The First Murder

by The Medieval Murderers

  ‘It is to observe all the sight-lines, do you see?’ he explained when Augustus Bromhead taxed him on his restlessness. The antiquarian nodded wisely, though he had not understood a word, and was still perplexed by Mossop’s actions. Just as he was about to ask for clarification, the manager broke away. He rushed down to the front of the stage, and berated the stagehands. They had dragged a large hip-bath on the stage, and had clearly not located it in the correct position.

  ‘No, no, no, Jed. Can you not see the cross I chalked on the stage? The bath must be there. Dead centre.’

  Jed Lawless grumbled under his breath, and took the reprimand out on his two assistants. He cuffed the ear of the nearest youth, a spotty-faced lad with wire-rimmed glasses hooked over his protruding ears.

  ‘Tom, you stupid idiot, can’t you see the mark?’

  Tom clearly couldn’t, and blushed. The other boy grinned and pushed the bath in place.

  Malinferno leaned across the seats to where Bromhead was sitting, and whispered in his ear, ‘Isn’t this supposed to be the Garden of Eden? Where does a bath come into it?’

  Bromhead shrugged wearily. He had tried to persuade Mossop not to use the pantomime backcloth for the scene, but had withdrawn his objection when asked for some more money for a new backcloth. Now, Mossop had inserted a bath into the scene. He began to explain to his friend.

  ‘Will is taken by Theodore Lane’s cartoon showing Queen Caroline and Pergami frolicking in a bath together. He is determined to reproduce it in the play, and insists “The Fall of Man” is the best place. God knows how he plans to show Adam and Eve in all their nakedness.’

  Malinferno had a good idea how from what Doll had told him, and his fears were realised immediately. Doll and Stanley emerged from the darkness of the wings in their attire for this scene. The handsome Stanley was stripped to the waist, showing off a hairy chest and a tight waist. His nether garment was no more than a tight pair of breeches that did little to obscure his well-endowed manhood. Malinferno thought he heard an indrawn breath from behind him where William Bankes sat. This was followed by a long-drawn-out expression of admiration in French from Quatremain, who sat next to Bankes. Of course, the Frenchman’s salute was not for Stanley, but for Doll. She was clad in nothing more than a thin muslin shift, which did nothing to hide her manifest charms. Especially when the candlelight shone on her.

  Stanley led Doll over to the bath, and held her hand as she stepped into it.

  Mossop then called out to Stanley, ‘Morton, kneel behind the bath. It will mask your lower half.’

  The actor did so, and the rolled edge of the hip-bath all but obscured his breeches. He looked naked. Stanley flicked some imaginary water at Doll, just as in the cartoon, and they recited their lines, Stanley first.

  ‘“Ah, Eve, you are to blame;

  To this you enticed me –

  My body gives me shame;

  For I am naked, it seems to me.”’

  Then it was Doll’s turn as Eve.

  ‘“Alas! Oh, Adam, so am I!”’

  That was as far as she got, for she burst into a fit of the giggles, and covered her breasts with her hands. Mossop rushed down to the front of the stage.

  ‘Eve! Doll, what is the matter?’

  Doll could not stop her laughter, merely pointing into the wings. Everyone turned to see what had amused her. The hot faces of the two young stagehands, formerly agog at Doll’s nakedness, suddenly disappeared into the darkness.

  That interlude proved the highlight of a long and arduous day’s rehearsal. When the only short break they did have arrived, Doll was steered to one side by Étienne Quatremain, and Malinferno was left to talk to William Bankes. It could have been very enlightening for Malinferno, as he knew Bankes too was a student of hieroglyphics, but the man seemed distracted by Morton Stanley’s deliberate avoidance of him. The actor first complained to Mossop about some minor matter, then deliberately joined Quatremain and Doll rather than talk to Bankes or Malinferno. Bankes was obviously put out, and all he did in response to Malinferno’s questions about the obelisk he had brought back from Egypt was wave a hand and sigh. Malinferno was actually glad when the rehearsal began again in earnest.

  Soon, only Doll, Morton, Perceval and Harry were left onstage, and the auditorium was empty but for Malinferno. All the other onlookers, including Bankes, Bromhead and Quatremain had long since gone, driven out by the tedium of actors repeating the same scenes and words over and over again. Mossop had been particularly irritated by Morton Stanley, who seemed unable to remember his words from one run-through to the next. At one point Mossop stalked towards Malinferno cursing under his breath, and making his feelings clear.

  ‘I would get rid of him if I could. In fact I would murder him, if only I had a replacement.’

  But he concealed his annoyance, and patiently called out to the actors to begin again.

  Malinferno eventually gave up too, and returned to Creechurch Lane, where he sat down on one of the creaky chairs and awaited Doll’s return. When evening drew on, he sent out for chops and gravy, which a skinny boy delivered on a tray almost as big as he was. But there was no sign of Doll, and Malinferno did not feel like eating alone. Both meals eventually lay cold and congealed on their respective plates. He looked to pass the time until Doll’s return with some more research into hieroglyphs, but was unable to find his notebook. He assumed Doll had misplaced it, as it was she who had been scribbling in it the previous evening. He remembered because she had been excited and had wanted to show him something, but he had been too sulky. He wished he had let her reveal her secret now.

  When she finally came in, and flopped on the other chair, much to its creaky consternation, he taxed her with the missing notebook. She flapped a hand wearily.

  ‘Lawks, Joe, I don’t know where it is. My brain is all a muddle of “move stage right” and “avoid masking the other actor”. Why can’t they use plain English in the theatre?’

  Malinferno knew he was being a little hard on her, and knew why too. He was resentful how Doll had become the centre of attention lately, on stage and over the cracking of the hieroglyphic code. But that didn’t stop him chiding her.

  ‘You had the book last. Where did you put it?’

  Doll sighed, knowing that, when Joe was in this sort of mood, he would not give up. She got up and crossed the room.

  ‘I hid it behind the sherry bottle. I put it there for safety. That sherry-wine is so awful no one would go near it.’

  She groped behind the dark brown bottle in question.

  ‘It’s not there.’

  Malinferno groaned. ‘I know it’s not there. That was the first place I looked. It is my hidy-hole too, after all.’

  Doll’s face lost the grey weariness that had spoiled her looks when she entered the room. She was now concerned, and peered sharply at the shelf where the bottle stood.

  ‘The bottle’s been moved. Look, you can see its original sticky ring on the shelf. The bottle is not where it was before. And I had an idea about the bird symbol I wanted to share with you.’ She looked around the room. ‘The papyrus sheets have been disturbed too. I left them stacked up at the back of the table. The one with the cartouche I copied into the notebook was on the top.’ She shuffled through the crackling sheets. ‘It’s gone. The one with the cartouche is gone.’

  Malinferno held his head in his hands.

  ‘All my notes . . . and yours . . . gone. We shall have to start again.’ He looked up at his worried companion. ‘What was the idea you had that you wanted to tell me last night?’

  ‘Oh, yes. The bird symbol. I think Young was wrong, and if you substituted an “a” for the “ke”, you had—’

  Suddenly, Doll held a finger to her lips. Joe looked at her quizzically, and she pointed at the door to their rooms.

  ‘The stairs creaked. There is someone out there,’ she whispered in his ear.

  Malinferno tiptoed to the door, and with a glance at Doll, flung it open.

&n
bsp; ‘Oh, sir, sorry, is your meal finished. I’ve come to fetch the plates.’

  It was the chop-house boy, come back with his vast tray, which he now held like a shield. Doll laughed, and ushered him in.

  ‘The meal, I am afraid, is uneaten. But you can take it away.’ She scanned his skinny frame. ‘Do you think you could find someone who could eat it up, all cold and congealed as it is?’

  The boy’s eyes widened at the feast on offer, and nodded eagerly. Once he had cleared all the crockery and left the room, Malinferno turned the key in the lock of the living room door. It was too late, but he knew he would feel safer with no possibility of further intrusions. He still wanted to know Doll’s theory, though, and followed her to the bedroom. But she was already snoring by the time he entered.

  The month end had come, and with August arrived, there were only three more days to go before curtain up on The Play of Adam. Rehearsals at the Royal Coburg Theatre were taking on a very serious mood. It was Friday, and the hangers-on were no longer in attendance. Even Malinferno had avoided going, but then he had other concerns. He was trying to resurrect his and Doll’s notes on the papyrus documents, especially the one with the cartouche on it that Doll had almost deciphered. He wracked his brains to recall the sequence of letters she had noted down. Was it ‘-OLT I M KE—KE’? That didn’t look right, but the letters were borrowed from the ones assumed to spell out Ptolemy. He scribbled something else down – ‘-OLE I P KE—KE’. Yes, that was it. It didn’t make sense, but then she had wanted to substitute another letter for the final two. The trouble was, he couldn’t recall what the letter was. He began to retrace his steps through other papyri, searching for other cartouches – those little clusters of hieroglyphs that were supposed to be names from the past. He reached for a damp cloth to cool his throbbing head.

  One of the young stagehands hadn’t bothered turning up to the rehearsal, and Jed Lawless had sent a message to the theatre saying that he himself was sick. Will Mossop assumed it was a hangover. Lawless drank too much gin, and he had a mind to fire him again. The trouble was, Lawless knew the ropes inside out at the Royal Coburg – literally. The ropes and pulleys that raised and lowered the backcloths and the counterweighted ropes used to cause actors to seem to fly were Lawless’s private domain. No one knew them better, and besides, he was the best stage manager this side of the river. Mossop was aware that firing him would necessitate re-hiring him the following day. And that would be an exercise in humiliation for Will that he did not wish to undertake.

  The rehearsal had started without Jed, and the boy with the glasses was just about coping on his own. But the next scene was ‘The Fall of Man’, and required the Garden of Eden backcloth and the hip bath. The boy scurried on stage and pushed the heavy bath roughly into position. Doll, in her thin muslin gown, stepped into it, and Morton Stanley kneeled behind it. There was a pause while everyone waited for the Garden of Eden to descend. It didn’t, and Mossop called out to the boy to set the correct backcloth. His head popped out from the wrong side of the stage, his face red, and his glasses askew. Then he rushed across stage into the opposite wing-space where all the ropes were cleated up. There was a short pause. Then a squeal of pain rang out from the wings, quickly followed by a strange whirring sound, fast and high-pitched. Doll was half-aware of something large descending from above, and she instinctively closed her eyes and flinched, throwing her arms over her head. There followed a huge thump, and the stage under the bath shook as though from an earthquake. A snake-like form draped itself suddenly over Doll’s upraised arms, and she screamed, struggling to cast it off as it wrapped itself around her. When her scream stopped, a deathly silence hung over the theatre for a long moment.

  She opened her eyes to see a cloud of dust rising around her. She coughed, choking on it, and fought the snake that had entangled her. It turned out it was merely a rope, and she pushed it off her, grasping the side of the bath. Beside the bath was the humped form of a filled sack, the sort of sack used as a counterweight to a human body in the flying device. This time, though, an actor was not at the other end of the rope. It now lay on the floor, where Doll had cast it. A body, however, did lie underneath the heavy, sand-filled sack that had plummeted from the heavens. It was the body of Morton Stanley and, judging by the blood that was seeping from under the sack and being absorbed by some of the sand that burst from it, the actor was dead.

  Doll heard a whimpering noise coming from the wings. She clambered out of the bath, and ran across the stage. Everyone else seemed stunned into immobility by the catastrophe. In the darkness, she could just make out a small shape – someone kneeling in front of the morass of ropes leading down to the cleats on the wall. It was the bespectacled boy – Doll was ashamed she didn’t even know his name – and he twisted round, holding out his hands to her. She could see that the skin on his palms was red and torn.

  ‘The rope just ran through my hands, lady,’ he blubbered. ‘It should not have been that heavy. It was only the back-cloth.’ He looked up at her with reddened eyes. ‘What happened?’

  Doll grimaced, thinking the poor boy had made a mistake. He had been hurried into doing a job he knew nothing about, and had dropped the counterweight.

  ‘It was the wrong rope, lad.’

  This was Will Mossop’s voice coming from the stage. It shook with anger and emotion. The boy looked up at Doll, ashen-faced.

  ‘It wasn’t, lady. Look. The cleats are all marked.’ He pointed at the clear, hand-painted black letters on the cleat that no longer had a rope attached. The deadly rope. Doll read the letters: ‘US3.’

  ‘Upstage backcloth number three,’ the boy explained.

  Mossop by now was in the wings too. He strode over to the cleats, and yanked on the rope secured round the next cleat to US3. Following the angle of the rope as it soared into the flies, both Mossop and Doll could see the Garden of Eden backcloth shuddering in response to his tug on its rope. Mossop pointed at the cleat the backcloth was on.

  ‘FL1. Fly one. The ropes have got crossed over. This is Jed Lawless’s fault.’

  Doll peered back onto the stage, where a small knot of actors stood around the heavy sack.

  ‘Is Morton . . .?’

  Mossop nodded.

  ‘Dead for sure. I shall have to call for the magistrate, but it is surely nothing more than a tragic accident.’

  Doll was about to offer a different opinion, but saw the far-off look in Will’s eyes. She knew he was already thinking of the implications for the play. She took his arm and drew him to one side, casting a glance at the whimpering boy.

  ‘Will, look after the boy.’

  Mossop shook his head, as though trying to clear his thoughts.

  ‘What? Oh, Tom, you mean? Yes, I will get a doctor to put some salve on his hands. He will be fine.’ He looked at his disconsolate band of actors onstage, then at Doll.

  ‘You had all better wait for the magistrate, and when he is finished, you can all go home. I will send a message round telling what I propose to do when I know myself.’

  Doll could see her chance at stardom slipping away. But for now there were other matters to deal with, and she didn’t propose to be held up by some interfering magistrate. She threw a cloak over her diaphanous shift, slipped out the stage door of the theatre, and called a cab.

  ‘Morton Stanley has been murdered?’

  Malinferno had reacted in shock at Doll’s pronouncement. Bromhead’s dire prediction was still uppermost in his mind, and now it seemed the warning had not been for nothing. He was pacing the landing that separated their two rooms, trying to convince himself that it wasn’t so. He called out to Doll, who was changing into something more decent in the bedroom.

  ‘Couldn’t it have been an accident? If the kid released the wrong rope, then it was just unlucky that Stanley was underneath the sack of sand.’

  Doll stepped out of the bedroom, and would have spoken, but she noticed that their landlady, Mrs Stanhope, was hovering at the bottom of the
staircase all agog, so she steered Joe back into their living room. She closed the door, and leaned against it. Her bosom, now clad in more demure white cotton, heaved.

  ‘It was no accident. The boy knew what he was doing, and chose what should have been the correct rope.’

  Malinferno frowned, still unconvinced.

  ‘He wore spectacles, didn’t he? That may have caused his confusion.’

  ‘No. He chose the correct cleat. But the ropes had been switched, and I think it was done deliberately.’

  ‘Who would have cause to murder Morton Stanley?’

  Doll barked out a laugh. ‘Nearly everyone who had been in the theatre the previous day. Percy Tristram and Morton have been at each other’s throats for years, apparently. Percy used to get the leads, but now he’s older and fatter, Morton has replaced him. He gets Morton’s goat by calling him Stan. It seems that when he started out on the boards, Morton Stanley was plain Stan Morton. When his star began to wax, he suddenly emerged as Morton Stanley. Percy doesn’t let him forget the old days.’

  Malinferno held up a cautionary finger at this point. ‘Yes, but if they have been old enemies, why kill him now, and so openly, too?’

  Doll sighed. ‘The very same thought had occurred to me. And I can’t give you an explanation. But it had to be someone theatrical, who knew about all the ropes and pulleys.’

  ‘Will Mossop must know.’

  ‘What makes you think Will murdered Morton?’

  Malinferno recalled the rehearsal he had attended when Stanley’s ineptitude had driven Mossop to distraction.

  ‘He actually said to me something about wanting to get rid of him if he could. I can recall his very words. He said, “In fact I would murder him, if only I had a replacement.”’