Smoke and Mirrors (7 page)

‘Did anyone see you here?’

‘Mr James. I think Mr Carew, the Class Five teacher, popped in at some point.’

Was Mr Carew one of those teachers too ancient to fight in the war? wondered Emma. She made a note to check. ‘When Annie used to come to see you,’ she said, ‘did she bring Mark with her?’

‘Sometimes. He was a nice boy. He didn’t have Annie’s originality but he was a sweet child.’ A definite quaver now.

‘Could I keep these?’ Emma gestured towards the folder. ‘And could I see the play that you were writing with Annie?’

Just for a second Miss Young hesitated. Then she rose and went to a filing cabinet, took a key from a fob in her pocket and opened it. She placed a yellow exercise book in front of Emma.

‘I’d like it back, if possible. It’s very precious to me.’

‘You’ll have it back in due course,’ said Emma. Just one glance at the title had been enough.

The True Story of Hansel and Gretel
.

‘Max. Dear boy. How wonderful to see you.’

The Great Diablo, resplendent in a moth-eaten fur coat, steamed through the empty auditorium, arms outstretched. The cast of
Aladdin
, halfway through a frustrating and protracted dress rehearsal, turned to stare at the apparition.

Max, who had been watching in costume from the front row, came to greet him.

‘Careful, Diablo, you’ll get greasepaint on you.’

‘What’s a bit of greasepaint between friends? Give me a cuddle, dear boy.’

Grinning, Max gave the old boy a hug. Despite everything, it was good to see him.

‘Goodness me, is that Denton McGrew I see up there?’ Diablo peered up at the stage. ‘How are you, you old tart?’

‘Bloody hell. The Great Diablo.’ The Dame came forward, terrifying in striped stockings and a massive bustle. ‘I thought you were dead.’

‘No, I was in Hastings, dear boy. Easily mistaken. I’m going to be joining this merry band.’

‘You’re kidding.’ McGrew closed his heavily mascaraed eyes in horror.

Roger Dunkley appeared from the wings. ‘Boys and girls, meet the new Emperor of Peking.’

Diablo swept a magnificent bow. Max helped him get upright again.

Annette Anthony also came tripping forward. From this angle, thought Max, the famous Principal Boy legs had definitely seen better days.

‘I think it’s simply marvellous of you to help out. Will you be able to learn the lines in time?’

‘Oh, don’t worry about that, my dear.’ Diablo beamed upwards. ‘I’ll just make ’em up as I go along.’

Max didn’t dare look at Nigel Castle, staring open-mouthed from the stalls.

*

‘You’re not seriously saying you suspect her?’

They were back at the station. Emma and Bob were huddled around the two-bar fire, arguing; Edgar, still in his overcoat, was poring over the exercise book given to them by Miss Young.

‘Why not?’ Edgar could hear the irritation in Emma’s voice. ‘The crime scene was rigged to look like “Hansel and Gretel”. The woman was writing a play with Annie based on “Hansel and Gretel”. You heard her talking about the fairy stories. It was really creepy.’

‘I didn’t think so.’ Bob, in turn, was sounding aggrieved. ‘She was just being a good teacher, interested in her pupils and all that. Besides, she’s got an alibi.’

‘Until six o’clock. She may have planned to meet them somewhere else, strangled them and taken their bodies up to the Dyke later that night.’

‘Can you really see her doing that?’ Bob’s voice was rising.

‘Yes. You may have been taken in by that lovely-teacher act but I thought she was a very strange woman.’

‘What do you mean, I may have been taken in?’

Edgar cut in. ‘This isn’t getting us anywhere. Emma, we have to be careful about saying things like “the scene was rigged to look like ‘Hansel and Gretel’”. That’s your hunch, and a good one it is too, but it’s not the only possible explanation for the sweets on the ground. But I agree with you. There was something odd about her manner. And this play . . .’

‘What’s it about?’ Bob came to look over Edgar’s shoulder and, after a few seconds, Emma joined him.

‘Hansel and Gretel and they’re both pretty unpleasant. Gretel is vain and self-obsessed. Hansel is just stupid. Anyway, both of them are planning to kill the other and blame it on the Witch Woman.’

‘Like the Witch Man in the play,’ said Bob.

‘There are some really nasty bits. Listen to this. It’s Gretel talking about her brother. “I just can’t stand seeing that stupid face for a minute longer. He’s always asking ‘What shall we do, Gretel?’ ‘What’s going on, Gretel?’ One day I’m going to hold a pillow over his mouth until he never asks a question again.” ’

There was a silence. Edgar could hear the fire hissing and the sound of police-issue boots going up and down the stone stairs. Eventually Bob said, almost timorously, ‘Do you think that’s what Annie felt about Mark? I mean, everyone says she was the clever one . . .’

‘I don’t believe it,’ said Emma. ‘They were devoted friends.’

‘Devoted friends fall out,’ said Edgar. ‘We’ve got to find out what happened after the quarrel in the street. Where did they go? Who did they see? We need to talk to the witnesses again, walk the streets, put ourselves in their shoes. Emma, you go to the library and get a book on fairy tales. I didn’t recognise all of the stories Miss Young mentioned – the one about the hedgehog, for example. It’s a long shot but there might be something there. Bob, we’ll go to Queen’s Park tomorrow. It’s Saturday and the snow’s clearing, there’ll be lots of people about. Maybe someone saw something.’

Bob didn’t protest that Saturday was his day off. He simply nodded and turned back to the exercise book. Edgar was grateful for his commitment – and Emma’s too – but he must remember to give them some time off soon. No one can work effectively for days without a break. For his part, he felt as if his eyes were slowly turning inside out. The night on Mrs M’s sofa had given him backache and his head was throbbing. Maybe he should eat something. It felt like years since the fried breakfast.

‘Let’s go to the Lyons’,’ he said. ‘Have some food. Nobody can think straight on an empty stomach.’

Bob agreed immediately and went to get his coat. But Emma stayed staring at the book, at the clear round writing and the intricate drawings in the margin.

I just can’t stand seeing that stupid face for a minute longer.

*

Max always knew that the day would end in a drinking session with Diablo. As they left the pier, the older man began to steer him, by imperceptible degrees, towards a ‘cosy little pub’ he knew. ‘Just one for the road, dear boy.’ Which road is that? thought Max. The road to ruin? But he followed Diablo through the Lanes towards a snug-looking corner building.

‘The Bath Arms.’ Diablo took Max’s arm. ‘They serve spirits.’

Of course they did.

But, as Max pushed his way through the crowd of after-work drinkers, he was surprised to see a tall, familiar figure at the bar.

‘Ed! What’s this? Hair of the dog?’

Edgar turned, blushing slightly. ‘Hallo, Max. I’m not turning to drink. It’s just . . . it’s been a long day . . .’

‘Never mind that,’ said Max. ‘I’ve got a surprise for you.’

But before he could say more, a rapturous cry of ‘Edgar! My dear chap!’ filled the air. Edgar hardly had time to gasp before he was enveloped in the fur coat.

‘Diablo!’ Edgar emerged, spluttering. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I’m in panto, my dear. The Emperor of Peking at your service.’

‘The Emperor . . .’ Edgar looked at Max. ‘Isn’t that . . .?’

Max sighed. ‘Yes, we’re in
Aladdin
together. The previous Emperor disappeared on a drunken binge and Diablo stepped in.’

‘Pros aren’t as reliable as they used to be,’ said Diablo. ‘And they can’t take their drink.’ He downed his whisky and held out the glass for a refill.

‘I thought you’d retired,’ said Edgar, as Max turned back to the bar. ‘You said that you were quite happy staying at Queenie’s, helping out with the boarding house. Wild horses wouldn’t tempt you back on stage, you said.’

‘Old pros never really retire. You know that.’

‘You said you couldn’t remember the lines any more.’

‘That’s not a problem with panto,’ said Diablo airily. ‘You can say what you like. It’s all nonsense anyway.’

Max returned with more drinks and they found themselves a corner table.

‘This is jolly,’ said Diablo. ‘A Magic Men reunion.’

Edgar didn’t know how he could refer so cheerfully to the unit to which all three had been seconded during the war. The Magic Men had been brought together by MI5 to use stagecraft against the enemy. Edgar had been the straight man, the regular soldier, but the others were all stage magicians. Max, of course, was a big star before the war. When he was in the army in Egypt, he had reputedly used misdirection and sleight-of-hand to great effect: dummy tanks, disappearing armies, the Suez Canal vanishing through clever use of arc lights. This was the story that had been sold to Edgar by the recruiting officer from MI5, that a camouflage group was needed to convince the Nazis that Scotland (so close to occupied Norway) was heavily defended. The other members of the group had been Tony Mulholland, a mesmerist with a battery of mind-control techniques, and The Great Diablo, who was already many years past his prime. The group had their successes – a full-size battleship constructed from an old pleasure cruiser – but their mission had ended in failure all the same. And none of it, in Edgar’s opinion, had been exactly jolly.

‘Ed’s not having much fun,’ said Max. ‘He’s involved in the case of the missing children. You may have read about it. Their bodies were found yesterday.’

Diablo’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Oh, my dear boy. How awful for you.’

‘Worse for them,’ said Edgar. But, maybe because Diablo’s sympathy was so genuine, he ended up telling them slightly more than he should about the discovery on Devil’s Dyke.

‘You told me this last night,’ said Max, when he got to the sweets. ‘At Mrs M’s.’

‘Did I?’ Edgar had completely forgotten. ‘Well, what do you think?’

‘Misdirection,’ said Max. ‘Smoke and mirrors. Classic magician’s technique. Leads the eye away from the important place. The sweets are a false trail, mark my words.’

‘This isn’t a conjuring trick,’ said Edgar, rather irritated by Max’s airy tone. ‘But it’s true that the sweets have made people’s imagination run riot. My sergeant thinks it’s some sort of gruesome re-enactment of “Hansel and Gretel”.’

‘Do you really think that someone would kill two children just to illustrate a fairy tale?’ asked Max.

‘I don’t know,’ said Edgar. ‘But it’s a line of enquiry at present.’ He suddenly noticed that Diablo had gone very pale.

‘Are you all right, Diablo?’

‘A fairy tale . . .’ Diablo was distinctly blue about the lips.

Max hurried to get some water. ‘Drink this, old boy.’ Diablo reached out a shaking hand for the glass.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Edgar. ‘It’s a particularly ghastly case.’

‘No.’ Diablo shook his head violently. ‘It’s not that. It’s just that it’s happened before.’

*

‘It was when I was a young pro. Before the war. The First World War. I was doing
The Babes in the Wood
in Hastings. I was the Demon King. Top of the bill. I was only in my thirties and I fancied myself in my cloak, twirling my moustache. Those were the days. The theatre packed every house, no nonsense about not drinking in the wings. There was a lovely little thing called Alice Dean playing Robin Hood. Oh, those legs in green tights! She wouldn’t have anything to do with me at first but I think I would have won her over in the end if this hadn’t happened . . . Anyway, there were two children in the pantomime, playing the Babes, you know. And one of them was this moppet called Betsy Bunning. You know the sort. She was fifteen, looked ten and acted like a thirty-five-year-old. Anyway, one day – I’ll never forget it – it was the dress rehearsal. I came on stage ready to twirl my moustache and there she was, lying in her bower with her throat cut.’

‘Good God,’ said Max. ‘Was she dead?’

Diablo took a gulp of whisky. ‘Oh, she was dead all right. Her blood was running down the stage. It’s a scene I’ll never forget – Alice screaming, the child swinging to and fro, her dress soaked in blood.’

He stared into space, as if the crowded pub had become the bloodstained stage. Edgar asked, ‘Did they find out who did it?’

Diablo came back to the present with a slight jump. ‘Oh yes. It was a man called Ezra Nightingale. He was a writer, obsessed with fairy tales, the proper gruesome Grimm ones. Anyway, he befriended Betsy – the prosecution claimed it was a sexual thing but he swore he was just being kind – and then he killed her. He wanted to re-enact the original story, where the children are murdered and there are bloody footprints in the snow. He didn’t approve of the pantomime version because it had a happy ending. Not a happy ending for poor Betsy, of course.’

‘What happened to this man? Nightingale?’ asked Edgar. He could be alive now, about Diablo’s age, an old man but still obsessed, still dangerous. He’d have changed his name though . . .

‘Oh, he was found guilty and went to the gallows,’ said Diablo. ‘He was hanged in 1913.’

Aladdin:
I don’t want to go in there. It’s all dark and creepy.

Abanazar:
That’s no way to talk about your uncle.

Aladdin:
You’re not my real uncle.

Abanazar:
Of course I’m your uncle. Just look how alike we are. Both handsome, manly [
pause for laugh
], brave . . .

Aladdin:
If you’re so brave, why don’t you go in the cave?

Abanazar:
Two reasons. One, because the secret door can only be opened by an innocent boy called Aladdin.

Aladdin:
That’s a good reason. What’s the second reason?

Abanazar:
Because I’ll kill you if you don’t.

Stage darkens. Abanazar explodes firecrackers from sleeves.

It was the first night of
Aladdin
. The auditorium was full and there was an excited buzz that seemed to carry all the way through the wings and into the labyrinth of backstage corridors. It carried all the way into the Number One Dressing Room, where Max sat drinking black coffee and reading through the script. He knew his lines, of course; it was just a superstition of his to glance through the words before going on for the first time.

The script was quite funny – he had to give Nigel Castle that – even if Annette always ruined the snappy dialogue by simpering too much on ‘manly’ and wiggling her hips at ‘innocent boy’. He could hear the opening number, ‘Boys and Girls of Peking’, booming through the loudspeaker. There was definitely a good audience out there tonight. Even the rather leaden dancers were getting applause, with shouts of ‘Ooh’ and ‘Aah’ for the more gymnastic stuff. Diablo was due on in a minute, walking in procession with his daughter, the Princess, being fanned by minions. The original Emperor had been carried in a sedan chair but one look at Diablo had forced Roger Dunkley to change this piece of business. ‘Don’t want my stagehands coming down with lumbago.’

Suddenly Max felt curious about Diablo’s entrance. He was pretty sure that the old devil had something hidden up his voluminous sleeves. As far as Max could tell, he had made no effort to learn his lines, although Nigel Castle kept offering to go over them with him. ‘Want to keep it fresh for the night,’ Diablo told the scriptwriter airily. ‘There’s such a thing as over-rehearsing, y’know.’

Max put down the script and opened his door. He could hear the first number coming to an end. Twirl, spin, thump, turn, crescendo, eyes and teeth. He made his way up the wooden steps to the wings. ‘Boys and girls of Peking. Come in!’ Thunderous applause.

The assistant stage manager, sweating with ropes and pulleys, saw Max and looked anxious. It was rare for Max to come out of his dressing room early. Max gestured reassuringly. He could see Diablo, resplendent in purple robes, waiting stage right.

‘Bow down for the Emperor of Peking and his daughter, Princess Jasmine.’

The actress playing Jasmine, a rather sweet girl called Hilda Thompson, gave Diablo an encouraging smile as they stepped onto the stage. There was no need for her to feel anxious. As soon as the old rascal had his feet on the boards he was transformed.

‘Hallo, boys and girls. It’s your old Emperor here!’

Max grinned in the darkness of the wings. He was pretty sure that this line wasn’t in Nigel Castle’s script, where the Emperor featured as a taciturn and tyrannical father.

‘Welcome to Peking. And anyone caught peeking will be shot on sight. Especially if they’re peeking at my lovely daughter. Isn’t she beautiful?’

He leered into the stalls and the audience rewarded him warmly, confident that they were in the hands of an expert. Aladdin’s first words, ‘Who is that girl?’, were lost in the laughter, which served Annette right for not waiting long enough.

Still grinning, Max made his way back to his dressing room. Just time for a game of patience before his first entrance.

*

Edgar saw the lights from the pier as he made his way along the seafront. He was planning to take some flowers to Mrs M on his way home. The Christmas roses, bought by Emma at lunchtime, were already looking sad and wilted. It had been a frustrating day all round. In the morning he and Bob had trudged around Queen’s Park asking tobogganing families if they had seen Annie and Mark on Monday evening. A few people knew the children, at least by sight (‘Isn’t it terrible? I don’t feel safe letting the kids out of my sight’) but no one remembered seeing them in the park that night. They spoke to several dog-walkers: a large man with a tiny poodle, a family with an ancient spaniel and a Great Dane that took up most of a house on the south side of the park. Although all of them had been out on Monday night, none of them had seen the children.

‘Dog people only notice other dogs,’ said Bob. ‘My mum’s the same. She only talks to people with Jack Russells.’

Edgar’s mother had never owned a dog though he’d longed for one as a boy. Sometimes, walking home from school, he’d imagined that he was accompanied by a large Alsatian called Rex. He wished that Annie and Max had owned a dog like that, one that would have ripped the throat out of anyone who had dared approach them.

Emma had spent the day researching. She hadn’t complained but Edgar knew that she’d rather be there on the streets with them. Was he being patronising, trying to spare her the slog and the frustration, treating her as fragile because she was a woman? Or was it just because she was so good at the background stuff, so meticulous and thorough? In his experience, it was almost impossible to get this sort of thing right.

In any case, Emma had done her work well and, in addition to the roses, Edgar was now weighed down by a carrier bag containing several large books plus an archive copy of the
Argus
from December 1912. Diablo’s killer might have gone to the gallows but Edgar still thought it might be worth reading about the case. The parallels were tenuous but nevertheless slightly too close for comfort: a dead child, a fairy tale, a seaside town in pantomime season. Even the weather. A phrase from Diablo’s account had come back to haunt Edgar in the night.
Bloody footprints in the snow.
Could it be the combination of children and snow had triggered a murderous reaction in someone somewhere? He decided to add ‘The Babes in the Wood’ to his reading list.

He’d sent Bob and Emma home after lunch but he had stayed on, going over evidence, trying to fit the pieces together. Annie wrote plays in which children killed or were killed. Then she was murdered and a supposed clue left in her grave. Were the sweets meant to point the way to Sam Gee or to something altogether more complex and sinister? What was the role of the teacher who had befriended her or of the middle-aged man who staged her dramas? Who was writing the script here? Was it Annie, the clever girl who had trained a troupe of children to act out her fantasies, not to mention the loyal assistant who was killed at her side? Or was there another hand behind the scenes, another player yet to make their entrance?

The boarding house was quiet. Presumably all the lodgers were either in the pantomime or in other Christmas shows at the Hippodrome or Theatre Royal. But there was a light on in the front room and, before long, Edgar could hear footsteps coming towards him. He composed his face into an ingratiating smile. He was sure that the landlady would invite him in, perhaps for a drink.

So, all in all, he was disappointed when the door opened and a sullen-faced girl in a maid’s outfit stared out at him.

‘Good evening. Is Mrs . . .’ He suddenly realised that he didn’t know what the M stood for. ‘Is the landlady in?’

‘No. She’s gone to the pantomime. On the pier.’

Of course. Mrs M would not want to miss Max’s first night. He suddenly felt stupid, standing on the doorstep with his bunch of flowers like an old-fashioned stage-door Johnny.

‘These are for her.’ He offered the flowers. ‘Can you tell her that they’re from the man who stayed here on Thursday night, to say thank you?’

The maid looked at him blankly. There was no sign that she’d understood – or even heard – his message.

‘Well, goodnight then.’ The door was slammed shut before he got to the bottom of the steps. Edgar turned his collar up against the wind and began the long walk home.

*

The girl lay cringing upon the slab. Max waved his green cloak, letting the stage lights chase the shimmering garment, leading the audience’s eyes up into the gods where he wanted them.

‘If you won’t go into the cave, then I’ll send you there myself.’

‘Oh, please don’t, Uncle.’

Max threw the cloak over Annette’s huddled figure. Grinning maniacally up into the royal box, he masked her just long enough for her to find the hidden catch in the papier mâché boulder. Goodness knows they’d rehearsed it often enough but Annette was a clumsy performer and frequently mistimed her disappearance, leaving him to twirl and ad-lib until the box closed and he was able to remove his cloak with a triumphant villain’s ‘Ha ha’. He thought of Ruby and how well she would have performed this trick. But Ruby was not going to have a career as a magician’s assistant. Not if he could help it.

But tonight Annette found the handle quickly. The rock didn’t even shake as she settled down inside it. Max stepped away as the cymbals crashed and the audience exhaled in a single, delirious ‘Oooh.’