Murder on Stage

by Cora Harrison

  Past twelve o’clock!’

  ‘There will be another poor soul tomorrow,’ said the elderly man to Alfie with a sigh. ‘You get used to the nightly lullaby in this place.’

  ‘Visitors for our Holy Joe here,’ said the turnkey with a sneer. He jerked his head at Alfie.

  Alfie got quietly to his feet, feeling his pocket to make sure that the piece of paper with the prayer was still there safely. At noon he had slept for a few hours and now he was stiff from lying, shackled and handcuffed, on the bare stones of the floor. It was all beginning to seem like a bad dream to him.

  But now, at the turnkey’s words, every fibre within him was quivering and ready for action.

  He followed the line of men who had been summoned. No one had come to visit the boys and they seemed a bit glum about that, calling out jeers and swear words after him.

  ‘Is it my sister?’ he asked the turnkey as the key was being turned in the lock.

  ‘How do I know? I just obey orders.’ He was extra bad-tempered with Alfie. Probably he sensed that, in some way, Alfie had hoodwinked him during that long session in the church with the chaplain.

  The turnkey stopped when they reached the felons’ quadrangle, where Alfie and the other prisoners, all heavily shackled and manacled, had dragged their legs around for half an hour that morning. ‘Stand!’ he roared and lashed out with his truncheon at one old man who had not stopped quickly enough to suit him.

  ‘Wait,’ he yelled again and then two other warders came out of the lodge, swishing heavy truncheons to warn the prisoners not to bolt.

  It would have been useless to try anything. They were in a concrete yard with twenty-foot high walls around the four sides of it. They waited, shivering in the rain. There seemed to be something going on in the building on the right-hand side – a clanking of iron bars, creaking sounds and hammering. The wait was long and dreary. The rain was heavy and the prisoners’ rough clothing soaked up the wet.

  ‘Have to search the visitors, lads; that takes time,’ said one of the warders eventually.

  And then there was another wait. Alfie thought he would scream if it were any longer. He began to worry about the prayer in his pocket. Would they search the prisoners as well as the visitors? Perhaps he should mention the prayer first before it was found on him. These two warders did not look too bad.

  One had almost a pleasant face, and Alfie approached him, moving slowly and watching his reactions carefully. He raised his right arm as he had been taught to do in school and the movement brought a reluctant grin to the man’s face.

  ‘What’s the problem, young shaver?’ he asked.

  ‘Please, sir,’ said Alfie with extreme politeness. ‘The turnkey said that it would be all right to give this to my sister. He said to tell you that it came from the chaplain in the prison church, sir,’ he lied with a sudden happy inspiration. They seemed to think a lot of religion in this prison so that might work.

  The warder gave the prayer a keen glance, but did not bother turning it over. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll pass it over.’

  Why can’t I give it myself? wondered Alfie. He was disappointed, as he had meant to give Sarah some sort of signal as he handed it over that this piece of paper was of significance. He just had to trust that Sarah would really get the paper – and realise what it meant.

  However, when they went into the visiting room, he could see why it had been taken from him.

  It was a fair-sized room, but it had been divided into three sections by bars, only six inches apart and stretching from floor to ceiling.

  The prisoners, with their warders, were at the nearest side of the room and the visitors, with two more truncheon-bearing warders, were at the far end.

  And the middle – a space of about six feet – was completely empty, barred off from prisoners and visitors.

  No visitor, no prisoner, could hand anything, whether it was a tasty cake or a weapon, across that space.

  There were plenty of visitors that day. An old woman in rags, a few warmly dressed men who seemed very uneasy in the prison surroundings, women with children clutching to them, most with a baby in their arms, a few others who were well known to the warders and engaged in jokes and banter with them. And then there were Sarah and the three boys. Sarah held Sammy’s hand and Jack had his arm around Tom’s shoulders. Tom’s face looked white through the grime, but Sammy was his usual calm self. They had not brought Mutsy – that was probably sensible, but Alfie got a lump in his throat as he wondered whether he would ever see his poor old faithful dog again.

  One by one the prisoners were called to come up, to stand like wild tigers peering through the bars. None of the visitors stayed long, Alfie noticed. It was very difficult to talk across that empty space and especially to talk with all the listening ears. He had imagined that they would be private.

  And now it was his turn. He moved to the bars and stood there. For the first time since he was a baby he could not think of anything to say. He just stared at them. It occurred to him that he was now completely powerless – he, Alfie, who always managed to find a solution. His belief in himself had ebbed away.

  ‘Alfie, I got your prayer.’ Sarah’s voice was calm and matter-of-fact and carried well across the space. Alfie was very thankful about that – thankful for her casual, collected manner. ‘You needn’t worry about us, Alfie,’ she went on. ‘We’ve got everything under control. I hope a gentleman that we know will be able to help you.’

  What did she mean, wondered Alfie. Did she mean that she had found the murderer? Could that be possible? But she couldn’t have. She didn’t know enough. None of them knew enough. More work needed to be done, more investigation. Still, he felt consoled. She had got the paper and she had brains, he told himself.

  ‘Would you like Sammy to sing you a song, Alfie?’ asked Sarah and without waiting for a reply she turned to the warder. ‘Would that be all right, sir, if the blind boy sings?’

  There was a moment’s silence. One warder looked at the other and then they looked across at the warders in the opposite cage.

  ‘Sing?’ said one in a dubious tone of voice.

  ‘I don’t suppose there can be anything agin it.’

  ‘Might be against regulations.’

  ‘They can talk, can’t they? No difference, ain’t there?’

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed the other reluctantly. ‘T’ain’t no difference. Go ahead, sonny, sing your brother a lullaby.’

  Then he whispered something and the other warder roared with laughter – something about hanging, probably, thought Alfie. Warders seemed to find that a great joke.

  And then Sammy began to sing. He sang a song about a woman stitching a shirt. It was always a great favourite with the well-dressed lady shoppers in Covent Garden: they seemed to love songs about poor people!

  There was another joke from one of the warders and a roar of laughter, echoed immediately by the visitors and those prisoners who looked for favour. The audience had got bored with the singing and had stopped listening.

  And then Sammy began to sing the chorus and only Alfie, who had heard his brother sing that song hundreds of times, realised that Sammy, instead of singing the chorus: stitch, stitch, stitch, had substituted the words fingers, fingers, fingers.

  Another joke from the comedian warder, another roar of laughter and Sammy went on fearlessly, his high voice penetrating through the shouts of laughter and the filthy jokes to reach his brother on the other side of the divided room.

  ‘Only three fingers, only three fingers

  Three fingers on the hand,

  We saw three fingers alone,

  Yellow gloves on the hand,

  One big finger was gone.’

  And then Sammy sang the rest of the verses of the famous melody ‘Song of the Shirt’, his face serious.

  When the song ended, he stopped and waited unselfconsciously. This was always the moment when the applause came, and after a minute one of the warders said, ‘Very nice, l
ad – now number thirteen.’

  And number thirteen came forward to listen to his aged mother complaining about his conduct and asking him how he expected her to live without anyone to support her.

  Sarah bobbed politely to the warders and led the boys from the room without even a backward glance. But she left Alfie’s mind buzzing.

  Three fingers! We saw three fingers alone, Sammy had sung. It made him think of . . . What was it?

  It could be a vital clue, if only he could remember!

  But it would be another week before he could have visitors again.

  Would he still be alive by next Monday?

  CHAPTER 22

  FRUSTRATION

  Alfie racked his brains as he followed the turnkey down the long passageways, and through all of the locked gates. What was that picture that kept flitting into his mind and then oozing away again? What could it be? Something about fingers . . .

  It was only when he was back in the prison room that suddenly he remembered.

  Harry Booth, there in front of the curtains. The intensely white limelight. Alfie clenched his hands and willed the vision to become clearer. Yes! Harry Booth had walked on stage. The riot began. The noise, the smell, the sights of that night at Covent Garden Theatre came back to Alfie. Harry Booth there, yelling at the top of his voice but no one listening. The curtains parting – just a crack. The hand coming out, coming from behind the gap between the two curtains. A frilly sleeve, edged with a thin fringe of orange fur – the colour of Joey’s wig . . . A clown’s sleeve. The hand moved down. It was pouring now. Pouring something from the glass phial. Something strange about that hand.

  It had bothered him all of the days since and suddenly now his memory was clear and pin-sharp.

  The hand that poured that deadly dose into Harry Booth’s port had been missing a finger.

  What was it that Sammy had sung? ‘We saw three fingers alone.’

  Alfie put his head in his hands and thought hard.

  Who was the man with a missing finger?

  Did he have anything to do with John Osborne, or Francis Fairburn, or even the manager?

  ‘Yellow gloves,’ Sammy had sung. Alfie kept his hands over his eyes. He could not afford to allow anything to distract him at this vital moment. His mind was clear and working fast and at once he knew where he had seen yellow gloves. The picture was very clear in Alfie’s mind. Himself and Mutsy, juggling, turning cartwheels, dancing – desperately doing anything that would attract the attention of the rich people who only wanted to get indoors out of the freezing fog . . .

  And the man that stopped. The small, fat man with his hat pulled down over his face. The man that praised his performance – this man was wearing yellow gloves as he pulled out a bunch of tickets from his pocket.

  Why wear gloves when you are handling something as thin as paper tickets?

  Unless, of course, that you have something to hide – like a missing finger!

  But why start a riot? Why hand out tickets for a performance where you have planned a murder?

  It just didn’t make sense.

  Did something happen that made the man in yellow gloves decide to murder Harry Booth?

  What was it that the clown had said about Harry Booth?

  ‘Always had his nose in other people’s business; that was Harry Booth for you.’

  Alfie sprang to his feet and gazed desperately around the crowded room, eyeing the couple of small windows high up in the wall and the locked door. He clenched his fists. Frustration was boiling within him. He felt like screaming, or kicking the door, or trying to scale the chimney above the tiny, smoking fire.

  He needed to be out there, snooping around, asking questions, finding out if his suspicions were correct, with the help of his gang, not stuck in here, waiting to be hanged!

  CHAPTER 23

  THE PUZZLE

  ‘What are they doing?’ asked Tom fearfully. He, Jack, Sammy and Sarah had just come out of the prison and had been stopped by a guard at the gate. Stout boards, painted black were being placed around the entrance to Newgate and in front of the yard beside it.

  ‘Getting ready for a hanging,’ said the warder cheerfully. ‘They have to keep the crowd back. Tomorrow morning they’ll stop the traffic until it’s all over. It’s a great sight. People pay any money to rent one of the windows around here so that they can look down and see everything. The more hangings there are, the more money is made. Listen! Hear that hammering. They’re starting to put the gallows together. Look over there in the yard. Can you see they’re building a platform outside that door? What’s the matter with the boy?’

  ‘He’s sick,’ said Sarah. She stood still for a moment, holding tightly to Sammy’s arm. Jack had gone after Tom who was vomiting into the gutter.

  ‘A relation of yours? The man for the high drop tomorrow?’ enquired the warder. ‘Sorry if I upset your brother.’

  ‘No, no relation of ours,’ said Sarah calmly. ‘Tom’s eaten something that disagreed with him.’

  ‘Greedy, eh?’ The warder laughed. ‘You can go now; you’ll get through over there. That fellow will let you past the barrier.’

  ‘You all right, Tom?’ asked Sammy as Jack and Tom joined them.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Tom. ‘Get off.’ He shook his brother’s arm from his shoulder. ‘I’m going back,’ he said. ‘Mutsy’s been on his own for long enough.’ He set off at a run, dodging in and out of the crowd that was flocking to Newgate to see the spectacle of the gallows being raised.

  ‘Leave him.’ Sarah grabbed Jack’s wrist. ‘He’ll be better on his own.’

  ‘He probably wants to be alone with Mutsy,’ said Sammy. There was a slightly bleak note in his voice, and Sarah, looking at him, wondered how often things got so bad for Sammy that only the presence of a warmly loving dog could comfort him.

  ‘We’ll walk slowly then and give him some time,’ she decided. ‘At least we’ll have something to eat when we get back. The cook’s good; she always gives me a basket of left-overs on my half holiday. I tell her that I am going to visit my Aunt Minnie who is bedridden. I’m beginning to believe in Aunt Minnie and her faithful dog myself.’

  There was no response from either of the boys so she went on. ‘I tell the cook so many stories about Mutsy that now she always gives me a bone for him. Let’s hope that she never decides to accompany me to see the poor lady.’ She tried to laugh but Jack didn’t respond and Sammy turned his head alertly in her direction as though he sensed something that was not in her light-hearted words. He said nothing, though, and the three walked in silence down Fleet Street until they passed under Temple Bar.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ asked Jack despairingly as they turned up towards Drury Lane. ‘I just keep thinking that we should be doing something. Should I go and see Inspector Denham? He knows Alfie. He’d know that Alfie could have had nothing to do with the murder on the stage.’

  Sarah thought about that for a minute. Alfie was waiting for his trial, but he was being treated like a criminal. Inspector Denham was the chief policeman at Bow Street Police Station – and yes, he did know Alfie, had used him on occasions in his investigations, but would he interfere in Scotland Yard business? Sarah thought not. And perhaps he might be annoyed that they came to him when it was not a Bow Street Police Station matter. On the other hand, Inspector Denham could probably tell them when Alfie would be tried. What would be the best thing to do? If Alfie were here, he would tell them, but now it was up to her. Jack was a nice fellow, but he was a follower, not a leader.

  ‘Leave it for the moment,’ she decided. ‘It would be better to go to Inspector Denham when we have something to report. Some sort of suspicion. We have no real evidence yet.’ She thought again about the glass phial with the greasy finger marks picked out by the dust. She clicked her tongue in exasperation at the idiocy of that Officer Grey from Scotland Yard shoving it into his pocket where the rough wool would rub it clean after an hour or so.

  The fire was brigh
t when they got back to the cellar and Tom was looking a little less white. Perhaps ten minutes alone with Mutsy had done him good. The big dog came over, tail wagging, sniffed each one of them carefully, looked at the door and then sank down, with a sigh, at Sammy’s feet. Alfie had never been absent from Mutsy for as long as this since Mutsy had joined the gang in the Bow Street cellar. Sarah stroked the side of his face and he gave a subdued flip of his tail, but his eyes were fixed mournfully on the door and he did not even sit up when Sarah opened her basket and took out a juicy bone wrapped in brown paper. She put it down in front of him and he just lay there gazing at it for a minute before beginning to crunch it. Sarah blinked hard and returned to her basket.

  ‘Plenty for everyone,’ she said, trying to sound cheerful. No one responded so she dug into her pocket and produced a twopenny piece – change from the sixpence given to her by Officer Grey.

  ‘See if you can get some small beer with that, Jack,’ she said. ‘Tom, get out the mugs.’

  Beer would liven up the boys, she hoped, and when Jack came back with a jugful, she made sure that Tom had a good share of it.

  ‘What about the prayer thing that Alfie gave you?’ asked Jack.

  ‘He must’ve given up,’ said Tom hoarsely. ‘I never thought I’d see the day when Alfie would start saying prayers.’ He crashed his pewter mug on the table and dropped to his knees, burying his head in Mutsy’s fur. ‘I wish . . . I just wish I’d never done it,’ he said brokenly. ‘I were that . . . I were that hungry! I just didn’t know what I was doing, sort of. I were out of my head with hunger. The words just came out . . . I wish I were dead . . . I do . . .’

  ‘Alfie hasn’t given up, Tom, no way. That prayer – that’s just a trick, ain’t it, Sarah?’ cried Jack. ‘Come on, Tom. Have a sup of beer and you’ll feel better.’

  ‘He’s right, Tom,’ said Sarah. ‘I bet it’s just a trick. We’ll have something to eat and then we’ll all put our heads together.’ She addressed the words to Tom, but looked at Sammy. She could see how intently the blind boy listened and how his clenched hand opened and relaxed.