‘You will have to find yourself another Romeo, sir. Cyril Montague has most definitely played his last role on life’s stage.’
* * * * *
‘Heart failure, of course.’ Dr Nethersole was a shrivelled, elderly man with a disproportionately large beard and booming voice. ‘It happens all the time to those possessed of intemperate habits. As, I believe, the late gentleman was. One minute you are, to all appearances, as fit as a fiddle; the next you are resting on the shoulders of six strong men as you are carried to the grave.’
The doctor, summoned from his home in Red Lion Square, had arrived at the theatre in a grumpy mood, but examination of Montague’s body seemed to have had a cheering effect upon him. As he pronounced his verdict on the late actor, he looked positively delighted.
It was as if, Adam reflected, Cyril Montague’s demise had been nothing more than an exhilarating confirmation of a theory Nethersole had long held. ‘So his final indulgence in his habit was fatal, was it, Doctor?’ the young man asked. ‘There can be no doubt about that?’
‘No doubt at all, sir,’ Nethersole roared. ‘No doubt at all.’ He sounded offended that Adam could even suggest otherwise. ‘The slow accumulation of poison in the body. The swift nemesis striking the overburdened heart. There could not be a clearer case.’
Adam remembered the fear that Cyril Montague had displayed during his visit to Doughty Street. The belief that he was being followed. He looked at the actor’s body, which was now covered by a sheet and stretched on a trestle table in the Royal Pantheon’s props room. ‘There is no possibility, Dr Nethersole, that there might be some other cause of death? Some other poison that has been introduced into his body?’
‘Other poison, sir?’ The physician spoke as if Adam was deliberately striving to anger him. ‘What other poison?’
‘Arsenic, perhaps?’ The young man racked his brains for the name of toxic substances. ‘Strychnine?’
Nethersole snorted with derision. ‘You are not, I take it, a medical man?’
Adam acknowledged that he was not.
‘I thought as much. If you were, you would not make such extraordinary suggestions. The ingestion of strychnine is followed by severe convulsions. Do you not remember the case of William Palmer, sir, who killed poor Cook?’
Adam was obliged to confess that he did not.
‘It was back in ’56,’ Nethersole said sternly, as if the young man’s ignorance of this fifteen-year-old murder was a sure sign of an inadequate education. ‘Palmer administered strychnine to his victim and Cook was racked by seizures. Are there any indications that this man’ – he nodded in the direction of Cyril Montague’s shrouded body – ‘suffered in such a way before he died?’
Adam shook his head.
‘As for arsenic poisoning, one of the nearly immediate consequences of swallowing it in quantity is extreme bodily effusion. Not to mince words, sir, the individual’s bowels open uncontrollably. We would certainly be aware of the fact, if this poor devil had been administered arsenic. No, there is no doubt about the cause of death. Mr Montague died from heart failure brought about by his own indulgence in opium.’
Dr Nethersole closed his medical bag with a flourish and stared balefully at Adam. ‘And now, gentlemen, my dinner – although doubtless cold and congealed by this hour – still awaits me at home. My bill will be with you tomorrow, Mr Danvers.’
* * * * *
‘Well, that went off better than we could have hoped,’ Danvers said. He and Adam were sitting in a private box at the Royal Pantheon. Its ormolu decoration, now filthy with age, showed that the theatre had once been a more prestigious venue than it now was.
The two men were looking down on the audience leaving the auditorium after a performance that, with the loss of its leading man, had very nearly not taken place. The manager had considered cancelling it after the discovery of Cyril Montague’s body but had decided that, with the audience already in their seats, he was risking a riot. ‘They’d turn savage,’ he had said. ‘There’d be blood in the aisles.’
And so, with catcalls beginning to echo around the theatre, the curtain had risen on Romeo and Juliet as, backstage, Dr Nethersole made his post-mortem examination of its leading actor. When it was over and the doctor had returned to his interrupted dinner, Danvers had invited Adam to stay and watch the last two acts of the drama. The young man had seen no good reason to refuse.
Montague’s understudy, an eager recruit to the company named Arthur Bellows, had jumped at the chance of playing Romeo. Belying his name, Bellows had proved almost inaudible in his speeches.
‘He’s speakin’ like a mouse in cheese,’ Danvers had said at one point in exasperation. ‘The audience aren’t catching a ruddy word of it.’
The understudy had made up for the weakness of his voice with the frenetic energy of his movements. He had raced from one side of the stage to the other like a rabbit pursued by a fox, waving his sword in the direction of his fellow performers at both appropriate and inappropriate moments. During the balcony scene, he seemed as likely to throw his lover over his shoulder and run offstage with her as exchange brief kisses. Even after Romeo had taken the poison and fallen to the floor of the Capulet crypt, Bellows had continued to writhe convulsively for several minutes as the awakened Juliet bewailed his death. The audience, to Adam’s surprise, seemed to enjoy his performance. When he took his bow, still apparently twitching in his death throes, they roared with approval.
‘Better than we could have hoped,’ Danvers repeated, as the crowds trooped out of the Pantheon. ‘I think I should give that understudy another chance tomorrow night.’
‘Mr Bellows certainly gave an interesting interpretation of the role,’ Adam remarked cautiously.
‘He was livelier dead than poor Cyril sometimes was when he was alive,’ Danvers said. ‘We’ll have to find a way for him to be heard beyond the first rows, mind.’
The two men left the box and made their way down the curving staircase that led to the theatre lobby. The last stragglers from the audience were leaving. A doorman was bowing obsequiously to them.
‘Well,’ said Danvers, holding out his hand, ‘this has been a night and a half, ain’t it? Who’d have thought, when you came knocking at the door of my office earlier this evening, that we’d find poor Cyril dead as a doornail in his own dressing room?’
‘Who indeed?’ Adam said. The two men shook hands. ‘Did anyone else visit Montague whilst he was here in the Pantheon?’
Danvers shook his head. ‘Not to my knowledge,’ he said. ‘He ain’t been such a popular man of late.’
‘What about the other actors? Would any of them have visited his dressing room?’
‘Can’t think of any reason why they should. Anyways, if they had, they’d have found him with his toes turned up, wouldn’t they?’
‘I suppose they would have done.’ There was doubt in Adam’s voice and Danvers took note of it.
‘Here, you’ve not still got it in your head that he was poisoned, have you? You heard what the doctor said. It was his intemperate habits as did for him. The only poison was that filth he smoked.’
‘Of course, you are right.’ Adam decided he had no wish to enter any further debate with the manager in the lobby of his theatre. ‘Nethersole is right. It was opium that proved poor Montague’s undoing.’
‘Exackly. He was hocused most of the hours God sent. No wonder it did for him. Well, I’ve got to go and take a look at tonight’s box.’ Danvers held out a sweating hand and Adam took it once more. It rested in his own briefly, like a fish on a slab, and then the manager was gone, walking swiftly back into his own domain.
As Adam turned to leave, he noticed a small figure standing by a door that led through to the stalls. It was the dwarf, Billy Bantam, whom he had met briefly at the Prince Albert. He had
been watching them.
Bantam stared venomously at him, then approached to within a few feet and spoke. ‘You ain’t the only gent what’s been looking for him tonight, you know.’
‘Looking for whom? For Cyril Montague?’
‘’Oo d’you think?’ the little man sneered.
Adam was eager to ask more questions but the tiny man immediately spun on his heel and retreated further into the theatre. He moved at a surprising pace, and was lost to view within moments. Adam made as if to follow him, and then decided the questions could wait. He stopped and turned to the magnificently attired doorman. ‘That was Billy Bantam, was it not?’
‘Was it, sir?’ The doorman spoke in a deep, booming baritone. He sounded, Adam decided, as if he had once trodden the boards himself. ‘It might have been. He’s in and out of half the theatres in London. Mr Danvers knows him of old. We all of us know him of old.’
‘And Mr Danvers allows him to come and go in the theatre as he pleases?’
‘Pretty much, sir. He’s harmless, is Bantam. Miserable little bugger, if you’ll pardon my language, sir, but harmless.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I have no evidence to prove this, Quint, but I do not share the doctor’s opinion. I do not believe that Cyril Montague died of heart failure. I think he was murdered.’
‘Who’d want to kill ’im? Another Miss Nancy like ’isself?’
‘I doubt it. Do you not think it odd that Montague should cross the Styx so soon after he had called upon me here?’
‘You mean, ’ow come ’e pays a visit ’ere and next day ’e’s as stiff as a board?’
‘A peculiar coincidence, is it not?’
‘Mebbe ’e knew something someone didn’t want him to know.’
‘And poor Cyril was sent to join the great majority to prevent him speaking further to me?’
‘Could be,’ Quint said.
‘But how could the murderer – if there were one – be certain that Montague had not already told me the vital information?’
‘Mebbe you’re next on his list.’
‘Thank you, Quint. That is a cheering idea, indeed.’
Master and servant were sitting in a tavern in the Gray’s Inn Road. Each had reported to the other the events of the previous day. Adam had told Quint of the death of the actor, and the intruder in Doughty Street. Quint had told his master of the meeting between Benskin and the mysterious gentleman in the paletot. Adam had been just as puzzled by it as Quint. Eventually, he had decided that it was of no immediate relevance and should be dismissed in favour of more obviously important matters.
Both men now had pints of India Pale Ale in front of them. Adam had taken a few small sips from his; Quint’s pint pot was almost drained to the dregs. He picked it up and peered into it, as if he thought the mere act of doing so might miraculously refill it. Adam pushed a silver threepenny bit across the table.
‘Go and buy yourself another drink, Quint. I cannot bear to see you looking so melancholy.’
The manservant hauled himself to his feet and lumbered across the room towards the bar. Adam crossed his hands behind his head and leaned back in his seat. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that Cyril Montague had been murdered. Dr Nethersole had dismissed the idea of strychnine or arsenic, but there were other poisons, were there not? The effects of which the doctor might not recognize. Perhaps the murderer knew more about poisons than did the elderly medic. But who could he be? Bantam, the tiny man with the face of a depraved child, had been in the Royal Pantheon immediately after the discovery of Montague’s body. Surely he could not have been the killer, could he? It seemed improbable. Yet what had he been doing there? And who was the other gentleman of whom Bantam had spoken? Had he really existed?
There were too many questions that could not be immediately answered. Adam unclasped his hands from the back of his head and rested them on the tavern table. Idly, he traced the line of the grain in its wood with his forefinger and then picked up his drink, taking a swift sip of the ale. He had to think logically of the matter, he decided. Suppose Montague had not died of heart failure brought about by his opium habit. Suppose he had been killed. What was the unknown murderer’s motive for despatching him? It could only be that the actor had known something which would incriminate the person who, as Adam still suspected, had poisoned him. Incriminate that person in the earlier murder of Dolly Delaney. If Montague had indeed been killed, his death must be linked with what had happened in York.
But what could the actor have known that proved so fatal? He had been in a show with Dolly, of course, so he might have then learned something from her. But The Bohemians of Paris had been staged at the Gaiety nearly a year ago. Why would whatever he knew have only recently become dangerous? Because, Adam speculated, the opium-addicted actor had spoken to him in Doughty Street. What exactly had the man said? He tried to re-run the conversation in his head. Had there been anything out of the ordinary in it? Yes, he thought, there had. He remembered the strange phrasing that poor Montague had used when describing the girl’s visit to him. ‘A girl calling herself Dolly Delaney,’ the actor had said. At the time, Adam had thought it an odd way for Montague to express himself. Cyril knew Dolly. The playbill from the Gaiety proved that. But, in York, the girl was only ‘calling herself’ Dolly Delaney. What had Cyril meant?
Suddenly Adam could see an explanation. It was a moment of revelation, and he slapped the table with his hand. Quint, who was just returning to his seat, clutching a fresh pint of pale ale, looked at him in surprise.
‘The girl on the cabinet card,’ Adam said. ‘The one we were pursuing. The one who was killed in York.’ He paused and once again ran through the possibilities in his head. Yes, he was certain he was right. ‘She wasn’t Dolly Delaney. In all likelihood, Dolly is still alive.’
‘She looked ready enough for the boneyard to me,’ Quint said. He raised his pint pot to his lips and took a long pull on his drink. ‘Dead as a herring.’
‘No, do you not see, Quint?’
The manservant, his face a blank, clearly did not.
‘She exchanged identities. In the weeks before the carte de visite was created, Dolly became someone else. It was that someone else who posed for the assorted photographs we have seen. Who worked at the Prince Albert. Who caught Adolphus Wyndham’s eye.’ He waved his hand like a magician drawing attention to the outcome of a particularly ingenious trick. ‘And it was that someone else who was murdered in York.’
Quint stared at the tavern window behind his master.
‘You are endeavouring to remain sphinx-like and inscrutable, Quint, but the task is beyond you. Your eyebrows betray you. You still do not understand.’
‘Dolly ain’t dead because the Dolly we followed to York wasn’t the real Dolly. What sort of a gammon yarn is that?’
‘No gammon. I am certain it is the truth. Let us consider the hypothesis. Dolly decides, for reasons that we do not yet know, that she wishes to become someone else. She persuades a friend to exchange identities with her. Dolly becomes Miss X. Miss X becomes Dolly. What follows from this, Quint?’
Quint, rubbing the stubble on his cheek, looked as if he still could not imagine what followed.
‘Why, if Dolly became Miss X, then it was Miss X who visited Miss Bascombe and received the money to travel to York. If it was Miss X who travelled to York, then it was that same Miss X who was cornered in the theatre and killed.’
‘And if my aunt had been my uncle, she’d have had a pair of balls beneath her arse,’ Quint said with some contempt. ‘What proof have we got that the tart ain’t the tart we thought?’
‘None at all, but I am convinced I am correct.’
‘And who’s this Miss X you keep gabbing on about?’
‘As always, Quint, you ask t
he pertinent question. Who indeed?’ Adam tapped his fingers on the table. ‘But I am sure that Cyril Montague knew that the dancer who came to see him in York wasn’t Dolly. Why else would he describe her as “a girl calling herself Dolly Delaney”?’
‘So why didn’t sissy Cyril tell anyone the girl wasn’t ’oo she said she was?’
‘I am not certain.’ Adam sipped again at his drink. ‘Perhaps he knew Miss X as well as the real Dolly. There must have been some connection between them, otherwise why would she have gone to see him? Perhaps he felt sorry for her and did not wish to cause her any further trouble.’
‘Why in ’ell is the girl pretending to be someone else in the first place?’
‘As I say, I do not know. That is for us to find out.’
‘And one more thing,’ Quint said. ‘This toff with his trousers down. Didn’t he know ’oo ’e was doing the blanket hornpipe with? He thought she was Dolly, didn’t ’e? I know some of these Champagne Charlies are so dumb they’d lose their arses if they were loose, but ’e’d ’ave some idea ’oo ’e was riding, wouldn’t ’e?’
Adam sighed. His manservant had expressed it crudely, but he was right, of course. What of Harry Vernon? He had given the cabinet card to Sunman. But if Adam was correct, that photograph was taken after someone else had adopted Dolly’s identity. Surely Vernon would be unlikely to be unaware who the woman he had been bedding for some time really was. Ergo, he must know that the cabinet card did not portray the real Dolly. And so he must have been deliberately trying to deceive his colleague. And, if he was, that raised further questions. Adam thought back to the night he had enjoyed Hetty Gallant’s company. Who had he seen in earnest conversation with the girl? Who had she been entertaining before she welcomed Adam into her bed? None other than Harry Vernon. At the time, he had thought only that the plump man from the Foreign Office had a surprisingly complicated love life. Now other possibilities arose in Adam’s mind, few of which were either agreeable or comforting.
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