A Hero By Any Other Name

by Stackpole, Michael A.

  Conrad couldn’t help to hide his smile. The attack had been traumatic, but working alongside Mortar was taking some of the sting out. He walked at the detective’s side down the center aisle. It was slow progress, as Mortar’ crow eyes peered right and left, and the detective squatted twice to get a closer look at the floor.

  “Tell the story one more time,” Mortar said as he continued to scrutinize the auditorium.

  He did so. Maybe Mortar thought that the attacker had watched the show, exiting when Clara finished her number and finding her in the alley.

  “I do not go into the alley after every performance, sometimes not even every evening,” Conrad said. “I was just in the mood for a smoke tonight, and I had brought a new cigar in Clara’s handbag. Clara is my—”

  “I know, stage persona.” Mortar gave him a thin smile. “Your smoking habit nearly cost your life.”

  Conrad twisted the ball of his foot against the aisle carpet runner.

  “Your story, Conrad, once more.”

  A third time? Wasn’t Mortar paying attention? Conrad took a deep breath and started the retelling again. He’d only had to tell the police the story once. But he realized that in this retelling he was recalling details he’d not told the police.

  “The man’s hands were calloused and the fingers were thick.”

  “Very good.” Mortar stopped at the third row from the front, motionless like a statue, breathing so shallowly Conrad barely detected the rise and fall of the detective’s chest. He tried to see what Mortar was so interested in.

  Mortar walked to the very front of the auditorium, looking at the floor only briefly, and then studying the stage. A brick was exposed at the bottom of the stage, where the wood front had come loose. Mortar pressed his hand against it and closed his eyes.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I talk to bricks,” Mortar said. “I listen to the mortar between them. The walls truly do talk ... to someone like me who can understand them.”

  “Wow.” Conrad was impressed, but skeptical. “What do those bricks tell you?”

  Mortar stood and brushed off his hands. Conrad was disappointed that the detective did not answer the question. “At this juncture I suggest we check the alley.” Mortar stared at the stage again and waved a hand in front of his face as if brushing some memory away. “Take me backstage, Conrad, and we will exit in the manner you did.”

  Conrad visibly shuddered.

  “No cause to be pusillanimous, Conrad.”

  “You use big words for a bricklayer.”

  “This evening I am a detective.” Mortar fixed him with serious look. “No need to fear the alley. Your assailant will not return this evening.”

  “I am not afraid,” Conrad lied.

  “Indeed.”

  Conrad timidly led Mortar down the corridor backstage.

  “Your story once more from this point onward,” Mortar encouraged. “Act it out, if you will.”

  That relaxed Conrad, acting anything out was slipping into a character, and he actually felt more comfortable when he was wearing a different skin. Sort of like Mortar ... bricklayer by day, well-spoken detective at night.

  “And the slashing motion. The same motion over and over,” Conrad said.Mortar stood in the alley and propped the door fully open so the light could spill out. There were a half dozen large lanterns set at irregular intervals. Three police inspectors stood mutely in the middle of the alley, looking one way and then the next, one meeting Mortar’s gaze.

  “Your observations?” Mortar asked the inspectors.

  The lead inspector made a huffing sound. “You’re not a real detective. We are more than competent of conducting our own investigation. We do not need the great Mortar.”

  “I am certain you are.” Mortar reply was flat. “Competent.”

  The squat policeman knelt in the alley, next to one of the lanterns and studied something on the ground. “More than competent,” he repeated. “Nonsense waiting for someone the likes of Mortar. A bricklayer who thinks he’s a great detective.”

  The lead inspector set his hands out to his sides in a half-shrug. “You have to understand, Mr. Mortar, or whatever your real name is, our quarrel is not with you. It is with—” He looked to Conrad. “—it is what this is all about.”

  “I am not a rent boy!” Conrad cut in, though he had been on occasion. “And that the Ripper was here and—”

  “It is not the Whitechapel Murderer come to another neighborhood,” the squat policeman said, speaking loud enough for his voice to carry through the alley. “It is not the Ripper. All those people out front think the Ripper went after you. It wasn’t the Ripper. It was someone objecting to that ... that ... lifestyle. Someone who does not approve of men pretending to be women. There are laws about men who share—”

  “I said I am not a rent boy.” Conrad felt his chest twist in fury.

  Mortar reacted, too. Conrad watched the implacable expression fade from the detective’s face and a flash of anger cross it. Mortar returned to his stoic mien when he spoke. “It is you, sir, who does not understand.”

  “Beg your pardon?” This from the lead inspector.

  “Clearly you do not understand this theatre or others like it in this district, buildings I helped erect. So many of these bricks were placed by my hands. You do not understand what goes on in these buildings. What Conrad and his fellow actors do is follow a tradition as old as the very theatre itself. Ancient Roman and Greek plays reversed gender appearances. In our England more than two hundred years ago, it was thought improper for a woman to appear on stage and so the feminine rolls were covered by male actors. Many of these fine actors today work in panto ... pantomimes, traditionally British, and often at Christmas for children. Songs, comedy, magic entwined with something like Mother Goose. Here, at Toole’s, they revel in burlesque. It is not about sex, gentlemen. It is all about illusion.”

  Conrad watched their reaction: at first angry at the thought of being lectured to, then slightly more accepting as the explanation went on.

  “Illusion, gentlemen; the art of appearing as something you are not. The women—like Miss Powles who portrays Vesta Tilley to sold-out houses does not denigrate men and neither does she want to be a man. She is thoroughly female, I assure you. And Conrad here, with his Clara persona, does not mock women. Comedic, yes, he is that, but with a practiced grace despite his tender age. In fact, I would go so far as to stipulate that Conrad and Miss Powles are more accomplished actors than their peers who do not cross the gender lines. They can see beyond themselves—as I can see beyond myself as a common bricklayer.” Mortar straightened his jacket. “Now, gentlemen, it is our job to see beyond this alley and discover who attempted to kill one of the Toole’s Theatre’s finest performers. Your observations?”

  “Clara—” The squat officer started, but stopped. “No blood that we can see, and we would have noticed, even as dark as it is. There’s been no rain. A drop of anything would show up, darken the dirt.”

  “A good observation,” Mortar pronounced.

  “What about the other murder?” Conrad had been thinking about that. “Three weeks ago. Not in this alley, but in the park.” He pointed toward the far end of the alley, where he had been trying to crawl to get away from his assailant. “The newspaper didn’t print much about it. All the stories were about the hunt for the Whitechapel Murderer, the Ripper. Jody, the actress’s name was Jody, no one said it was the Ripper, but—”

  “I investigated that.” This came from the third police inspector who had been quiet up to this point. “And, no, it wasn’t the Ripper. Jody Blake’s neck had been slashed. It was the only mark on her ... uh, on him, and the handbag taken, perhaps a robbery. If it was the Ripper, well, she ... he ... would have been gutted. The Ripper, he guts them, wants us to make us pick up pieces. The Ripper wants there to be a lot of blood. Besides, the Ripper only goes after women—real women.”

  “And, Conrad,” Mortar interjected, “If the Ripper had b
een after you, we would not be having this conversation and you would not be assisting me with this investigation.”

  “You would be dead,” the thickset officer pronounced. “If it had been the Ripper, you would be dead dead dead. And we would be picking up the bloody pieces.”

  Conrad swallowed hard and ran everything over in his mind. He watched Mortar walk from one officer to the next, talking in low tones, maybe purposefully so he could not hear, maybe not wanting to offend or worry him. He watched Mortar lean against the building on the opposite side of the ally. Was he talking to the bricks? Asking what they saw?

  “Conrad.” Mortar put his hands in his pockets. “Can you act out what happened?”

  “Sure.” Conrad walked across the alley to sit on the barrel ... careful, this time, to avoid the nail that had snagged his dress. He grimaced, thinking of the dress. Ruined, worn only once and ruined, expensive. “Damn. It was pretty.”

  The officers and Mortar looked at him.

  “Like I’ve said for the ... oh, tenth time ... I came out here to smoke a cigar.” Even in the lantern light Conrad noticed the arched eyebrows of two of the police inspectors. “I like cigars. Robert says no to smoking ... of anything ... inside. There were fires. So I came out here. Sat right here, and that’s when I saw him. He was standing over there. And I took out my padding. If he was interested in women, I wanted him to know I was not a woman. I would have waggled my ... well ... I could have shown him more.” Conrad left out the part about men meeting other men in this alley. That was illegal.

  The thickset inspector moved a lantern so it could better illuminate the corner where the attacker had stood. Mortar walked to the corner and put a hand on the bricks, closed his eyes. “My initial observations, my initial hypothesis, was incorrect, then. Presumptuous of me.”

  “Write that in the newspaper,” the thickset inspector said. “The great Mortar admits he was wrong. Wrong about what?”

  “In the third row I noticed shavings of dried mud. It has not rained here for days, the ground hard-packed. There were sewer workers out front, with muck caked upon their boots. It was logical to assume—and still logical to assume—that one of the sewer workers was in the audience, as it is wet in the sewers, hence the source of dried ... matter. Conrad mentioned his attacker was large.”

  “And so were those sewer workers. Better tell the chief inspector,” the thickset policeman said. He motioned to the others. “We’ll need to talk to those sewer workers if they are still out there. I could see that a man like a sewer worker might object to Conrad’s performance. We will return in a bit.”

  The three inspectors went into the theatre. Conrad saw Mortar’s shoulders relax.

  “There was dried mud, wasn’t there?” Conrad asked. “I saw it, too. In the third row.”

  “Of course, or I would not have mentioned it.”

  “But you don’t think one of the sewer workers did it.” Conrad slid off the barrel. It was quiet in the alley. There were no sounds creeping out from the back door of the theatre, no laughs slipping out cracks in the window from the Beefsteak Club above it, open only on weekends now, no stray dogs barking. No one throwing refuse out the back doors of the pubs. If the crowd out front was still there, the intervening building effectively blunted the noise. It was like the Toole’s stage late at night or early in the morning when he showed up to rehearse, no one else near, as he wanted the privacy.

  Mortar stared into the corner where the attacker had stood.

  “So, if not one of the sewer workers, who do—”

  Mortar gestured with his hand, and Conrad let the silence settle in deep again. Conrad knew this wasn’t the safest of areas ... any place with theatres and pubs and businesses that stayed open late invited a certain dark element. There were not many murders here ... other crimes and vices, some of which the neighborhood tolerated or wholeheartedly espoused, but not murders. Except for Jody three weeks ago.

  “The man who attacked you, Conrad—”

  Conrad wasn’t going to repeat the story. Not again. He opened his mouth to offer a retort, and then thought better of it. “He was a head taller than me. Precisely.” Conrad had not mentioned that before. “When he was on top of me, I could tell that his upper arms were thick like hams. He could have been a common laborer, a hard laborer, a builder ... a bricklayer, and as I said his fingers were calloused. But he wasn’t those things.”

  Mortar backed into the corner, standing where his attacker had first been. “And why, Conrad, wasn’t he those things?”

  “Because he was too old for that work.” That realization almost surprised Conrad. “He was slower than me, and I would have outrun him if, but I fell. When he caught me, he was huffing, like the way an old man sounds after walking too far. He just reminded me of an old man.”

  “Indeed, Conrad. The bricks told me he had some age. Perhaps you have missed your calling. Perhaps you should be a detective rather than an actor. You are an astute observer.” Mortar studied the ground. “I read the newspapers, and I recall the article about Jody Blake. I dismissed it as a robbery as well. What if Jody Blake had exited this theatre through the back door, encountered the man in the alley, and a chase resulted?”

  “Catching up to Jody in the park.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Jody was not fast, Mr. Mortar. Jody had a twisted leg, a childhood illness that left a mark. An old man could have caught Jody.”

  “Another good observation.” Mortar ran his fingers along the grooves between the bricks. He hummed softly.

  Conrad shifted back and forth on the balls of his feet, wondering if he should say something. Was it possible Mortar really was talking to the building?

  “There have been other deaths through the past several years, associated with this building. I should have looked into them before tonight.” A pause. “What do you know of this theatre, Conrad?” Mortar’s crow eyes looked more intense in a face hooded by the shadows and flickering lanterns.

  “The actors—”

  “Conrad, you need to expand your thinking.”

  “Not the actors, then. You mean the actual theatre? I do not—”

  A clattering interrupted, a horse-drawn carriage passing by the near end of the alley.

  “—know anything about the building. Never gave it much thought.”

  “It has stood a long time. I helped build it, and the others in this area. I am older than I look. This was not always Toole’s.”

  Conrad shrugged. Mortar didn’t look all that old. “So? Is that important?”

  “The bricks think so. It was called the Lowther Rooms forty-some years ago, and then was used as lecture halls by a Catholic religious order. Thirty-four years past it became Woodin’s Polygraphic Hall, then the Charing Cross Theatre, performing Norma, a burlesque, and The Pretty Druidess, and later The Gentleman in Black. There was a fire and rebuilding, the place renamed The Folly Theatre and specializing in burlesque. Up the River, The Creole, Blue Beard received favorable reviews. Mr. Dickens described it as a ‘little bandbox of a place, very prettily fitted up,’ in his Dictionary of London.”

  “So ... what does that have to do with me? With the man who attacked me?”

  Mortar pressed a palm against the wall, hummed, then stepped closer to Conrad. “Eight years ago, or thereabouts, it was renamed the Toole’s, in honor of the man who bought it and runs it still.” He scratched his head. “I know the history of buildings, Conrad, because I relate to them.”

  “So ... this building knows who attacked me?” Conrad still played along, but he was starting to think Mortar was more than a bit touched.

  “Bricks do not care about names and faces. But this building witnessed the attack on you, and saw other horrid happenings. I have been remiss, not speaking to this building in so long. The man who attacked you was shielded with a cloak, so the bricks can provide no details. Still, they give us clues, pieces to the puzzle that we must assemble to get a look at the entire picture.” He took a deep breat
h and held it. “One final time, Conrad, recount your tail.”

  And as Conrad finished. “I’m Catholic. The gesture with the knife, razor, whatever it was. The gesture made over and over. It was the sign of the cross.”

  “Very good, Conrad.”

  The house lights dimmed and a flute played a haunting tune that carried across the barren stage and silenced the murmurs of the Wednesday night audience. Other woodwinds joined it, playing soft and low, but then rising in an almost eerie crescendo as Clara glided forward and a single light gleamed down. She was dressed as a deaconess of the Church of England, but her scapular was purple and red. Her mocking appearance brought gasps from the audience.

  “Amazing grace,” she began to croon, “how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.”

  Clara pivoted as two other nuns joined her, these also dressed in purple, performing a panto routine behind her, the tallest holding her hand straight above her brow and peering into the audience as if looking for something.

  “I once was lost, but now I’m found.”

  The panto nuns embraced, like it was each other they’d been looking for.

  “Was blind, but now I see.”

  The slighter nun pretended to be blind and stumbled over the hem of her scapular. The audience appreciated physical humor, and so started to applaud, some of the people deciding they were no longer offended.

  Clara continued her song, swaying sensually. “That was amazing, Grace!” Clara exclaimed to the slighter nun, who had stopped stumbling and found her way to the edge of the stage, poised there as if she might take flight. The slight nun bowed and hurried from the stage. The taller stayed a moment more. Then Clara made the sign of the cross, waited until the stage lights dimmed, and then she hurried into the wings.

  Clara brushed by Robert. He looked aghast. “That was—” Clara and her “sisters” did not wait to hear it. Clara knew that “wonderful” or “amazing” would not be one of the descriptors. She herself thought the routine horrid and hoped the other acts were so much better that Toole’s would not lose attendance. Clara hurried past Gertrude, who was waiting to put on a much more polished burlesque routine. Pausing at her dressing room door, she reached in to retrieve her handbag.