Arrowood and the Meeting House Murders

by Mick Finlay

  ‘But I… I can’t.’ He turned to the guvnor, a pitiful look on his smooth, rosy face. ‘Mr Arrowood, could you…?’

  Napper answered. ‘No, I don’t want him examining the scene before I arrive. Send Nick.’ He looked over at the guard. ‘Don’t disturb anything. Just see if she’s there and come straight back.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Nick, getting his overcoat.

  ‘Hurry, Gisele,’ said Leonie. ‘We’re on soon.’

  The two women began to apply their paint again.

  ‘But what am I to do about the show?’ asked Ralf, his voice high and reedy. His pale and perfect skin had pinked. ‘We’ve two hundred and fifty people in there waiting to see three Capaldi’s Wonders. They’ll want their money back. Oh, my God, Dad’ll be furious.’

  ‘Send him a message, son,’ said the guvnor. ‘He’ll know what to do.’

  ‘He said I wasn’t to come running to him when I had a problem. I got to prove myself with this show. I got to fix things. Oh, Lord, I’m so blooming unlucky, on the second night, too. Why did this…’ As he spoke, he was staring at the guvnor. His eyes narrowed. ‘Mr Arrowood, could you…’

  ‘Could I what, lad?’ asked the guvnor.

  ‘Could you take Sylvia’s place?’

  ‘Take what?’

  ‘Sylvia’s place, sir.’

  Arrowood looked at him, bewildered. He opened his eyes wide, then squinted at Ralf. He rubbed his pitted nose.

  ‘Take what?’ he asked again.

  ‘Please, Mr Arrowood. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t have to. We need three Wonders, not two. They’ll go mad.’

  The guvnor looked at him in horror. ‘You mean as Baboon Girl?’

  ‘You can do it, sir. Please help, please, Mr Arrowood. There’s hundreds of people out there.’

  The guvnor turned to Leonie, who was dabbing charcoal powder at the entrance of her nose-holes. Gisele was putting orange enamel paint on her arms and neck. He frowned and looked back at Ralf. ‘But I don’t look like a baboon.’

  ‘I don’t look like a pig,’ said Leonie, lifting her head and examining her nose in the glass.

  ‘But I’m nothing like a baboon! Barnett, tell them.’

  ‘We’ll paint your face, Mr Arrowood,’ said Ralf. ‘Don’t be afraid. The ladies do it every day.’

  ‘I’m not afraid, I just don’t look anything like a baboon.’

  Napper had the widest smile I’d ever seen on his face. ‘You do look like a baboon,’ he said.

  ‘You have the arse,’ I told him.

  ‘I do not.’

  ‘Trust me, sir,’ I said, trying not to smile. ‘You’re close enough.’

  He looked at me like I’d betrayed him. Finally, he turned back to Ralf.

  ‘I don’t understand why you’re asking me this, Ralf.’

  Napper stepped over to the door. ‘Well, I hate to miss the show, but I’ve got an appointment with a magistrate. Come along, Mabaso.’

  The two coppers disappeared into the corridor, shutting the door behind them.

  ‘We can brush your whiskers so they stand up,’ said Ralf. ‘Shave your moustache off. Please, Mr Arrowood. You can do it. We’ve only two performances today.’

  ‘No! What d’you think I am?’

  ‘Just one performance then,’ pleaded Ralf. ‘I’m sure Nick’ll bring Sylvia back before the next one.’

  ‘I’m not even a woman!’

  ‘You can wear Sylvia’s dress,’ Ralf went on. ‘You’re about the same size. I’ll find you a wig. Leonie’ll do your face. Have you got hairy legs?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He does,’ I said.

  ‘Perfect,’ said Ralf. ‘Please, Mr Arrowood. I’m desperate. I’ll give you Sylvia’s money. I’ll give you more. Twenty shillings.’

  The guvnor sniffed. He looked at me for help, then went to stand by the door, looking at the ladies like he’d been hit in the face by a trout. He pulled out his pipe and got it going. He shook his head and sighed again.

  ‘Forty,’ I said.

  ‘No, Norman!’ he cried. ‘I’m not doing it.’

  ‘The medicine, William,’ I said.

  He bit his lip, drawing hard on his pipe. He shut his eyes and tapped his walking stick against his boot. Finally, he sighed. ‘Only for one performance,’ he said.

  ‘Can you sing “The Fishermen Hung the Monkey, O!”?’ asked Ralf.

  ‘I know it and I’m a very good singer. I take lessons.’

  ‘Can you dance the Highland Fling?’

  ‘Of course,’ answered the guvnor as if it was something that no gentleman, even a poor, fallen one, should be asked.

  Ralf held out his hand. ‘It’s a deal, Mr Arrowood.’

  ‘One more thing, Mr Ralf. You have to tell me what happened at the Quaker Hall on the night of the murders.’

  Ralf swallowed, his hand mid-air. ‘I don’t know what happened.’

  ‘Of course you do, son,’ said the guvnor. ‘Your father told me he had no secrets from you. He said you were his right-hand man.’

  ‘He did? He said that?’

  ‘Exactly those words. So, tell us. Why did he have Mr Fowler shot?’

  ‘He didn’t. It wasn’t anything to do with him.’

  ‘Then why did your uncle Ermano shoot him?’

  ‘My uncle…’ Ralf’s mouth had gone dry. He took a flask from his pocket and had a long swallow.

  ‘We’ve three witnesses. Detective Napper’s keeping it secret for the moment, but he’ll be arrested in due course. And your father for giving the command.’

  ‘I don’t know anything.’

  ‘Of course you do. Thembeka and Senzo have identified him. He’s already done for, so you’re not betraying anyone. Listen, Ralf, if it was self-defence, then nothing will happen to him. That’s the law. But if it was deliberate murder, then…’ The guvnor paused, clutching his forehead, his jaw dropping. ‘Oh my goodness. It was deliberate. That’s why you won’t tell me! Oh, my Lord, you poor lad. Having to keep a terrible secret like that. Trying to protect your uncle from the gallows. Oh, you poor thing. You’re too young, Ralf. Much too young.’

  ‘It weren’t his fault!’ cried Ralf. ‘One of them Zulus pulled a pistol on him. He thought they were going to shoot him so he pulled his out, then Mr Fowler jumped in front of him at just the wrong time. The witnesses’ll tell you the same. It was self-defence.’

  ‘The murder of Musa wasn’t an accident, Ralf. His teeth were beaten out of this mouth.’

  ‘That wasn’t him. We didn’t know about that till we saw it in the papers, I swear it. When Mr Fowler was shot they got out of there as quick as they could.’

  ‘Why did they take Mrs Fowler and S’bu?’

  ‘They didn’t! Father’s been in a rage ever since, thinking it’d all come back on us. Dad even bashed up Uncle Ermano about it all.’

  A short bloke appeared in the corridor. ‘Ten minutes, Mr Capaldi,’ he said, then turned and disappeared.

  ‘You better get ready, Mr Arrowood,’ said Ralf. His voice was quiet now, unsure if he’d done the right thing. ‘I’ll wait out here.’

  ‘Money first, Mr Ralf,’ I said.

  Ralf took out his purse and counted out two quid. ‘I’ll give you a knock,’ he muttered. He turned to me. ‘You can go out front if you want to see the show, Mr Barnett. I might join you later.’

  I saluted the lad, then turned and marched down the corridor. I bought a hot brandy from the drinks counter and made my way to the hall where Capaldi’s Wonders were to perform. It was jammed in there, old and young, rich and poor, all standing waiting to see the freaks. I sipped my brandy and waited for the show.

  Five minutes later, the band started up and the crowd fell silent.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Polichinelle, dressed in his yellow-and-red clown costume, skipped onto the stage to the cheer of the crowd. A single electric spotlight was on him. He rang the bell attached to his belt, then jumped as if he’d had his arse pinched.
Folk laughed. He put his finger to his ear and turned his head like he’d heard something off-stage.

  ‘What’s that you say?’ he asked. The punters cheered again. It was his phrase. I only knew it from Neddy, who used to say it a lot, and always with that same finger to the ear, pretending to hear something just out of reach.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I have a treat for you. From the four corners of the world, the most wondrous, the most monstrous, the most educational, the one and only Capaldi’s Wonders!’

  To great applause and cheering, the curtains behind him opened to reveal Gisele painted orange and lying in her glass tank with starfish hanging round her. A woman in black next to me gasped.

  ‘THE HUMAN LOBSTER!’ cried Polichinelle.

  Her legs were in the fish tail costume, her top half in the orange vest. The tank was half-full of water, rising to about her waist. She raised her hands so the punters could see her deformities.

  There were gasps and mutterings all round the room. A child began to weep.

  ‘This creature was discovered by the captain of a tea clipper off an isolated island in the Samoan seas,’ said Polichinelle, going to stand behind Gisele’s tank. ‘When she’s out of water for more than two hours, she begins to turn blue.’

  ‘Show us!’ yelled a bald fellow in the middle.

  ‘Get her out!’ yelled another.

  The clown silenced the chatting in the room. ‘I’m afraid we cannot do that, sir. You see, for her being out of water’s like you being in a fire. She shrieks like the Catholic martyrs. People have gone mad when they heard her shriek. I heard it once and had to spend two months in a monastery.’

  I chuckled and lit up a fag.

  Polichinelle moved back to centre stage, ringing the bell on his belt. He cupped his hand to his ear. ‘What’s that you say?’ he asked the crowd. He waved his other hand around, encouraging the audience, then cupped his ear again.

  ‘WHAT’S THAT YOU SAY?’ roared the crowd.

  The clown laughed. ‘Next, ladies and gents, the one and only in the world. The most beautiful… TASMANIAN… PIG… WOMAN!’

  Leonie appeared from the side of the stage and clumped over to join Gisele. She wore her stage costume: over-tight dress of soft pink, white gloves and boots with leather hooves sewed to the ends, a curled tail stuck to her rumple. Her face and scalp were painted a whitish pink, her wide nose-holes darkened with charcoal.

  ‘I don’t like it, Mama,’ said a girl of six or so behind me.

  ‘You’re not supposed to like it,’ said her mama.

  I moved away to the side of the room and took a swallow of my brandy.

  ‘This beauty was first discovered by a missionary about a hundred miles from the penal colony of Hobart,’ announced Polichinelle. ‘He came across her in a forest where she was eating mushrooms straight from the ground. All we know is that she’s the daughter of a Greek chap named Hercules who ran a pig farm on nearby land. Nobody knows who her mother is.’

  ‘Kiss me, darling!’ yelled a wag near the front.

  His mates around him laughed.

  ‘Go on, then, sir!’ shouted a gent from the middle of the crowd. ‘Get up there!’

  The wag climbed onto the stage. He looked an ordinary sort of bloke, a shopman or something, and it was clear he’d had a few drinks. He stumbled towards Polichinelle, who slapped his face hard. That got the biggest laugh so far, but the bloke didn’t mind. He turned and took a bow, then advanced towards Leonie, his arms out. Though she tried to push him away, he pulled her close and planted a kiss right on her lips. Cheers filled the room. He got to one knee.

  ‘Marry me, my princess!’ he shouted.

  ‘Ugly princess, more like,’ called out a rough-looking fellow in front of me.

  Oh, they liked it, this crowd out to find a bit of magic that Christmas.

  ‘Marry me, piggy!’ demanded the drunken bloke, still on one knee.

  He was struggling to his feet when Leonie stepped forward and kicked him in the face. He shrieked, falling on his back. The crowd liked that even better. Showing a strength you wouldn’t think he had, Polichinelle grasped the fellow by the back of his coat and threw him off-stage into the first row of punters.

  When the uproar had died down, Polichinelle rang the bell attached to his belt and cocked his head.

  ‘WHAT’S THAT YOU SAY?’ roared the crowd.

  ‘Some say she’s the missing link,’ he said, his voice serious now. ‘Living proof of Mr Darwin’s theory of the descent of man. From a Mexican tribe of snake-eaters who say they found her living with bats up a tree in the deepest, darkest Mayan jungle. Hold your breath, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, while I present to you… THE… BABOON… GIRL!’

  The guvnor appeared, stepping out from the curtains. He peered into the dark of the hall.

  ‘What the bloody hell is that?’ muttered a croaky young woman.

  Sylvia’s ballet dress came down to his knees. His legs and arms were exposed, and it looked as they’d used charcoal to make the hairs thicker. They’d shaved his moustache off, and the hairs on his cheek, and smoothed away the blotches of his face with some kind of purplish powder. They’d left his side whiskers and the hair round his jawbone and neck, but had starched it so it stuck out like a fan around his face. He walked stooped, his arms dangling toward the floor, his bum padded with a cushion.

  All around, people were whispering and muttering.

  ‘It’s hideous, Charles,’ said an old woman to a young bloke next to her.

  ‘I’ll get nightmares, I shouldn’t fancy,’ murmured a boy of about eleven or so to his ma in front of me.

  A soldier by the stage poked the guvnor in the belly with a walking stick. Arrowood swatted it away and loped over to Leonie. He looked out at the crowd with a pout and a sneer. I laughed. He wasn’t half-bad as a baboon.

  ‘That ain’t a lady,’ growled a grizzled old bugger wearing a battered top hat. ‘They must think we’re fools.’

  The opening chords of ‘The Fishermen Hung the Monkey O!’ started up, and the other stage lights turned off, leaving only the guvnor in the spot as he began to sing the famous song:

  In former times ’mid war and strife,

  The French invasion threatened life,

  And all was armed to the knife,

  The Fishermen hung the Monkey, O!

  As he sung, he staggered back and forth across the stage, his rumple out, staring at the punters left and right. I looked around at the couples dotted here and there and wished Molly were here. The guvnor sang on:

  They tried every means to make him speak,

  They tortured the Monkey till loud he did squeak

  Says one that’s French, says another it’s Greek.

  For the Fishermen then got drunkey, O!

  The crowd cheered, mugs and pots were raised, folk took great gulps of their booze. And as they drank, the chorus came along, and the whole room sang:

  Dooram a dooram a dooram a da,

  Dooram a dooram a da

  Dooram a dooram a dooram a da,

  Dooram a dooram a da

  The kiddies all round were staring at the guvnor with wide, fascinated eyes. Verse by verse, Arrowood acted out all the words of that ugly song, the torture, the hanging, the head-shaving, the ear-severing. And as the monkey was slowly mutilated, the kiddies’ smiles turned to fear, and then horror.

  When the final chorus ended, a dozen children were sobbing, the parents on their knees comforting them. Without a pause, the band began to play the Highland Fling, and Leonie and the guvnor began to dance.

  When it was all over, dozens of punters crowded round the stage, the children feeding the three performers fruit, touching Gisele’s hands, stroking the guvnor’s legs and tugging at his whiskers. Polichinelle stood at the side with a cigar in his mouth, watching it all.

  I got myself another brandy and waited in the vestibule for the guvnor to become himself again. The wound in my side was playing up, so I swallowed down anot
her couple of Black Drop as I watched the punters empty out of the hall.

  After a while, the guvnor put his hand on my shoulder. He was back in his yellow suit, his Donegal coat, his bowler. He’d combed his whiskers down, but there were still smears of purple around his chops where he hadn’t wiped careful enough. I didn’t like the look of him so much without his moustache.

  ‘Nick says there’s no sign of Sylvia in Brixton,’ he said. ‘God only knows where’s she’s got to.’ He looked around, surveying his public. ‘How was I?’

  ‘Better than I expected.’

  He nodded. ‘I was excellent. Say it, Barnett.’

  ‘You were better than I expected.’

  ‘I was excellent. Say it.’

  I stood.

  ‘Say it.’

  ‘You were excellent.’

  Finally, he smiled. ‘Yes, I was, wasn’t I? I didn’t look anything like a baboon, though, did I?’

  ‘Of course not. Sir.’

  ‘Right, let’s go,’ he said, tapping my ankles with his stick. ‘The road to solving this case lies in discovering what happened to Mrs Fowler. We need to have another look at the last place we know she was alive.’

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The door of the Quaker Meeting House was open, and the same smiley fellow we’d seen last time sat in the office.

  ‘Did you find Reverend Druitt?’ he asked, shaking our hands.

  ‘Yes, most helpful, sir,’ said the guvnor. ‘You heard about Mrs Fowler, I suppose?’

  ‘The poor woman,’ he mumbled. ‘It was in the evening papers. Was it the Africans what did it, Mr Arrowood?’

  ‘The police are still investigating. That’s why we’re here, sir. Would you mind if we had another look in the main meeting room? There are a few details…’ The guvnor paused by the hooks. ‘You’ve left her coat there?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, what a dummy,’ said the chap. ‘I should’ve sent it to her house. I’m forgetting everything these days. But would you mind if I left you to it? I’ve quite a bit to do before locking up.’

  The guvnor searched Mrs Fowler’s coat pockets again. He pulled out her gloves, her hanky, the fold of acid drops and pamphlet on the Bombay plague. ‘Where are her scarf and bonnet? They weren’t on her body,’ he said, hurrying into the large meeting room. He’d changed since his performance, his steps quicker, his eyes more alive. There was no trace of his earlier disgrace. He pointed at the far wall. ‘You take that side. Look everywhere, every nook and cranny.’