The Hourglass Factory

by Lucy Ribchester

  Pandemonium re-erupted. The few who had sat back down leapt to their feet and the pushing began again. This time blows were thrown and people emerged from the crowd with red smarts and dark scratches on their faces and hands. Frankie stood frozen as the safety curtain began to crank down. ‘Faster, man,’ called one of the stagehands. ‘It’s as fast as it will go,’ came the cry back from the wings.

  The stage manager had the tiger cornered against the back wall but it was beginning to growl and pace. Foucaud was fiddling with a bottle of something in his hands. A slab of dripping meat flew at him from backstage and he caught it, splashing his shirt, then soused it in liquid from the bottle and threw it to the tiger. The tiger arched its neck and locked the meat in its teeth, smacking the sinews apart. Everyone watched and waited. It wavered, moved forward. The stage manager dodged back.

  ‘Just wait,’ snapped Foucaud.

  The tiger’s shoulders rocked and faltered. Frankie could have sworn she saw a glint of betrayal in its amber eyes as it looked first at the stage manager, then at its sweating owner, then collapsed in a bleary-eyed thump that made the ground shudder.

  She took a step closer. The iron curtain was still cranking down, but there was a gap of a few feet, which, if she was quick, she could make it through. Fighting her instincts to run in the other direction, she dashed into the orchestra pit, scaled the bars and burnt her hand on a hot footlight as she hauled herself onto the stage. A few more seconds and the metal curtain slammed to rest on the wood.

  Lit by the stage lights, technicians and stagehands had started to approach the sleeping tiger. ‘Is it dead?’ one of them asked.

  ‘Dead?’ said Foucaud. ‘Do you know how much one of those costs?’

  ‘Laudanum,’ the stage manager said.

  The stagehand backed off.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Foucaud said, ‘he’ll be out for a good hour with that dose. But I’ll need your men to help get him back in the cage.’ The men all suddenly found fascination with their boots or bits of the stage curtains. Then one of them clocked Frankie.

  ‘Hey, who are you?’

  ‘Francesca George, London Evening Gazette.’ She patted her pocket for a press card to flash and in the end settled for waving her notebook aloft.

  ‘No, no, no,’ the stage manager said. ‘We run a respectable theatre here. We have it under control. I’m afraid you’ll have to leave.’

  He started towards her. Suddenly the tiger snorted and everyone jumped. All eyes watched it as silence settled again, muffled by the iron curtain. Finally, the Great Foucaud pulled himself to his senses and fetched a rope from the wings. With a weariness that suggested he had done it all before, he began binding the beast’s twitching legs.

  The stage manager looked up and down at Frankie. ‘Out.’

  ‘Hold on, hold on,’ Frankie dodged his manhandling. ‘I don’t care about your bloody tiger. What I want to know is: hasn’t anybody bothered to ask where Ebony Diamond is?’

  She watched each of their faces carefully for traces of something. Reassurance, contempt, knowledge that it was a trick and she had been duped. Instead there came an uneasy shifting of eyes. A passage of alarm passed from the lighting technician in his brown coat, down to the stagehands holding a tarpaulin over the heaving belly of the cat, to the stage manager, who swallowed twice. ‘She’s bound to be somewhere.’

  ‘Did you know about the end of her act?’

  He made a show of scoffing. ‘Damn gypsies never tell you anything. These circus folk are always trying to get one up on us. Think they can . . . you know . . .’ He tipped his chin to one of the young stagehands, a Chinese boy in overalls too large for him with the sleeves and trousers rolled up. ‘Check her dressing room. And clear off you.’ He nodded at Frankie then turned round to supervise his men from a distance as they dragged the glossy body of the tiger onto the tarpaulin by its bound paws and tail. It was as sorry a sight as Frankie had seen, sedated, its shining teeth rendered useless by a stupefied brain. It somehow reminded her of Ebony the day before, vomiting and wailing on the pavement kerb.

  Suddenly the ground shook under her feet as the tiger dozily struggled in its tarpaulin swaddle. Six men leapt in fright. ‘Can we get it through the trapdoor?’ one of them shouted.

  ‘Too heavy. It’ll break a bone if it falls from that height. Are you still here? I said bugger off.’

  Frankie dodged as the convoy of men heaved past her, uttering blue curses at the weight of the cat.

  ‘You sure we can’t just toss it down?’

  ‘I said no.’ The Great Foucaud, who had a surprising Black Country flavour to his accent the more he spoke, began directing the men into the wings. ‘If you lift, it’ll be easier.’

  ‘You’re having a laugh, you lift it, sunshine.’ Their voices trailed off and Frankie took the opportunity to slip into the shadows and have a nose about the stage. It was at least fifty foot across, shiny and black with white chalk markings ghosted here and there to identify where the different sets should be placed. The air, as well as carrying the scent of tiger, smelled of sweet greasepaint and burnt electrics. She paced the length of the front before moving back into the centre directly below the trapeze. Looking down at the floor she found that she was standing in the middle of a large square cut into the wood. It was about six feet across and would have been all but hidden except for the light catching the very slight darkening of the groove, and a pattern of chevrons in the dust to suggest it had been recently disturbed. She knelt again, bracing a crick in her knees. Running a hand along the edge, she came upon a flap on a hinge, a small, flimsy bit of veneer that concealed a larger clasp, pressed shut but not locked. She checked around her. The men were still busy trying to heave the tiger through a door backstage. Swiftly, she clicked open the clasp. The door creaked, then swung down into black. Warmth rose and a rank fog hit her; rotting meat and a cat’s moist unwashed coat. Tentatively, braced just in case there should be another animal down there, she bent her head towards the gloom. It took her eyes a few seconds to adjust. She remembered with a growing unease the stage manager’s words, ‘It’ll break a bone.’ Looking back up she saw the trapeze still dawdling in an unseen draught of air above. She looked back down. It was impossible. But it was the only way. Unless she had gone up she could only have come down. Frankie peered back through the trapdoor, squinted into the gloom, and saw the corset.

  Directly underneath the stage a large rectangular space was marked out by high steel bars, with an open gate on one side. She could make out a bucket of water in one corner and the unpleasant shadows of faeces scattered round another edge. In the centre lay a pile of shredded black fabric on top of a ragged dark pool with gnawed bones protruding here and there. She had to pull back to steady her stomach. From a careful distance she peeped again. The corset was spread open but it was distinct enough. The trim, the feathers. A swell of disorientation hit her and her head swam. What had she thought she was doing? An escape gone wrong? A sabotaged stunt? Or had someone else set it up? Could someone have been controlling the trapeze from above and the floor from below, someone inside the theatre?

  Frankie sat back on the stage, her legs stretched ahead of her, trying not to breathe the foul air. Her body suddenly felt weighed down. She had known Ebony was in danger. She had broken an unspoken promise, failed an unsworn oath. If she had told Mr Stark sooner, if she had gone to his office instead of filing her copy to the newsroom. If she had gone to the police . . .

  She saw movement on the stage and noticed that the young Chinese stagehand who had been sent to Ebony’s dressing room was staring nervously at her from the wings. She quickly drew in her legs, dusted herself off and stood up.

  ‘Don’t you think you’d better close that?’ she pointed at the trapdoor. The boy hastily ran over and levered up the flap, securing it with the catch.

  ‘Well, was she there?’ A dying ember of hope was in Frankie’s voice.

  ‘Where did Mr Higgs go?’

  ‘Tha
t the stage manager?’

  The boy fidgeted in the pockets of his large overalls. ‘He said you had to go.’

  ‘Was Ebony Diamond there?’

  He paused then shook his head.

  Frankie tipped back her head, sucking in the lingering foul air. She closed her eyes and felt strain on the muscles of her neck. When she opened them again, she found herself staring straight into the leather loop hanging down off the trapeze. It took her a second to register that something was moving on it, then a drip hit her square between the eyes. She shook her head reflexively, then raised a finger to the spot and dabbed. She stared back up again. She could barely see the thing in the dim light, but she hadn’t imagined that drip.

  Cautiously she sniffed her fingers. It wasn’t cyanide, she knew that much, from reading Strand magazine. Cyanide smelled of Amaretto. Chloroform, that was supposed to be mousy. Arsenic on the other hand had no smell in liquid form.

  She looked across at the young stagehand then back up at the trapeze. ‘Can I get up there?’

  He was regarding her warily and she bitterly wished she had something to bribe him with. She was reluctant to part with her last sticky shilling and thought instead there might be sixpence in her shoe, but when she rummaged to check, there was nothing. Then she had an idea. ‘How’d you like to be in the newspapers?’

  His expression didn’t change but a flash of pride brightened his eyes.

  Frankie was halfway up the ladder when she began to regret her request. ‘You’re doing this for someone else,’ she whispered to her fears. But it didn’t stop the vertigo rushing round her, making her fancy the ladder was wobbling. The metal rails were thinner than apple branches, and by some trick of fear seemed soft and bending. She reached the top and swallowed, her mouth paper-dry, before making the final climb on a rope up to the platform. The rig was deserted, the fly-operator’s post abandoned. The boy wedged round her with effortless dexterity and she followed on hands and knees, trying not to look down.

  They hauled up the trapeze by its ropes, lifting on it a cloud of Ebony’s scent. The fibres had a sticky silken feel to them. Frankie reached for the leather strap, then thought better of it and raised it to her nose using the wooden bar. The boy watched her curiously as she sniffed. There was no odour but leather, but it was definitely wet. Ebony hadn’t caught the strap, Frankie was sure of it. So did that mean she knew something was wrong?

  There were only two ways to find out what was on it, and as she didn’t have access to a laboratory of potions and litmus papers, she was going to have to use the dangerous one. She swallowed, then smeared her finger along the sodden leather. Her heart was beating as she raised her moist fingertip to the tip of her tongue. She hesitated. Her tongue would make her swallow whatever it was. Better to rub it on her lip. She touched her finger very gently to her top lip. After a couple of seconds, a familiar sensation set in, one she knew well and didn’t have pleasant memories of. Emboldened, she rubbed a little harder, the boy watching from the shadows. And then she knew. Not poison, but something equally deadly for a person whose nerves in their mouth kept them alive.

  Now she had the distinct impression that Ebony Diamond had known exactly what she was doing when she missed that strap.

  ‘You know her dressing room?’

  The stagehand nodded.

  ‘Take me there.’

  Halfway down a paint-scented corridor, Ebony’s name had been badly calligraphied onto a piece of card and stuck to a flaking door. The young stagehand held it open for Frankie. She crept inside, feeling slightly violatory, the same way she had felt going into her Nan’s parlour after she had died. The smell was there; poudre d’amour and Old Tom gin. Frankie looked at the lamp-lined mirror expecting to see it framed in postcards from suffragette colleagues, surrounded by green, white and violet bouquets. Instead there was only one card, an old picture of a man in a strongman’s leotard, holding up a baby elephant. She tweaked it from the wood frame and turned it over. The handwriting was poor, block capitals. It said, ‘LOVE, PAPA.’

  The mirror reflected back a rack of corsets, all black with jet beads, lace and magpie feathers. The large taffeta dress Ebony had been wearing at the corset shop was upended over a chaise longue, its petticoats splaying out into sooty petals.

  ‘What was she wearing when she came in?’

  The stagehand pointed at the dress.

  ‘She keep clothes in here?’

  ‘She moved a few costumes in the other day. Said she couldn’t make up her mind.’ Frankie turned and ran her finger along the corset rack, rough silk and slippery satin. She peeked at one of the labels. ‘Olivier Smythe.’

  Something moved in the mirror, a flash of bright copper, and she spun only just quick enough to see a figure in brown tweeds slipping out from behind the door and into the corridor, pulling his cap down over his red hair as he ran. It was enough. She recognised him. The ginger-haired boy from Smythe’s. Frankie skidded out into the corridor and pounded the linoleum floor in chase but he was faster, and slid round a corner and out of sight. The screech of friction on his shoes split the air. She heard the handle being turned on a fire exit, a gust of cold air whipped down the corridor and a door smacked shut.

  ‘Do you know that boy?’ she shouted back at the stagehand.

  There was no reply, and when she turned she saw that he had been joined by the stage manager and three of his men, their sleeves rolled up, still panting and oily-faced. The stage manager’s complexion was a chalky beige and he carried something in his hands that he quickly tried to conceal behind his back. The straps dangled out and Frankie saw it was the shredded corset from the tiger pit.

  She looked both ways down the corridor. She was determined not to leave until she’d had a better look at that cage.

  ‘Get her out of here. Police’ll be here any minute. Last thing we want is press sniffing around.’

  ‘Police?’

  The stage men moved towards her. She backed up a few steps.

  At that moment a noise distracted them all, braces slapping against marching legs. At the far end of the corridor, the Great Foucaud appeared, puffing, puce, his hair plastered to his face in brilliantine triangles. He threw his hands into the air. ‘Gone. Priceless.’

  For a second the stage manager was distracted, and turned his gaze on Foucaud who had raised a threatening finger. ‘And if I find out that any of your men are involved. I’m suing this so-called theatre. You’ll never open another show in London again.’

  ‘What’s gone?’ Frankie asked.

  ‘Thirteen different tailors, one of whom is now dead. One hundred and eighty-five shows. It’s simply irreplaceable, and this so-called theatre . . .’

  ‘Excuse me . . .’ The stage manager held aloft the ripped corset. His hand was shaking badly though he kept his voice steady. ‘Your animal was responsible for the death of Ebony Diamond tonight. I don’t give a donkey’s tit what it is you’ve lost.’

  Foucaud blew spit between his lips. ‘That pile of bones in the tiger’s pen is made of beef, you idiot. I checked. His food’s been ransacked as well. Someone has it in for me. Someone here wants to ruin me.’

  ‘Not you,’ Frankie muttered under her breath.

  The stage manager seemed torn between relief and humiliation. He looked down at the corset as if it was part of a conspiracy to trick him.

  Frankie’s relief was swiftly followed by confusion. If Ebony was not in the tiger’s stomach, then why were her clothes in its cage, and more pressingly, where was she?

  ‘I want this place searched, top to bottom,’ Foucaud snapped. ‘I bet it was that electrician’s boy with the gammy eye; he saw me being tied in before the act.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ The stage manager pressed his brow.

  In a sudden blaze of anger Foucaud seized him by the throat with one of his great, card-palming, dove-squashing hands and pressed him up against the corridor wall. The stage manager began to splutter. Frankie noted that none of his men
came to his aid. ‘The tiger suit for God’s sake,’ Foucaud snarled. ‘The climax of the bloody act. Someone has stolen my custom-made, mechanical limbed, six-months to replace, not to mention the cost, tiger suit. And unless you find it you will never, and I mean never work in London again.’ He released his grip and ran the huge hand back through his greased hair, pressing it to his head.

  The stage manager was trembling and swallowing. He lifted his finger at Frankie. ‘Out.’

  Three stagehands started towards her. ‘All right, all right,’ she held up her hands. ‘But your boss, Mr Whatshisname, when he gets wind of this . . .’

  ‘Out!’

  She backed into the exit door, clipping the latch with her spine, then reluctantly pushed her way out into the cold. The rain had stopped but the air was sharp and icy. She gathered her jacket round her and muttered a curse. Looking up at the high walls of the theatre, it seemed there were no windows low enough to climb back in. She looked down at her footwear. Her days shimmying up trees and drainpipes were over anyway.

  Reluctantly, she began moving towards St Martin’s Lane, when the sight of an old drunk crouched up against the wall made her stop. It wasn’t the scarred and ruined face of the man that made her start but the blanket he was sitting on. He stretched his arms out and Frankie walked closer until his weathered hands clutched the knees of her trousers. ‘I’ve not got nothing.’ She peeled him off. She had been right at first sight. The blanket was furry with the soft oily shine of a cat’s pelt. ‘Where did you get this?’

  He slurred something and spat on the ground.

  She reached out until her fingers touched wet animal hair. Her skin began to creep at the friction.

  The man boxed her a hook but the move toppled his balance and he fell sideways onto the pavement. Frankie quickly grabbed the blanket but it was too heavy and a corner was trapped under the man’s buttocks. As he scrambled to his feet, his eyes glaring for a fight, she spied what she was after, leant against the wall. It had been propping the old man’s back up, an unconventional cushion but a comfortable-looking one. A tiger’s gold-eyed head. She picked it up with both hands and ducked the man’s blurry punch. Taking the head with her she stepped a few paces beyond his reach and examined it.