Dead for a Spell

by Raymond Buckland

  To his credit, Alfred got down on his knees and stuck his head, followed by his shoulders, into the end of the pipe. I had to admire him. I have a fear of confinement. I wouldn’t have done what he was doing even if Her Imperial Majesty herself had been trapped in that tight enclosure.

  When Alfred signaled that he was ready, we broke into two groups, one on each of his legs, and started pulling. For a moment nothing happened, and then slowly, very slowly, Alfred’s filthy, once-green trousers began to reemerge from the end of the pipe.

  “Pull!” gasped the blond girl.

  Suddenly we all fell backward as Alfred popped out of the opening . . . empty-handed.

  “What happened?” asked Mr. Stoker, as we picked ourselves up.

  “S-sorry, sir,” said Alfred, breathing deeply. “I just couldn’t keep a grip on ’im.”

  “Then get back in there!” snapped Charley.

  Reluctantly, Alfred once again got down on his knees and inserted his head and shoulders into the pipe.

  “Get a good grip this time!” shouted one of the boys. There were murmurs of agreement.

  Once again we gathered at the projecting legs and, gently, started pulling. Bit by bit, inch by inch, Alfred’s lower regions began to come back out of the pipe.

  “What’s going on here? Who called for me?”

  I glanced up over my shoulder and saw a pale, thin figure in top hat and frock coat, clutching a black doctor’s bag, standing with the tall boy beside him. It was Dr. Schrock. Mr. Stoker quickly told him what was going on.

  “Is he alive?” asked the doctor.

  After the briefest of pauses, Stoker replied, “We hope so.”

  “If he’s not,” said Welly darkly, “then I swear I will make Mr. Robertson pay for it.”

  It took all of ten more minutes to get Rufus out of his confinement. We all helped lift him up out of the ditch and lay him on the grass verge. We hovered around as the doctor examined him.

  “He is breathing—though only just,” was his final pronouncement. “Get him to my house right away.”

  It was as I traipsed along beside Mr. Stoker, who insisted on carrying the still figure of Rufus, that we learned that Dr. Schrock was actually a veterinarian.

  “No matter,” he said. “One animal is much like another, human or not.”

  * * *

  It was a long night. Rufus was unconscious. Dr. Schrock said he was comatose. We had originally thought that Rufus had crawled into the opening to hide and get away from Robertson or Robertson’s men, but it was looking more and more as though he had been caught and badly abused. We reached the conclusion that the boy had been savagely beaten before being stuffed into the pipe.

  I spent the night sleeping on the floor at the doctor’s house while Mr. Stoker returned to the hotel. Welly stayed at my side. The following morning, when Mr. Stoker came back, there had been no change. Half the children had also slept on the floor, though one or two—those who, presumably, had homes to go to—returned early, bringing pies and rolls with them, which we all fell upon gratefully.

  “What is your prognosis, Doctor?” asked Mr. Stoker after the veterinarian had made yet another examination of Rufus. “And I ask you to be truthful. We will get nowhere if we beat about the bush.”

  Dr. Schrock nodded and then slowly shook his head.

  “I have done all that I am able. And I hasten to add that I doubt any other man of medicine could do more. I may primarily be an animal doctor, but as I said last evening, we are all animals of one sort or another.”

  Stoker grunted in agreement. “Know that I hold you in the highest regard, Doctor. I thank you for your efforts. It seems we must all pray and send our healing thoughts and energies to this poor boy.”

  I saw that a number of the children had eyes red from tears. Charlotte—Charley—stoically remained dry-eyed, though I could see that her movements were jerky and mechanical, as though her mind were elsewhere.

  “Harry, I ask that you remain here, at least for the time being. Regrettably, I must return to the Lyceum. As you know there is much to do there that requires my attention. The Guv’nor leans on me a great deal, especially with Mr. Booth being there and with Othello opening night drawing ever closer.”

  “I quite understand, sir,” I said.

  “Get back as soon as you can,” continued my boss, “but not before we have a more definite and stable condition for the boy.”

  It was to be another day before I was able to return to the Lyceum. I then walked into Mr. Stoker’s office and slumped down on the chair in front of his desk. I had taken the milk train to get there, and happily, my boss was in his office early. He looked up at me, his eyebrows raised.

  I said, “Rufus died.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was Saturday afternoon—the matinee—and I had tried to get absorbed in the performance but found it difficult to concentrate without my thoughts continually straying up to Oxford. As I had told Mr. Stoker, Welly had taken it upon himself to see that Rufus would be given a proper burial and had seemed almost anxious to get me away and back to London. I was now concerned about the hunchback. He had not shown the emotion that I was sure was locked up inside him. I felt that he needed to get it out. But, with grim determination, he had assured me that all was well with him and that I should return to where I was needed. I could not argue. The first train to the capital had been at 4:30 A.M. that morning, and I made sure that I was on it. It stopped at every station along the line, picking up milk churns, and we finally steamed into Paddington Station at 8:15 A.M.

  “Are we certain that Reginald Robertson was the one responsible?” asked a hushed voice.

  I looked up from where I stood in the Opposite Prompt corner, stage right, watching but not seeing the performance progressing. Turning, I saw Mr. Stoker in the shadows. I nodded my head.

  “Everything seems to point to it, sir. He had chased Rufus, and he was the one who made the remarks about the boy not showing up again.”

  My boss stood there silently for several moments before moving off. I returned my gaze to the stage and tried to focus my attention on Hamlet.

  Billy Weston was also far from my thoughts, yet he was what I needed . . . someone on whom to fasten my attention and to get my mind moving again along other lines. We still had to find out who murdered Nell Burton and Elizabeth Scott. I was therefore grateful and relieved when Billy showed up in my office shortly after the final curtain.

  “You found the Reverend Prendergast, I take it?”

  “Yes, Mr. Rivers,” he said. “Nice enough for a vicar. Bit too preachy for me, but then I s’pose that’s ’is job.”

  I smiled, for the first time in many days.

  “Where’s Ben?” I asked.

  “He went back ’ome and I came down ’ere.”

  “Sit down, Billy,” I said. “Tell me all about it.”

  It seemed that the two of them had not wasted any of my money. They had got straight to work and talked, over several days, with the Reverend Prendergast, and then, after that, with various locals in the area around where Elizabeth Scott had been murdered.

  “What did you find?”

  “Well, Mr. Rivers, the vicar had done some diggin’ about, after ’e spoke with you, it seems. ’E said as ’ow ’e’d read over a journal—I think ’e called it—that the old vicar had kept.”

  “The Reverend Swanson,” I said.

  “That’s ’im. Reverend Prendergast said as ’ow it was quite a eye-opener for ’im, was the way ’e put it.”

  I nodded. “That’s good. I think the old vicar had more of a grasp on what was going on in his parish than does this new one. Certainly so far as the sort of incidents in which we are interested. Go on, Billy. Tell me what you found.”

  “The vicar said as ’ow there was reports in the journal about meetings of groups of people.
’E talked about them gettin’ together at certain times of the year and dancin’ round bonfires and stuff. Weird things. Creepy, I thought.”

  “Mr. Stoker is going to love this.” I chuckled. “Just the sort of thing he suspected, I think. Anything else, Billy?”

  He started checking his pockets, looking for something.

  “I got a list ’ere somewhere. The vicar let me copy it down. Where is it?” He stood up, the better to dig into his trouser pockets. “Ah! ’Ere it is.” He pulled out a crumpled, grubby piece of paper, together with a half sovereign and a number of smaller coins. “Oh, and that’s all the money we got left,” he said. Sitting down again, he laid the scrap of paper on my desk and repeatedly rubbed his hand over it in a futile effort to smooth it out. Then he took it up and peered at it.

  “What is it, Billy? A list of what?”

  “Of the people as was jumpin’ about round the bonfires. Let’s see, there was a Sadie Compton—was women as well as men, it seems—and Ben Staples, ’Arry Westwick, Albert Pottinger, Bessy Wheatly, Jacob Nugent, Matthew ’Iggins, Matthew Epson, Sarah Winterbotham, Angus Wilson, and Cuthbert Nightingley. That’s all the names there was, Mr. Rivers, but the old vicar said as ’ow there was others ’oo ’e didn’t know.”

  I nodded. “Well done, Billy. This will be a big help. I’m sure Mr. Stoker will want to pass this along to Inspector Bellamy after he’s had a look at it.”

  Billy sat back, looking pleased with himself.

  “Have you been home yet, Billy? Had anything to eat?”

  He shook his head. “No. I came straight ’ere from the railway, Mr. Rivers.”

  I pushed the small pile of money back toward him. “Well, take this and go and get yourself something to eat,” I said. “Hold on to anything left over. If you need to go back to your rooms for a while, that’s fine. Be back here before this evening’s performance, and we’ll both go and see Mr. Stoker and you can tell him all you’ve just told me. I’m sure he’ll have some questions.”

  * * *

  Billy Weston had no sooner gone than Inspector Bellamy slipped into my office space. Speak of the devil, I thought. I briefly wondered how he managed to move so quietly in those big policeman’s boots.

  “Mr. Rivers,” he said, as though summoning me to a witness stand.

  “Inspector Bellamy,” I responded, refusing to be intimidated. “And to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?” I stressed the last word, meaning it to carry a trace of sarcasm, but he seemed impervious to any such subtlety.

  “We have been pondering the whole question of your young lady’s murder,” he said, positioning himself in front of where I sat.

  “I would hope that you have,” I replied.

  “We are not prone to beat about the bush, so we must say that there would seem to us to be the elements of a conspiracy here.”

  “A conspiracy?” What was he talking about?

  “Yes, sir. A conspiracy.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and back again, fastening his beady little brown eyes on me.

  “Concerning . . . ?”

  “The murder of your young actress, Miss Nell Burton.”

  “What the devil are you talking about?” I cried, and came to my feet. Unfortunately, my lack of height did not give me the ability to look him straight in the eye, but I did the best I could.

  “All this talk of ritual slayings and theatrical knives belonging to Mr. Irving just doesn’t make sense,” he said. “This is a theatre. You people are actors. You present these dramas, and we do know that you have to practice them. We also know that in your practices things can go wrong. Horribly wrong! In this case, when things went ‘off the rails,’ as the current expression puts it, then you all conspired to present this ridiculous story of Satanist rituals and human sacrifices. You did your little chalk drawings and then claimed they are myth . . . mist . . .”

  “Mystical?” I said.

  “No, sir! No! It will not wash! We know better.”

  I was almost speechless. I wished Mr. Stoker were there. He would not have been at a loss for words, but he had gone to dine with Mr. Irving between performances. I had to handle this on my own.

  What would Mr. Stoker have done? I felt that he would have tried to make the inspector see how ridiculous was his charge. I sat down and even managed to smile up at the imposing figure before me.

  “Won’t you sit down, Inspector?”

  He remained standing and glaring down at me. I swallowed.

  I raised my hand and extended my fingers. I began to count off points on them as I elucidated.

  “Firstly, Miss Burton was more specifically an extra, not an actress in the general sense of the word.”

  “Did she or did she not appear on your stage in your play?” he demanded.

  It threw me off balance a little, but I tried to ignore it. “You are correct on that score. In that sense, yes, she was an actress.” I moved on to the next finger. “And yes, the murder weapon was a knife taken from this theatre and had indeed once been used by Mr. Irving. But as we explained some time ago, the Guv’nor had no knowledge even of the fact that the knife was missing.”

  The inspector said nothing but remained with his eyes fixed on me.

  “At rehearsals—rehearsals, Inspector, not practices—nothing goes wrong.”

  “Nothing goes wrong? Then why do you need to practice?”

  I swallowed. It was a good point. “Nothing goes wrong to the extent that you are implying. No actual knives are used in practice . . . I mean, rehearsal. We use prop knives; wood and rubber. Onstage we might use an actual blade, if the performance merits it, but then it is never, ever, a sharpened blade.”

  “It seemed to do a good job on your young lady’s throat.”

  “Because it wasn’t the blade we use in the play!” I cried. “In fact that particular knife is not used at all in Hamlet. It belongs to The Merchant of Venice. And anyway, if we staged all this, then why would we use Mr. Irving’s own knife and implicate him?”

  I could hear my voice getting higher and higher as I became more and more frustrated. I took a deep breath and mentally counted to ten.

  “Inspector Bellamy, we have been over all of this. Mr. Stoker has been over it. If you want to go over it yet again then I suggest you speak directly to him. He is not here at the moment but . . .”

  “The waste of police time is a serious offense, Mr. Rivers. There are penalties for such,” he intoned.

  “I would think that the waste of time when you could be out finding the murderer would be a much more serious offense, Inspector,” I said through gritted teeth, my fingernails digging into the palms of my hands as I clenched my fists.

  He stood staring at me for a long time before saying, “Yes. Well, that’s as may be.” Then he turned and walked away.

  I sat seething for the longest time. How incompetent could the Metropolitan Police be? How could they possibly believe that we had manufactured all the evidence to cover up a blunder on our own part? How could they not see that Nell’s throat had been viciously slashed? I sat there for a long time. My thoughts strayed once more to Rufus and to Welly. All seemed very bleak.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It had been some time since I’d last spoken with Miss Edwina Abbott. Not that I had missed the young lady, but I remained fascinated by her tarot cards. Mr. Stoker seemed to have respect for their prognostications, so I tried not to dismiss them in too cavalier a fashion myself. As I passed the entrance to the greenroom during that Saturday evening’s performance, I glanced in and, as usual, saw the girls all huddled about Miss Abbott as she spread out her pasteboards on a table. Seth Hartzman leaned up against the wall, watching them. He caught my eye and nodded in a not unfriendly manner. I paused, and he came over to me.

  “Miss Abbott sure keeps ’em happy with those cards,” he said.

  “H
as she read them for you?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Nar! I don’t need no cards or such to tell me what to do.”

  “I don’t think that’s quite the idea of them,” I said.

  He shrugged. “I don’t need the likes o’ them.”

  I saw an opportunity. “What exactly is your connection with Mr. Edwin Booth?” I asked, as casually as I could.

  “Booth? What about him?”

  “How well do you know him?” I persisted.

  Again he shrugged. “I don’t, really. It’s Colonel Cornell I know. It was him as got me this job.” He looked back at the girls, still crowded around Edwina. “Not that I’m overjoyed with it.”

  “You have acted before?” I asked.

  “Been in and around theatres some, yes.”

  That didn’t exactly answer my question, but I let it go.

  “Have you known the colonel a long time?”

  He paused before answering, and I wondered if I had overpressed my luck and been too obvious in trying to get information out of him.

  “We go back a way, yes. Here! Where’s that callboy? It must be near time for us to go on again.”

  “Edward won’t let you miss an entrance,” I assured him. I thought to change the subject. “Are you looking forward to doing Othello?”

  “I do what I’m told,” he said, enigmatically. “Go where I’m told to go.”

  “It was Colonel Cornell who told you to do this and Othello?”

  “He’s a very busy gentleman. I don’t get to talk to him a lot.” He turned away, back to the others in the greenroom.

  I passed on. It seemed that Mr. Hartzman was not causing any disruptions, and that was all I cared about. I moved up to the stage level and stood in the wings watching the play progress.

  It was as Act Five, Scene Two, got under way that my calm was disturbed. The graveyard scene had gone well, with the Guv’nor’s “Alas, poor Yorick” speech well received. Saturday evening performances were always the best of the week, with a near-capacity house that truly seemed to appreciate the works of the Bard. Now we were into the last scene, approaching the death of Hamlet. I felt a tug at my sleeve and looked down to see Edwina trying to get my attention and mouthing words I couldn’t quite hear. I backed farther away from the stage.