Murder in the Limelight (20 page)

A collective shiver ran round the room.

Seeing Auguste’s eye on her, Maisie slipped out of the room. He followed grimly for he was none too pleased with her. Ignoring this obvious fact, she took his arm lovingly. ‘You know I went to dine with Mr Manley last night, Auguste.’

‘I had heard,’ said Auguste stiffly. ‘Naturally as your fiancé I am the last to hear . . . but the news did reach me.’

‘Fiancé,’ said Maisie, diverted. ‘But I haven’t said yes yet, you know. Don’t count your
poule au pot yet
. I don’t want you suing me for breach of promise.’

Auguste repressed all thoughts of Tatiana. He was committed. As a man of honour, he could not retract.

‘Thomas was late arriving. So I waited—’

‘Merely having words with Florence,’ said Auguste dismissively, still hurt. ‘Inspector Rose still favours Summerfield at the moment,’ he added.

‘Very well, if you don’t want to listen!’ said Maisie. ‘Anyway, Summerfield couldn’t strangle a boiled egg. If the inspector really thinks it’s him, he’s got no more sense than a magsman’s meat.’

Unaware of these in fact unjustified comments on his intellectual powers, but in possession of the Galaxy Girls’ interesting disclosures of Miss Lepin’s proposed movements the night
before, Rose set forth once more in pursuit of His Lordship.

Lord Summerfield was staying in London by the Yard’s request. The butler seemed quite resigned now to the lowering of his front entrance requirements. He meekly took Rose’s hat, umbrella and coat. Without a look of reproof he placed the Staffordshire puzzle jug upright after its unfortunate displacement by Egbert Rose in struggling to extricate himself from his overcoat, and ushered him into the presence of His Lordship. Summerfield was hunched up over the fire, looking more like a frightened rabbit than a member of Britain’s ancient peerage. His mother more than compensated. Bosom swelling, lorgnette swinging to and fro in the hand; even the family pearls looked indignant. Nevertheless, ‘I’ll see the inspector alone, mother,’ Summerfield managed to squeak.

‘But—’

‘It’s better, ma’am.’ Rose blandly held the door open for a defeated mama, and turned his attention to her son. ‘I hear that you had a meeting with Miss Lepin last night, Your Lordship.’

‘I – er – yes – I – she didn’t arrive, Inspector.’

‘Again? You don’t seem to have much luck with the ladies one way and another, do you, sir?’

‘Don’t you believe me?’ A modicum of the patrician crept back into his voice.

‘I just wanted to hear your story, sir.’

‘I waited in my carriage in my usual place – outside the Lyceum theatre.’

‘The Royal Strand theatre, was it not?’

Summerfield blinked. ‘The Lyceum.’

‘But you sent a message to the young lady to say you’d meet her outside the Royal Strand.

‘I sent no such message.’

‘But—’

‘Lord Summerfield’s ancestry triumphed. ‘Inspector, I sent no message. A forgery, no doubt.’

‘Then what did you do, sir?’ said Rose resignedly.

Summerfield went pink. ‘I – I cannot say, Inspector.’

‘Can’t, sir?’ Rose replied mildly enough, but Summerfield caught the underlying message.

‘A lady’s honour.’

‘But the lady did not turn up.’

‘No, another lady.’

‘Sort of lady you’d found in the street, sir?’

‘I—’ Summerfield stopped to consider. He gulped, shut his eyes, then opened them again and said firmly: ‘Yes.’

‘Not much honour up the Haymarket, sir, if that’s where you met this lady. I should have another think about things, sir. See if this lady’s honour is as important as all that.’

Summerfield was going to have a hard job explaining away three broken engagements, thought Rose to himself as he left. Just as he would have a hard job explaining to the Assistant Commissioner – or worse, the Commissioner himself – the bad news that a peer of the realm might have to be arrested. Fortunately the Honourable Johnny, interviewed earlier that day, had had an unassailable alibi – in his view.

‘I was at my club, don’t you know,’ he had declared winningly. His sister-in-law and brother had nodded complacently. Clubs were approved of, since the temptations provided there did not include loose women.

‘Your club, sir? Indeed,’ murmured Rose, wondering if the Honourable Johnny could possibly be as silly as he seemed trotting out the old club alibi for the third time. ‘We’ll be having a word with them, of course. Have to make it clear to them this is a murder investigation. We often find that sort of thing makes a difference. They’re not so sure after all which night it was. And it’s important we’re sure, sir, ain’t it?’

For all the certainty amongst the girls that the culprit was Summerfield, there was a general panic and unease that night that went ill with this conviction.

One of the chorus girls, walking through the wings,
screamed when a stage hand inadvertently touched her forearm. She apologised quickly and walked on. Another hung back in the doorway of the dressing room until a companion joined her. Thereafter they walked down in pairs. Had the newspapers shouted their headlines earlier, the chorus line might have been seriously depleted that evening. Did the murderer know the difference between a chorus girl and a show girl? Would he pick on them next?

There was equal tension in the gentlemen’s dressing rooms on the other side of the theatre. They looked at each other askance. After all, Obadiah Bates had been attacked. Perhaps the murderer had a preference for girls, but was prepared to make do with a man? In any case, no one wanted to share a dressing room with a murderer.

Herbert sat in front of his mirror, wrestling with his nightmare. That awful feeling that people were avoiding him. Perhaps they thought
he
was the murderer. These past few days had been so terrible, he was almost ready to be convinced that he was. He looked at his pudgy hands. Could they strangle someone? Had he the strength? The thought of Florence came unbidden to his mind, and with a great effort of will he pushed it away again.

Florence Lytton was perhaps the least frightened now. After all, she reasoned, two girls might have been murdered in mistake for her, but it was hardly likely that three could have been. She was safe. Perhaps the dolls were the end of it so far as she was concerned. Now Props had left she felt better. But then there was the mystery of Thomas. Her stomach lurched again. He acted so strangely. He hadn’t come home till two o’clock, and had declared his intention of going out with a chorus girl. With Maisie, it was true, not Gabrielle. But suppose it had been Gabrielle all along? This alarming thought brought back her fears with a rush. She would ask Maisie . . .

The unease spread into the performance. A hammer fell off
the flies and narrowly missed a girl’s head. Edward Hargreaves mislaid his favourite baton, a mouse was seen in the wings and chased across the stage by the theatre cat before disappearing in the set. Herbert fell over a coil of rope and banged his head, and Auguste burned the cream of crayfish soup. More ominous than all these incidents, as Robert Archibald walked round on what had been intended as a calming tour, was a report from the box office manager of the number of people asking for their money back and the curious lack of the usual queues for gallery and pit.

When the curtain finally went up, ten minutes late, owing to a need to rearrange the show girls, now lacking three of their number, the brightness of the opening chorus, ‘Everything’s all right, it’s a sunny day in Piccadilly’ struck a false note. There was not the usual enthusiastic response from the audience. Herbert, with his normal sang-froid (assumed), succeeded in raising a few laughs when he entered, but it was noted by the stage manager that one of them was at the expense of Miss Lytton, a fact which did not go unnoted by her and which threw her for the rest of the scene. It was a sign of the times, thought Robert Archibald, for Herbert to act so unprofessionally.

The performance lurched along unsatisfactorily to nearly the end of Act 2, newcomers to the Galaxy wondering why so much enthusiasm was generated amongst their friends for this mediocre show. When the curtain rose on Act 3, the audience settled down for the final act, once again in the toyshop setting. They were in reasonably good mood. Not only had the drinks been excellent – hurried instructions from Mr Archibald to the barmen had so ensured – but the closing songs of Act 2 had been a success. In particular, Florence’s marionette song had gone better than ever before, its melody still lingering in the memories of its listeners.

Herbert’s toyshop was full of shoppers. Several show girls draped themselves fashionably around the walls,
backs to the rows of miniature Bengal Lancers and clockwork geese. Chorus girls, swinging baskets elegantly on their arms, sung of the pleasures of childhood. Herbert capered amusingly behind his counter.

Into the midst of this jolly scene tripped Miss Penelope, looking winsome in pale blue chiffon, with silk shoes to match and a darling little white silk hat with real flowers. Ideal costuming for a shop assistant.

‘Get over there,’ barked Herbert. ‘Where have you been, Miss Pearl? We have customers, can’t you see?’ To the audience: ‘How lovely she looks. How I wish she’d look at me as she looks at that doll—’

This touching soliloquy was cut short by a scream. Florence’s by now familiar scream. Piercing, long drawn out and very loud. It was not in the least musical. Robert Archibald shot up from his seat at the spectacle on stage. Not another damned doll? Not now.

It was not another damned doll. It was the mouse, who was exposed to public view as Florence removed the doll on which it had been comfortably perched. Alarmed by the noise it leapt to the stage floor, resulting in as great a display of shaking petticoats and agitated legs as ever the Folies Bergeres had boasted.

Two new arrivals precipitated themselves simultaneously on to the stage to join the screaming mêlée. One was the cat, in hot pursuit of its prey. And falling over the cat in his haste to succour his lady love was Props, in street cap and ragged coat, blinking in the glare of the stage lights and gazing in bewilderment at the screaming Florence.

Bemused, not having seen the cause of the uproar, the audience waited for this up-to-date burlesque on
Dick Whittington
to develop into something more musical. Archibald, unable to bear the sight of his disgrace, staggered outside to communicate his feelings to a brick wall. Thus he missed the sight of the Galaxy’s saviour.

Thomas Manley rushed on to the stage and once more
burst into song with no accompaniment. Unfortunately it was a song from the previous act, but no great matter. Seizing a weeping and hiccuping Florence in his arms, he nobly sang:

Edwards Hargreaves picked up his second-best baton, and signalled to Percy. Like courtiers in the castle of Sleeping Beauty, the orchestra came slowly to life.

Somewhat puzzled by the way the story appeared to be regressing, the audience stirred uncomfortably as Thomas reached the end of his song and without ado broke into the finishing chorus of Act 2 once more. Hargreaves by this time was but a beat behind him, and the chorus valiantly joined in, as the verse went on. Thus the curtain fell on Act 2 to a fetching tableau of hero and heroine, fifteen chorus girls, five show girls, one theatre cat and an ex-props man cowering behind a toyshop counter. The mouse had prudently disappeared.

Robert Archibald spoke between the leg of mutton and the dessert, a careful timing suggested by Auguste. ‘I have,’ he said abruptly, ‘decided to take no more chances with the lives of our girls. The theatre—’ he gulped, ‘the theatre is closed from tonight for an indefinite period. At least for two weeks in respect for our three young ladies, may be longer, depending on police advice. Until this murderer is caught. The police,’ he continued unhappily, glancing at Egbert Rose sitting discreetly with Didier in the far corner, ‘have asked for all your names and addresses, ladies and gentlemen. I have supplied them. Just a formality,’ he added wretchedly. That such a scene could be taking place in his theatre was still not quite real to him. ‘If there is
anything you have not already told them, please will you do so.’ He had no great hope that the murderer was going to surrender himself for the good of the Galaxy, but it was worth mentioning.

‘Your salaries will be paid at least for the two weeks to come.’ A murmur followed this. It was generous. But the Galaxy closed! Each contemplated his own position. Florence thought of a week alone with Thomas. Herbert of himself abandoned in an unfriendly world. Chorus girls of having to buy their own suppers, stage hands of needy wives and children. Suppose the Galaxy remained closed . . .

It was a prospect Robert Archibald dared not contemplate. For well over twenty years the Galaxy had been his life. From those exciting heady moments as they rushed to complete his building in time for the opening performance, finishing it with ten minutes to spare. The first performance, the coming of Daisie Wilton, of Thomas Manley, his founding of the Galaxy Girls – all precious memories. And now this! Three dead and the theatre closed. Pray heaven it would be open again in time for Christmas.

He regarded his nougat of apricot as he would cold tapioca pudding – with little cheer. Far from raising his spirits it appeared to taste of cotton wool, such was his depression.

Belongings were gathered together in the dressing rooms, huddled groups discussed the situation, rumours of who had been seen with whom, who had been seen at this and that time. And more and more ripples of blame seemed to be settling on Lord Summerfield.

Egbert Rose faced an obdurate Props, who glanced fearfully from Rose to Archibald.

‘How did you get into the theatre, Props?’ asked Archibald bewildered. ‘And what on earth possessed you to rush on to the stage?’

‘Came in stage door,’ muttered Props. ‘Mr Bates weren’t looking.’

This Mr Bates strongly denied when asked.

‘Props?’ asked Archibald again.

‘Been here every night,’ muttered Props.

‘Past Obadiah?’