by Myers, Amy
‘But you like me, Obadiah. You wouldn’t want to harm me.’ She forced herself to sound calm. ‘They’ll find out if you kill me. The police are outside. Then you won’t be able to work at the Galaxy again.’ Stop talking and hurry forward.
‘I must still do my duty, miss. I always do. You know that. I always do that.’
She was level with the voice, soon to be past. But he sensed her presence. She felt a movement. She ran into the dark, then stopped as she felt his breath, his presence barring her path. As he lunged at her she pushed, knocking him off balance and half fell through the door to the stage area and wings. And light, blessed light. Low, but sure. She was younger than he, and despite the impediment of her skirts, nimbler. She slammed the door shut, running through the cluttered backstage area towards the wings. The door was opening and she leapt quickly into the stage manager’s corner. Implacably Obadiah Bates moved on like an automaton, his movements dictated by some other power.
‘It’s God’s mission, miss. He wants you there, you see. It’s for your own good.’
He stood by the wings blinking, looking round slowly, taking his time.
Her very heart beat so loudly she thought it would betray her. But his eyes stopped lower. A fold of her dress must have been showing for his eyes riveted on the ground at her feet and a smile crossed his face. His eyes were blank as he strode towards her corner.
With a cry she ran in the only direction she could – across the stage lit with dim gas-tees. Then darkness swept over her as Bates found the gas plate and plunged the stage and wings into pitch dark.
‘Don’t you worry, miss, I can see. Comes of being an old soldier. You have to with them Pathans around, you see,’ he said reassuringly, spookily, his voice coming from nowhere, as if it were in one of Maskelyne’s magic tricks.
The dark disorientated her. She turned round, then was still. Which way was she facing? The floats? The back of the stage? Or the far side with its wings. If she ran, would it be to freedom – or to him? The world swam around her; impotently, she heard the footsteps of Obadiah Bates coming towards her through the blackness, and could do nothing.
‘The restaurant. I left her in the restaurant,’ Auguste hurled back over his shoulder at Rose and his squad pounding along behind him.
Through Exeter Street, into Wellington Street, and first Auguste, then Rose, plus six uniformed constables and an apparent transvestite fell through the doors of the Galaxy Restaurant.
The diners paused, foie gras on forks, fascinated at the scene.
Auguste looked wildly round then rushed to the door of the kitchen, colliding with a veau farci borne by the youngest of his waiters.
‘Maisie,’ he said, clutching the unfortunate youth by the lapels of his jacket. ‘Where is Miss Wilson?’
The youth gazed back in terror. It was left to Gladys to answer: ‘Miss Wilson went into the larder, Mr Didier. That one.’
The kitchen staff looked on in bewilderment as their lord and master rushed into his own private larder, followed by the might of Scotland Yard, like a scene out of a Gilbert & Sullivan opera.
Sixty diners watching through the open door wondered why. Opium den? Or was the chef the murderer? They looked with less enthusiasm at the food in front of them.
‘But you like me, Obadiah.’ I must stay calm, keep him talking.
‘Oh yes, I’m very fond of you, Miss Maisie. I always was. That’s why I’ve got to do it. I can’t let you go to the bad – that’s what I told them all, if only they’d stuck to their own class they’d have been all right. Now if you’d been content with Mr Auguste, you’d have been happy. But now I’ve got to save your soul. God has ordered me to. It’s a penance, see. For not saving her.’ He kept on coming towards her.
‘Her?’ said Maisie in a voice she did not recognise as her own. ‘Who is she?’
‘“You lost her for me, Obadiah,” He says, “so you save all the others.” And I do. You know how fond of all you girls I am. I’d do anything for you. It’s a pity you saw me, of course. It’s more painful this way. The others didn’t.’
She should run. Try to escape. But where? In the dark he’d catch her. As if divining her thought, he reached out of the blackness and caught hold of her. She screamed.
‘It won’t take long, miss, you’ll see.’
‘But you must give me time to say a prayer, Obadiah,’ said Maisie quickly. ‘If I am to meet my God.’ How can my voice sound so steady, she thought crazily, when inside I feel like this?
Obadiah considered. ‘Very well, but don’t go thinking I’ll not do my duty. You’ll like it up there with the angels.’
With his arm still grasping hers, she knelt down on the stage.
‘Dear Lord, who made me—’ Please, please Lord, let me have wit enough to think of something, she was thinking to herself, forcing her voice to go on talking.
‘I’ve got a knife too,’ said Obadiah chattily, ‘when you’re done. If you think you’d prefer that. Here, you feel. It’ll slide into you as easy as anything.’
‘I haven’t finished my prayer, Obadiah,’ said Maisie through stiff lips. ‘And I pray for—’
It was at the moment that Maisie screamed that Auguste and Rose arrived, with the help of electric torches, at the door of the wings.
Listening, aghast, Auguste was about to rush through but Rose restrained him. ‘He’s mad, Didier, one sound from us and he’ll kill her before we can get there. Remember, he doesn’t care about himself.’
‘But—’
‘Think. Isn’t there any way we can get to him without crossing that stage. Swing down on him, maybe?’
‘Dear Lord who made me . . .’
Memories of the Galaxy, of burlesque, of the infinite possibilities of theatre, crossed Auguste’s mind.
‘Not up. Down,’ he said suddenly. ‘Down.’
‘And I pray for . . .’
Maisie’s voice echoed down through the floorboards of the Galaxy stage.
‘That’s enough now, Miss Maisie,’ said Obadiah. ‘Time to go now.’
Flight was impossible. There was nowhere to go. Desperation took hold of her.
Perhaps it was her subconscious, perhaps it was her training from Auguste never to overlook anything out of order, however trivial, in the perfect dish. Whichever, she cried out the first thing that entered her head.
‘The dolls, Obadiah. Why the dolls?’
‘I killed them,’ he replied. As he spoke several things happened. A scream from above their heads in the darkness, a long drawn out ‘Dolls’, the darkness itself transformed by an overpowering shaft of light from the flies, fixing, mesmerising Obadiah Bates as he held Maisie with knife poised at her throat. Simultaneously, behind him, Auguste Didier shot up through the star trap like the demon king, propelled from below by six sturdy policeman.
Grabbed by Auguste, caught in the brilliant limelight, Obadiah dropped the knife. Sobbing, Maisie crawled away. But Auguste was no match for Obadiah, who with one blow of his fist knocked him senseless into the unlit floats.
With a polite smile Obadiah, a manic figure in the wavering limelight, picked up the knife again and dragged Maisie to her feet. But into the limelight danced another figure, maddened, manic and determined. Props was going to get his revenge at last. With no one to control it, the light wandered on and off the fighting men. In the shadows Rose’s men stood impotently by, waiting to see their target. Props too was no match for Obadiah. Hands were round the younger man’s neck, choking him, strangling him.
From the stage manager’s corner, Maisie screamed. Taken by surprise Obadiah relaxed his grip and Props broke free. She took a desperate gamble. She pulled the lever on the only down trap to be controlled from stage level, and Obadiah Bates disappeared. There was no blanket underneath to catch him.
‘It was like your pudding, mon coeur,’ said Auguste, palely theatrical, holding court in Rose’s office next day, a bandage around his head, elegantly adjusted over his thick dark hair. ‘Upside down.
We thought Miss Lytton was le rôti, the girls the forcemeat, les légumes. But she was not the top of the pyramid. She, like the girls, was attacked for what she represented. And when one perceived that, the sauce clarified. Is that not so, monsieur l’inspecteur?’
‘Naturally, Mr Dupin – er, Didier,’ said Rose gravely.
Auguste managed a weak smile. ‘It is true that the greatest detectives, as the greatest cooks, are called Auguste, and I am honoured to count myself a successor of Mr Poe’s hero. Je vous remercie.’
Maisie laughed, a little shakily. She had not yet recovered from the events of the day before and was unusually silent.
‘And if,’ continued Auguste, ‘the girls were not attacked for sexual reasons, then why, hein? This is what we ask ourselves, me and the good Inspector Rose here. What do they have in common? They were to be escorted by Lord Summerfield. Alors, Inspector Rose, with your help, ma mie’ – Auguste could not resist adding – ‘has discovered it is not Lord Summerfield who is our murderer. Then perhaps it was because of what he was? A peer. An English milord. Yet why should anyone want to stop these girls being courted by a lord? It does not make sense. It is a brilliant future for them. Jealousy? An extreme form to lead to murder.’
‘Florence wasn’t going to marry a peer though,’ Maisie pointed out.
‘True,’ said Auguste. ‘So we seek another reason. When did these dolls appear? At the dress rehearsal of a play. A new kind of play. A play with the theme of a lady disguised as a simple country girl, with whom a lord falls in love not knowing she is the Lady Penelope. But this is not the same theme as the girls and Lord Summerfield. Then I remembered that Obadiah had only seen part of Miss Penelope’s Proposal. He did not know that our simple country maid is really a peeress in disguise, and Obadiah believed very firmly that girls should marry within their own class. But why should he feel so strongly about it as to murder? It did not make sense. He was devoted to the Galaxy, to the girls. He had worked there for fifteen years. Then I remembered what Inspector Rose said about the psychopath – that he has a blind spot, that where it is concerned moral judgement is suspended, twisted. But why a blind spot? Perhaps someone close to him had been betrayed by a milord. Deserted, seduced. Perhaps even his wife? She had been dead many years. His daughter also dead. Yet his favourite play was King Lear. Henry Irving was his hero, coming on stage with Cordelia in his arms – dead. Gone to heaven.
‘It was easy enough for him to kill the girls. They trusted him. He was just old Bates, who looked after them, was devoted to them. It was simple for him to send a message up by the call-boy, or just to tell them that Lord Summerfield had changed the place of the assignation. Easy to approach them in the street, to say there had been another change of plan, offer to accompany them—’
Maisie shivered, involuntarily feeling her own neck.
‘But why the crossed arms?’ she said.
‘He was devoted to you all,’ said Auguste sombrely, ‘but he was mad. He thought he was doing his best for you, saving your souls, ready for heaven. Even you, whom he liked especially. Then you met Lord Summerfield in front of him. He had no chance to kill you then, and afterwards he was himself away from the theatre. Only on Boxing Day could he strike. And strike he had to for not only had you dined with Summerfield, but you were betrothed to me,’ he added a trifle grimly.
‘But who was it then,’ said Maisie, determinedly overlooking this remark, ‘who attacked Obadiah? We thought it was the murderer—’
‘Props attacked him, of course,’ said Rose. ‘Not quite sane, is Props. Harmless on every front – except Miss Lytton. And Miss Lytton had been upset by those dolls. We’ve talked to him and he seems never to have realised that Miss Lytton thought he was responsible for strangling the dolls – we won’t tell him. But he guessed who was and attacked Bates. He’s not a robust man, and Bates is an old soldier, so he did no great harm. But he wouldn’t give up. So when he heard Bates tell Watch he wouldn’t be needed, that he would be staying in the Galaxy that evening, it never occurred to him to wonder why: he just knew his chance had come. So he left as normal and entered by his own secret entrance through the meter room – which fortunately we hadn’t yet cut off. Otherwise it might be a different kettle of sole au gratin, eh, Monsieur Didier?’
‘Non, not in a kettle, monsieur. The gratin is cooked—’
‘I still don’t see,’ said Maisie hastily, seeing Auguste was about to pontificate, ‘why he suddenly started to murder us? We’ve been dining and marrying into the peerage for years. Why begin now?’
‘You yourself gave me the clue,’ replied Auguste graciously, ‘when you told me of something that struck you as odd when we met the Honourable Johnny Beauville. The first murder, we assume, was the evening after the first night of Lady Bertha’s Betrothal . . . Suppose Obadiah’s daughter was not dead, suppose she had not been seduced and betrayed by a peer and left to die, but had legitimately married him? Dead to Obadiah perhaps. Suppose she had not seen her father since? “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.” Irving in Lear. Suppose that on the night of Lady Bertha’s Betrothal he saw her again, that she did not even speak to him, ignored him. Would that not be enough to turn the mind of a man with an obsession? Against a woman who revealed her origins by speaking of a “likeness” not a “photograph” and who accompanied, out of duty, her brother-in-law to the stage door of the Galaxy: Lady Gertrude Charing.’
Lady Gertrude sat stiffly in her chair, clad in imperial purple satin, as if interviewing a recalcitrant servant. Her face was impassive, but out of it stared Bates’ eyes, cold where his had been puzzled; the face that both Rose and Auguste had half recognised and failed to place.
‘Have you anything else to say, Inspector?’
‘You didn’t think you might have visited him once in a while? Written to him, if you didn’t want to see him?’
Her face remained unmoved. ‘I left that life behind me when I married, Inspector. I explained that to my father. He had instructed me always to do my duty. I did it. I have an example to set. I see no reason—’
From somewhere upstairs a scream of fury could be heard from one of Obadiah’s grandchildren.
‘So you don’t hold yourself responsible in any way?’
Lord Charing, hitherto a silent observer, rose in protest. She stopped him with a gesture.
‘No, Inspector, I do not.’ She folded her hands in her lap. The interview was at an end.
‘I think we’ll start rehearsing a new show, Hargreaves,’ said Robert Archibald thoughtfully. ‘Something a bit different. Cheer everybody up. Got any tunes in mind? Let’s call it, A Kiss for Lady Katie.’
Hargreaves smiled. A tune was already adrift in his mind, even the words, if he could persuade the lyricist of their merit:
‘You’ve returned
And it is spring . . .’
Darling Percy. A new year. A new start. A new play.
Henry Irving walked to the front door of the Lyceum. He sniffed the bracing, cold air. New year, new play. Something different. Something to lift people’s spirits. King Arthur. Yes, it had been a good idea. Nothing like blank verse to get them cheering with patriotic fervour.
The Prince of Wales relaxed after reading the long missive from Mama. Thank God the murderer was found. A tramp so it appeared – Lord Charing had worked hard on his wife’s behalf. Mama seemed to be implying that she personally had achieved it. She was in a good mood. Now he could return to the Galaxy again – after a decent interval, of course. Perhaps the next first night. Now whom should he escort?
The gallery and pit queues shivered, part with cold, part with anticipation, keeping an eye on the stage door behind them lest Miss Lytton and Mr Manley arrive without their noticing. 1895 and the coldest winter for ninety years, but it would be worth the long wait to see Miss Penelope’s Proposal. What a relief that tramp had been caught and there would be no more murders. The Galaxy was itself once more.
Florence sailed throug
h the stage door, bestowing her bewitching smile on Fred Timpkins. Obadiah would never have approved of his replacement, a mere stagehand. But it saved trouble and he knew the ways of the Galaxy, Archibald reasoned.
A hand thrust a posy of flowers into her hand. She looked up and smiled even more bewitchingly.
‘Thank you, Props dear. Thank you.’ She had spoken for him. After all, no great harm had come to Obadiah from the blow – and he was a murderer. Conscience – stricken at her treatment of Props, Florence had exerted all her charm at Scotland Yard – everybody loved Florence . . .
Especially Props. Miss Lytton had passed. God was in his heaven, and so was William Ferndale. All was right with his world.
Much later that evening the temperature in the kitchen was high and rising further, despite the cold outside. The revellers had gone. Only Auguste and Maisie remained to see that all was in order before retiring to their rest.
‘I tell you, ma fleur, that grilled cod is not a dish that I wish to serve to you. It has no part in a respectable kitchen. It may have been the Duke of Wellington’s favourite dish, but one must recall he it was who did not appreciate the cuisine of the Maître Monsieur Ude, even dismissed him. He cannot have been a great general for he had no respect for his stomach. And neither,’ he added rudely, ‘if you desire grilled cod, have you.’
‘I only said that it would be a change.’
‘Ah yes, a change. But a change from what? From the greatest wonders of Escoffier and Didier? From the choicest poulets gras set on a delicate bed of cresson? From a homard with sauce remoulade. You have no finesse, no palate,’ he railed unreasonably.
‘It’s only that I still don’t feel quite right here yet, after what happened. To sit and eat food – poor Obadiah.’ Her voice trailed off.
‘Yes,’ said Auguste, softening. ‘Poor Obadiah. But you must remember he was mad. And I cannot forget that he attacked you.’ The thought brought back all his terror on that nightmare evening. ‘But if you had not disobeyed me and left the restaurant, it would not have happened,’ he said severely, so as not to betray these emotions. ‘That will not happen when we are married, my heart.’
