THE BOY DETECTIVES

by Adrian Wright

  ‘Bert?’ asked Gordon.

  ‘Bert Brownhill, our musical director. Not quite Malcolm Sargent, but Malcolm wouldn’t want to look at this show every night, would he?’

  ‘The tumblers are brilliant,’ said Francis, who had been watching the male acrobats with fascination.

  ‘Yes,’ said Bunty. ‘Nice lads, too. The Dramono Troupe. They’re from Roumania, and send all their earnings back home to their mother. Can’t speak a word of English, bless them, but they have impeccable manners. Oh, and that’s our soubrette, Mavis Day. She sings selections from The Chocolate Soldier in camiknickers. She’s toured with Donald Wolfit, but she gave it up after getting bad notices for her Othello.’

  ‘Welcome to the Hippodrome, Miss Rogers.’

  The boys looked up to see a tall, distinguished man beside them, dressed in an astrakhan coat, wearing a homburg and holding a fat cigar.

  ‘Charles Penderbury, manager of the Hippodrome. I trust you have everything you require. Dressing room satisfactory, everything disinfected and so forth? We pride ourselves here at the Hippodrome, you know, and all artistes are treated equally. You lady – how shall I put it? – entertainers, are treated just the same as the greats.’ Mr Penderbury puffed out his chest. ‘We were privileged to have Sybil Thorndike here only last week. Such class! But we don’t make distinctions. We put her in the same dressing room as Phyllis Dixey?’

  ‘Not at the same time, I trust?’ asked Bunty.

  ‘Ah! Dear Dame Sybil!’ said Mr Penderbury. ‘Now that’s what I call an artiste. A very different type to yourself, of course, but we treat every one alike here, you know.’

  ‘That’s just as well, Mr Penderbury,’ said Bunty, ‘because Sybil is coming down to Norwich tonight to see the show, and I shall need a comp.’

  Mr Penderbury spluttered. Sparks cascaded from his cigar end.

  ‘Dame Sybil coming to this show?’ he chortled. ‘Oh, that’s a good ’un!’

  ‘She’s a great admirer of mine,’ said Bunty. ‘Unlike some people I could mention, she is a person of taste and refinement, and knows a fellow artiste when she meets them. And make sure she is shown to my dressing room after. Francis, I would appreciate your help with my cases. You can stay here and watch, Gordon. Delighted to have met you, Mr Penderbury. I trust my dressing room in your delightful little flea-pit will be up to Dame standards.’

  Taking Francis’s hand, Bunty strode purposefully out through the pass door. After a few incomprehensible grunts, Mr Penderbury sidled away into the rear of the stalls.

  Gordon was thrilled to be sitting alone in such a great theatre, watching the preparations for a spectacle in which he and Francis were to play an essential part. How different from the grammar school’s Mikado, when the school matron had frankly been an embarrassment as Ko-Ko (one of the older boys had said she was more like bromide). Anyway, that had been done in the school hall; this was a genuine – what had the Reverend Challis called it? – Temple of Thespis. More than once, Francis had tried to persuade him of the pleasures of learning Greek, although usually Gordon was much happier on a cross country run, or taking his stand at wicket.

  Francis had certainly had some influence on him, though. It was Francis who had encouraged him to take up the subscription to The Children’s Newspaper, from which Gordon had benefited enormously. The articles on foreign countries, on strange rural customs in England, of developments in the worlds of science, and accounts of his various sporting heroes, had inspired him week by week. Then, of course, there was his personal link with the newspaper; after all, he was the proud recipient of an Arthur Mee Good Handwriting Certificate, signed by the great man himself, the creator of The Children’s Newspaper. A short time ago, the paper had published a piece about the Muses. Surely, Gordon thought as his eyes roamed over the proscenium arch that curved above the Hippodrome’s stage, he recognised some of what he saw there.

  He had never before looked at this proscenium so carefully, but now it fascinated him. In a theatre so full of mouldings of ladies (what Francis had called caryatids) apparently holding up the balconies, and medallions, he couldn’t recall ever having taken much notice of the figures that decorated the arch. Now, he saw that each was identified by a name. There were six of them in all: Calliope, Melpomene, Terpsichore, Thalia (he remembered that The Children’s Newspaper had shown the enormous cameo of Thalia that dominated the auditorium of the Playhouse Theatre in London), Euturpe and Euphrosyne. Of course, these were the Muses, all in some way appropriate to the theatre. Gordon had made a point of learning about the Muses, and being able to recognise each of them. Because it was difficult to differentiate between them, it had been a test of his mental abilities. There had been some complexity about the Muses and the Three Graces, and no end of exploration through the pages of Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable had sometimes led to even more confusion!

  Now, he remembered certain facts by the images on the proscenium. There was Terspichore, the muse of dance, holding her lyre, and there was Melpomene, the muse of tragedy, standing in a most distraught attitude, her hand dramatically held to her brow. Euturpe, the muse of Dionysiac music, was identifiable because she was playing a flute (and anyway, her name had been painted below). Gordon remembered, too, that Thalia, a muse who had taken a particular interest in poetry and comedy (what would she make of Dick Slocombe?), was also one of The Three Graces. Now, what had been their names?

  That was when the advantages of learning poetry at school came in so handy! It had been in Spencer’s epic Faerie Queene.

  ‘They are the daughters of sky-ruling Jove / By him begot of faire Eurynome / The first of them hight Euphrosyne,/ Next fair Aglaia, last Thalia merry;/ Sweet Goddesses all three, which me in mirth do cherry.’

  Gordon was surprised he had ever managed to learn such stuff. It wouldn’t do his reputation with the Fourth Form Soccer Eleven much good. Now, he might even consider learning Greek. The Greeks always had a word for it – the problem was that he couldn’t understand any of them!

  *

  Ladies Without was twice nightly, at 6.15 and 8.45. Between the shows, Bunty insisted on giving the boys an eggs and bacon supper cooked by her elderly dresser, Florrie, one of the several dressers who travelled with the management’s shows and looked after its stars. They had all got on famously throughout the day, and when the time came for Francis and Gordon to rehearse their moves on stage, Bunty had been on hand to give them confidence.

  ‘Your appearance is in the very last item of the show, just before the walk-down. It’s a tableau of an epic painting by John Martin, the Victorian painter. Not that the audience will have a clue about that, of course. But I’ve conceived it very much along the lines of his work. Have you been to the Tate Gallery? You should, darlings. When you come to London, I’ll take you there and we’ll marvel at those enormous canvases of apocalypse and death and have tea and scones and go for a boat ride on the Thames and eat ice-creams in that wonderful restaurant with its delicious Rex Whistler mural. You won’t have lived until you’ve seen the Pre-Raphaelites, darling Rossetti and Burne-Jones and Ophelia drowning in the prettiest frock you’ll ever see.

  ‘Now, Francis will be in this alcove here, holding a pitcher, darling, with your hand on your hip, and looking out to the audience. You mustn’t move, darling, and you mustn’t look anywhere but straight in front of you, and you’ll be in this alcove on the other side, Gordon darling, and everything else ditto. The curtain will go up, and the girls will all be in place on stage among the Gothic ruins. I must remember to check that the new girls Trixie and Nancy know where they are standing, and then I rise out of a giant Botticellian conche draped in a diaphanous concoction. Actually, darling, Cecil Beaton designed it for me: so sweet of him. And I stand and look, and then the Beaton slips off my shoulders, and the lighting changes and the curtains close.’

  ‘And that’s it?’ asked Gordon.

  ‘That’s it, darlings,’ said Bunty. ‘But it’s then, when I come up in the
shell, that the most wonderful moment of the show comes to me at every performance.’

  Francis and Gordon looked puzzled.

  ‘Come with me,’ she said, and holding their hands she sped them back to her dressing room, where Florrie was ironing Bunty’s crinoline dress for the first half finale. Bunty asked her to take some props to the prompt corner. The old woman gathered them together, swept some costumes into her arms, and cheerily left the room.

  The boys had never before felt enveloped in such a dusty warmth, the smell of Bunty’s greasepaint (Leichner 5 and 8 and carmeline for the eyes, and Gala pillar-box lipstick), the lingering fog of face powder, the blinding light of the bulbs around the mirrors that threw reflections of the glitter and dazzle of costumes across the room, her leather suitcases (embossed with her initials, B.G.R.), and the array of flimsy gauzes, shot silk, fishnet and organza that lay in wait for her hand to pluck. Bunty closed the door, and almost whispered, ‘I have something very special to show you.’

  From a secret compartment in her travelling case Bunty produced a small velvet box, and slowly opened its lid. Francis and Gordon were stunned. There, shimmering with a radiant intensity, was a huge pearl set in a pendant. Whichever way it was turned, the pearl shone with a translucent majesty that held the boys in thrall. Its effect was hypnotic, as if the pearl was drawing whoever set eyes on it deep into its centre.

  ‘What a magnificent thing!’ exclaimed Francis.

  ‘I wear it at each performance,’ explained Bunty, ‘in the final tableau. It is the only thing I have that once belonged to my mother. All through her life, she never appreciated its beauty or guessed its worth. When she abandoned us, she thought nothing of leaving it behind. And I think she never discovered this.’

  With an intricate movement of her fingers, Bunty dislodged the velvet bed in which the pearl resided, and withdrew a tiny piece of paper, browned with age.

  ‘Another secret compartment!’ whispered Gordon.

  ‘Yes.’

  She unfolded the tiny document and Francis and Gordon read the barely distinguishable words ‘Here Rests a Sibling Pearl of Great Beauty’.

  ‘A sibling pearl?’ asked Francis, his voice almost hoarse in wonder.

  ‘What does it mean?’ said Gordon.

  ‘I’ve always thought it meant that there were others like it. This is our secret, boys. No one else has ever been told of it, or seen that message.’

  ‘Do you know where the pearl came from, originally?’ asked Gordon.

  ‘I believe it is many hundreds of years old,’ said Bunty. ‘My father always told me that it had been acquired by my grandfather, Horace Clatten.’

  ‘Of course!’ said Gordon. ‘Sir Horace Montgomery Clatten, the great explorer and adventurer. I read about him in the Childrens’ Newspaper.’

  ‘Fancy you knowing that,’ exclaimed Francis. ‘You’re quite right. Sir Horace was also a great inventor and eccentric. He developed the automated bustle, you know.’

  ‘There are stories that he unearthed ancient treasures in foreign lands. And, yes, I seem to remember … it’s coming back to me … wasn’t there an account of him discovering the jewels of a twelfth century Peruvian princess?’

  ‘Then you do know something about my pearl!’ said Bunty.

  ‘Yes,’ said Francis. His face bore an expression of profound concern. He thought that if Gordon knew something about it, it was very likely that other people did too!

  *

  The opening night of Ladies Without at Norwich Hippodrome was a highlight in the theatrical calendar, an event in which Mrs Jones found herself a prominent feature. Aunt to Miss Bunty Rogers, mother of Francis Jones about to take to the stage with his cousin Gordon, and treated like a queen from the moment of her arrival, with Charles Penderbury escorting her to the front row of the dress circle, where such a very pleasant, well spoken lady was already installed in the seat next to her. She and Mrs Jones got on famously, and by the time the curtain rose she felt quite at home. And what a show it was! Such colour, with the girl dancers opening the proceedings in a flurry of pastel shades, their colour magically enhanced by the footlights. Then there was the comic, Dick Slocombe, who told some stories that would have made his mother blush. Mr Jones worked hard at suppressing hearty laughter. And then the girls were on again, introducing the singer Mavis Day, and then a group of acrobats who swung about all over the place, one of them climbing the rigging up to the very top of the proscenium arch.

  Best of all, of course, was the first appearance of Bunty. You could almost hear the audience holding its breath as she emerged from a totally black stage, with nothing more than a giant ostrich fan to cover her necessities, and walked seductively down to the footlights. She seemed to take the whole audience into her confidence with the most beguiling turn of her eyes, and then in no more than a flash of time she switched the fan dramatically to one side, just as the lights – as if by some extraordinary magician’s trick – faded to black. The applause was sensational. Bunty had cast her spell over all, even the woman next to Mrs Jones, who whispered ‘What a remarkable girl! Better than Duse!’

  By the interval, when Mrs Jones and her neighbour retired to the bar, the atmosphere was at fever pitch. Mr Penderbury bought Mrs Jones a small sherry and the other lady a large shandy, and made an inordinate amount of fuss about both. By the time they resumed their seats, the lady had ordered a new corset from Mrs Jones, and assured her that she herself had begun on stage in just such a modest capacity as Francis and Gordon.

  And what a finale the boys’ appearance made! It was all Mrs Jones could do not to burst with pride when Francis was discovered on stage, standing in an alcove, and Gordon exactly the same on the other side of the stage. Draped across the stage were the young ladies of the company in various advanced states of undress, their private parts shadowed and all but indistinguishable in the clever lighting of this scene of classical disorder. From the backcloth shone a sympathetic moon, as unmoving as the clouds that trailed in its wake, and as motionless as the girls on stage, all of whom were placed so as to emphasise the presence of the star of the evening. Stillness was everywhere, on stage, in the stalls, in the balcony, in the very breath of the audience. And then, from the centre of the stage, rising from the ruins of what looked like an abandoned world, a giant shell emerged from the bowels of the theatre, with a shuddering slowness that was thrilling to see.

  ‘How Botticellian!’ whispered Mrs Jones neighbour. And then the very top of Bunty’s head appeared, her golden tresses winding down and down until they reached her feet, framing her naked loveliness. And there, at her throat, the strangest light shone with immense clarity from a great pearl that somehow hypnotised every onlooker. The orchestra was playing ‘In an Old Persian Market’. The shell came to a shuddering halt. The music reached a crescendo. The lights played for a moment or two with subtle changes, at last resting in fullness on the exquisite form of Bunty, and then the lights faded slowly, the pearl retaining its enthralling presence until the very last moment of the blackout. The applause of the audience was tremendous, but very gradually, through that enormous noise came another sound: the sound of screaming and hullabaloo on stage. The curtain rapidly fell, and the house lights came up.

  ‘The pearl has gone!’ said Francis, running to Gordon across the stage immediately after the curtain had gone down.

  Gordon was careless enough to bump into one of the acrobats, one of the many who had emerged from the wings. The muscular young man almost pinned Gordon up against the scenery and hissed ‘Watch it, sonny’. He gave Gordon a penetrating glance, as if he suspected him to be the source of the trouble, and then ran off into the wings.

  At the centre of the melee was a distressed Bunty, being comforted by some of the still naked girls. Amidst the general confusion, Mr Penderbury was fetched from his office, and immediately had a telephone call put through to the local constabulary. A moment or two later, the Chief Constable of the county, who had been in the audience with the f
ellow members of the Watch Committee, strode purposefully on to the stage.

  ‘What’s all this about, Francis?’ asked the Chief Constable.

  ‘Miss Rogers has been robbed, sir. A pearl of great value was taken from her when the lights went down at the end of our scene.’

  ‘That narrows the field for suspects. Presumably the culprit must be one of the company who were on stage with her?’

  ‘It may be,’ said Francis, ‘but not necessarily so. The whole company, and the electricians and backstage staff, were in the wings ready for the walk down, and in the blackout any one of them could have come on stage and taken the pearl.’

  ‘Nobody is to leave,’ commanded the Chief Constable. ‘My men will conduct a thorough search.’

  Amongst the general confusion, the acrobat had returned with a glass of water, which he held to Bunty’s lips as she reclined against her shell.

  The search was begun shortly afterwards by a posse of policemen, but two hours later the police confessed themselves mystified as to where the pearl had gone, and the Chief Constable called off the search.

  ‘But it must be found!’ exclaimed Francis in exasperation. ‘Mysteries are meant to be solved. It’s not only that the pearl is of inestimable worth. Someone has taken it, and robbed our relative of a thing of great sentimental value.’

  ‘Well,’ said the Chief Constable as he prepared to leave the theatre, ‘in this case I think you are up against impossible odds. No trace of the pearl has been found, and there is no evidence or witness statements as to who might be responsible. It really is a case of the pearl being a needle in a haystack. I’m afraid we have to recognise that a theft has taken place, and that there is little hope of recovery.’

  ‘Not if we can help it,’ whispered Gordon under his breath.