The Case of the Murdered Players (Andrew Tillet, Sara Wiggins & Inspector Wyatt Book 7)

by Robert Newman

  But Tucker had gone out even before he was told to investigate and came back almost immediately.

  “It’s that boy from Foljamb’s,” he said. “With some flowers.”

  “That’s who it is,” said Happy Jack, appearing in the doorway with an enormous box of flowers. “The boy from Foljamb’s.” He paused for a moment, leaning on his crutch. “Well, well. Lot of old friends here tonight,” he said, looking at Sara and Andrew. “And a relative,” he said, looking at his grandfather. “But I don’t see the person I came to see.”

  “Who’s that?” asked Wyatt.

  “The great Madame Bernhardt. The divine Sarah. That’s who the flowers is for. Don’t tell me she’s gone!”

  “I’m afraid she has,” said Wyatt.

  “Oh, no! I told Mr. Foljamb I shouldn’t wait until too late, but he wouldn’t listen to me. ‘Late’s better than early,’ he said, and he’s the boss; so I did what he said, and you can see what happened. But still,” he said, looking across the room with shining eyes, “all is not lost. There’s someone else here I can give the flowers to—someone I think is just as divine as the French lady.” Swinging forward smoothly on his crutch, he started across the room toward Verna.

  Suddenly—and without really knowing why—Andrew became anxious. It may have been because of Happy Jack’s unnatural pallor, the gleam in his eye and the smile that wasn’t truly a smile. Whatever the reason, all at once he didn’t want Jack to go anywhere near his mother. But even as he started forward, old Mr. Collins said, “No, Jack! No!” and Wyatt stepped in front of Verna.

  “I’ll take the flowers, Jack,” he said.

  Jack paused. “What?”

  “I said, I’ll take the flowers.”

  “No, no,” said Jack, shaking his head. “Can’t do that. Got to give them to her myself.”

  “Well, you can’t,” said Wyatt flatly.

  “Why are you being so difficult, Peter?” asked Verna. “The boy’s not doing anyone any harm.”

  “Isn’t he?”

  “No. He’s just …” She gasped as Jack suddenly raised his crutch and drove the tip at Wyatt’s throat. Wyatt pushed it aside, and it hit his shoulder instead of his throat. There was a metallic click, and Wyatt staggered back with blood staining his shoulder. Pulling back the crutch, which now had a needlelike spike projecting from the tip, Jack was about to stab Wyatt with it again when, with a diving tackle, Andrew knocked him to the ground.

  With surprising speed, Jack picked up the crutch, which Andrew had knocked from his hands, and was struggling to his feet when Sergeant Tucker reached him and, lifting him up, pinioned his arms behind him.

  “Peter, are you all right?” asked Verna, her face white.

  “Yes,” said Wyatt.

  “Let me see,” said Verna, helping him off with his jacket and looking at the stab wound in his shoulder. “Andrew, give me your handkerchief.”

  He handed it to her, and she folded it and placed it as a pad on the wound.

  “I don’t understand,” said Sara as Verna, working swiftly and efficiently, tore a long strip from the bottom of her petticoat and began to bandage Wyatt’s shoulder. “You mean it was him … Jack…”

  “Yes,” said Jack, twisting and pulling in Tucker’s grip. “It was me … me … me that done it, done them in. And I only wish I’d had a chance to do more of ’em before you got me!”

  “But why?”

  “You want to know why? I’ll tell you! You really think they called me Happy Jack like I said they did? Happy?” He snorted. “Hoppy Jack is what they called me—hoppy, like a frog! ‘Come on, Jack. Let’s see you hop!’ and they’d knock me down or throw things at me till I hopped like they wanted me to! And afterwards, after I left the raggedy school, it was even worse! How do you think I felt about you, all of you who was so straight and could skip and run and jump and all when I was so twisted and could hardly walk? I hated you—hated you ’specially when you looked at me so kind and pitying like, feeling so sorry for me! But most of all I hated them!” he said, spitting at Verna. “Actresses!”

  “Why, Jack?” asked Wyatt quietly.

  “Because they killed me mum, one of them did, and made me this way!”

  “Who’s ‘they,’ Jack? Who did it? And how?”

  “I don’t know who. They was all jealous of her, all of them! As to how … They left a stage trapdoor open and she fell through it, fell into the basement. It was just before I was born, and it killed her and made me the way I am, all twisted up.”

  “And what was your mother’s name? Was it Sally Siddons?”

  “Yes, it was.”

  Wyatt looked at old Mr. Collins, who was bent forward and holding his head.

  “She was your daughter, wasn’t she, Mr. Collins?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is what Jack said the truth?”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “What do you mean, it’s not the truth?” said Jack. “She told me it was!”

  “Who’s ‘she’?” asked Wyatt. “Your mother?”

  “No. That other woman—the one I met a couple of weeks ago. She was my friend, and she said she’d tell me things my gramps had never told me.”

  “Who was this woman? What was her name?”

  “I don’t know. She never told me her name. She used to meet me when I was leaving Foljamb’s and walk with me, talk to me. All I know about her is that she was a real lady, spoke like a lady.”

  “Do you know who that lady was, Mr. Collins?”

  “No,” he said. But it seemed to Andrew that he hesitated for a fraction of a second before he said it, and he got the feeling that Wyatt had noticed it, too.

  “You never spoke to her, had any dealings with her?”

  “Maybe I did, but I don’t know who she was.”

  “All right. We’ll come back to that. But what about what Jack just told us?”

  “He was born the way he is, all crooked like, and not because Sally fell through any trapdoor. She never did fall through any trapdoor, didn’t die that way.”

  “But it did happen that way. It did!” shrieked Jack. “That woman told me it did!”

  “If it happened before you were born and killed her,” said Wyatt, “how is it that it didn’t kill you?”

  “What? I don’t know. Maybe it didn’t kill her right away. Maybe she just got hurt and died after I was born.”

  “No,” said Collins. “The birthing woman—midwife—what helped bring you said it happened like that sometimes: a baby born all crookedy. She said it was a kind of sickness.”

  “No!” said Jack, jerking upright and starting to tremble. “You’re lying! You’re all lying! They did it to her—actresses—because they was all jealous of her! The lady told me—that’s why I did what I did! And I know it’s true! It’s got to be true! If it’s not …” He suddenly groaned, his eyes rolled up and he sagged and would have fallen to the floor if Tucker had not held him up.

  “Fainted,” said Tucker. “Looks to me like he might get fits.”

  “Yes,” said Wyatt. “I want a doctor to look at him. Have him taken to the French Hospital—that’s the nearest one—and make sure someone stays with him, watches him, until I get over there.”

  He signaled to two constables, who took the unconscious boy and went off with him.

  “What about you, Inspector?” said Tucker. “Don’t you want a doctor to look at your shoulder?”

  “Later. We’ve got too much to do now, and it seems to have stopped bleeding.” He picked up the crutch that Jack had dropped. “How does this work?” he asked Collins.

  “There’s a spring inside the crutch. If you bear down on the needle, it’ll go up inside and a catch will hold it.” Wyatt pressed the tip of the needle to the floor, and it disappeared up inside the crutch, catching with a click.

  “How do you release it?”

  “That little knob halfway down where you grip it.”

  Wyatt pressed the knob, and the needle sprang out again.<
br />
  “Very ingenious. You made it, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And gave it to Jack?”

  “No, I didn’t give it to him. He found it and took it. He said he wanted it to protect himself against boys who had been bullying him, beating him.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “Why not? Before he had the crutch, he’d sometime come home with a black eye, hurt and bruised.”

  “And what about those recent deaths? Didn’t you wonder about them?”

  “Why should I? The papers never said how they’d been killed. It never dawned on me that maybe Jack had done it—if he really did.”

  “What do you mean, if he really did? You heard him say he had committed the murders!”

  “Well, yes,” said Collins awkwardly. “But he’s not quite right in the head—never has been.”

  “All right. Let’s go back ten years or so. You made the crutch for your daughter, Sally, didn’t you?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “You didn’t make it? You just said you did.”

  “I made it, but not for her. I made it as a prop for a play—The Crooked Man From Crewe—where this mad doctor uses it to kill people.”

  “I don’t remember any such play,” said Wyatt. “Do you?” he asked Verna.

  “No.”

  “It never opened. That’s why I still had the crutch. Ben Green was supposed to play the part, but he decided he didn’t like it and backed out, and the play was dropped.”

  “It should be easy enough to check that. For whatever reason, you made the crutch. How did your daughter, Sally, get hold of it?”

  “She … she took it.”

  “Just took it? Why?”

  “She … she hurt her ankle, needed something to help her walk, so she took it.”

  “You mean, that’s what she said.”

  “Yes.”

  “And didn’t you realize later on what she really wanted it for? That she used it to kill three actresses?”

  “No, no! I didn’t know it! I never knew how they died—no one did—so I never thought she might have done it!”

  “Even though she was very close to Ben Wallace, expected to play the lead in his pantomime? And expected it because he was the father of her child?”

  “That … that had nothing to do with it. He died of heart failure.”

  “Yes, when he realized that Sally had killed his wife. Killed her because she was jealous of her, and because she thought—if you can call it thinking—that when his wife was dead, she’d get her part in the pantomime.”

  “It’s not true,” whispered Collins weakly. “It’s not.”

  “I don’t want to interfere, Inspector,” said Barnett, “but I’d like to make sure I understand this. Are you saying that this man’s daughter—that sick boy’s mother—was responsible for the deaths of those actresses some ten years ago?”

  “I am. I think she killed Nina Wallace for the reason I gave. She killed Aggie Russell, Nina’s friend, because she was the only person who knew that Sally had gone to see Nina. And she committed a third murder in order to disguise the motive for the other two.”

  “And where is she, this woman?”

  “She’s dead, isn’t she, Mr. Collins?”

  “Yes. Went to Canada right after Jack was born, leaving me to take care of him. She tried to act there and in the States, but couldn’t get no parts and finally got sick and died.”

  “Then no matter what your suspicions are, Inspector,” said Barnett, “there’s no point in your trying to prove it.”

  “No.”

  “How does all this relate to that unfortunate Jack boy? I gather you think there was something mentally wrong with his mother. There’s certainly something wrong with him. And if there is—if he’s mentally backward—how was he able to determine what his mother had done and, no matter what his sick motive was, decide to do the same thing himself?”

  “He didn’t. Someone told him that completely fabricated story about his mother’s fall through the trapdoor and his supposed injury in order to give him a motive. And then went on to tell him what to do about it, how to use the crutch as she had done.”

  “But who could have done such a thing? And why?”

  “Those are two very interesting questions. Let’s take the second one first.”

  “Forgive me, Inspector,” said Mr. Norwood, who had been following everything that had been said with fascination. “When I asked if I could stay here, I didn’t realize that you were going into anything quite so elaborate and complicated. You know what my interest is.”

  “Yes. Your client or protégé—or rather that of your estimable Golden Rule Society—Mr. Nifty Bolan. We’re just going to get to him. And get to him by way of Mr. Collins. Would you care to tell us, Mr. Collins, what you were doing on Regent Street this evening?”

  “What?” said Collins heavily. “Look, I’m not feeling so good. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I’m afraid you may have to. You were the one who arranged it, weren’t you? The supposedly broken gas mains, the flames and all that?”

  “All right. Yes, I did. It was harder to do than a transformation in panto because I didn’t have no stage to work with, but I did it. What are you going to charge me with on that?”

  “That depends,” said Wyatt.

  “But what was the purpose of it?” asked Barnett. “Unless …” His eyes widened. “Was it robbery?”

  “Of course. Everything that happened tonight—everything that’s been happening for some time—has been part of an elaborate plot to crack the richest crib in London. Sergeant,” he said to Tucker, “could we take a look at what Bolan had in that bag when we nabbed him?”

  “This one, sir?” asked one of the constables holding up an old carpet bag.

  “No, no. We know what’s in that. The burglar tools that Mr. Collins sharpened and put in shape for Bolan. The other one.”

  The constable handed Tucker a gunny sack. Reaching into it, Tucker took out several large, velvet-covered cases, which he handed to his chief. Wyatt opened one, held it up, and they all gasped, for it blazed with the light of the jewels it contained: a wide, elaborate necklace of diamonds, rubies and emeralds.

  “The Ghazipur jewels!” whispered Barnett.

  “And anything else that might be easily available in Worthington’s vaults.”

  “I must say I’m impressed, Inspector,” said Barnett. “You seem to have solved two sets of murders and prevented what would probably have been the greatest robbery of our time.”

  “I can’t say I understand everything that you’ve said, Inspector,” said Norwood, “everything that’s been going on, but I agree with Mr. Barnett and congratulate you also. And this in spite of the fact that you have caused me great distress. Because, as I said before, Bolan there is a protégé of mine. Or at least, of the Golden Rule Society. But now … Is he the man who’s responsible for what I gather was a very elaborate plot?”

  “It certainly was elaborate. Are you clear on just how it was supposed to work?” Wyatt asked Barnett.

  “I’m not sure I am. At least, I’m not certain I understand how the murders fit it.”

  “They were an important part of the plan. Their purpose was to stir up the press and the public so that the police would concentrate their attention and most of their strength here in the theatre district at the time when the robbery was to be attempted elsewhere. And of course the whole performance was carefully orchestrated, and the night picked for the attempt was the night when—not only most of our own great actresses—but a great visiting actress, Madame Bernhardt, was to be here and possibly vulnerable. But to answer Mr. Norwood’s question. No. Nifty Bolan, who is just a cracksman, was only a tool and not the intelligence behind this very well worked-out plan.”

  “But who was behind it?” asked Barnett. “Do you know?”

  “Yes, I do. I had only a suspicion until tonight, but now I believe I can prove it.” He
glanced over at the entrance to the Beefsteak Room, and Andrew and Sara saw that Beasley, wearing a bowler and a dark coat, had come in and was standing behind the constables who guarded the door.

  “And who is it? Are you going to tell us?” asked Barnett.

  “Why, yes. I intend to.”

  “Is it all right for me to stay?” asked Norwood. “I have a feeling that my presence here is rather irregular. Though I suspect that the whole proceeding is irregular.”

  “Indeed it is, Mr. Norwood. And I have no objection whatsoever to your staying. As to whom the man behind the plot is—the Napoleon of crime about whom I spoke to you the other day, Mr. Barnett—I’d like to remind you of the person Happy Jack said had told him that wild story about his mother, the story that turned him into a murderer.”

  “As I recall, all he said was that it was a woman.”

  “Exactly. And who was it that approached you, Mr. Collins, and had you arrange that little performance with the gas jets on Regent Street?”

  “It was a woman. I never got a good look at her ’cause I only talked to her in the dark. And I never talked about it to Jack, but now I got a feeling it was probably the same one that talked to him.”

  “Now let’s get to you, Bolan. You were caught with the goods, and with your record, you’re going to be up for quite a stretch. However, we might be willing to talk up for you if you’ll tell us what we want to know. Who put you up to the job?”

  “I don’t know,” said Bolan. “Like Dabby Dick Collins there, I never got a good look at her ’cause I only seen her in the dark, but…”

  “But you too say that the person who approached you, told you what to do and how to do it, was a woman.”

  “That’s right, guv’ner.”

  “Well, as I said, though I had my suspicions, I had no way of proving what I thought until this evening when a new fact came to my attention. I asked Mr. Henry Irving how and when he got the idea of having the reception for Madame Bernhardt, and he said that the idea had been suggested to him by someone else: his friend, Mr. Norwood. Is that true, Mr. Norwood?”