The West End Horror

by Nicholas Meyer

  “Did you see his teeth?”

  “Didn’t I just say he makes a considerable effort to hide them?”

  “Then how do you know they are ugly?”

  “Elementary, my dear fellow. He does not open his mouth when he smiles. Hmm, the house is dark, tonight. Let us go ‘round by the stage door and see if there are folk within.”

  We walked into the alley that led to the stage door and found the door open. There was activity within the theatre, though it was clear from the bustle backstage that no play was in progress. We threaded our way amongst actors and stagehands until our presence was discovered by the manager, who politely enquired as to our business there. Holmes tendered his card and explained that we were in search of either Mr. Gilbert or Sir Arthur Sullivan.

  “Sir Arthur ain’t here, and Mr. Gilbert’s leading the rehearsal,” we were told. “Perhaps you’d best speak with Mr. D’Oyly Carte. He’s in the stalls. Right through this door and very quiet, gentlemen, please.”

  We thanked the man and stepped into the empty auditorium. The house lights were on and I marvelled once again at the lighting in the Savoy. It was the first theatre in the world to be totally lit by electricity, and the resultant illumination differed greatly from that supplied by gas. I thought back fifteen years and tried to recall my first visit to the place. I had worried then about the danger of fire originating from an electrical failure, since I could not understand who Reginald Bunthorne was supposed to be and allowed my mind to wander from the piece. My fears were apparently without foundation, because years have gone by since and the Savoy still stands unharmed.

  A lone figure was seated in the stalls towards the back, and he favoured us with a baleful stare as we walked up the aisle in his direction. He was a small man, dwarfed by his chair, wearing a dark, pointed beard that complemented his black eyes. Something in his glower, at once so regal and so forbidding, made me think of Napoleon. It was my subsequent impression that this was his intention.

  “Mr. Richard D’Oyly Carte?” Holmes asked when we were close enough to be heard in a whisper.

  “What do you want? The press is not permitted here before opening nights; that is a rule at the Savoy. There’s a rehearsal in progress, and I must ask you to leave.”

  “We are not from the papers. I am Sherlock Holmes, and this is my associate, Dr. Watson.”

  “Sherlock Holmes!” The name had produced the desired effect, and D’Oyly Carte’s countenance broke into a smile. He half-rose from his chair and proffered two seats beside him. “Sit down, gentlemen, sit down! The Savoy is honoured. Please make yourselves comfortable. They have been at it all day and are at rather low ebb just now, but you are welcome, nonetheless.”

  He appeared to think we had entered his theatre on a whim, having for some reason taken it into our heads to attend a rehearsal. For the present Holmes encouraged this view.

  “What is the name of the piece?” he enquired in a polite undertone, slipping into his seat beside the impresario.

  “The Grand Duke.”

  We turned our attention to the stage, where a tall man in his late fifties, of military bearing, was addressing the actors. I say “addressing them,” but it would be more truthful to say he was drilling them. It seemed in no wise inconsistent with his military stamp, which marked him as a compulsive man of precision. The stage was devoid of scenery, making it difficult to understand what the piece was about. Gilbert—obviously the military fellow was he—directed a tall, gangling actor to repeat his entrance and first speech. The man disappeared into the wings only to emerge seconds later with his lines, but Gilbert cut him off in mid-sentence and requested him to do it again. Next to us our host made several rapid notations in a book propped upon his knees. With some little hesitation the actor retreated once more upon his errand. Though nothing was said, it was clear that all were fatigued and that tempers were fraying. Carte looked up at the stage, pen in hand, a scowl creasing his features. He tapped the stylus nervously against his teeth.

  “They’re played out,” he proclaimed in a mutter directed to no one in particular. From his inflection, it was impossible to determine whether he meant the players or the authors.

  The actor made his entrance a third time and launched into his speech, getting somewhat further along before the author interrupted and asked him to repeat it.

  “Our visit here is not entirely a social one,” Holmes leaned towards the impresario. “I believe there is a young woman attached to the company by the name of Jessie Rutland? Which is she?”

  The manager’s demeanour underwent an instant metamorphosis. The harassed but generous impresario became the suspicious property owner.

  “Why d’ye want to know?” he demanded. “Is she in any difficulty?”

  The difficulty is none of hers,” Holmes assured him, “but she must respond to some questions.”

  “Must?”

  “Either to me or the police, quite possibly to both.”

  Carte regarded him fixedly for a moment, then slumped into his seat, almost willing it to swallow him.

  “I could ask for nothing more,” he mused darkly. “A scandal. There has never been a breath of scandal at the Savoy. The conduct of the members of this company is beyond reproach. Mr. Gilbert sees to that.”

  “Mr. Grossmith uses drugs, does he not?”

  Carte stared at him from the recesses of his chair, wonder written on his face.

  “Where did you hear such a thing?”

  “No matter where, the story will go no further than it has. May we speak with Miss Rutland now?” Holmes pursued.

  “She’s in her dressing room,” the other replied gruffly. “Not feeling well—said something about a sore throat”

  On stage voices were being raised. “How many times will you have it, Mr. Gilbert?” the actor exploded.

  “Until I have it right will do, Mr. Passmore.”

  “But I’ve done it fifteen times!” the actor wailed. “I’m not Mr. Grossmith, you know. I am a singer, not an actor.”

  “Both facts are evident,” Gilbert responded coldly. “However, we must do the best we can.”

  “I will not be spoken to in this way!” Passmore declared, and shaking with anger, he stamped into the wings. Gilbert watched him go, then turned his attention to the ground, apparently studying something there.

  Carte rose to his feet “Gilbert, my dear, let’s halt for supper.”

  The author gave no sign of having heard.

  “Ladies and gentlemen—” Carte raised his voice and adopted a cheerful timbre—“let us forbear for two hours and renew our energies over supper. We open within thirty-six hours, and we must all sustain our strength. Played out,” he muttered again as the group on the stage started to disperse.

  “The dressing rooms are downstairs?” Holmes asked as we got to our feet.

  “Women stage left, men stage right” The impresario waved us absently towards the proscenium, absorbed by a more immediate crisis. We had started down the way we had come when the air was rent with an unearthly wail. So odd was the noise that for a moment no-one was able to identify it. In the empty theatre the hideous sound echoed and reverberated. The people on stage, preparing to leave, stood momentarily frozen with surprise and collective horror.

  “That’s a woman!” Holmes cried. “Come on, Watson!” He dashed across the footlights and into the wings, his coattails flying as I followed. Backstage, we plunged into a labyrinthine mass of theatrical apparatus that obstructed our path to the wrought iron spiral steps which led to the dressing rooms below. Behind us we could hear the pounding feet of the chorus, hurrying in our wake.

  At the foot of the steps a passage led off to our left, and Holmes flew down it A series of doors on either side of the corridors, some of them ajar, led to the ladies’ dressing quarters. Holmes flung these open in rapid succession, stopping abruptly at the fifth door and blocking my view with his back.

  “Keep them out, Watson,” said he quietly and closed the doo
r behind him.

  Within seconds a group of thirty or so members of the Savoy company surrounded me, all babbling questions. I was struck with the ironic observation that they sounded like themselves—that is to say, like a chorus of Savoyards, singing, “Now what is this and what is that and why does father leave his rest, at such a time of night as this, so very incompletely dressed?” Suddenly into their midst, parting them firmly left and right as though he were breasting the Red Sea, strode Gilbert. His muttonchop whiskers bristled, his blue eyes were very bright.

  “What is happening here?”

  “Sherlock Holmes is endeavouring to find out,” I gestured behind me to the closed door. The large blue eyes blinked in the direction of the door, then refocussed themselves on me.

  “Holmes? The detective?”

  “That is correct I am Dr. Watson. I sometimes assist Mr. Holmes. The woman who screamed, I take it, was Miss Rutland,” I went on. “She complained of not feeling well, and you sent her downstairs to rest.”

  “I dimly remember doing something of the kind.” He passed a weary hand over his broad forehead. “It has been a tiring day.”

  “Do you know Miss Rutland well, sir?”

  He answered my question automatically, too preoccupied to object to my forwardness in quizzing him. “Know her? Not really. She is in the chorus, and I do not engage the chorus.” A trace of bitterness crept into his voice, undisguised.

  “Sir Arthur engages the singers. Sir Arthur is not here at the moment, as you have quite possibly divined. Sir Arthur is either at cards with some of his titled friends or else at the Lyceum, where he is wasting his talents on incidental music for Irving’s new Macbeth. It would be too much to ask him for the overture to our piece before opening night, but I daresay he will deign to have it ready by then. Perhaps Sir Arthur will even find time to coach the singers once or twice before we open, but I am not sure.” Now he turned and spoke to the company. “Here, everybody!” he cried, “go and have your supper. We shall continue at eight o’clock sharp with Act One from the sausage-roll number. Go on and eat, my dears; there’s nothing of consequence that need detain you here, and you must keep up your strength!”

  They dispersed on cue, Gilbert patting a head occasionally or saying something encouraging in a low voice to another as they passed by, until we were alone. For all his military gruffness, a reciprocal bond of affection and trust between him and the players was evident.

  “Now let me pass,” he ordered in a tone that brooked no objection. Before I could answer, we were interrupted by a clatter on the spiral stairs at the end of the corridor as Carte descended hurriedly with another man, whose black bag proclaimed him a member of the same profession as myself.

  Carte, rushing towards us, cried, “Dr. Watson, this is Dr. Benjamin Eccles, the doctor who is on call at the Savoy.” I shook hands briefly with a man of medium height and pale complexion, with deep-set green eyes and a small, delicate-looking nose.

  “I make the rounds of several theatres in the district when I am on call,” Eccles explained, looking past me at the closed door, “and I’d just stepped into the stalls to see how the rehearsal was getting on when Mr. Carte saw me and summoned me downstairs, as he seemed to think I might be needed.” He glanced from one to the other of us—uncertainly, confused, perhaps, by the presence of another physician.

  Behind us the door opened and Holmes stood there in his shirt-sleeves. Clearly he had only been waiting for the members of the chorus to depart. I introduced Dr. Eccles, and Holmes favoured him with a curt inclination of his head.

  There has been a murder,” he announced in sombre tones, “and all must remain as it is until viewed by the authorities. Watson, you and Dr. Eccles may come in. Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Carte, I must ask that you remain beyond the threshold. It isn’t a pretty sight,” he added under his breath, standing aside to let me in.

  The sight, indeed, had little to commend it. A young woman with dark russet hair, who could not have been more than twenty-five, lay on her side upon a small sofa, which constituted the sole article of furniture in the room, save for a dressing table and chair. Her nap had been rudely interrupted by a crimson gash across her pearl white throat, and her life’s blood, quite literally like a leaky tap, dripped on to the floor, where it had begun to collect in a small pool.

  The sight was so horrible, the corruption of her existence so woefully and inappropriately complete, that it robbed us of articulation. Eccles coughed once and set about examining the wretched creature’s remains.

  “Her throat has been severed quite cleanly,” he reported in a faint voice. It is slightly hard above the cut. Can rigor have set in so quickly?” he asked himself. “It isn’t present in her fingers, and her blood is still—is still—”

  “She complained of a sore throat,” I explained, suppressing an hysterical impulse to giggle at the thought “Her glands are merely swollen.” As I said this, it occurred to me that my own throat felt raw—a ghastly enough identification.

  “Ah, that must be it.” Eccles looked about the small room. “I don’t see a weapon.”

  “It is not here,” Holmes replied. “Or if it is, my search has failed to reveal it”

  “But why, why? Why was she slain?” Carte shouted from the doorway, his small hands clawing clumsily at his collar and tearing it asunder. “Who would want to do such a thing?”

  No-one was able to answer him. I looked at Gilbert. He had sunk on to a bench across from the entrance to the room and was staring glazily before him.

  I didn’t know her at all well,” he spoke woodenly, like one in a dream. “Yet she always seemed sweet enough and willing. A sweet young thing,” he repeated, his eyes beginning to blink rapidly.

  “There is nothing further for us here, Watson,” Holmes declared, resuming his jacket and ulster.

  Carte rushed forward and seized him by the lapels. “You can’t go!” he cried. “You mustn’t! You know what this is about! I insist that you tell me. What questions were you going to put to the girl?”

  “My questions were for her ears alone,” the detective replied solemnly. Gently he removed the other’s quaking hands. “You may refer the police to Dr. Watson and myself for our depositions. They know where we are to be found. Come, Doctor.” He turned to me. “We have an appointment at Simpson’s which now assumes greater importance.”

  We bowed and shook hands with Gilbert, who responded in a trance, leaving Carte and the shaken Dr. Eccles, who would write up the relevant particulars of his examination.

  Poor man, he was more used to sore throats than cut ones, I fancy.

  As we walked down the corridor, I heard Carte suggest to Gilbert that the rest of the rehearsal be cancelled.

  “We can’t,” Gilbert replied in a hoarse rejoinder, his voice cracking with emotion.

  SEVEN

  ASSAULTED

  Simpson’s Cafe” Divan was but a few yards farther along the Strand, and it was no great matter to get there from the theatre.* Nevertheless, as we left the Savoy and stepped on to the pavement, the frigid wind hit me like a wave and I stumbled against the kiosk next to the ticket office.

  “Are you all right, Watson?”

  I think so—only a bit dizzy.”

  Holmes nodded sympathetically. It was quite warm inside—and appalling. I confess to feeling slightly faint myself.” He took my arm, and we entered the restaurant.

  At this hour Simpson’s was by no means full. We were recognised at once by Mr. Crathie and experienced no difficulty in obtaining a table. It wanted fifteen minutes of eight, granting us some moments for private reflection regarding the unexpected turn events had taken. I, for one, did not feel in the least like eating. I was aware, however, of an overpowering thirst and ordered a brandy and a carafe of water. The brandy burned along my throat like fire, and I found I could not swallow enough water.

  “If we persist in tramping about in this weather,” Holmes noted, “we are bound to catch our death.” He, too, drank a good dea
l of water and looked, I thought, paler than was his wont We sat for some moments, studying our menus without enthusiasm, each wrapped in his own thoughts. Around us the restaurant was filling with animated diners.

  The case begins to assume a familiar shape,” Holmes stated, setting aside the wine list.

  “Which shape is that? I am utterly at a loss, I confess.”

  “A triangle, if I am not mistaken. I shall be greatly astonished if it does not prove to be the old story of a jealous lover, discarded by his mistress in favour of another patron. Possibly a more powerful one,” he added darkly. He reached into his jacket and withdrew his pocketbook, carefully extracting again the slip of paper from Jonathan McCarthy’s engagement calendar.

  “It must be a very peculiar triangle,” I countered, “if it includes so odd an angle as McCarthy. Are you asking me to believe that sweet-faced young woman took up with a man of his stamp? My mind rejects the whole idea.”

  “I must ask your mind to remain open a little longer, Doctor, for she did take up with him. At least, the evidence points strongly in that direction.”

  “What evidence?” My head had begun to throb almost as badly as the old wound in my leg.

  “Wilde’s, of course. If his information about George Gross-mith’s recourse to drugs elicited the response it did from Carte, we may, I think, grant its accuracy—at least provisionally—in other areas, as well. What have you to offer in rebuttal of such a charge? Her innocent appearance and the testimony of Gilbert, who by his own admission scarcely knew her. The latter information rebuts itself. As for the former,” he mused, staring dreamily at the paper before him, “what can a woman’s appearance signify? Women are devious creatures, even the best of them, and capable of vastly more than we men would like to suppose. That she was McCarthy’s mistress, I am prepared to credit on the basis of the evidence so far; what her motives were for so being, I am prepared to learn.”

  “From whom?”