Murder in the Limelight (21 page)

‘Yes,’ said Props firmly.

‘No you never,’ said Bates indignantly. ‘You never did.’

But Props could not be budged.

‘I shall look forward to a rest,’ said Edward Hargreaves. ‘I shall compose instead. For the next show.’

‘If there is a next,’ said Percy.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I think the Galaxy’s finished,’ said Percy with a light laugh. ‘I’ve been thinking it for some time.’ He glanced sideways at Edward. ‘I might look for another position.’

Edward stared at him disbelievingly. ‘Another theatre?’

‘No,’ said Percy slowly. ‘In a hotel perhaps. One of the big ones on the Riviera. The Majestic in Cannes, for example.’ He flicked a cuff back into place.

‘Leave
London
? Leave me?’ Edward stared at him in horror.

‘Just for a while. You could come with me. If you really think you’ll miss me that much.’

‘But why leave London?’ Edward was bewildered.

‘Just for a change, dear Edward, just for a change.’

‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Maisie, toasting her toes in front of Rose’s small fire in his office, whither they had been summoned this Saturday morning. ‘This – what do you call it? – psychopath of yours, suppose he’d got a bee in his bonnet about theatres?’

‘Theatres?’ asked Rose.

‘We don’t know about Christine Walters, of course, but
Edna Purvis was killed round the back of the Olympic, Gabrielle near the Royal Strand—’

‘Coincidence,’ said Auguste, somewhat annoyed that he had not had this idea.

‘But why then girls just from the Galaxy,’ asked Rose practically. ‘Why not girls from any theatre?’

‘I don’t know. Galaxy Girls having a certain reputation with some people, perhaps.’

‘But did you not say that the psychopath has normal reasoning? Perhaps we should not be looking for a psychopath, after all,’ said Auguste, ‘but a madman.’

‘No, these crossed hands, they must mean
something
,’ said Rose. ‘It’s not the act of a madman. What does it suggest to you, Didier?’

‘Your hot cross buns,’ said Auguste, then looked apologetic for this flippant comparison.

‘And they mean?’

‘The cross. Holiness.’

‘Suggests a kind of reverence, doesn’t it?’ said Rose. ‘Towards women. He never interferes with them. Who does that suggest?’

It was a rhetorical question for he and Auguste were now fairly certain whom it suggested. And last night Props had supplied the missing ingredient: the way into the theatre without passing the stage door.

‘Props or Herbert,’ said Maisie slowly.

‘Yet the dolls, monsieur,’ said Auguste quietly. ‘The daggers, strangled necks, these are not signs of reverence.’

‘Reverence betrayed, is my way of thinking,’ said Rose. ‘Something happened to trigger our man off. Miss Lytton upsets him somehow and sends him crazy. Idiosyncrasies, that’s what we need to look for.’ He paused. ‘Like your theatre idea, miss. Now, Lord Summerfield has a little idiosyncrasy about theatres, hasn’t he? Always waiting outside the Lyceum, for example.’

Maisie stared at the inspector. Then she retorted
vigorously, ‘You aren’t still thinking of that poor gommy, are you?’

‘It fits, miss. It fits.’

‘I know he couldn’t have murdered Miss Lepin, and that’s for sure.’

‘Why’s that, miss?’

Maisie shot a cautious look at Auguste. ‘He was dining with me, that’s why.’

It took a moment for this to register with Auguste. Then:
‘Last
night?’ he enquired in awful tones. ‘As
well
?’

‘Yes, and there’s no need to sound like Irving in
The Bells
,’ said Maisie crossly. ‘I was dining with him. That’s all.’

‘You told me you were dining with Mr Thomas Manley. You lied to me. You have betrayed me.’

‘I said I was
going
to dine with him. But he never arrived. And as I was walking to the cab rank I saw Lord Summerfield – all alone. So there we are.’

‘Mr Manley told me he dined with you,’ said Rose, ‘after being delayed by his wife. And His Lordship never mentioned anything about you.’ He was not pleased. The case against Summerfield was not good, but it was at least a theory to talk about with the Commissioner.

‘He wouldn’t, would he? He’s a gentleman, that’s why. I was’ – she studiously avoided Auguste’s eye – ‘dining at his home.’

‘With Her Ladyship that would be?’ asked Rose politely.

‘Not likely,’ replied Maisie forthrightly. ‘Can you see old Queen Boadicea passing me the cabbage without raising every single tile on the ancestral roof? But if it’s witnesses you’re thinking of, I imagine the butler, a few liveried waiters and the coachman will back His Lordship up.’

Rose looked at her. So did Auguste – much as he would a customer who had the temerity to leave a
soufflé d’écrevisse
unfinished.

‘I take it,’ said Auguste stiffly, ‘that you no longer consider yourself my betrothed.’

‘Oh, Auguste.’ Maisie was irritated. ‘Are you telling me that you don’t believe me when I say I was only dining?’

‘Naturally I believe you, but I have my honour—’

‘That’s all right then,’ said Maisie more cheerfully. ‘Your honour will be happier after a good luncheon. Isn’t that right, Inspector Rose?’

‘Indeed, Miss Maisie, I believe Brillat-Savarin remarked that a good meal induces contentment both of body and soul,’ replied Egbert Rose gravely.

This display of erudition was rewarded by a glare from Auguste who for once could think of nothing to say. And having nothing to say, found himself forced to smile. But perhaps that was at the thought of the roast ortolans that awaited them.

The mounted men at Wolferton railway station were of course unaware of the contents of the missive with the Royal Seal, but when their employer, a portly gentleman, read it in his morning room at Sandringham House he was cast into gloom. Mama was displeased
again.
It was so unfair. Why should Mama think that he was in any way to blame for the deterioration of morals in London? Surely even she could not have believed those unfortunate rumours about the Ripper and Eddie. Even after the poor boy’s death the rumours continued that his son, the Duke of Clarence, had been the Ripper himself.
Another
Ripper? What did these heavy hints mean? Surely even Mama could not think that he, the Prince of Wales, would creep about the streets of London strangling chorus girls. Chorus girls indeed.

Here he was, but newly returned from an important diplomatic mission – double mission indeed – to Russia, and already Mama was treating him like a little boy again. The funeral of an autocratic crowned head was never an easy event to attend, but everyone agreed that had it not been for his tactful handling of that uncouth King of Serbia things could have got out of hand. All the crowned heads of Europe could have been at each other’s throats, acting like a pack of schoolboys. But he’d calmed them down. Why did Serbia
always
have to cause trouble though? Just a tiny little Balkan state and always stirring things up. Sometimes he had an uneasy feeling about Serbia. If he were Franz
Josef, sitting there in his Imperial Palace in Vienna, he would see the Serbs were kept in their place.

His thoughts turned to happier events. The new Czar’s marriage to dear little Alix. Nothing could go wrong there. And Mama was delighted with the success of her matchmaking. So why was she in such a bad mood now? One-thirty. It was time for luncheon. And Alexandra was late again. It was clearly not going to be a good day at Sandringham House.

It was not a good day at the Yard either. The painfully written, tart words of the latest edict from Windsor lying across the Commissioner’s desk from Rose did not bode well.

‘We’re looking for a madman, sir.’

‘Should be simple enough. It must be someone at that theatre.’

‘Or connected with it. The theatre’s closing, which will give us a chance to investigate every single man concerned with the theatre. We’ve several lines to follow up.’

Rose spoke more confidently than he felt.

The case they had built up against Summerfield had been a strong one, though based on circumstantial evidence only. Still, most murders were. Very few villains stayed around to be witnessed in the act. But something had been wrong. Rose tried to be grateful that Maisie had blown their case to smithereens.

It was not a good day in the Galaxy restaurant either. Othello’s occupation gone, thought Auguste, gazing idly from his window across the road to the Lyceum. What was the use of a theatre restaurant without a theatre? It was deprived of soul. He thought of the time he had seen Mr Irving, his noble features blackened for the Moor.
Quelle majesté, comme un grand filet de boeuf
. What dignity. Of course his Othello did not compare with his Macbeth. Or, in
Auguste’s opinion, with his Lear. Though there few would agree with him. It had generally been reckoned a failure and after that short run two years ago he had never attempted it again. He would never forget Mr Irving full in the limelight at the rear of the stage: ‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child’. He had been moved to tears at the end of the play when he carried on the dead Cordelia in his arms. Ah, that was tragedy. Now,
la belle Sarah
– a tragedienne, too, but of what different type. As Phèdre –
magnifique, superbe
.

Tiens
! he had almost forgotten the
matelote
sauce for the eels. For himself, he was not sufficiently enamoured of this fish, but it was popular with Londoners. It was like the conclusion that he was gradually coming to – it must be the answer, there was no escape from it. There was no other explanation. And what would happen when it was revealed – what would that do to the Galaxy?

‘It’s Scotland Yard, Mr Didier.’ Gladys broke into his thoughts.

Fresh from the Commissioner’s office, Rose had arrived at the restaurant in search of reassurance and food. After one glance at his face Auguste went so far as to sit with him, leaving the kitchen in the nervous hands of Annie.

‘What’s this, Didier?’

‘That, monsieur, is an aspic of chicken
à la reine
.’

‘Rain?’

‘Queen, monsieur.’

Rose did not wish to talk of queens, and glared morosely at the unfortunate dish in front of him. He seemed to have lost his appetite for it somehow.

‘All right, so it’s not Summerfield – or probably not,’ he added darkly. ‘But I still wager it’s rejection. Disappointment in love. Does strange things to people. Even quite normal people. Ever noticed that?’

‘Indeed, monsieur. Why, I—’

‘Ophelia,’ interrupted Rose, warming to his theme,
‘went and drowned herself. Constance Kent murdered her little brother. Thought she’d been rejected by the family.’

‘Indeed, monsieur. I—’

‘Now, now, Didier, let me speak. You Froggies do love the sound of your own voices. So our Florence rejects our fellow quite properly—’

‘Unless—’

‘Didier! He shows his displeasure, by giving a fright with the dolls, but because he worships her he won’t touch or harm her. Instead he kills her attendants. What do you think of that?’

‘But why, monsieur,’ asked Auguste meekly, ‘the crossed hands?’

‘Why not?’ said Rose. ‘If he is mad?’

‘He is but mad nor-nor-west,’ said Auguste, ‘to quote your
Hamlet.
There is purpose in his madness. It may be, monsieur, that he is not mad as your Ripper was mad but like our friend Mr Robert Louis Stevenson’s hero, Dr Jekyll – and Mr Hyde. That one side of him does not know what the other side does. In order to produce the stock you have the scum which must be removed. It is necessary to distil, to purify, like Dr Jekyll, and then one is left with the scum, Mr Hyde. Dr Jekyll did not know of the actions of Mr Hyde.’

‘That’s as may be, Mr Didier,’ said Rose, ‘but to the poor lass lying there strangled with her tongue bulging out, it doesn’t matter too much for what reason she was killed. Dead is dead, and it’s my job to find out who did it. And I still think our Florence is at the heart of it. Yet I admit, Mr Didier, it’s odd that there have been no further attacks on her.’

‘Love gone putrid, monsieur. He does not wish to kill Miss Lytton. He does not have the courage. But the dolls were a threat, a message that she should not regard his love lightly.’

‘Our Props, you’re thinking of.’

‘Florence just never noticed him.’

‘She notices him now,’ said Rose. ‘Screams every time she
sees him. Natural enough since she’s convinced he’s responsible for those dolls. Said he told her so. Yes, it fits all right.’ he went on. ‘The dolls are like the violets. A message. Bobbing up like a jack in a box on the stage. He’s got some special way in, that’s for sure, for all he denies it. Bates insists he didn’t come past him last night. And the rope came from his room. He’s just the type we’re after. Quiet, inoffensive. That’s what I find down Brick Street – it’s not the big loud-mouthed villains, it’s the quiet softly-spoken ones that stay in the background.’

‘But I think, Inspector, we should see whether Lord Summerfield had made improper advances to Miss Lytton,’ put in Auguste innocently. He liked Props. ‘There was something strange, did you not think so, when he spoke of her?’

‘Your Miss Maisie’s cleared him,’ pointed out Rose unkindly.

Auguste glared at him. ‘Or Monsieur Beauville, or Mr Sykes.’ He was not to be deterred. ‘Perhaps we do not yet know quite enough about Miss Lytton. We think of her as the glorious centre of the Galaxy around whom things happen. But suppose, monsieur, instead, she is the cause – like the pole in the carousel. No maypole, whose strings are pulled hither and thither by others, but the centre of power that controls. She makes these players dance to her command.’

‘The lady can’t help being popular,’ pointed out Rose. ‘And after all, she’s married. She might be thinking: if they want to be foolish enough to fall in love with me, I’m not to blame. No harm in being admired, is there, Monsieur Didier?’

‘Devotion is pleasing until it curdles. Then, like mayonnaise, it is difficult to put back together again.’

‘Humpty Dumpty,’ said Rose diverted.