flight, had once shared with me the view that if we spent all our time looking back at yesterday, we would be roundly spanked by tomorrow – and although I had had to suppress my giggles at the time, I had come to see the wisdom.) And perhaps Stanley’s guilt had not really been so very clear at the time as it was now, with the glare of hindsight shining upon it. No! I told myself. Stop that! It was clear. It had been perfectly obvious to me from the start and I would not allow myself to wriggle out of my discomfort by pretending otherwise. Besides, I could not edit my memories to suit myself because I had a record of them.

I laid a hand out and picked the topmost book from where I had left them on my nightstand. My much-ridiculed notebooks, I thought, as I flipped through the pages. There were my first impressions of the household: Lollie – sweet and confused, inclined not to believe her own experiences but rather to cling on to her hopes even in the face of bitter experience to the contrary; Mrs Hepburn – sharp-tongued but good-hearted, kind to her charges and a later note squeezed in – food sent back and tricks played – soup/water, goose/mouse; Eldry – shy, easily frightened, PF foisted attentions against will. Unstable – stains/washing find out more?; and Pip Balfour himself - unassuming, friendly, shirtsleeves! Model yacht!! Hard to see beast L. speaks of. Seems absol. unexceptional & pleasant yg man. Brilliant actor???

Stanley must be further on. Yes, that was right, I had not set down my thoughts about him until after the meeting in the carriage house that day. I picked up a second and a third notebook and found it at last. I turned the page towards the window and began reading.

Stanley. Footman. Smug, boastful (esp. re superior training), ingratiating, hates blood. Hints but knows nothing of import. Hates PB, because father/TB/visit. This had been scored out and changed to: would never pay TB visit – fears blood. Could not stab someone. Conclude: innocent as has always seemed (more’s the pity). I stared at the page in front of me. I traced the words with my finger and spoke them under my breath. ‘Innocent as has always seemed’?

So where were the notes about my suspicions? About what I had thought of Stanley all along? I got out of bed and walked up and down the bare floor staring at the journal in my hands. How could such lies be there in my book, in my writing, when I had not written them and never would write them, and where was what I had written, what I must have written, about all of his blunders and my growing certainty? I stopped pacing and threw the book down onto the bedcovers.

I was still standing in the middle of the floor when Alec came back to the door again.

‘Dan?’ he said. ‘Are you still in h-?’ He came right into the room and took my arms in his hands. ‘Dandy?’

‘Alec,’ I said, and I was surprised at the smallness of the voice that came out of me. ‘Something is wrong.’ I led him over to the bed and sat him down on it, opening the notebook and laying it on his lap.

‘I didn’t write that,’ I said, pointing.

Alec skimmed the page quickly and then looked up at me.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure.’

Alec shut the book and looked closely at the cover.

‘It’s your book, though, isn’t it? I recognise it.’ I nodded. It was certainly mine. Alec opened it again and peered at the binding. ‘It’s a proper page,’ he said. ‘It hasn’t been bodged in with glue. And it’s your writing, darling. I’d know it anywhere. I always said you take too many notes. And now there are so many you can’t even remember writing them. Lesson for next time: less writing.’

I nodded. Writing, I thought. Handwriting. Names signed in writing. I was close to it now; I had almost caught hold of the end of it. And yes! There it was.

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Listen to this.’ A will in Pip Balfour’s writing, referring to a cousin no one has ever heard of and a wife who probably did not exist, and bearing the signatures of two women who cannot be found. And a note in Stanley’s writing accusing himself of a crime he could not have committed – because of the blood – and left to prove a suicide he could not have committed – more blood – and now this. A journal entry in my own writing which I did not write, saying things I did not think and omitting things I did.’

Alec whistled.

‘I’m sure I’m right,’ I said. ‘Alec, there’s a forger at the bottom of this.’

‘Hang on, though,’ Alec said. ‘The will, I grant you, is worth forging and the signatures to it, obviously. And the confession. But why would anyone forge a note in your personal papers?’

‘I don’t know why. I’m very confused about things this morning. I feel almost… drunk.’

‘Well, you looked at least “almost drunk” when you came up from your cosy time in the pantry last night,’ Alec said. ‘Perhaps it hasn’t worn off yet. What were you drinking?’

‘I can’t remember,’ I said, and ignored Alec’s tutting and rolling eyes. ‘But I’m sure about this.’

‘A forger, though,’ he said. ‘I always thought that a forger had to copy what lay before him and that it took long hours of practice and draft after draft to get it right.’

‘So?’

‘Well, just that that would do for a will that could be worked upon in secret for as long as it took to perfect it, but could a forger dash off a suicide note or slip an entry into a journal without a single crossing-out or false step to betray him? It seems more like some kind of party trick or magic turn, not part of a carefully planned murder. Sorry, darling, I think this particular leap of genius can be cured by two aspirin and a prairie oyster.’ He gave me a very unsympathetic grin and left again.

His words, though, had left their mark upon me. Party trick, he had said. Magic turn. Words which sent me scurrying to put on my clothes, drag a brush through my hair and fly down and down and down the four flights, back to the servants’ floor. If anyone had heard of such a thing it would be Mr Faulds, I told myself, for had he not spent the last part of the evening before regaling me with tales of impressionists and ventriloquists, mind readers and spirit writers, and all the ways there were to fool a gaping audience about who one was or where or what one could see or touch or do? If this feat of forgery were possible, then Mr Faulds would surely have come across it somewhere along the way. And besides, the thought of pouring even a little of this out to Mr Faulds was as comforting as a warm blanket and a mug of cocoa. Mr Faulds would help me.

He was at the head of the table, in his waistcoat with a cotton breakfast napkin tucked into his collar against splashes of yolk on his black tie, but he gave me a sunny smile as I rushed in and did not hesitate to follow me out into the passageway when I said I needed a word with him. He ushered me into his pantry with the utmost courtesy and I sat down again on the seat I had occupied the previous evening.

‘It’s about writing,’ I said. ‘Gosh, this is all so muddled. But it just occurred to me that no one who saw the will being written is here to confirm it. And obviously, poor Stanley is not here to say whether he wrote the note that was found beside him, and there’s another thing too – it doesn’t signify but it started me wondering – and I just think that maybe there’s something peculiar about all this suspicious writing of things and I wondered if you had ever heard of anything like that, in your music-hall days. One of these clever tricksters you were talking about last night or something? Could such a thing be done, do you know?’

Mr Faulds was staring at me with his eyes very wide and his mouth just slightly open, but I could see that behind the frozen look on his face his mind was whirring just as fast as mine.

‘What?’ I said. ‘What have you thought of? Has something struck you too? What is it?’

‘What on earth put such an idea into your head?’ said Mr Faulds.

‘Am I right?’ I said. ‘Have I solved it?’

‘Solved it?’ said Mr Faulds. ‘Why on earth would you be looking to solve anything, Fanny?’ He was gazing at me with the oddest expression and I remembered that Fanny Rossiter was not in the business of solving things. He did not seem to disapprove, though. His regard was sorrowful, as though I had filled him with some regretful sadness of some kind.

‘Fanny,’ he said, ‘listen to me. Just listen. I never heard of such a thing. And you can be sure I would have.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Really?’

Mr Faulds tapped his fingers against his cheek and thought hard, but he was soon shaking his head.

‘You must be thinking of the spirit writers I was telling you about. But they had huge sheets of white card and the “spirit pens” – all done with a wire, you know – were great black things that made writing you could see from the back of the gallery.’

‘Oh,’ I said again. ‘I really thought I’d got a hold of something there.’

‘Listen, Fanny,’ he said again. ‘Just hush now and listen to me.’

But before he could go on there was a rap at the door. A spasm of annoyance passed over his face as he barked out permission to enter. It was Eldry, looking startled at his tone.

‘Beg pardon, Mr Faulds,’ she said, ‘but that Osborne, Aunt Goitre’s chauffeur, is asking urgently for Miss Rossiter.’

Mr Faulds looked very slowly between Eldry and me before he replied.

‘You’d better run along then, Fanny my girl. But you need to tell that young man how to behave himself when he’s a guest below stairs in another man’s house. You tell him from me.’

‘He’s in a funny mood this morning,’ said Eldry when the door was shut behind us. I nodded but did not reply. Alec was standing in the open garden doorway, smoking, and turned round when he saw me, throwing his cigarette out onto the grass and starting up the stairs. I followed him. When we were out of Eldry’s earshot I asked him what the trouble was.

‘I was worried about you,’ he said. ‘Phyllis said you came panting in and dragged Mr Faulds from his bacon and eggs and disappeared with him. I didn’t know where you’d got to.’

We were on the ground floor and I veered off the stairway and into the small back parlour which I knew would be empty once the fire was laid for the day.

‘Never mind where I had got to,’ I said, when we were inside with the door locked behind us, ‘ask me where I’ve got to now. I’ve got a lot further in the last five minutes, I can tell you. I went to ask Mr Faulds about the forgery because last night he was telling me all about card tricksters and voice throwers and people who could guess objects held up in the audience when they were blindfold and all that sort of thing. Now, he was adamant he had never heard of such a thing. He thought long and hard and drew a blank. But I’ve just realised something.’

Alec gave a loud tut and rolled his eyes, for he hates these dramatic pauses when I do them even though he does them himself every chance that comes.

‘Mr Ernest Faulds,’ I went on, ‘has said that he has no singing voice, and has “heard” lots of music-hall songs over the years – “heard”, mind; not “played” – and spoke of comics as though of a separate race and said he had no time for magic acts and is not much of a dancer and in short…’

‘In short, has never said outright what it was he did onstage,’ said Alec.

‘Precisely. And did not like it one little bit when I started talking about trick writing. And here’s another thing: one time I teased Faulds about “neglecting his talents” working as a butler instead of treading the boards and he shut down like a trap. I couldn’t understand why I had offended him so, but now I see.’

‘How could forging handwriting make a stage act?’ Alec said.

‘How can card tricks?’ I countered. ‘The question is how can we find out? Or do we just go to Hardy with what we’ve got and tell him Faulds is the man? That he forged the will and the suicide note and killed Pip and Stanley?’

Now, Alec actually screwed his face up, so little did he think of my brilliant leap of reasoning.

‘I shall come to the police station with you and wait outside,’ he said, ‘but if you want to march into Hardy’s office and shout “Ta-dah!” it will have to be a solo act, I’m afraid.’

‘What a shame it’s Sunday,’ I said. ‘I could have telephoned to the stage-door of the Swansea Alhambra or the Leicester Whatever and asked if anyone remembered him. Ernest Faulds the Forger. It even sounds like a music-hall turn.’

‘Well,’ said Alec, ‘I really don’t think this is going to go anywhere, Dandy, but if you’re determined, you should know that Sunday is the busiest day backstage, all hands on deck for the departure of the outgoing artistes and the arrival of the next lot for the week to come. And also, if Fabulous Faulds the Forger played Leicester and Swansea then he would surely have played the Edinburgh Empire too.’

‘Will you come too?’ I said. ‘I’ve never knocked on a stage-door before.’

‘Nor have I!’ said Alec, just too emphatically to be quite plausible, and I smirked, wondering which curled and powdered little songbird had tempted him into hanging around with red roses and invitations to supper. ‘But I’ll happily tag along.’

There was indeed a great deal of activity in the lane behind the Empire Theatre, with trunks and hampers being carried out to carts waiting at the roadside, and stagehands trotting up and down between the backstage proper and the workshop which lay at the farthest end of the lane. There was even the inevitable argument going on out front on Nicholson Square, between the men in the carts and the men in the armbands.

‘I’m nowt to do wi’ no carters’ union,’ said a pugnacious-looking little man who was holding one end of an enormous trunk whose other end already rested on the flat bed of his cart. The horse in the shafts was looking back at the commotion with eyes which had seen it all. ‘I work for Moss’s Empires and I’m already having enough trouble today trying to get this show over to Glasgow with no bloody trains and no bloody buses and not even a barge on the canal. And so help me if you don’t get your neb out you’ll not recognise it next time you look in a glass, I can tell you.’

Alec and I sidled past as casually as we could and just as casually mounted the stage-door steps and entered the theatre. I sniffed deeply, expecting some romantic aroma from all I had heard and read on the matter, but there was just must and paint and lamp oil and I concluded that one would need to be devoted already to all things theatrical for such a smell to quicken one’s blood.

‘Name?’ said a voice at our side, making both Alec and me jump. We turned to see an elderly man wearing a velvet blanket around his shoulders like a shawl, clutching a tattered sheet of paper and looking at us over the top of a pair of half-moon spectacles.

‘Mrs Gilver,’ I said, ‘and this is Mr Osborne. Are you the stage-manager?’

‘No, no, no,’ said the little man. ‘I’m the door-keeper. What name’ll we have you down by? Here – you’re not amateurs, are you? We haven’t come to that?’

‘Oh, no – you misunderstand,’ I said, ignoring Alec’s quiet chuckle. ‘We’re not an act. Goodness me, no! We’ve come to talk to… well, you, I suppose. How fortunate that we came upon you right away.’

‘You’re not an act?’ said the man, looking between the two of us and the two dogs. ‘Pity. I’d have liked to see it. And God knows what we’ll end up with Tuesday night, because half our next week’s show was coming up from Bradford and the other half was coming down from Dundee and now Mr Moss is having to scrape up what he can from round-about. But no amateurs so far, I’m glad to say.’ He turned away in the middle of this and shuffled back towards a small office, more of a cubby-hole really, set to one side of the door. His shawl, at the back, trailed almost to the floor and ended in a tassel. At second glance it might have been a curtain; certainly one edge showed puckered fading as though it had been gathered onto tape in an earlier incarnation. This, I thought, boded very well, for surely toddling about draped in old curtains was the sort of thing one would come to after long years. If he had taken this job the month before and was just settling into it, such behaviour would not have occurred to him.

He let himself down into a battered armchair inside his little kingdom with a rheumatic groan and puffed in and out a bit until he had recovered from his excursion.

‘So what can I do for you?’ he said. ‘Autographs, is it? Who’re you after?’ He gestured around himself at the walls where photographs, half-covered with fading endearments in looped handwriting, were tacked up six deep almost to the ceiling. Right behind his head in pride of place was a garishly tinted portrait of Marie Lloyd blowing a kiss.

‘We’re after someone in a manner of speaking,’ I said, ‘but not an autograph. We’re trying to find someone, or find out if he ever appeared here.’

‘Well, you’ve come to the right place,’ said the man. He stuck out his hand and gripped first mine, then Alec’s, then a paw each of Bunty and Millie. ‘Joe Crow,’ he said. ‘Fifty years and counting. I was here the night the old Empire burned down and I was first back in after the painters left when they finished the new one. There hasn’t been an act through here since 1876 that I don’t remember.’ He tapped his head (a remarkable red colour for anyone, let alone someone who was seventy if a day). ‘It’s all up here. Ask away.’

‘You are a godsend,’ said Alec, wringing his hand again and this time passing a folded banknote as he did so. This is the kind of thing one is always very glad to have Alec around for; I could never manage it without fumbles and blushes. I didn’t see what denomination of note it was but it caused old Joe to turn up the gas ring under a tea kettle and to gather three cups, wiping them out with a corner of his velvet curtain.

‘It’s a man by the name of Ernest Faulds?’ Joe shook his head. ‘Or perhaps he used a stage-name. But we do know what the act was. It was forgery of some kind. Copy-cat handwriting. Off-the-cuff, perhaps taking members of the audience and mimicking their hands?’ Joe was shaking his head again, very determinedly.

‘And this act said he did a turn at the Empire?’ he said. ‘Someone’s been having you on, missus. I’ve never seen it. I’m not saying you couldn’t work it up to an act if you put your mind to it – that would all depend on the patter – but I’ve never seen such a thing. Not here.’

He sounded horribly sure and I looked at Alec only to find him gazing back at me.

‘Ernest Faulds,’ I said again, slowly, hoping that something would jog a memory out of the old fellow. ‘A Cornishman. Very pleasant-looking chap, turned-up nose, red lips, twinkling eyes, wavy black hair.’

‘Sounds like a comic,’ said Joe.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I know he’s not a comic or a song-and-dance man. I only wish I had a picture of him to show you.’

The kettle was boiling and Joe was spooning great heaps of tea into a battered pot.

‘Coals to Newcastle, that would be,’ he said, ‘I’ve a picture of every act that’s ever trod the Empire stage. I put the cream of the crop up on my walls, like Miss Lloyd here.’ He paused in the act of pouring in the water on top of the tea and shook his head. ‘I still can’t believe she’s gone,’ he said. ‘Can’t believe I won’t ever see that little face looking up at me and hear that little voice, always with a chuckle in it. “What do you know – it’s Joe Crow!” she used to sing out whenever she stepped inside the door there and saw me.’

Alec and I murmured in sympathy and after a respectful pause, I led him back to the point again.

‘The cream of the crop are on your walls as you said, Mr Crow, but what of the others? Where are they?’

‘In my albums here,’ he said, patting the table where the teapot, caddy, milk bottle and packet of sugar lay. ‘Well, scrapbooks really. I’ve saved every one. Even managed to get them out the night of the great fire.’

I was puzzled, but Alec leaned forward and lifted the tablecloth and then, with a sinking heart, I saw. It was not a table at all but a stack of cardboard albums, three across, as many deep and half-a-dozen high with a cloth thrown over them.

‘It would be a very great inconvenience, I know,’ I said, ‘but I don’t suppose you would let us look through them to see if we can spot the chap, would you?’

Joe’s eyes, still glistening from his thoughts of Marie Lloyd, filled to the brim again, and for the third time he pumped Alec’s hand.

‘My eyes, missus, sir,’ he said. ‘You’ve no idea how happy you’ve made me today. It’s been years since anyone’s wanted to look at my pictures and hear my stories. You’ve made my day for me. Now, just take your tea – and drink it while it’s hot, mind you – and let me get this lot cleared off. Will we start now and work our way back or start in the ’70s and go through in proper time?’

I tried as gently as I could to nip this in the bud, telling him that for now we would have to begin five years ago and work backwards for perhaps twenty before we would be forced to admit defeat in our quest.

‘But if you would be so kind,’ I said, ‘another day I should love to come and look at the very oldest ones. What a treat! And I can bring a drop of something too, for us to share. You just name your poison, Mr Crow.’

For all the velvet shawl and the shuffling he was admirably efficient once he had got the spirit of our enquiry and he found the book for 1921 within a minute or two. Then – thank the Lord! – he was called away to his business (a very dramatic-sounding voice hailing him from the stage-door) and Alec and I were left to flick through the heaps of pictures on our own.

Joe looked in on us now and then and was unperturbed by the growing disarray of his little domain as the ‘table’ was dismantled and the albums we had finished with grew up into tottering piles all around and, until he was called away again, would lean against the door-jamb having a quiet smoke and making little observations about the faces as we turned them over.

‘Flirty and Gertie,’ he said. ‘They could hold the splits through an entire song. Three verses with a chorus in between each. Don’t recall him – fine set of muscles, though, eh? Ah, Miss Allakamba and her snakes. She was a lovely lady. And who’s that? Another comic? What does it say his name is? Oh, yes, I remember him like my brother. And that’s Sarah… Sarah… Oh, now, Sarah…?’

The main impediment, in fact, was that we were only interested in the men and Joe only remembered the names of the women, and so every Sarah and Gertie and lady with her snakes which we should have laid aside without a glance had an associated chuckle and reminiscence to be waited out before we could get on.

‘Sarah Pretty!’ said Joe. ‘How could I forget that? You only have to look at her – Oh, you’ve moved on, have you, missus. Well, you go back and see if it’s not Sarah Pretty that signature says, now you know what you’re reading.’

After half an hour when my hopes were beginning to flag, Alec gave a cry, plucked a photograph from a page – ripped it right off its anchoring – and held it up, letting the rest of the album slide off his lap onto the littered floor.

‘Got him!’ he said. ‘Hah! Got him.’

I snatched the photograph out of his hand and felt a surge spread through me, for it was indeed Mr Faulds; there was no mistaking it. He was dressed in a turban with a long feather and a satin tunic of rich ornamentation, and was staring out of the photograph with a piercing gaze.

‘We’ve found him, Mr Crow,’ I said. ‘This is him! We’ve got him now.’

Then Alec and I met one another’s eyes, both remembering at the same time that really we had got nothing. We had already known Faulds was on the stage. Finding a picture had got us nowhere.

‘Unless…’ said Alec. He nodded towards Joe who was peering over my shoulder at the picture of Faulds.

‘Indeed,’ I said. ‘Now Mr Crow, if you please. What was this man’s act? Can you remember? Was it anything to do with handwriting of any kind?’

Joe Crow shifted from foot to foot and rubbed his finger along under his nose.

‘Oh, it’s all up here,’ he said. ‘Never you fear. Now. Now then. You just read me what it says on the picture there, missus, for these aren’t my reading specs I’m wearing.’

I looked in dismay at the faded ink of the signature and the message above it. It was a scrawl, like a ball of wool after a kitten at play, and I could imagine Mr Faulds, halfway out the stage-door, late for his train, dashing off a word for ‘old Joe on the door’ without a moment’s real attention.

‘To…’ I began, pretty sure of that much. ‘And then the next bit is probably Something Joe. Dearest, Alec? Could that be dearest Joe?’

‘Ah, he was a sweet laddie, I remember,’ said Joe, making me want to kick him.

‘With something something. Actually with somethingest something…’

‘Fondest regards,’ said Alec. ‘From…?’

‘Mister,’ I said. ‘The next word is definitely Mister.’

‘And then something something something hands,’ said Alec.

‘Handwriting?’ I said. ‘No, it’s not, is it? It’s just in something hands. Could that be a reference to handwriting? Writing in many hands?’ Alec screwed his face up and I had to agree; this was stretching things.

‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘I think it’s in my hands, don’t you?’

‘Mister, mister, mister…?’ said Joe. ‘I remember him well. He threw it all up, you know. Left the stage behind him.’

‘His name starts with Mes or Mis or perhaps Mef or Mif,’ said Alec.

‘To dearest Joe with fondest regards Mister mifsomething. Something - maybe your? – something in my hands.’

‘His own name was plain enough,’ said Joe. ‘It’s on the tip of my tongue. And here’s another thing – he lives in Edinburgh now. I met him on the street once and passed the time of day.’

Alec and I both turned to stare.

‘He does,’ I said. ‘That’s right, Joe.’

‘Didn’t I just tell you?’ said the old man. ‘It’s all up here. I remember everything. He was a clever enough act but he couldn’t give up on the high life he was born to. Now, money, you see, wouldn’t be no good to most in this game – top billing and your name in electric bulbs is something it just can’t buy – but he went back to it in the end. Back to his family. Oh, his name’s on the tip of my tongue.’

‘No, he’s not with his family,’ said Alec. ‘He took a position here. A live-in job.’

‘And why would he be doing that when he was in for a fortune? I’m telling you, he lives with a relation. A cousin, he told me. And his real name’s…’

‘George Pollard,’ said Alec and I together, and Alec went on, under his breath, ‘My God, Dandy. We’ve got him.’

‘George Pollard!’ said Joe. ‘That’s him. You might have told me if you knew it all along. That’s the chap. Georgie Pollard – from Cornwall – came from a rich tin-mining family down there.’

‘And his act, Joe?’ I said softly, hoping that now the floodgates had opened it would all come pouring.

‘Mister Mesmero,’ said Joe. ‘That’s the one. “Your mind in my hands”. Best stage hypnotist I’ve ever seen. He could twist you round his little finger and you never knew a thing about it.’