Murder in the Limelight

by Myers, Amy

  ‘I let them stand in the hallway if it’s raining, sir. If I know them, that is.’

  ‘Including, I assume, the Honourable Mr Beauville and Lord Summerfield?’ Rose shot at him.

  ‘Lord Summerfield? He waits in his carriage round by the Lyceum in Wellington Street. Thinks no one’ll see him there. Just one of his little ways.’

  ‘And Mr Beauville?’

  ‘He comes in often, sir. Very chatty gentleman. When he’s not in a cake, that is.’

  ‘And what about Monday, the day of the dress rehearsal? Or Wednesday when Miss Purvis disappeared?’

  ‘I don’t recall, sir,’ said Obadiah, with a note of finality in his voice. ‘But he wouldn’t have got out of this hallway. I’d have been after him.’

  ‘You’re a friend to these young ladies, Mr Bates. In their confidence, that sort of thing. Do they tell you who their escorts are?’

  ‘I keeps my eye on ’em, sir,’ said Obadiah. ‘Part of my job. I warn ’em against the bad ’uns. The Galaxy looks after its young ladies.’

  ‘Not well enough,’ said Auguste unthinkingly until he saw Obadiah’s reproachful eye on him and added hastily: ‘It’s not your fault, Obadiah. You are only responsible for the stage door, not what happens to the girls after that.’

  ‘That’s right, sir. I have to go home, sir.’

  ‘When do you leave? When everyone has gone?’

  ‘Not always, sir. Watch sometimes sees the last one or two out. Door’s locked, of course, when I go.’

  ‘Did you see Miss Purvis leave on Wednesday evening, the night she died?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I delivered His Lordship’s bouquet earlier, and Miss Purvis was that pleased about meeting him, but as I said, sir, His Lordship waits in Wellington Street. I understand he has a mother and likes to keep his life to himself, so I don’t know whether Miss Purvis met him or not.’

  Egbert Rose sighed. ‘And how about Miss Walters? I understand His Lordship had arranged to see her too.’

  ‘Very probably, sir. Some of the young ladies like titles very much.’ He shook his head in disapproval. ‘Keep to their own class, they should. Nothing but bad will come of it. That’s what I say.’

  ‘And you’re sure Lord Summerfield did not come in to the theatre on either occasion?’

  ‘Quite sure, sir, unless he was disguised as a chrysanthemum!’ Obadiah laughed at his little joke.

  ‘Would he or Mr Beauville know where Props’ room is?’

  ‘Most likely, sir. Always a lot of comings and goings to Props’ room. You can’t see the actual door from here, of course, it’s round the corner, but there’s no mistaking what it is.’ He hesitated. ‘Beg pardon, sir, but this rope – no doubt it came from Props’ room? Not from the wings or flies?’

  ‘No doubt at all,’ said Rose. ‘Why?’

  ‘No reason, sir. No reason.’ Obadiah was paying great attention to the bouquets and telegrams in front of him.

  ‘Obadiah, if there is anything, anything that seems strange to you, – just a little fact, perhaps, that seems unimportant – you must tell us. After all, the whole future of the Galaxy is at stake perhaps,’ Auguste added as the surest way to impress Obadiah.

  Obadiah raised his head and looked Auguste straight in the eye guilelessly. ‘There’s nothing, sir, nothing. I’ve told you everything.’

  ‘Interesting,’ said Rose.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Auguste putting the finishing touches to a Mephistophelean sauce. ‘You understand, the final addition of the bay leaf—’

  ‘Lord Summerfield and those two girls,’ said Rose firmly.

  ‘You are right, Inspector. I remember Maître Escoffier saying, “Seek the obvious solution, the simplest course”. And the simplest course is Milord Summerfield.’

  ‘But the dolls, Mr Didier, don’t forget the dolls. He’d have to be popping in and out all day. Unless they are just a nasty coincidence, which don’t seem at all likely to me.’

  ‘Unless—’ Auguste broke off and stared thoughtfully at the plate of raw liver in front of him.

  ‘That’s a nice looking colour,’ said Rose, momentarily diverted.

  ‘Mais oui, not many people like the sight of raw meat but to a chef it is poetry. What ballads can be composed from it. What songs—’

  ‘Not that. The bottle. I like a nice drop of rosé.’

  Auguste stared at him, then with a smile said: ‘Then you’ll take a glass, Inspector.’ He whipped down a glass from the shelf and filled it. ‘Côtes de Provence, Inspector. From my home village.’

  ‘And very nice too. I just like a sip—’

  A sip was all he took. He coughed and spluttered as the harsh liquid found its way down his throat.

  ‘What in the name of thunder is that?’ he said reproachfully. ‘None of your deadliest poisons known to man, I hope?’

  ‘Forgive me, Inspector. No, it is simply raspberry vinegar for the marinade pour la foie de veau. My own recipe. It will do no harm. Indeed, much good if you have a cough.’

  ‘I haven’t, or rather I didn’t,’ Rose grunted, still spluttering. ‘French concoctions!’

  ‘No, Inspector, an old English remedy. Your own Mrs Beeton recommends it. A lady of whom I greatly disapprove in most matters – but with this I concur. But enough of cooking – you see how this helps our case? You believed it was Côtes de Provence because you saw what looked like a rosé wine and because I told you it was Côtes de Provence. Now Obadiah believes these delivery men are delivery men because he is told so, and because they look like delivery men. They have the uniform. But suppose it is not a delivery man. Suppose it is Lord Summerfield.’

  Rose was unforgiving. ‘Here we go again, Mr Didier. You and your complicated ideas. Just you look at the commonsense side of it. It ain’t just a matter of stealing into the theatre past Obadiah. Our villain’s got to find his way into Props’ room when it’s unoccupied, creep around the theatre behind the scenes, wander all over the stage.’

  ‘Once past Cerberus at the stage door,’ said Auguste, ‘it is not difficult. This theatre is an ant heap teeming with people. One ant is much like another. They are all so busy keeping their own place in the line they will never check anyone else, provided he seems to know where he is and what he is doing. Come, I will show you.’

  He led the way to his own special larder where none but he was allowed and which was therefore concealed from the gaze of the curious. Once inside he swung open a false set of shelves to reveal the secret door.

  ‘I show you this, Inspector Rose,’ he said grandly, ‘because I know you will not take advantage of it. It is possible but unlikely that someone other than myself and Mr Archibald knows of the existence of this door and could perhaps have used it. But I, I am a greater Cerberus than Obadiah. No one comes through my kitchen without my knowing it.’

  ‘Contravening the Licensing Act, 1872. Have to remember that, Mr Didier,’ said Rose, coughing slightly. ‘Raspberry vinegar.’

  Auguste cast him a suddenly nervous glance and decided to proceed down the steps and along the corridor running under the foyer to the other side of the theatre. It brought them past Props’ room and the corridor to the stage door, and through a door into the wings. ‘Now, Inspector, I will show you how easy it is to be one of these ants. Take off your hat, and your overcoat, and roll up your sleeves. Voilà! You are a workman with business to do in this building.’

  It took a moment to accustom themselves to the dimly lit wing space, and in that time Rose managed to trip twice over the paraphernalia of theatre; the prosaic facts behind the magic. Auguste took his arm and led the way on to the Galaxy stage lit by a solitary gas tee light. Rose stood as one bemused, gazing over the darkened footlights into the cavernous auditorium.

  ‘Fancy,’ he said at last in an awed voice. ‘You’re standing where that enormous cloud came down in By Jupiter and roughly where Bluebeard’s Castle stood. Yet it’s quite small when you look round. Where does all that scenery go?’

  August
e pointed up, way up, to the roof fifty feet above them. ‘Up Inspector, or down to the cellars.’

  ‘How do they get it down?’

  ‘I will show you, Inspector.’ Down on the mezzanine floor a dozen or more cellarmen were moving around, busily oiling machinery, greasing traps, hoisting ropes. It was a vast underground factory of industry. No one took any notice of them.

  ‘This is the star trap,’ whispered Auguste, pointing to a star shape in the floor above their heads, and the machinery underneath it. ‘For the demon king – or the villain. We don’t use it now. But in the burlesques it was invaluable. The down traps also. And others.’

  ‘Could someone hide down here, and get up on stage when all was quiet?’

  ‘It is possible, yes,’ said Auguste, considering. ‘But you would have to know a lot about the cellar and how to remove the rebates to clamber on to the stage. And then you could not shut it behind you. In theory it is possible. The stage is one mass of moving parts. Most of these boards remove to make sloats for raising scenery. And down traps. We even have a grave trap. Our villain could shoot up like the demon king through the star trap, or he could go up to the flies, strap himself to a travelling iron and fly down.’

  Rose regarded Auguste severely. ‘You’re being fanciful, Mr Didier. At my expense. I’ll have you know we regard contravening the Licensing Act most severely at the Yard.’

  ‘Ah, but I do not entirely jest,’ said Auguste, laughing. ‘You will see. You have a head for heights?’

  Up at the first level of flies, Rose stepped gingerly between ropes, windlasses for the curtains, borders and gas pipes, trying not to look below him. He was none too easy about heights if truth be told.

  ‘You see, Inspector, travelling irons.’ Auguste waved his arm towards the narrow bridge linking the flies of both sides of the stage. ‘Now, how easy to hide up here and float down like a god. The Nemesis of the Yard – the deus ex machina.’

  Rose grunted. He could not see Summerfield up here. But Auguste was inexorable. The flies were nothing to the gridiron floor which formed a roof to the stage. Up, up and still up until they were nearly fifty feet above the stage. Up here another small army of ants beavered away.

  ‘Lie down on the floor, Inspector. Look through the cracks.’ He could see the small twinkling glitter of the tee lights, far far below, and between them a chandelier ready to be dropped for the scene in Lord Harry’s home. It was hot here already. What must it be like with all the gas lights lit for the performance? Rose’s respect for the performers’ cool poise grew.

  Off the far side of the grid a ladder led down to another room, this one full of bespattered men, furiously painting a huge canvas in a frame.

  ‘Reminds me of that scene in Mr Carroll’s book,’ grunted Rose. He was a zealous father where reading was concerned. ‘Painting the roses before the Queen found out.’ Indeed, such was their concentration the painters might well have had their heads at stake.

  ‘This is small beer, Inspector, compared with the world of the pantomime. I had a petite amie in the chorus at Drury Lane. Ah, the effects there! It is magic, fairyland. But how many men slave to get that effect? The transformation scene is unforgettable there, yet many girls have burnt to death in the process. It is like our case here, Inspector Rose. The glitter of the Strand, the romance of the Galaxy. But behind the Strand lie the old rookeries, and after the curtain has fallen at the Galaxy two girls are strangled.’

  ‘But all the same,’ said Rose. ‘I don’t see Milord Summerfield gallivanting around up here just to strangle a few dolls. It would have to be a man of the theatre. Used to it,’ he said, wiping the sweat off his face with the white handkerchief impeccably ironed by Mrs Rose. ‘Yes, a man of the theatre.’

  Lord Summerfield clearly did not enjoy his obvious role of suspect-in-chief in a murder case. Lady Summerfield relished it even less. She regarded the purlieus of Scotland Yard as she did her own outhouses – as evils necessary for the continuance of society. As she was conducted with her son into the higgledy-piggledy clutter of Rose’s office, she looked around as if she had stepped for one misguided moment beyond her own green baize door and found herself in an alien and unwelcome world.

  ‘Good morning, Inspector,’ murmured Lord Summerfield in a desperate attempt at patrician graciousness, which failed dismally.

  ‘Sit down, My Lord.’

  He blinked at the somewhat peremptory tone. Rose was carefully prepared for his lordship this time. Lady Summerfield had already seated herself in the chair of honour, if the shabby leather chair which faced Rose’s desk could lay claim to such a name.

  ‘Got bad news for you, sir. Miss Purvis was found dead yesterday. Circumstances were very like Miss Walters’.’

  Lord Summerfield’s face blanched to the colour of his own embossed writing paper.

  His mother spoke for him. ‘Why should this concern us, Inspector?’

  ‘Not you, ma’am. Lord Summerfield. Anything you’d like to tell us, sir?’

  Lord Summerfield glanced at his mother. ‘No,’ he ventured.

  ‘Try again, sir. We understand you’d arranged to meet the young lady the night she died.’

  ‘No.’ A definite squawk this time.

  ‘Now that you have your answer, Inspector, we shall depart,’ Her Ladyship stated, rising to her feet, eight yards of purple alpaca falling submissively into place behind her.

  ‘Not yet, ma’am. You can leave if you wish, but not Lord Summerfield. Someone I want him to meet.’ He rang a bell on his desk.

  Maisie Wilson was a bright light in that small office, bringing with her a sense of exuberant life as she swept in on a waft of Floris perfume and rose soap. A bright green dress battled with flaming red hair to bring a rare exoticism to the Factory. Auguste, in her wake, was almost overlooked.

  ‘Lady Summerfield, I’d like you to meet Miss Wilson.’

  Her Ladyship stared through her lorgnette, making no attempt to return Maisie’s bow.

  ‘Who,’ she demanded indignantly of the world at large, ‘is this young person?’

  Auguste was about to intervene when Maisie saved him the trouble.

  ‘This young person,’ she said cordially, ‘is Miss Maisie Wilson, in the chorus at the Galaxy. What are you playing? The Empire?’

  Auguste snorted and hastily turned it into a cough. Lord Summerfield looked frightened. Lady Summerfield regarded Maisie once more through her lorgnette and when this failed to achieve the desired result, compressed her lips and regarded Inspector Rose sternly.

  ‘And this, Lady Summerfield,’ that gentleman said, ‘is Maître Didier.’

  ‘Ah, a lawyer,’ said Lady Summerfield, gratified that the proceedings were at least graced by one acceptable human being.

  ‘No, a cook,’ said Rose, enjoying himself immensely.

  Lady Summerfield paled, then rallied. ‘Somewhat unorthodox, Inspector. We do not meet cooks.’

  ‘So’s murder unorthodox, milady,’ murmured Auguste.

  What dull lives these English lived – how much in life they were missing, ignoring the riches that the gastronomic art could bestow. For as they treated the practitioner, so they regarded his product. Now in France . . .

  ‘Tell Lord Summerfield what you told me yesterday, miss. He don’t seem to remember,’ said Rose, surveying his little group with glee. That’s right. Make them uneasy and they’ll come clean. Just like that bit-faker down the Nichol. That heaving cesspit of crime in the East End had once been Rose’s territory, after which few places held terrors for him.

  ‘About Edna and him, you mean?’

  Lord Summerfield went white.

  ‘It’s true, isn’t it?’ she appealed. ‘Why, she was shouting all over the place that night about meeting you. But you’ve got nothing to worry about. Unless you killed her,’ she added encouragingly.

  Lady Summerfield slowly turned her head towards her son, but for once his mother was not his main concern. It was the inspector he must convince.


  ‘She didn’t come,’ Summerfield said desperately. ‘She didn’t come. You must believe me.’

  ‘Must I? So now you’ve remembered, you tell me what happened.’

  ‘I took the carriage to Wellington Street, as I always did,’ he said miserably, ignoring the swelling of Her Ladyship’s bosom. ‘But she didn’t come.’

  ‘Didn’t you go round to the stage door to find out if she’d left?’

  ‘No, I thought she must have left with someone else. They sometimes do, you know,’ he added disarmingly.

  ‘Anyone see you in Wellington Street?’

  ‘Not that I am aware of. I—’

  ‘Why do you bother to do it?’ asked Maisie indignantly. ‘Why not come to the stage door like everyone else? Not ashamed of being seen with us, are you?’

  ‘My son clearly realised what was due to his position as head of the house of Summerfield,’ said a glacial voice.

  ‘Like the Galaxy ladies, do you, sir?’ said Rose, ignoring this offering.

  ‘I – er – have the greatest respect for them, Inspector,’ said Summerfield, mustering what dignity he could.

  ‘I’m sure, sir. See all the Galaxy shows, sir? Just to show respect?’

  ‘Every one.’

  ‘Like Miss Lytton, do you?’ Rose shot out.

  Summerfield flushed red, clearly annoyed. ‘Ah, I have the greatest respect for—’

  ‘Ever taken her out – just to show respect, of course.’

  Lord Summerfield muttered, ‘She is a married lady, Inspector.’

  ‘But you’d like to get friendly with her?’

  ‘Miss Lytton – Miss Lytton is’ – he had some difficulty in framing his words – ‘an angel, Inspector, an angel,’ he said fervently, his tongue suddenly unexpectedly loosened. ‘A light in this dull world. She is far, far above me – I am unworthy – I would not presume – I have the utmost reverence for – She is all that is most lovely in woman, a pearl among swine.’

  He stopped, now conscious that his audience was looking at him in amazement.

  ‘You like Miss Lytton then,’ said Rose stolidly.