1 Murder Offstage

by L. B. Hathaway

  ‘Withholding evidence. That’s the official charge, anyway. But it doesn’t look good for you, Blake, let me tell you. We picked you up at the La Luna club last night, where the body of one of your theatre employees was found murdered, and another employee was murdered only two days ago in strange circumstances. How do I know you’re not somehow responsible for both murders? I’m looking into it now, investigating the evidence. Chances are you’ll hang for this, Blake. I’ve got another missing girl on the cards as well – your Wardrobe Mistress, Dolly Price – remember her? If she turns up murdered too it’s likely going to be the final nail in your coffin.’

  ‘Murder?’ yelped Blake, swaying slightly, growing visibly paler, if that were possible. ‘Hanging? But I had nothing to do with Georgie’s death, I swear it. First I knew of it was last night, on the way here in the police van. And as for Le Merle…that was damned inconvenient, let me tell you, when he went missing. Nearly had to shut the theatre down that night. It was awful! That would have been a real failure. I love that place…’

  ‘Well, it’s closed down now all right. Dead as a dodo. I’ve got most of your employees sitting here in the cells. So there won’t be any shows on at the Athenaeum Theatre for quite some time.’

  At this news Blake gasped, his face genuinely grief-stricken. Inspector Lovelace got up to go, gathering his hat and umbrella together. ‘Well, if that’s it? I’ll be off.’

  ‘No, no. Wait. I’ll help you. But I’m no murderer. Not really much of a Theatre Manager really. What is it you want to know exactly?’

  Inspector Lovelace sat down again heavily. He nodded, and pretended to consult a list in his fob-book.

  ‘Now you’re talking sense. We already know about the international diamond smuggling ring, and the counterfeit money production…’ The Inspector said all of this in a blasé manner, ticking it off his imaginary list. Posie watched as Blake’s jaw literally dropped open.

  ‘So there’s probably not much you can add. Or is there?’

  Blake spread his hands in front of him as if to ward off traffic, and started gabbling fast:

  ‘I swear, Inspector, I had nothing to do with any of that malarkey. I’m just a regular London lad, I never got mixed up in planning any of that caboodle, nor my cousin Reggie, either. It was always my fancy to run a theatre, and it seemed my dream came true at last, last year…when I was given the chance…’

  ‘How did you meet your employer? Count della Rosa, isn’t it?’

  The very name seemed to change the atmosphere in the room, and Posie saw Blake nervously licking his lips. He nodded.

  ‘I met him at a casino, I forget which one now. Somewhere in Holborn, I think. I’d been down on my luck all night and I’d lost all I had. I owed a pretty penny. I’d been hitting the sauce badly too. I was in a terrible state when the Count turned up, seemingly out of nowhere. He paid off all my gambling debts in one go and bought me a drink. He said he had a proposition for me.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘He seemed to know all about me; about my cousin Reggie too. Reggie had debts n’all. It was almost spooky, you know? As if he’d been following me, watching me. I learnt later that’s what he’s best at, knowing things about people: finding your weaknesses, knowing your secrets.’

  Posie felt cold all over.

  ‘He said he knew I loved the theatre. He told me he’d just acquired the lease on the Athenaeum Theatre in Piccadilly, and he needed a nice solid English Manager and a Manager’s Assistant to run it for him. He said it would be a piece of cake. Almost the whole lot of them were coming from abroad; the best of the best, he said. Crème de la crème, he said.’

  ‘That must have sounded tempting,’ remarked the Inspector soothingly, privately thinking how naïve Mr Blake must be.

  ‘It was. A great fat salary would be paid to me and only a couple of last-minute things needed to be sorted out; a new Wardrobe Mistress was needed and a couple of fresh stage-hands, too. Nothing I couldn’t sort out in a trice. So I accepted willingly.’

  ‘And it was all it was cracked up to be?’ asked the Inspector in a friendly manner.

  ‘At first,’ nodded Blake. ‘But after a while I realised it was fishy as hell. Nothing was what it seemed. The theatre was just a way to keep his gang working together legitimately in London. I mean, who’s going to question a bunch of foreign dancers and musicians if they come and go sometimes? And the whole lot of them were scared of the Count. I noticed people looked in terror at him out of the corner of their eyes whenever he came past. That’s when I realised he must have something on everybody there, that everybody there owed him in some way, people with shady pasts... I’m not saying he was blackmailing them, but he got his pound of flesh…’

  ‘You mean at the La Luna club?’

  Blake nodded. ‘It met at his say-so, usually once a month when there was absolutely no moon. It was his little joke: the La Luna club didn’t really exist, legally or publicly; so it could only run on nights when the real moon didn’t exist, either. He had people, spies, stretched all across London, telling people to come at the right time; celebrities, famous people, fashionable young folk. It was amazing. But it was all a cover for the diamond merchants he knew, to come and go and make their selection of whatever he had brought in that month.’

  ‘A risky business, I’d say,’ remarked the Inspector drily.

  ‘Yes,’ nodded Blake in agreement. ‘But the Count told me it was part and parcel of my duties at the Athenaeum. I just helped out, transport and the like…acting as a sort of glorified bouncer. A caretaker, if you will. I wasn’t in a position to argue.’

  The Inspector changed tack. ‘What about Lionel Le Merle and Lucky Lucy, sorry, Georgie le Pomme…what was the deal there? Did they know each other well?’

  ‘They were thick as thieves. Boon travel companions. The theatre was closed once a week on a Sunday, and that’s when they would take off together, go on a little jaunt to Antwerp. They were both from somewhere out there originally, by all accounts. I’d know they’d been away together because they’d bring back these little foreign cakes and share them out on the Monday night, and that’s also when the Count was at his happiest…they were his best pair of runners, you see? I thought it was drugs at first; I only found out about the diamonds later.’

  ‘Were they involved romantically?’ asked Inspector Lovelace.

  Blake roared with laughter. ‘Not on your nelly!’

  He grinned. ‘Lionel Le Merle was old enough to be Georgie’s father, her grandfather even! And I think that was the secret to their success: they hammed it up for the customs officers, pretending to be a father-and-daughter theatrical pair. Besides, the Count wouldn’t have let anyone come between himself and Georgie. She was his.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Posie watched as the Inspector seemed to tense up, every nerve and muscle twitching.

  ‘Georgie and the Count were an item. Lovers. Crazy about each other, they were. Inseparable. Not married as far as I know, but as good as. The Count was jealous if someone even so much as looked at Georgie twice over. Obsessed.’

  ‘So he can’t have thought much of her running off with Lord Cardigeon to the Ritz Hotel then, can he?’ the Inspector said, shrewdly. ‘Maybe that was the motive for her murder? Pure and simple jealousy?’

  Blake shrugged.

  ‘I can’t help you with what he felt, Inspector. But I can tell you that the stealing of the black diamond from Lord Cardigeon was the Count’s idea, and it was very much pre-arranged. From what I understand, the Count knew it was locked away in a safe somewhere by the Cardigeon family, untouched.Well, one night he got to drinking in a pub with some young fellows (as I said, he makes it his business to find out about a person, their habits and such like) and they just happened to be some of Lord Cardigeon’s friends.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘A simple story. He offered them a wad of money if they’d give young Cardigeon a pair of tickets to the show at the theatre the next night. And he set u
p Georgie le Pomme to be the bait. He knew it was a certainty that the young Lord would go crazy for Georgie. Every man lost his heart over that gal soon as he set eyes on her.’

  ‘You’re telling me she was a deliberate honey-trap?’

  Blake nodded. ‘That’s about right. I was told she’d be away from the theatre for a couple of weeks and to organise another dancer in her place. I suppose they thought that two weeks was long enough for her to get hold of that black diamond.’

  Posie sagged a little at the window and sat down in a chair. She had always felt sorry for Rufus in all of this, but the pre-meditation behind the scale of the thing was unbelievable. In her mind she was drawn back to the folder of cuttings Inspector Oats had shown her earlier today, the many schemes and deceptions the girl had been involved in over the years, and she found herself asking the same question she had earlier: For such a clever girl, what had gone wrong this time?

  ‘So, what happened?’ asked Inspector Lovelace, voicing her own thoughts.

  Blake shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. I guess her time was up. She just needed to make her escape from the young Lord and bring the gemstone back to the Count.’

  ‘But something went wrong?’

  ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t told anything. It must have gone wrong. I’m guessing Le Merle, her old travelling companion, was sent in to find her, to remind her of their usual arrangement; their team-work, the need to come back to the Count. But something had changed for Georgie. Perhaps she had decided to strike out on her own at last? Perhaps Le Merle just got in her way…so she shot him. Of course, that’s just what I think.’

  Inspector Lovelace was noting all of this down, nodding and grimacing all the while.

  Posie felt a sense of relief. At last the threads of the story were coming together, and Rufus would soon be proved to have nothing whatsoever to do with this ridiculous crime. But the relief was tempered by the knowledge that although Mr Blake’s opinions were useful, and probable, they weren’t exactly going to be admissible as evidence in Court.

  She was aware of the Inspector’s voice continuing in the interview room, but her thoughts were drifting miles away, in a frantic colourful blur of images. Could it be that a hardened, seasoned professional like Lucky Lucy had fallen victim to the famous charms (or curse) of the Maharajah diamond? Had she too wanted to possess it all for herself?

  ‘Who do you think killed the girl? If she double-crossed the Count, and she was found dead in his nightclub, it would seem he is the main suspect. Agree?’

  Mr Blake shook his head resolutely.

  ‘Not on your life. He’d never have killed that girl. Not in a million years. He loved her too much. Look somewhere else. He’s not your man.’

  The Inspector noted this down.

  ‘One last thing, Mr Blake. Your employer is proving a devil to track down. Can you help me at all?’

  Blake shook his head, his blood-shot eyes blinking furiously to stay awake.

  ‘Sorry Inspector. He’s a man of mystery. Likes to keep it that way. I only really saw him at the theatre and in the La Luna.’

  Inspector Lovelace was leaving the interview room.

  ‘I say,’ Posie heard Blake saying, calling out after the Inspector hopefully.

  ‘Have you got any more of whatever was in that thermos flask? It was jolly good.’

  ****

  Thursday 17th February, 1921

  Eighteen

  Looking back later, Posie would not be able to put her finger on the reason why she had woken up so confoundedly early. All she could say was that she was aware of some clear and present danger close at hand.

  The pearly grey morning light was stealing into her bed-sitting room. There was no sound at all, and the silence was extraordinary. Posie reached for her bedside clock, whose luminous hands showed it was just before six o’clock. Getting up, she felt a horrible trepidation take over her, and something propelled her over to the window, compelled her to pull back the thin gingham curtains and look out at the dawn.

  Nightingale Mews was empty, and misty puffs of frozen white fog were floating eerily past in clumps. The street lamp directly opposite her window was still on, flickering slightly. And then, through the tatters of swirling mist, just a few feet away from her across the cobblestones, she saw clearly what she had feared since the case had started: she was being watched.

  A man, stationary under the lamplight, was carefully observing her.

  Posie gulped as the mist encircled him. It wasn’t her police escort from the night before, of that she was sure. He had escorted her home and then left again: keeping watch over her from dawn onwards was not in his brief.

  The man became clear for an instant again: an unfamiliar figure with a black bowler hat pulled down low to cover his face, a black overcoat, shining black shoes and then…

  …what on earth was that?

  Posie leant in as close as she could. Something small was pulling on a lead, a bright red lead, attached to the man’s black-gloved hand. It was a small dog, more like a rat really, the sort fashionable women bought to carry in their purses when they didn’t get enough attention from their husbands. It was straining hard at the red lead, prancing on its tip-toes. As if it were unused to being trapped in such a fashion…

  Then she saw it clearly for a second and her heart missed a beat: it was unmistakeably Mr Minks! On a lead! With some terrible captor!

  Without thinking she grabbed her coat and flung it over the top of her thick flannelette pyjamas, cramming her feet into her slippers. She hurled herself out of the room, down the stairs and through the front door…out into the cobbled street and the icy dawn fog. The cold hit her like a physical blow and she reeled, teeth chattering, looking frantically this way and that. But the man in black and Mr Minks had gone.

  One end of Nightingale Mews was a dead end, so Posie automatically turned left, running as fast as she could in her slippers over the icy cobbles, out under the stone arch of the Mews entrance. She ran onto the busy Cromwell Road, with its sweep of grand museums and its busy parade of shops and cafés crammed tightly together along the pavement.

  ‘Bring him back, you coward!’

  Posie was screaming hoarsely into the frozen air, but fortunately nothing was yet open, and no-one saw her scurrying along like a madwoman, shouting wildly at someone who might or might not have been ahead of her there in the mist.

  Out of breath, her slippers sodden through and her bare feet freezing, Posie came to a halt opposite the grey turrety splendour of the Victoria & Albert Museum. She bent doubled-up by a street lamp, trying to get her breath back, half-sobbing, half-panting, struck by the sheer uselessness of it all.

  She turned homewards with a heavy heart, so she could begin her day over for the second time, aware that finding Mr Minks was only the very tip of what seemed like a great, dark, insurmountable iceberg.

  ****

  It was extravagant in the extreme, she knew, but she didn’t care. Posie ran the chipped enamel bath with the lion’s paw feet almost to the brim with hot water and poured in a whole packet of floral bath salts from Harrods.

  As she lay back soaking in the delicious perfumed water, thawing her feet out, trying to stop shivering, trying to calm herself down, she heard Mrs Rapier, her landlady, out on the landing, making snide remarks about how some people were incredibly selfish and had no manners, using up all the hot water, and how early it was in the morning too to have a bath – the pipes clanking had fair woken her up – and it was not yet six-thirty! Posie ducked her head under the water, drowning out the bleats and moans.

  Dressing carefully and warmly in many layers, Posie left the house as quickly as possible so as to avoid Mrs Rapier and her further catty remarks. She pulled the front door behind her as quietly as possible and set off. Surprisingly, given the butterflies in her stomach which refused to go away, Posie found she was starving.

  She bought herself a hot-buttered bacon roll at the corner of Brompton Cross before boarding an almost
empty bus trundling towards Victoria. Eating hungrily, she watched the sky lighten above her to an arc of pale streaky blue, rippled through with a strange golden-bronze sunlight. She watched London coming to life all around her, fascinated as ever by the hundreds and thousands of different lives and stories being played out as she sped along, each and every one with a different outcome. Posie crumpled her greasy napkin.

  What would be the outcome of her day? Everything seemed to be spiralling horribly out of control.

  The chimes of Big Ben at Westminster could be heard as they swerved past Buckingham Palace.

  It was just gone seven o’clock.

  ****

  Scotland Yard was very quiet, just stirring into life, and Posie was informed that Inspector Lovelace was not yet in.

  Posie ignored the sleepy-eyed policeman in Reception, keen to be off his long night-shift, who called uselessly for her to stop as she barged on down the dark corridors in the direction of the Inspector’s office. She was relieved to find Sergeant Rainbird was already in, bustling about with a mug in his hand. He simply nodded at her as if he had somehow expected her to appear, as if it were nothing out of the ordinary.

  ‘What’s new? Any progress?’ she asked.

  He shook his head in response and propped himself against the Inspector’s desk in a nonchalant manner. He started rifling through the wire basket on the edge of the desk, marked ‘INCOMING MAIL’. There seemed to be nothing of any importance there, just paper flyers; coupons and police circulars and the like.

  A smartly dressed police post-boy popped his head around the door.

  ‘Word from Inspector Lovelace. He’s running late. Held up in a meeting with the Commissioner. Inspector Oats, too. You’re to open the morning mail.’

  Rainbird looked delighted and seized upon the thick package of papers the post-boy handed over and started ripping the envelopes open. Posie held her breath; there was something she was after in particular, but Rainbird was frustratingly heaping the opened mail all together, as if according it equal importance. He was about halfway through when he looked up at Posie suddenly.