Who Killed Dick Whittington?

by E.

  Alderman: “Leave my shop, I say.”

  And the reply:

  Dick: “Good-bye, Alice. Remember me, I pray.

  For I will return and claim you as my bride.

  When luck has changed, and once more you’re at my side.

  Come, my faithful cat, some day we’ll gain renown,

  And they’ll be glad to welcome us to good old London Town.

  Farewell . . . farewell.”

  All: “Farewell . . . farewell . . . farewell”

  The stage blacked out. The front cloth fell. The Dame entered in front of the cloth and began her beguiling of the audience—the routine to give the stage hands time to set the next scene.

  * * * * *

  Come behind the scenes for a few moments and remark upon the preamble to the tragedy that is so soon to fall on the heads of the company. As the curtain fell there was a hurried rush of principals and chorus from the stage. Girls dashed helter-skelter through the Green Room to the dressing-rooms to change for the second half, and to repair the ravages of heat and scurry on their make-up. Principals, with a little more time on their hands, made their way more slowly to a drink fetched for them by the dressers.

  All but Dick Whittington. She stalked to the stage-manager’s box and confronted that harassed executive.

  “Tell that blasted stage-hand who changes the tree-trunks on the revolve to be more careful!” she snapped. “He damn near split my skull last night in the black-out, and those girls who stand up-stage are crowding in on me. I won’t have it.”

  “All right, Miss de Grey, I’ll see to it,” William promised. He pulled her down-stage and dodged a ten-foot ‘flat’ which three stage-hands were moving across to set up. “You’d better go into the Green Room till we’re set,” he cooed, and piloted her out of danger. As he came back on the stage he caught up with a stage-hand setting the mossy bank on which Dick Whittington was soon to repose to hear the bells of Bow.

  “Arthur, go steady in the revolve with those ground irons of yours,” he said. “Miss de Grey says you nearly murdered her last night.”

  “Blasted good job if I had,” was the reply. “She’s been rocking again, I suppose. Properly got it on her tonight, ain’t she? I reckon she’s copped the brewer.”

  “Cut that out, Arthur,” the stage-manager retorted sharply. “You do your job, and let it go at that.”

  “Orlright . . . orlright, guv. But somebody’ll drop a counterweight on that mess of peroxide one of these fine nights, and serve her blasted well right. Jes’ listen to her a’rortin’ to the Cat, now. . . . Blimey, he’s walked out on her.”

  The Cat, swearing, swung angrily from the Green Room and turned towards the dressing-rooms. The stage-manager looked anxiously after him, and then the more pressing business of changing the scenery called his attention. He was to remember, later, the cat’s disappearance at the head of the stairs. But now he turned to his staff.

  “Come along, lads, we’re letting it go a bit fine,” he called. Down came the backcloth with its views of distant London. Down came the borders of tree foliage, and in went the ‘flats’ of oak and elm. Stage-hands carried on and arranged the mossy bank. The Highgate Hill scene, highlight of the pantomime, was ready. Ten minutes had passed since the black-out, and the Dame had ended her front-cloth scene to sustained clapping and applause. She came off, wiping perspiration from her (or, rather, his) face.

  The stage-manager gave the light cue. The electricians dimmed the stage, and stood by for their trickiest scene.

  “Everybody ready?” asked the stage-manager, and looked anxiously round. His finger pressed a button, and the front cloth went up.

  * * * * *

  Dick Whittington, bundle and stick over his shoulder, walked on to the stage. A tired, and dispirited Dick. He came slowly into view, and approached the mossy bank.

  “Come along, pussy, here’s a bank.

  We’ll rest awhile.”

  There was a momentary pause. . . . The stage-manager jumped.

  “Where’s that blasted Cat?” he asked himself. “What the hell’s he doing?”

  He started out of his corner, but with a sigh of relief returned. A furry coat appeared up-stage, and slowly ambled towards Dick Whittington.

  Miss de Grey saw it at the same time. To the stage-hands, watching her from the side, it was obvious that she was furious at the momentary delay. She fumbled her lines:

  “The world is all against me. Only you are my friend

  So we’ll sleep awhile, and at break of day

  To make our fortune we’ll away.

  Good night, Tommy.”

  Dick stretched herself gracefully at full length upon the moss of the bank, and closed her eyes. The Cat meowed and, to the delight of the younger members of the audience, washed carefully its fur and face, passing, of course, its paws round the back of its ears. Then, with a final stretch, he curled himself across Dick Whittington’s legs.

  Applause broke out, and subsided. From the wings came Fairy Bow Bells. Her wand extended over the sleeping Dick. She spoke her traditional lines:

  “Sleep on, sweet boy.

  Though fortune may frown,

  Soon you’ll return with wealth and renown.

  Dream of the message that peals from Bow Bells;

  Turn again, Whittington, that’s what it tells.

  Lord Mayor of London Town

  Three times Lord Mayor.

  Turn again, Whittington, life will be fair.”

  The soft music swelled to crescendo, and the sound of bells filled the theatre.

  Slowly the stage revolved to a half-turn. Bells hung everywhere on this reverse side of the scenery. Girls dressed as silver and golden bells poised, and then broke into ballet for three minutes of sheer loveliness. The Belles appeared as in a dream.

  Again the stage revolved, bringing the mossy bank and the sleeping Whittington once more to its original position downstage. The Fairy of the Bells sang her song—the cue for Dick’s waking, and for his words:

  “The bells, the bells; is it a dream?

  I thought I heard the Bow Bells say:

  Turn again, Whittington, Lord Mayor of London.”

  But no words came.

  The Fairy Queen waited. The stage-manager, sensing something wrong, leaned forward and looked back along the stage. He saw Dick Whittington still reclining.

  “What the hell’s happened now?” he hissed. “God, she must have fainted.” He turned towards the orchestra pit and waved frantically at the conductor.

  “Go on, go on, for the love of Mike,” he called in a loud whisper.

  “YOU”—to the mesmerized Fairy Queen—“say it. . . . Say it, damn you!”

  The Fairy took up the unspoken lines, the chorus joined in, and the audience, unaware that anything unusual had happened, applauded enthusiastically as the curtain closed.

  “No call . . . no call,” the stage-manager shouted, and rang down the fire-curtain for the interval.

  He rushed to the mossy bank, as the Cat, free at last to move, got up and walked to the side of the revolve.

  The stage-manager bent over the recumbent form of Miss de Grey. He shook her. “Miss de Grey . . . Miss de Grey,” he called. “Are you ill?”

  No answer came. He signalled a stage-hand.

  “Carry her to the lounge in the Green Room,” he said. “And get the first-aid man. Quick.”

  The first-aid man came at the run, his flask loosened and uncorked. He bent over the star and loosened her jerkin. He felt for her heart, and suddenly shrank back.

  “Gawd A’Mighty!” he said softly. “Gawd A’mighty, I believe she's dead.”

  “What!”

  The exclamation came from the house manager, breathless from his dash from the front of the house to find the reason for the stage contretemps.

  “Dead? Impossible,” he said.

  “I reckon she is, sir,” the first-aid man confirmed, after another examination. “You’d better get a doctor.”

/>   The manager, white-faced and trembling, waited for the fire-curtain to be raised, and then slipped on to the front of the stage, and faced the audience.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “I regret to have to announce that Miss Norma de Grey has been taken suddenly ill. If there is a doctor in the house, the management would be grateful for his assistance.”

  His eyes searched the stalls and saw a man rise from the fourth row and acknowledge him with a nod. The manager hurried from the stage to meet him.

  Behind the scenes consternation reigned. Principals and chorus were crowding the entrance to the Green Room, pushing and jostling in an endeavour to see the Principal Boy, still lying on the lounge.

  “What’s the matter with her now?” asked Idle Jack.

  “’Nother tantrum, I reckon,” retorted the Demon King. “The bloomin’ Cat’s scratched her tights, I shouldn’t be surprised.”

  “Now, boys and girls, please,” coerced the stage-manager. “You’ve got only five minutes.” He jostled them clear of the entrance. “Off you go.” He turned to the understudy.

  “Miss de Grey won’t be able to appear again tonight. You’ll have to go on. Buck up and get dressed.”

  “Me? Bow Bells at last. Whoops! Well, I’ll be damned! My chance at last.” She dashed for her dressing-room.

  “You’ve four minutes,” the stage-manager warned her.

  * * * * *

  The doctor, escorted by the manager, came through the pass door, crossed the stage and, entering the Green Room, bent over the still figure of the star.

  Beneath the powder and paint, the face stared out greyish-blue. The doctor sought for, and held, the pulse in the girl’s left wrist. It showed no movement or beat. He lifted an eyelid and looked into a glassy, staring pupil.

  Suddenly, he bent lower. Then, gravely, he turned to the manager and the stage-manager.

  “I think you had better telephone for the police,” he said. “This woman has been poisoned.”

  There was a shocked silence, broken by the voice of the stage-manager.

  “Poisoned, sir?” he said. “But it’s impossible. She was on the stage. I was watching her the entire time. Neither she nor anybody else moved a hand.”

  “I don’t care where she was, sir,” the doctor retorted, “she has been poisoned. She has had a dose of prussic acid, and must have died within a few seconds. I will remain here until the police arrive.”

  The three men looked at one another.

  “The show must go on, of course.” The manager looked at the doctor. “Can we move her into her own room? We have the company coming through here.”

  “I see no harm in that. She did not die in this lounge.”

  Gently, the body of Dick Whittington, for whom the Bow Bells would never again ring, was carried into Number One dressing-room, laid on the lounge, and reverently covered with a dust-sheet.

  The stage-manager chivvied the call-boy. “Here, you, get them all down for the opening of the second half,” he said. “And tell them to hurry.”

  A ring on his house telephone sent him back into his box. He lifted the receiver. “Hallo,” he called.

  “Front of the house calling, William. The kids are calling for the Cat. What’s the matter with him?”

  “The Cat? Isn’t he out there? Gawd, what the devil is he doing? Haven’t we got enough trouble without him causing more. . . . Call-boy! . . . Call-boy!”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Go and see where the devil the Cat is.”

  It was the practice of the Cat, during the interval, to appear among the audience in the front of the house, gambolling along the gangways, playing with the children and walking along the plush front of the dress circle. For the kiddies it represented one of the high spots of the entire performance. It was the absence of ‘Tommy’ on this occasion that had led to the telephone call from the front of the house; and to the demand of the stage-manager to know where was the absentee.

  Nor was it the children alone who enjoyed the perambulations of the Cat amongst them; the Cat enjoyed it—from a financial point of view. He usually carried a little bag into which patrons whose children were singled out for a lick and a meow, beneficently slipped in pieces of silver—and paper. A cat who knew his tiles, so to speak, could make several pounds a night by judiciously picking the right parents. And Mr. de Benyat’s cat had done exceedingly well out of the Burlington audiences. So William, the stage-manager, was as much puzzled as he was worried by the missing cat.

  “Anyway, he can’t do it now,” he ruminated, “because the curtain is darned near due up. . . . Wonder if that understudy is going to be all right? She’s—”

  A series of piercing shrieks interrupted his soliloquy. He spun round, and out of the box on to the stage. “For the love of heaven, what the devil is going on now?” he called. “Dammit, they’ll hear it in front.”

  The shrieks grew in volume as the operator of them came nearer. Doors of dressing-rooms opened, and scared girls in various stages of dress, or undress, peered out.

  “Who is it?” roared the stage-manager. “Gag her, whoever it is.”

  The call-boy came into view at the far end of the Green Room, still shouting and waving his hands, and with a face as white as a sheet. William seized him by the collar, and shook him like a terrier shaking a rat.

  “Shut up, you little devil, will you? What’s got hold of you?”

  “The Cat, sir . . . the Cat. . . .” He paused, panting.

  “What’s the matter with the blasted Cat?”

  “He’s dead . . . in his room . . . lying on the floor.”

  “What!”

  The stage-manager stared incredulously.

  “Dead. . . . On the floor.” The boy gave one more shriek, and fell in a heap on the stage, unconscious. The first-aid man picked him up and rushed him off to the Green Room lounge only recently vacated by Dick Whittington.

  “Lord, there’s the orchestra finishing!” William ran his hands through his hair. He seized the telephone and dialled the orchestra pit. The conductor’s voice answered.

  “Bill, play the intermission through again, and then go straight on. We’re holding the curtain—got to get hold of the Cat’s understudy.”

  “Understudy? What’s the matter with the Cat, then?”

  “We think he’s dead, too.”

  “What? Well, if that ain’t the cat’s whiskers. What are we playing tonight? Whittington, or Sweeney Todd?”

  “I don’t think that’s funny, old man.” William banged the receiver down. “Jack,” he called to a stage-hand, “get hold of the Cat’s understudy, and tell him he’s got to go on. Room 26. Anybody taken the doctor to the Cat?”

  “Yes, guv’nor. Manager’s gone up with him.”

  “Right. Everybody down? Where’s that call-boy? Crumbs, got to get an understudy for him now. Come along, ladies. Get a move on. We’re late already. Stand by. . . .”

  “What’s the matter with Miss de Grey, Bill?” whispered one of the girls.

  “Don’t know, sweetheart. She can’t go on. Stop talking.” He turned to the Whittington understudy. “You all right, dearie?” he asked.

  “What do you think, sonny—my chance.”

  “Right.” He gave an anxious glance round the stage, noted the position of the chorus waiting, and counted them. None missing, he noted. He searched for, and found, the Captain and Mate waiting to follow after the chorus. . . . His fingers pressed the button once more.

  The curtain went up.

  The play went on.

  The stage-manager breathed a sigh of relief and sat on his stool. A hand touched his shoulders.

  “Can’t find the Cat’s understudy anywhere,” announced Jack.

  “Curses on him!” burst out the harassed man. “Here we’re paying salary for a walking understudy, and when he’s wanted he ain’t here. Listen. The blighter will be in the Green Man, round the corner. Fetch him out, take him to his blazing room, and put him into his skin. Then
come back and tell me he’s there.”

  “Right, guv.” Jack vanished on his Cat hunt.

  The house manager, tip-toeing silently through the wings, edged his way into William’s box. William eyed him.

  “Dead?” he whispered.

  “No. But damned near gone. He’s on the way to hospital.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Poison, same as Miss de Grey. Got a police inspector here. Listen. After the finale, get everyone dressed quickly, and into the Green Room. They’ll all have to be questioned. I’ve ordered coffee and sandwiches to be brought in. Heaven knows when they’ll get away tonight. I’ll try to get cars to take them all home afterwards. Nobody is to go out of the theatre. There’s a copper on the stage door, and the door is locked.”

  “That means stage hands, too?”

  “Yes, everybody.”

  “O.K.”

  CHAPTER III

  THE COMPANY TELL THEIR STORY

  At 11.30 p.m. a hundred or more people gathered in the Green Room of the Burlington Pavilion Theatre.

  They sat on the plush-covered lounges which lined the walls; they occupied chairs which had been carried from dressing-rooms. They eyed one another, talking in scared whispers, and casting now and again glances at the empty and silent stage shrouded in gloom as deep as the shroud of death which had descended over it during the evening.

  Round a table at the exit end sat a little group of men talking among themselves. From amongst them one stood up—the manager of the theatre. He looked along the rows of faces, and spoke.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said gravely, “I am sorry to have to tell you what some of you know already—that Miss de Grey is dead. . . .”

  A shocked silence followed the announcement, broken only by a few sobs from the younger girls of the chorus. The manager paused for a moment, to regain his composure.

  “She died on the stage, in the Highgate Hill scene,” he continued. “Mr. Enora, than whom we have never had a better Cat, is seriously ill. Now some of you were on the stage at the time, and others were in the wings. Inspector Bradley here”—he indicated the man by his side—“wants to ask you a few questions. He will not keep you long tonight. When he has finished, you will be taken to your diggings in cars, and I want to ask you not to discuss this tragic affair with anyone. The inspector assures me that it is most important that you shall not indulge in any talk. Now, Inspector.”