Cursed in the Act

by Raymond Buckland

  I looked about for Stoker and saw him heading for the passageway that led from the stage to the office, a somewhat dark passage under the staircase leading to the two “star” dressing rooms above the stage on the OP side. I made off in the same direction.

  I found the big man at his desk.

  “The Guv’nor spoke of trauma suffered by Richland,” I said. “What was that all about?”

  “If you’d ever seen a man who’s been trampled by a team of horses, you wouldn’t have to ask, Harry,” he said. “But now that you have asked, here’s a chance to see it firsthand. The police at St. James’s Division, Piccadilly, have the body. A Superintendent Dunlap is in charge. They want someone to officially identify it.”

  “Identify it?” I echoed, my voice sounding somewhat hollow, even to my own ears.

  He nodded. “Hop on over there, Harry. Won’t take you but a minute.”

  * * *

  I had not previously had the opportunity, if that is the right word, to visit a morgue. The one at St. James’s Division police station did not inspire me to repeat the effort at any time in the future. The morgue was in the basement, below street level, and was even colder than the February air outside. It reeked of a mixture of bodily excretions and stale tobacco smoke topped by liberal applications of carbolic soap. I held my scarf up over my nose and tried to breathe as shallowly as possible. The officer I had been handed over to was a Sergeant Samuel Charles Bellamy. He was in plain clothes, which he explained by stating that he was a detective policeman. He pointed to one of several sheet-covered figures lying on tables at the back of the white-tiled room.

  “Strand fatality, approximately eleven thirty on the late evening of the 8th day of February 1881.” The sergeant read from an oak and metal clipboard that looked as though it had seen many years of service. “Victim male, approximately thirty-five years of age; five feet and eleven inches in height; eleven stone four pounds in weight. Contents of pockets: none. Jewelry: none . . .”

  “Yes. Thank you, Sergeant,” I said. “I’m just here to identify the man. Can we get this over with?”

  The policeman shrugged and advanced on a figure lying on one of the tables. A soiled grayish sheet covered the victim’s head and body but allowed his feet to stick out incongruously from the bottom. The detective sergeant gripped the top of the covering and pulled it back. One of the dead man’s arms flopped out and hung down over the edge of the table. I looked at it, trying not to focus on the victim’s face. The hand seemed clean and fresh, almost as though belonging to someone alive.

  I was not expecting what I saw when I turned my gaze to the head, though to be honest I didn’t know what I expected. The man’s face had been smashed and crushed almost beyond recognition. There had obviously been a great deal of blood, but this, mercifully, had been hosed off for the most part. The chest had caved in, and it looked as though one arm was at an unnatural angle. I glanced quickly at the destroyed features, nodded, and looked away again. I felt a great desire to vomit.

  Upstairs in the office Sergeant Bellamy was kind enough to give me a cup of tea, which I clutched as I tried to absorb any and all heat from the liquid and from the steam it emitted. The sergeant wore his gray-flecked sideboards long and full in the old-fashioned muttonchops style, his thinning black hair brushed across the top of his head and plastered down with macassar oil. He had neither mustache nor beard. He was a tall man but had a slight stoop.

  “You identify the body as this man Peter Richland?” he asked, a pen poised over the clipboard.

  I nodded. I had been able to make out that the face—crushed as it was—had recently been shaved of beard and mustache. This was something Richland had reluctantly done to play—given the opportunity—the part of Hamlet. It wasn’t much but it was just about the only identifying factor available.

  “How did you know he belonged to the Lyceum?” I asked.

  “Not too difficult to a trained eye, sir,” said the sergeant, in a superior tone. “We found that he had traces of that theatre makeup stuff on his face and he was only a short distance from the theatre.”

  “Of course.” I nodded my head. “Of course.”

  * * *

  The funeral took place on Saturday, with a mixture of rain and snow falling. It made the somber affair even more so. There were few mourners. There was normally a matinee performance on a Saturday, but despite what the Guv’nor had said to us, in his address onstage, it had been canceled after all, at Miss Terry’s insistence, so as not to tax the Guv’nor after his poisoning. This then allowed Lyceum staff to attend the funeral, though it seemed that most of the people had found that they had duties of one sort or another that precluded them from being there. There were a few faces I recognized, however. Bill Thomas had abandoned his seat at the stage door. Miss Margery Connelly, the wardrobe mistress, accompanied by Miss Edwina Price, the prompt, were both there. A few of the actors, though none of the leads, stood about as though rehearsing a crowd scene.

  St. Paul’s Church—the Parish Church of Covent Garden—is known as the Actors’ Church and has a long association with London’s theatre community. The funeral was taking place in the churchyard. The rector was an ancient, thin rail of a man who looked to be in danger of sailing off into the stormy skies above, should the wind blow too strongly. He conducted the service in a high, reedy voice, on more than one occasion stopping to cough in such hollow, rasping fashion that many looked to see a second body join the one in the coffin. But he made it through the service and then, wrapping his cloak tightly about him, hurried off to the comparative warmth of the church, leaving the grave digger to finalize the event.

  I noticed a small, plump woman whose hat and veil did not hide her red face and graying hair. She had been standing close beside the rector throughout the service. I made a small bet with myself that she was Richland’s mother. I believe he had no wife to grieve for him. I approached and introduced myself.

  “Good day to you, Mr. Rivers,” she replied. “I appreciate your coming here today.”

  I couldn’t help noticing that her eyes behind the veil had a twinkle to them, with no sign of tears. Yet as we spoke, her mouth changed rapidly from a slight smile to a thin, hard line.

  “We shall all miss your son, Mrs. Richland,” I said. “Such a tragedy.”

  “Hamlet is a tragedy,” she said, her eyes boring into mine. “Peter wanted to play Hamlet. It seemed as though he might . . . at one time.”

  “Ah! With Mr. Irving’s, er, mishap, you mean?” I said.

  “Peter would have made a wonderful Hamlet. He was a very gifted child.”

  “Of course. Of course.” I nodded my head and looked about me, hoping to see someone I could use as an excuse to break the conversation.

  I had no need. Suddenly, without a further word, Mrs. Richland turned away and walked off in the direction of the Henrietta Street entrance to the churchyard. Her back was straight and she did not hurry.

  Before returning to the theatre I caught up with Bill Thomas and he and I made a short detour to the Druid’s Head. We were soon ensconced in a niche by the fireplace, each with a tankard of porter in hand.

  “Speak not ill of the dead,” said Bill, his face somber, “but I don’t think Peter Richland will be missed nor mourned at the Lyceum.”

  “You are right there, Bill,” I said.

  “Was that his mother I saw you addressing?”

  I nodded.

  “I thought I recognized her.”

  “You’ve met her before?” I was surprised.

  “She stopped by the theatre one time to drop off something for her son. Medicine he’d forgotten to take, or some such thing. I only saw her briefly.”

  “She seems to be taking it well. I expected to see a lot of tears and hand-wringing, but she had a determined set to her mouth and both eyes quite dry.”

  Bill took a deep drink from his tankard
and then belched. He sat back on the settle. “You can never tell how a person will take a death, especially the death of your own son,” he said quietly. “Just because there are no tears doesn’t mean there is no sorrow.” Quite the philosopher, I thought.

  We sat quietly for a few moments. John Martin, the tavern keeper of the Druid’s Head, loomed over us. If he could have acted, he would have made a magnificent Falstaff. His stomach preceded him as he steered around the tables and chairs of his establishment. His deep voice bounced off the low, blackened beams of the ceiling. His ruddy nose and cheeks reflected the red glow of the log fire in the hearth. He now stood before us clutching half a dozen empty tankards in his ham-sized fists.

  “You at the funeral of that study man?”

  “Understudy,” I said. “Yes, we were just there.”

  “Funny what ’appened to ’im.”

  “What do you mean, John?” I was suddenly curious.

  He moved around and stood with his buttocks to the fire. I felt a sudden chill as the warmth was cut off.

  “Why, ’e seemed sober enough when ’e left ’ere that night. Walked out wif ’is friend, and the next fing I knew there was a commotion outside. When I looked out, someone by the road said as ’ow a gent ’ad been run down.”

  “You didn’t actually see it happen, then?”

  “No. Don’t know as ’ow anyone did. Though there was a couple of toffs out there, wif too much wine in ’em. And then someone cried out about one man pushing the other, or somefing.”

  “One man pushing the other?” I was interested. “You mean, Richland didn’t just get run down?”

  John shrugged and, thankfully, moved out of the line of the fire’s warmth. “Confusing stories,” he said. “One of the gents said that your man, the study, blundered out into the road and was ’it by a growler goin’ too fast . . . nufin’ new there. The other gent was on about ’ow the study’s friend ’ad pushed ’im in front of the four-wheeler and then—afterward—had dragged the body off to the other side of the road and then away down an alley.” He sniffed. “All that matters, if you ask me, is that your man got ’isself killed.” He somehow managed to add Bill’s now empty tankard to those in his hands and sailed off toward the bar.

  “But you say you didn’t actually see this, John?” He had disappeared behind the bar and didn’t hear me.

  “Happens all the time,” said Bill. “Those growlers are always going too fast. No consideration for others, especially when they’ve a few drinks in them. Bound to be accidents. Have another drink, Harry?”

  I looked at Bill. “An accident?” I asked. “Or murder?”

  * * *

  “Ithink we have neither the time nor perhaps the interest to investigate Peter Richland’s death,” said Stoker when I reported my conversation with the owner of the Druid’s Head. “‘Did he fall or was he pushed?’ is the basis of many a theatrical drama, not to mention works of literature, Harry, as you well know. The police seem satisfied with the turn of events, I take it?”

  “No mention of any fubbery at St. James’s Division,” I said. “All cut-and-dried, according to the detective sergeant at the morgue.”

  “You mentioned that there was nothing in Richland’s pockets and no jewelry?”

  “That’s correct, sir. Strange, don’t you think, though, the police didn’t comment on it? You’d imagine that at the very least he would have had a pocket watch.”

  “But you spoke of an eyewitness saying that the man with him dragged his body over to the other side of the road and out of sight down an alley, did you not, Harry?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He shrugged. “Well, there you are, then. A simple case of robbing the corpse before making off. Opportunism, Harry. We see it everywhere.” My boss paused, as though a thought had struck him, then nodded and pursed his lips. “Hmm.”

  “Is there something else, sir?” I asked.

  “I hope there will not be.”

  I was puzzled. “Sir?”

  He straightened up in his chair and looked me in the eye. “Mr. Richland was not, at least, killed within the confines of the theatre,” he said.

  “No.” I was still puzzled. What was he driving at?

  “It seems highly unlikely, then, that his specter will linger here; though there have been cases . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “Are you talking about ghosts, sir?”

  “Do not dismiss such things out of hand, Harry. I would draw your attention to the Man in Grey at the Drury Lane Theatre. Most certainly a well-known, if not famous, specter.”

  The ghost he referred to had been around as long as the Drury Lane Theatre had been standing. No one knew who he was . . . a onetime actor or perhaps an admirer of one of the early actresses. He would be seen sitting in a box seat or in the front row of the stalls. From all reports he appeared to be a man-about-town, but his three-cornered hat placed him over a hundred years behind the present times. In 1850 some workmen had knocked down a wall at the theatre, to enlarge the auditorium, and had exposed a hidden room. It contained a male skeleton with a dagger stuck between the ribs. Although the remains were given a proper burial, the ghost continued to appear at irregular intervals. I knew that there were many similar stories connected to other theatres in London and about various parts of England, Scotland, and Wales, not to mention Ireland.

  “You are thinking that perhaps our Mr. Richland might become the Man in Grey of the Lyceum?” I asked.

  Mr. Stoker shook himself. “As I say, he did not die within these walls, so don’t be so superstitious, Harry! Let us keep our sights on the attempt to poison the Guv’nor. I am not willing to let that slide, and I still have great suspicions about those malcontents at Sadler’s Wells.”

  “So I should just forget what I heard about Richland being pushed?” I didn’t feel comfortable with that.

  Neither, it seemed, did Stoker. After a moment’s thought he said, “Well, as I said Harry, focus on the poisoning of the Guv’nor . . . but if you can also do a little digging into Richland’s death, well, why not?”

  “When you think about it,” I said, “killing off our main understudy would add to any attempt to undermine our production. So it could be part of the same plan to do us harm.”

  “True. Yes, very true, Harry. And who, exactly, was this friend that Richland was with? Do we know that? Might bear some investigation, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I agree,” I said. “So do you want me to make another trip over to Sadler’s Wells?”

  He again turned his gray green eyes on me and squinted slightly as he tapped the side of his nose with his forefinger. My stomach lurched. I knew the sign. He had in mind some devious plan, and I was to be the instrument of it.

  “You are well acquainted with our Mr. Archibald, I take it?”

  I nodded. Mr. Archibald was in charge of makeup and personal props at the Lyceum. No one seemed to know if Archibald was his first or his last name. He was a short, thin man of indeterminate age, with a large head, who affected an almost feminine manner. Rumor had it that he wore one of his own much-curried wigs. He was inclined to wax poetic about the works, and actions, of Oscar Wilde. The twenty-seven-year-old Wilde had entered society just last year and, to complicate matters, had been a former suitor of Mr. Stoker’s wife, Florence, though both gentlemen had long since settled their differences. Mr. Archibald lived in Chelsea, close to his hero.

  “I would like you—if your stage-managing duties permit, of course—to visit with Mr. Archibald and see if you can affect some disguise that will permit you to enter the backstage area of the Sadler’s Wells Theatre undetected and to mingle with the staff. See what the word is regarding Mr. Irving’s affliction . . . and, now, Richland’s ‘accident.’ I have the feeling that someone there is in on any malice that may have been directed this way. Do you think you can do that, Harry?”

  “
Of course, sir.” The words were out of my mouth before I even considered it. I later thought to myself that perhaps I shouldn’t be quite so eager to please.

  As I made my way across the stage toward the dressing rooms, wardrobe, and makeup, on the far side, I wondered about my mop of carrot red hair. How on earth would Mr. Archibald hide that? It would take some monstrous wig, it seemed to me, to cover my head and still look natural.

  There was a thud and I almost jumped out of my skin. Something had landed at my feet, right beside where I was walking. It had only narrowly missed me. Alarmed, I looked down on a heavy sandbag with a short piece of rope attached to its neck.

  Up above the stage, on either side of it, are the fly galleries: working platforms where the flymen, or riggers, work scene changes by raising and lowering scenery flats. It had taken me a long time to learn the intricacies of this world above the stage. When I first came to work at the Lyceum, I had to learn and adjust quickly. It was a big theatre and there was much with which to familiarize myself. The fly galleries run back from the proscenium to the rear wall. They are connected, along the wall, by a bridge and narrow catwalks. All is accessible by ladders and rungs built into the walls. There is also the gridiron, or fly tower, high above the main stage, immediately under the roof of the building. It’s called the gridiron because the floor consists of narrow wooden joists laid on beams with just enough room between the joists for ropes to pass through and connect to pieces of scenery. This vast network of ropes runs through multiple pulleys and up over two great drums rotating on shafts, just under the peak of the roof. The ropes go all the way down the walls to the stage floor. There they are wound around cleats when not fastened to the scenery. To counterbalance the weight of the scenery, the other ends of these ropes are tied around heavy sandbags that move up and down the walls as the scenery is manipulated.

  It was one of these sandbags that now lay at my feet. I wondered how that had happened? Stooping, I saw that the short piece of rope had been cut through. This was tough, three-quarters of an inch, Manila hemp. Someone had deliberately cut it and dropped the sandbag, trying to hit me on the head! That would certainly have made a mess of my carrot red hair! As I peered up into the gloom above me, I heard someone scramble along the catwalk. It was far too dark to see who it was.