by M. J. Trow
‘A shilling a day he pays that chap to do that,’ Trottie said to Lestrade from the corner of her mouth.
‘Well, well,’ the impresario held out a theatrical hand, ‘Squire Bancroft Bancroft.’
‘Er . . . Anthony Lister Lister,’ said Lestrade, following what was obviously a theatrical convention.
‘What have you done?’
‘Nothing,’ Lestrade admitted quickly.
‘Nothing?’ Bancroft was a little confused. ‘Trottie, darling . . .’
‘Mostly pantomime, Squire.’ Trottie came to Lestrade’s rescue as he had to hers not an hour before.
‘Ah, the nursery of the theatre.’ Queen Gertrude thrust her way into the gathering. ‘You can’t beat a good burlesque, that’s what I always say. Isn’t that what I always say, Squire?’ She nudged him disarmingly in the ribs and his monocle fell off.
‘Oh, er . . . quite. Mr Lister, this is my wife . . . um . . . Mrs Bancroft Bancroft.’
‘Charmed.’ Lestrade took the proffered hand, but thought better of the kiss the Great Actress clearly expected.
‘Likewise,’ she bobbed. ‘You may call me Effie . . . Anthony,’ and she proceeded to paw his arm.
‘Known Trottie long?’ Bancroft asked.
‘Not really,’ Lestrade said.
‘We thought perhaps the gravedigger,’ Trottie suggested.
‘But I’ve got a gravedigger, dear,’ Bancroft explained. ‘George Arliss will be very disappointed . . .’
‘Nonsense, Squire,’ Effie Bancroft retorted. ‘You can never have too many gravediggers, that’s what I always say. I’m sure if Gilbert and Sullivan ever get their hands on the Bard, they’ll have a whole chorus of gravediggers.’
‘Oh, very well.’ Bancroft threw up his arms. ‘We’ll try you out, Anthony, darling, but I can’t promise,’ and he turned to his wife. ‘He hasn’t even got George’s stupendous lip, you stupid old trout. And remember, if I hire him, you are not to wander into the men’s dressing-rooms; understand?’
‘That was a mistake,’ she hissed. ‘You know perfectly well I got lost.’
‘Not fourteen times you didn’t.’ He rounded on her. This sotto-voce tête-à-tête had nearly reached the street and the loving couple both turned to the waiting company and tittered before gliding apart.
‘Johnston, darling. Sorry about this. We’ll have to work on the bedroom scene later. You’re marvellous, of course. It’s just a pity about the queen, that’s all . . .’ and he ignored the venomous scowl Mrs Bancroft flashed at him. ‘Right, everybody!’ And he clapped his hands. ‘I want to give Anthony a try-out. Gravedigger scene. I’ll have to be George Arliss; he’s having his monocle reground today. Somebody give Anthony a script.’
A sheaf of tatty papers appeared from nowhere and Lestrade tried to read it. The lights dazzled and the sweat began to trickle down his temples. True, his Sarah Bernhardt in the Police Revue was legendary, but perhaps a gravedigger in drag might raise an eyebrow or two.
‘Perhaps if you took off the boater,’ Bancroft suggested. Mrs Bancroft had marched off to a corner where Lestrade was horrified to observe that she was lighting a pipe.
‘We’ll go from page forty-one. Johnston – “think it be thine indeed” – Anthony, you can read George’s part for now.’
Like a book, thought Lestrade, though it had to be said he read better upside-down.
Johnston adopted a peculiar stance as though his codpiece were playing him up and placed a hand over his breast. ‘I think it be thine indeed,’ he said, ‘for thou liest in’t.’
Silence.
‘That’s you, Anthony darling!’ Bancroft roared and Lestrade heard the Great Director slap his thigh, or probably someone else’s, with exasperation.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Lestrade. ‘I thought I was reading the gravedigger’s part.’
‘So you are, dear boy,’ Bancroft replied.
‘It’s just that it says “1 Clo”. I was a bit confused, that’s all.’
‘Aren’t we all?’ sighed Bancroft. ‘First Clown, Anthony. First Clown. “You lie out on’t sir”. Can we get on, Anthony? We open, heart, in three weeks. I don’t want anyone to panic or go to pieces or anything, but I’ve got to break in a new Ophelia, Gertrude needs work – and how – and the deuc’d ghost machine is playing up. Other than that, we’re laughing, aren’t we, dears?’ And he was screaming his head off by now. ‘Now, once again, Anthony, from the top.’
Lestrade decided that Bancroft was more over the top than from it and went into his part with a will. ‘You lie out on’t sir, and therefore it is not yours: for my part, I do not lie in’t, and yet it is mine.’ He peered at the page. Yes, he’d got the words right, but they made no sense to him whatsoever. Clearly Johnston understood, however, because he came back with, ‘Thou dost lie in’t to be in’t, and say it is thine: ’tis for the dead, not for the quick; therefore thou liest.’
‘Er . . . “’Tis a quick lie, sir: ’twill. . .”’ Lestrade thought twill was a sort of material the cavalry wore. He couldn’t get into this play at all. ‘“’twill away again from me to you.”’
‘What man dost thou dig for?’ Johnston asked, dropping to one knee.
‘For no man, sir,’ Lestrade answered.
‘Go with him, Anthony,’ Bancroft bawled. ‘Go with him.’
Lestrade dropped to one knee as well and there was an audible crack as patella hit board.
‘What woman, then?’ Johnston asked.
‘For none neither,’ Lestrade hissed through the pain.
‘Who is to be buried in’t?’
‘One that was a woman, sir; but, rest her soul, she’s dead.’
‘Oh, God!’ Johnston broke away from the imaginary graveside and Lestrade thought how good that was. He couldn’t find the line in his script, however, and erred for a while, while Mrs Bancroft blew a cloud of smoke from her lips and rushed to the leading man who stood, head in hands, in the wings.
‘What’s the matter now?’ Bancroft roared from the darkness.
‘Don’t be such an insensitive bastard, Squire!’ his wife commanded. Obviously all this queen-playing had gone to her head. ‘Can’t you see Johnston’s upset?’
‘Oh, give me strength!’ Bancroft wailed. ‘I never had this trouble with Mrs Patrick Campbell. We’ll break for elevenses. Where’s that chap who makes the tea? Aubrey Smith? If you’re off playing cricket somewhere, I’ll flay you alive!’
LESTRADE FOLLOWED THE pale-faced Hamlet through the bowels of the building. Trottie True was at his elbow, but he raised a finger to his lips and asked her, in sign language, to return to the stage. At the dressing-room door, the one with the single star that said in large letters painted by Squire Bancroft himself ‘MEN ONLY’, Lestrade collared his man.
‘My performance wasn’t that bad, was it?’ he said.
The leading man pulled himself together and sat before a mirror dazzling with light bulbs. ‘I’m sorry . . . er . . . Lister. I don’t know what came over me. I’m Johnston Forbes-Robertson, by the way,’ and he extended a hand before deftly whipping off his codpiece. Lestrade noted with some satisfaction that he was nothing without it.
‘I’ve suffered a bereavement recently,’ he said, blowing his elegant actor’s nose into a Leichner tissue. ‘Your lines up there brought it all flooding back – “One that was a woman, sir” . . .’ and he shook his head. ‘You know we actors, Lister,’ he sniffed. ‘Emotional types, eh?’
‘Was it your wife?’ Lestrade fished.
‘No. Closer than that.’
‘Sister?’
‘My leading lady. My Ophelia. Oh, Trottie’s all right, but Squire Bancroft tends to pick ’em for the length they measure on the casting couch rather than their talent.’
Lestrade had heard they were all the same length lying down, but that was obviously an ugly rumour.
‘Henrietta was just starting out. She’d been third spear bearer for a year or two and then got the Aladdin at the Hippodrome, Weston-Sup
er-Mare. This would have made her. She’d have been up there alongside Mrs Patrick Campbell, Sarah Bernhardt . . .’
‘Lily Langtry?’ Lestrade extended the list.
‘No, I meant she was an actress, Lister,’ Forbes-Robertson sneered.
‘What happened to her?’
‘Lily Langtry? I haven’t the faintest idea.’
‘No, I mean Henrietta . . . er . . . I didn’t catch her last name.’
‘Fordingbridge. She met her death three days ago at the hands of a madman.’
‘Ah, of course,’ Lestrade said, putting on his finest performance. ‘On the Underground, wasn’t it? I seem to remember reading about it in Greasepaint. Shocking. Shocking. You’ve . . . er . . . no theories, I suppose?’
‘None. Except . . . oh no, that’s ridiculous.’
‘What?’ The gravedigger was all ears.
‘Well, didn’t Trottie True’s sister meet a similar end?’
‘Good Lord! Did she?’
‘Well, surely you know that?’
‘Squire Bancroft didn’t.’
‘What?’
‘I have a confession to make to you, Mr Forbes-Robertson. I am not an actor.’
‘Oh no!’ Forbes-Robertson clapped a theatrical hand to his theatrical forehead. ‘Shock! Horror! Tell me it isn’t so.’
‘Ah,’ said Lestrade, ‘you’d guessed.’
‘Let’s just say I had an inkling,’ Forbes-Robertson said. ‘Just a teensy one, of course. You’re a policeman, aren’t you?’
‘You’d guessed that too?’
‘Well, not at first. But your face was a little familiar. Didn’t I see you in a Metropolitan Police Revue at the Alhambra a year or two back? You were Widow Twankey.’
‘Sarah Bernhardt,’ Lestrade corrected him, a little hurt.
‘Well, I was close.’
‘Inspector Lestrade.’ The actor manqué came out of the closet at last.
‘Are you on his trail?’ Forbes-Robertson asked. ‘The madman who stalks the Tubes?’
‘On his trail, certainly, but as to how close, that’s anybody’s guess. Tell me all you know about Henrietta Fordingbridge.’
FORBES-ROBERTSON HAD known Henrietta Fordingbridge in the biblical sense, but he was far too much of a gentleman to go very far into that. After all, he had been educated at Charterhouse and Rouen and his first part was as Chasteland in Mary Queen of Scots. As to the rest, he had loved her in the way that actors do, passionately and strong. Yes, he had proposed. No, she had not said yes. There was someone else, she had told Forbes-Robertson – a writer and visionary. Forbes-Robertson had offered to kill him, but Henrietta had just laughed. When he’d threatened to kill himself, that had elicited the same response.
‘So he killed her instead,’ was the conclusion to which Walter Dew had immediately leapt. Alas, it was the wrong one and Lestrade continued to dunk his Bath Oliver without moving his lips.
FRIDAY MORNING FOUND him padding up the shady side of Garrick Street, in search of the club of the same name. Dray horses snorted and champed their bits under a burning sun and flies droned about those bits they tried desperately to champ. A top-hatted gentleman in brown livery hailed Lestrade at the door.
‘Are we a member, sir?’ he inquired.
Lestrade assessed the situation at a glance. ‘You may be,’ he said. ‘I am not.’
‘Then may I ask your business, sir?’
‘Certainly. Now let me pass.’
The flunkey was of the determined variety, however. This was a club unlike any other, composed of lawyers, literary men and thespians – men who made enemies like other people made excuses. To the flunkey, Lestrade could have been a client, dissatisfied with a barrister’s defence; an author whose latest opus had been cruelly mangled by an editor’s whim; a theatregoer who objected to an actor’s performance. He could take no chances.
‘I cannot let you in, sir,’ he said.
‘Official police business.’ Lestrade flashed his documentation.
‘That’s what they all say,’ the flunkey said.
‘Do let him in, Kennedy,’ a rich, mellifluous voice said, as it swept past them both.
‘Very good, sir, Mr Marshall Hall, sir. This way, sir, if you please,’ and he led Lestrade into a cloakroom to the left where the Inspector solemnly deposited his boater before ascending the marble and brass staircase. Great actors stood before him, adoring the spotlight on their gilded faces. Advocates in wigs and gowns bore down on him in cross-examination. He was shown into a drawing-room where anonymous gentlemen snored the morning away under copies of The Times and flunkeys ran to and fro with amber nectar decanters on silver trays.
‘Thank you, Mr Marshall Hall.’ Lestrade bowed to his man, already perusing his paper.
‘What for, Lestrade? The entree? I’d offer to buy you luncheon, but I know the food would be too rich for someone used to Scotland Yard fare. Looking for someone else to hound?’
‘I was hoping to find Squire Bancroft.’
‘Well, you must be virtually unique in that. I believe I heard him shattering glass in the next room. Thank you, by the by, for dropping charges against George Culdrose. The man was patently innocent and alas, not rich enough to interest me for long.’
‘As you say, Mr Marshall Hall, patently innocent.’
‘Yes, and it just saved you from charges of wrongful arrest, didn’t it? I’ll swear you chappies have a sixth sense when it comes to that sort of thing. Pity you haven’t the same sense – or indeed any sense at all – when it comes to stopping this sort of thing.’ He tapped The Times with his index finger. ‘“Terror of the Tubes”,’ he quoted, ‘“Whose Line Is It Anyway?” Tsk, tsk. This rag gets more like a penny dreadful every day. Any ideas, Lestrade?’
‘Ah, Squire Bancroft.’ The Inspector felt the furniture wobble as the Great Actor-Manager’s dulcet tones preceded him into the room.
‘Good God, er . . . ?’
‘Inspector Lestrade, Scotland Yard,’ said Lestrade.
‘Really?’ Bancroft sat down beside the advocate unasked. ‘Haven’t a brother or cousin or something in the theatre, have you?’
‘Would that be the operating theatre?’ Lestrade asked solemnly. ‘Or the theatre of war?’
‘Er . . .’
‘Never mind. I would like to ask you some questions.’ Lestrade looked in the direction of Marshall Hall, who showed no sign of leaving.
‘Morning, Bancroft. I believe you need a lawyer. I am that man. Shall we say fifteen guineas?’
‘Oh, morning, Marshall Hall.’ Bancroft screwed in his monocle. ‘I didn’t see you there . . . eh? Fifteen guineas? Are you mad? Anyway, I have a lawyer.’
‘Oh, yes, for contracts and slander and so on. But I’m talking about a criminal lawyer. I have a feeling that Lestrade here is about to arrest you for murder. Of course, if he doesn’t get his words quite right, the cautioning and so on, the judge will throw it out. And even if he does, I’m sure I can get you bail. It might mean putting up the Prince of Wales of course as surety, but I’m sure you’re good for it.’
‘Arrest me for murder? What is this all about? I haven’t understood a bally word for the last five minutes. Lestrade? What’s going on?’
‘I fear Mr Marshall Hall is a little premature, Mr Bancroft,’ he said. ‘I merely want to ask you some questions.’
‘Well, I’m not sure it’s convenient; not at all sure.’
‘We can do it at the Yard.’ Lestrade stood up.
‘Er . . . no, no. All right,’ the Great Actor fluffed. ‘Er . . . is that fifteen guineas an hour, Marshall Hall?’
‘Good Lord, no. I’m a generous man,’ the lawyer said. ‘It’s only fifteen pounds an hour. From my vast experience of police procedure, this will take an hour and ten minutes. Lestrade?’
‘Wait a minute,’ Bancroft said, flicking his fingers at a flunkey. ‘I need a drink.’
‘Three brandies,’ said Marshall Hall, ‘on Squire Bancroft’s slate. Well, Lestrade?’<
br />
‘Better than I was,’ the Inspector said. ‘Mr Bancroft, how well did you know Miss Henrietta Fordingbridge?’
‘I barely touched her, for Jove’s sake,’ the Actor-Manager flustered. ‘Is that a proper question, Marshall Hall?’
‘Perfectly proper,’ chuckled the lawyer. ‘It’s the answer that bothers me. For example, as I’m sure Mr Lestrade is about to follow with – where precisely did you touch her? When was the last time you touched her? And so on. Am I right, Lestrade?’
‘In a manner of speaking, Mr Marshall Hall, but unless you let me conduct my own inquiries, I shall have to ask you to leave.’
The lawyer sat back. ‘Feel free,’ he said. It was a rare moment of generosity from a lawyer.
‘Well?’ Lestrade looked at Bancroft.
‘Well, she was a sweet girl, certainly,’ the Actor-Manager remembered. ‘Not without a pinch of talent.’
‘Pinch?’
‘Well, perhaps that’s the wrong word. Modicum.’
‘Go on.’
‘I first met her last year. I was giving advice in my capacity as chairman of the Extremely Dramatic Theatre Association and there she was, the most charming Principal Boy I had ever seen. I signed her up on the spot. Well, one thing led to another and . . .’
‘Oh?’
‘Look, Lestrade, I won’t have this innuendo. I did nothing improper with Miss Fordingbridge. I’m expecting a knighthood in a year or so. It’s more than my career’s worth. The only reason I’m baring my soul here is that I happen to know that all my fellow club members are deaf, senile or both – oh, present company excepted of course, Marshall Hall.’
‘Eh?’ The advocate was clearly miles away.
‘Did you ever visit Miss Fordingbridge’s home?’ Lestrade asked.
‘Never. It could have been on the Greek island of Mossbros for all I know. We only ever met at the theatre – either the Prince of Wales or the Haymarket.’
‘Yet you called at Miss True’s home,’ Lestrade challenged him.
