The First Murder

by The Medieval Murderers

  Doll shook her head. ‘Nah. That’s just theatre-speak. They all go to excess like that.’

  Malinferno was not so certain.

  ‘We should not rule him out nevertheless. Who else is there with a motive?’

  Doll grimaced, thinking of the exchange between Morton and the chief stagehand.

  ‘The obvious suspect has to be Jed Lawless.’

  She told Malinferno of the incident in the wings when Morton threatened to kill Lawless, grabbing the club-footed stagehand by the scruff of his neck.

  ‘It was when Jed accused him of being a player of backgammon in a rather loud voice. Morton threatened him with violence, and Will had to separate them. They cooled down, but I heard more than I was supposed to when Jed stalked off. He made a threat, spoken in a whisper.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘“Kill me, Molly? Not before I have killed you first.”’

  This time, she didn’t have to explain to Joe that ‘molly’ was a derogatory name for a man who liked to dress as a woman. The euphemism ‘playing backgammon’ had been sufficient education for him.

  ‘But doesn’t the same apply to Lawless as to Will Mossop? Could that not just have been all wind and bluster?’

  ‘Not the way he said it.’

  Malinferno gathered up his garrick greatcoat, and tossed her cloak at Doll.

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To the theatre, of course. I need to see the scene of the crime.’

  Doll groaned, and was about to complain that the last place she wanted to go right now was the Royal Coburg. In fact, she wanted to say that she was heartily sick of the place, but Joe was already halfway down the staircase.

  She called after him. ‘Go to the end of the lane, and find a Tilbury. I’m not walking there this late at night.’

  The little Tilbury cab came to a halt outside the imposing front of the theatre. A mist had risen from the river, and it drifted down the Waterloo Road, turning the façade of the Royal Coburg into something from a Mary Shelley novel. Malinferno paid the cabby, and watched as the Tilbury disappeared back over the river. Despite his heavy coat, he shivered as the cab was swallowed in the swirling fog. Doll grabbed his arm.

  ‘Come on. It’s bleeding cold out here. Job will have a nip of something in his cubbyhole.’

  ‘Job?’

  Doll dragged him down a dark side street that ran between Waterloo Road and Webber Street.

  ‘Job is the stage-door man. He always has some gin tucked away somewhere.’ She grinned. ‘I call it his little comforter.’

  Malinferno groaned at the pun, but allowed himself to be led to a dingy door set deep in the recesses of the grimy brick wall at the rear of the theatre. Doll pushed it open, and it creaked theatrically.

  ‘Job? It’s only me, Doll Pocket. Are you there?’

  There was no reply, and the little office with its window on the corridor that led backstage was empty. Doll frowned.

  ‘That’s odd. He should be here. He practically lives in that office.’

  Malinferno glanced nervously over his shoulder. There was something eerie about an empty theatre, devoid of actors and the noise and bustle of performance.

  ‘Shouldn’t we just go?’

  Doll laughed. ‘Nah. You wanted to see where Morton snuffed it, and see it you will. It’s only along here.’

  She led the way confidently down the darkened corridor, and Malinferno followed, groping along the wall uncertainly. At the end of the corridor, which he presumed led onto the stage, there was a glimmer of light. The yellowish glow of candles. As they got closer, Doll suddenly stopped. Malinferno came up behind her.

  ‘What is it, Doll?’ he whispered into her ear.

  ‘There’s someone on the stage, and he has candles lit.’ She looked around the wings. ‘Where the hell is Job when you want him?’

  Malinferno peered over Doll’s shoulder.

  ‘Could that be him lying in the middle of the stage?’

  Doll turned her gaze where Joe had indicated, and gasped. The body of an elderly, unshaven man lay face up right where the sack had plummeted down onto Morton Stanley. She turned to Joe, and was about to speak, when he held a finger up to her lips. He pointed towards the wings on the other side of the stage. Jed Lawless limped out of the darkness, his club foot clomping on the boards. He bent over the body of the stage-door man, and peered at his face. Doll gasped involuntarily.

  ‘Poor Job, what’s Jed gone and done to him?’

  ‘It’s easy to find out,’ Malinferno responded decisively. ‘He can’t run far with his gammy leg.’

  He rushed out of the wings towards the murderer. His approach surprised Jed, who fell back from the body. But just before Malinferno could grab him, the body reared up.

  ‘What the hell . . .?’

  Malinferno was stunned, and stared at Job, who appeared to have come back from the dead. It was Jed who broke the deadlock.

  ‘What you doing here? And who are you, anyway?’

  Doll emerged from the wings to settle the impasse.

  ‘Jed, this is Mr Malinferno. He has been to see the rehearsals, don’t you recall?’

  Jed waved a dismissive hand. ‘Ahhh. I don’t have time to look out beyond the proscenium arch. I’m too busy backstage.’

  Malinferno couldn’t help himself, and threw out an accusation: ‘Setting up traps to kill innocent actors?’

  Lawless gaped at Malinferno, and then he barked out a derisive laugh. ‘You don’t think I did for him, do you?’

  Doll added her voice to Malinferno’s. ‘You did say you would kill him before he killed you.’

  The diminutive stage-hand frowned. ‘Did I? When?’

  ‘When you cast that slur on his masculinity, Jed.’

  ‘Oh, that. You mean when I called him a backgammon player and a molly.’ Lawless was unperturbed. ‘That was just talk. But if you think his murder has to do with his private proclivities, you should look at that Bankes fellow. Him what put up all that money, and got Stanley the part.’

  It was Malinferno’s turn to frown.

  ‘William Bankes, the MP? What has he to do with Morton Stanley?’

  ‘I don’t know if he is a Member of Parliament or not. What I do know is that him and the molly-man was close friends.’ He winked. ‘Very close friends, if you take my meaning.’

  Malinferno suddenly recalled the frosty atmosphere at an earlier rehearsal between Bankes and Stanley. The actor had deliberately snubbed Bankes. Was that the start of a row that had led to murder?

  Lawless turned his back and proffered a hand to Job, who was still on the floor. The old man was having difficulty getting back to his feet, though apparently not having been murdered at all. When Doll asked what they were up to, Jed explained that he wanted to find out what had been done with the counterweight and the fatal rope. Job had been lying where Stanley had been in order to see up into the flies. The old boy turned to Lawless, and pointed upwards as if to God.

  ‘You were right, Jed, the pulleys have been moved.’

  Jed snapped his fingers. ‘I knew it. And the counterweight reversed.’

  Malinferno was puzzled. ‘Reversed?’

  Lawless snorted at Malinferno’s ignorance of matters theatrical. ‘The sack should have been in the wings, and the other end hooked onto the actor, who would have been onstage. That’s how the flying rig works. We manipulate the weight in the wings and make the actor rise or descend onstage. The weight should never have been above the stage, so someone deliberately put it there, if you ask me.’

  Job pointed at the chalked cross drawn on the stage.

  ‘Right above where Stanley was due to hit his mark.’

  Doll stared at the scuffed mark, and felt a chill run down her spine. She clutched at Joe’s arm.

  ‘Come on, Joe. We won’t get any further standing here.’

  ‘But—’ Malinferno wanted to share his suspicions of William Bankes, but Doll was determined
to go.

  ‘Come on!’

  She dragged the puzzled Malinferno off the stage, leaving Jed Lawless to sort out his tangled web of ropes and pulleys. As they retraced their steps along the dark corridor leading to the stage door, Malinferno asked her what the hurry was, bursting with his new idea.

  ‘We were just getting somewhere there. Just imagine if it was a . . .’ He sought the right word. ‘. . . a lover’s tiff between Bankes and Stanley. Or if Stanley was about to let society know of Bankes’s leanings, it could have destroyed his reputation. That makes it a very good reason for Bankes murdering Stanley.’

  Doll remained silent until they had escaped the gloomy confines of the backstage area of the Royal Coburg. But once they were out again in the street, she took a deep breath, and the words tumbled out of her mouth.

  ‘You’re exactly right, Joe. It makes a good reason for murdering Morton. But the problem is that we aren’t looking for someone who set out to kill Morton.’

  Malinferno stared at Doll, not comprehending her meaning. ‘We aren’t? Why not?’

  ‘Because Morton Stanley wasn’t the intended victim.’

  She pointed over her shoulder at the large and looming edifice that was the Royal Coburg, still shrouded eerily in mist. Malinferno was completely lost.

  ‘Then who was?’

  Doll Pocket pulled a grim face. ‘Me.’

  Doll promised to tell Malinferno all if he first bought her a meal.

  ‘The truth has made me feel famished.’

  Now, they sat in the anonymous chop-house in Unicorn Passage, just off Tooley Street, where Malinferno had first become acquainted with Bromhead’s copy of The Play of Adam. He was beginning to feel that the warning written at the end of ‘Cain and Abel’ had some meaning to it after all. And that it was his fault that Doll’s life had been placed in jeopardy. It was he who had suggested that she should audition for a part in the play. As they ate, he confessed to Doll that the play was cursed, but that he’d only learned this much later. He wanted to know why she thought the deadly trap had been set for her. But Doll refused to enlighten Joe until she had finished the food placed before her. Finally, she wiped the brown gravy from her lips with a napkin, and dabbed the splash that had marred the pristine white of the front of her gown.

  ‘I hope that doesn’t stain. I paid a lot of money for this gown.’

  Through gritted teeth, Malinferno begged Doll to explain why she thought she had been the target of the heavy bag of sand.

  ‘It was when Job pointed at the chalk cross marked on the stage.’

  ‘Yes. He said it was Morton Stanley’s mark. You yourself told me he couldn’t remember all his positions. Mossop must have put it there to make sure he was in the right place.’

  Doll smiled fleetingly.

  ‘Yes, we thespians call it hitting your mark.’

  ‘And the sandbag certainly hit Morton’s mark. With deadly results.’

  Doll spat on her napkin, and worried at the gravy stain that marred the material over her cleavage.

  ‘But that is the whole point. It wasn’t a mark placed there for Morton to hit. It was there to show young Tom where to put the bath.’

  ‘Tom, the stagehand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Doll watched as understanding blossomed in Joe’s eyes.

  ‘The bath in which you were to sit. Then if Tom hadn’t missed the mark in his haste, you would have been right under the counterweight.’

  Doll nodded, and Joe squeezed her hand.

  ‘You would have been crushed to death. Just as Morton was.’

  ‘Yes. So you see, we are looking for someone who wanted me dead, not Morton Stanley.’

  ‘But . . .’

  Malinferno didn’t want to believe what Doll was telling him. He wanted another explanation for the falling sack that had taken Stanley’s life. Then he wouldn’t feel so guilty.

  ‘But, why would anyone at the theatre want to kill you? Unless Bankes was jealous of the attentions Morton was paying you.’

  Doll gave up trying to remove the gravy stain, and patted Joe’s hand.

  ‘I think he would have known that Morton’s embraces onstage were all for show – a pretence for everyone else. But I believe that you are right to point the finger at William Bankes. Remember the other incident that occurred this week?’

  Malinferno frowned, and then recalled what had vexed him so earlier.

  ‘The theft of my notebook with all the workings you and I had made on hieroglyphs?’

  ‘Yes. The murder took place after that notebook was taken, so perhaps something in it drove the killer to set the trap up at the theatre.’

  ‘But very few people were there when Stanley was killed, apart from the actors and Will Mossop. Do you think it was one of them?’

  ‘No. The beauty of the trap was that someone else would spring it unwittingly. It could easily have been Jed Lawless, and maybe that was what the murderer intended. To shift the blame on to Jed. As it turned out, Jed was ill and poor young Tom released the rope that was supposed to lower the Garden of Eden backcloth. But it was the rope that now held the counterweight of the flying rig. With the bath in place and me sitting in it . . .’

  Doll brought her hand down on the table with a crash, and their cutlery rattled. A few heads in the chop-house turned to look at them. But Doll just stared back brazenly, and the onlookers’ eyes fell back to their own meals.

  She leaned towards Joe, and hissed in his ear, ‘I’d’ve been squashed as flat as a pancake.’ She looked around for the waiter. ‘And talking of food, do you think we could get some plum pudding? This evading death by a whisker makes me feel starved.’

  Only when the puddings were laid before them would Doll continue with her diatribe.

  ‘No, I reckon it’s what I wrote in your notebook that almost did for me.’

  ‘And you think Bankes was responsible?’

  Doll inclined her head. ‘Something like that.’

  She shovelled a spoonful of plum pudding in her mouth, and winked at Joe. He felt ill, pushed his bowl aside, and pursued the line of thinking.

  ‘He is, after all, an Egyptian scholar himself. If he saw that you had cracked the code of the hieroglyphs, he had every reason to kill you and claim the breakthrough for himself.’

  Doll waved her spoon in the air as if about to say something, but her mouth was still full of sweet pudding. So Malinferno pressed on.

  ‘I think we should follow up your suspicions, Doll. We know that he has shipped an obelisk to London from Philae on the ship Dispatch. And that it has just landed. He told you so. The obelisk lies on the quay at Deptford, and it is likely Bankes will be there to view his prize. We should confront him there immediately. And even if he’s not there, we may at least learn something of his plans.’

  Malinferno pulled on his garrick, and was almost out the door before Doll could spoon the last of her pudding into her mouth. She grabbed her hooded cloak and followed him. Once in Tooley Street, they searched in vain for a cab of any sort. The night was cold and it began to drizzle, causing Doll to doubt the urgency of their mission. But Malinferno was not to be put off.

  ‘Come on, Doll, it’s not far from here. We can walk it.’

  He strode off towards Deptford, and Doll sighed, wrapping her cloak close around her. Her satin slippers were not the most appropriate footwear for the weather, and soon her feet were soaked and frozen. The rain began to come down more heavily, and soon a rising wind was driving it in their faces. But finally the dreary sight of the Royal Dockyards came into view. Ten years ago, this had been a bustling area where ships bound for the Napoleonic Wars were built. Now, with the threat from the continent over, and victualling the only use for the dockyards, it was a run down and almost deserted place. The stench of rotting food drifted on the wind along with the rain, and any night watchman worth his salt would be snug and warm out of sight. Malinferno led the way to the main wharf where he guessed the Dispatch was moored up. The obelisk
it had brought back from Egypt had to be so big that it would be hard to miss. Even in the gloom of a dreary London night.

  Suddenly the persistent drizzle turned to a downpour. The quay was inky black, and merged with the sky as the sullen rain clouds scudded over. Malinferno stumbled on a loose coil of ropes, losing his footing. Doll grabbed his arm and he regained his balance. It was so dark, he could barely make out the location of the quayside, but thought he saw the outline of masts and rigging. Holding on to Doll’s arm tightly, he groped his way towards the ship. A long, dark shape, lying on its side, loomed out of the pelting rain, blocking their way to the Dispatch. Malinferno could see that it was fully six foot high and square, but it tapered away evenly to their left. He touched its surface, and he could feel carvings all along its length. It was the Philae obelisk, lying where it had been offloaded onto the quay. Fascinated, he took a step along it, but Doll held his arm, stopping him.

  ‘Listen,’ she hissed under her breath, and held a cupped hand to her ear.

  He did so, and discerned a sound like someone chipping at the stone. It was coming from the other side of the obelisk. Malinferno indicated that he would go to the left, and that Doll should go to the right around the base of the prostrate pillar.

  ‘Just position yourself at the end,’ he whispered in her ear, ‘but don’t show yourself until I have had time to get close to Bankes.’

  She would have asked how Joe knew it was William Bankes who was chipping away at the obelisk, but he disappeared into the darkness before she had a chance. She shrugged, and pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders. Somehow the rain was penetrating her cloak, and a cold dribble was running down her neck. She tiptoed towards the end of the mighty monument, stroking her fingers along the cold stone, admiring the hieroglyphs that disturbed its surface. She was almost stopped in her tracks by a familiar cartouche, but realised that if she examined it she would not be in place to trap whoever it was on the other side of the obelisk. She pressed on. The base of the stone was smoothly cut, and as she rounded it she could now see the ship at its mooring and the grey surface of the Thames beyond. The water was like a wide, undulating grey ribbon caught between the darkness of the sky and the quayside. Raindrops pockmarked its otherwise dark and mysterious surface. She peered cautiously around the end of the stone, knowing that Joe would not yet be in place.