Cursed in the Act

by Raymond Buckland

  I agreed with that. I had no desire to meet with Sergeant Bellamy with my wrists in a set of darbies and accompanied by a constable. “And why is it, again, sir, that we are grave digging?”

  “The head, Harry. The head.” He slipped off his surtout and his jacket, placing them in a neat pile at the foot of the tree, and rolled up his sleeves. He took hold of one of the shovels and, as the light suddenly faded, moved forward and started digging. “The head that truly belongs to our Peter Richland should be inside the coffin, attached to the body. I want to see if it has really been spirited away.”

  We alternately dug and secreted ourselves behind the tree. It was harder work than I had expected, the grave deeper than I felt certain was necessary. At one point, as we paused to get our breath, Stoker leaned on his shovel and looked up at the cloud-enshrouded moon.

  “What do you know of the Roma, Harry?” he asked.

  “Excuse me?” I said, puzzled.

  “The Roma. Known generally as the Gypsies. They were not truly from Little Egypt, you know, but the name stuck.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about, but who was I to question the ramblings of my boss?

  “You know about Gypsies?” I asked.

  “Oh yes.”

  I was not really surprised. Stoker was a writer and storyteller at heart. He spent a great deal of what little spare time he had researching the most obscure subjects. He told me that one day they would all be worked into novels that he planned to write . . . when he had the time. In 1872, before coming to England, he had had a short story, “The Crystal Cup,” appear in print, and then, shortly afterward, “The Chain of Destiny” was published in four parts. I didn’t doubt for one moment that he would one day be the author of a major literary work.

  Just then the moon escaped the grasp of the clouds and we retired once more behind the yew.

  “A superstitious lot,” he said. It took me a moment to realize that he was referring to the Gypsies. “It was the full moon made me think of them. They attribute divine properties to it, you know? Worship it. The Gypsies of Transylvania, so I am given to understand, claim that thousands of years ago the Sun King married a beautiful golden-haired woman. His brother the Moon King also married a silver-haired beauty. Then there was some sort of dispute that ended in the Sun King chasing the Moon King across the sky for all eternity.” He paused, looked up, and signaled me to follow him back to the digging. As he sank his shovel once more into the dirt he continued his story.

  “Superstitious people, yes. Take vampires, for example.”

  “Vampires?” I stopped digging.

  “Don’t stop, Harry. I have a feeling we are very close.”

  I resumed the work. “There’s really no such thing as a vampire, is there, sir?” I asked, peering about me and wishing I could see into the shadows.

  He grunted. “The Roma believe in them. And for good cause, it would seem. The Romanes word for the living dead is mullo.” He suddenly chuckled.

  “What?”

  “Nothing, Harry. I was just recalling that the Roma obviously have little respect for our medical profession. Their word for doctor is a mullomengro . . . literally translated as a ‘dead-man maker.’ Hah!” He chuckled again but then grew serious. “Gypsies believe that the dead will rise from their graves to seek revenge, in the form of vampires, if they have been killed by an enemy. Such a vampire may just go after the one who caused his death or may go on an indiscriminate killing spree. There’s just no telling.” He glanced around, peering into the darkness, as did I. I shivered and wished to be finished with our morbid work.

  “Ah!” Stoker stopped as his shovel hit something. “I think I may have struck what we seek.” He moved close beside me as I took over the digging. “Carefully does it, Harry. There’s no need to abuse the wooden lid. Though heaven knows it is only going to be buried again.”

  We gently brushed the dirt from the top of the wooden casket. The faint moonlight glinted on the brass nameplate that adorned the lid. I peered at it.

  “Well, at least we’ve got the right one,” I said, making out the engraved Peter Wilberforce Richland.

  In another ten minutes we had the top cleared with enough room to kneel beside the casket. Stoker uttered a mild curse.

  “What is it?”

  “I didn’t bring a levering tool. We need something to pry up the lid.”

  I reached for my shovel again. “I think we can use the head of this,” I said. “It may not leave a clean edge to the coffin, but I don’t think anyone will complain.” I heard him chuckle.

  It seemed that the lid was not fastened down as tightly as it might have been, and I had no difficulty getting the head of the shovel into the edge and began lifting the exposed top. My boss moved around to the far side and did the same there. Suddenly, with a loud crack that must have been audible as far away as Fleet Street, the lid came free. We both stopped moving as the echo of the sound bounced off the church walls.

  After what seemed a very long time to me, Stoker laid down his shovel and, taking hold of the edge of the lid, lifted the top up and away. We both leaned forward to look inside. Just at that moment the moon came out from behind its cloud and we saw nothing in the bottom of the casket but a large log.

  * * *

  “We have Mr. Richland’s head—or the police have it—but where is the body?”

  Stoker sat in his office chair and looked at me, his brow furrowed. We had departed the cemetery that morning, leaving the grave and coffin open, revealing its arborical contents to anyone curious enough to investigate. I now sat opposite my boss, trying to stifle a yawn, and pondered the same thing.

  “Perhaps it was dumped in the Thames,” I suggested. “So many bodies are.”

  “It is possible, Harry. But something tells me that it was not. The question is, why go to the trouble of having a funeral and burying a tree trunk in place of the man, when you can simply steal the body and hide it for your nefarious desires without the need for the ceremony? Presumably—to answer my own question—the tree trunk was so that the coffin would seem sufficiently heavy and no one would realize that the body was missing.”

  “But who would do that and why?” I asked.

  “Precisely.” He was silent for a moment. “Why deposit the head in our scenery, Harry?”

  “To disrupt our production, I suppose. And I imagine he was not expecting us to recognize whose head it was.”

  The big man nodded agreement. There followed another silence, this time longer than the previous one. Eventually, I felt impelled to break it.

  “Where would one start looking for a headless corpse?”

  “Of course there may be another totally different explanation.”

  Bram Stoker gazed, unseeing, at the blank wall opposite his desk and ignored my question. I recognized the look that enveloped his face when he was plotting one of his short stories or mulling over some obscure facts or folklore.

  “What do you know of zombies, Harry?”

  I said nothing . . . What was there to say?

  He continued. “The empty coffin got me thinking. In certain Caribbean countries—one immediately thinks of the Republic of Haiti—an empty coffin signals the creation of a zombie. The ‘undead,’ as they have been called.”

  “I thought that was vampires?” I said, trying to sound intelligent.

  “They also have been so termed.”

  “So what’s the difference, sir?”

  “Ha!” He shook his head as though in despair. “Vampires spend their ‘waking’ hours sucking blood from human victims, to sustain themselves. They then return to their graves, which they use as a base for their nightly sojourns.”

  “And zombies?”

  “Zombies do not return to their graves. Neither do they drink blood. Once resurrected, they will work, sustained not by blood but by normal food—albei
t any type of rotten garbage containing sufficient nutrients to support their strength. They are, in effect, slaves to their masters, requiring no pay, clothing, or entertainment, and minimum sustenance. Extraordinarily cheap labor, Harry.”

  “So what exactly is a zombie?”

  “It’s an abomination, Harry. No two ways about it.”

  “Yes, but more specifically . . . ?”

  His focus came around to me and he ran his fingers through his beard, a gesture I envied.

  “In that black republic there are men we would call magicians. They are known as bokos.”

  I was beginning to feel uncomfortable and wondered what the time was. I’d been hoping to take a nap before the day progressed much further, but I had to admit that Stoker’s tales of the undead held me captive. His stories always did.

  “The word ‘zombie’ comes from the Congolese nvumbi, meaning a body deprived of its soul.” He suddenly yawned. He, too, it would seem, was feeling the effects of our late-night outing to the cemetery. He stretched and yawned again. “It is the boko who creates the zombie, Harry. When a person in the islands is considered dead, because of the climate they are not embalmed but are placed in the grave as speedily as possible. At nightfall, after a funeral, the people of the villages lie in their huts and wait with bated breath to see what may happen.”

  “L-like what, sir?” I was on the edge of my chair.

  “Drums, Harry. Drums.”

  I swallowed.

  “When the drums start sounding, and resonate down from the hills, the villagers know to stay safely inside their huts and not to venture forth.”

  “What is happening?”

  “At the cemetery, at the fresh grave, the boko takes a handful of meal or flour and allows it to trickle through his fingers onto the earth in the design, or the representative, of Guédé, the god of the dead. He lights four candles and sets them about the grave site. Then he pours libations of rum. The boko’s drummer starts pounding out the traditional rhythm of the Petro dance, and the boko stands and watches as his minions dig through the freshly turned soil and unearth the coffin. They bring it to the surface and remove the lid. It is said that then, when the boko calls the name of the deceased, a hand will appear on the edge of the coffin and gradually the corpse will stand up, climb out, and follow the boko wherever he may lead. From then on he is a slave to his new master.” Stoker yawned again. “But enough of this, Harry. Let us leave it for the moment.”

  I was speechless, in my mind seeing the enactment under the light of a Haitian moon. I didn’t want him to stop. My tiredness seeming to have abated. I finally blurted out, “But is this true, sir? I mean, are there really such things as zombies?”

  He looked at me long and hard. “An alternate explanation, Harry, is that the boko has surreptitiously introduced an alkaloid drug to his intended victim. The drug would bring about a cataleptic state easily mistaken for death. As I’ve mentioned, with the heat and humidity no time is lost in getting a corpse—real or imaginary—into the ground. By the night following the burial the drug would have worn off sufficiently for the boko to rouse the victim and lead him away.”

  “What sort of drug could do that?” I asked, my interest piqued.

  He thought for a moment. “A zombie is said to move in a slow, jerky manner, Harry. In just such a manner as does one who suffers from catalepsy. Such a person may be unable to recognize loved ones and unable to speak or register emotions. He—or she, for there are female zombies—must eat to obtain the strength to work, however. Local herbs that can bring about such a state are Terminalia catappa, Spondias dulcis, and one or two others—all deadly poisons if used incautiously. But cigars and pipes are commonly smoked in Haiti, by both men and women. What simpler method to introduce the soporific to the victim than by using the dried leaves rolled in the form of a cigar or crushed like tobacco? But . . . enough of this, Harry!” He sat back, seeming to have reached some sort of conclusion. “Talking of poison, I think it best we concentrate on our original question, who tried to poison the Guv’nor? I still strongly suspect Mrs. Crowe, or her brother, Ralph.”

  I was a little disappointed that the storytelling was over, but he was right—we needed to get on with more practical things.

  “I may yet send you off to Sadler’s Wells in disguise,” he continued, “but for this morning we have other work to do. The Guv’nor is not happy with Act Three, Scene Four. He thinks that Mr. Sampson’s Polonius is not all it should be when he gets stabbed through the arras. He wants to walk through that whole scene again.”

  “The whole thing?” I said, “Miss Grey is not going to take kindly to that.”

  “Oh, Meg won’t have to do it, Harry. Miss Edwina Price can read in the Queen’s part for her. Now, while I think of it, Harry, I need you to run an errand.”

  I couldn’t suppress a sigh. There was always a lot to do in the theatre when preparing for an evening performance. And I should certainly be there if the Guv’nor was going to be making any changes to Act Three. It seemed like I’d been running errands not directly connected with the Lyceum’s production for a long time now.

  “Yes, sir,” I said, dutifully. “What is it?”

  “It’s for the Guv’nor, so you needn’t look so put-upon.”

  I sat up straight.

  “He wants you to take a cab around to his house and fetch back his Brodie edition of Hamlet. He’s worked from that for years, apparently, and it’s full of his penciled notes. Mrs. Cooke, the housekeeper, will let you in. Make sure you leave everything tight and secure when you depart, you hear me?”

  I nodded and stood up. I had never visited Henry Irving’s home before so this would be interesting.

  * * *

  I had somehow missed my breakfast that morning, so I stopped briefly at the Druid’s Head for a quick bite to eat before heading for Mr. Irving’s residence. As I watched John Martin carve a thick slice of ham and slip it between two slices of home-baked bread, I thought back to his comment about Peter Richland being with a friend the night he got killed. I asked him about it.

  “Lor’ bless you, Mr. Rivers,” he said. “I gets far too many folks in ’ere to recollect ’em all. But yes, now that you asks, I did take note as ’ow your man seemed over generous—if I may put it that way—when it come to buying drinks for this other feller.”

  He spoke with his face screwed up as he tried hard to recollect that night. Not paying attention, he piled a particularly ample portion of mustard on the ham before slapping the top slice of bread back on it and pushing the plate across the counter in my direction. He continued talking as I lifted that top slice and carefully scraped off much of the dressing.

  “Don’t rightly know as ’ow this feller was a friend of your Mr. Richland, o’ course. Could ’ave been long-lost cousins for all I was to know. Or they could’ve just met that night as they was drinkin’, which is ’ow I sees it.”

  “So you think Richland simply got to drinking with another man who was in here?”

  “As I said, that’s the way I sees it. But ’oo’s to say? You like a nice glass of porter to wash that down, then, ’Arry?”

  I nodded. “But you did say that they left together?”

  “Oh aye. Staggered out of ’ere the best of friends. Then your man got ’isself run down.”

  I ate my sandwich and drank my stout and had John go over things one more time. It seemed he’d never seen the other man before, nor had the man shown up since, which I thought strange.

  * * *

  The hansom let me off outside 15a Grafton Street, Mayfair, on the corner of Bond Street. Asprey’s Jewellers occupied the ground floor, with display windows showing their expensive silver plate and jewelry. A small black door, around the corner on the Grafton Street side, was the entrance to the rooms above, where the Guv’nor lived. He shared the household with his friend Mr. Henry G. Barker, a leather merchant, and
a staff of six. The cook was—perhaps appropriately—Mr. Henry Cooke, and his wife, Eliza, was the housekeeper. There were three young female servants plus a fourteen-year-old boy servant. It was the boy who answered the door to my knock. When I told him of my errand, he turned away from me and shouted up the stairs behind him.

  “Mrs. Cooke! Mrs. Cooke!”

  A young servant girl shortly appeared at the head of the stairs and looked down on us.

  “What is it, Timmy? Mrs. Cooke is occupied.”

  I spoke up the stairs to her and again explained my errand.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, sir. Timmy! You know better than to leave the gentleman standing! Come on up, sir. I’m sure Mrs. Cooke will be with you in just a moment.” Then she turned and scurried away, presumably to alert the housekeeper. The boy stepped back and allowed me to precede him up the narrow staircase.

  As I reached the top, a short, stocky woman in a tight black dress, her hair pulled back in a severe bun-chignon, came bustling along to the landing. For the third time I explained why I was there.

  “Of course, sir. Come this way, if you please. Timmy, get on and fill the coal scuttles, they’re all ’alf empty. Jenny, you take this gentleman to Mr. Irving’s study and see as ’ow ’e’s comfortable.” She turned back to me. “Jenny’ll see to you, sir. You must excuse me but we’re all be’ind today, some’ow.” She picked up her skirts and hurried away as the young housemaid smiled at me and led the way down the corridor and into a room on the right.

  “This is Mr. Irving’s study, sir,” she said. “Let me take your hat and coat. Timmy should have done that. Oh dear.”

  She seemed momentarily distressed at the oversight. I felt I had arrived at a most inopportune moment and tried to make amends.

  “Please don’t fuss, Jenny. It is Jenny, is it not?”

  “Yes, sir.” She blushed and bobbed a curtsey.

  It had been a long time since anyone had curtsied to me and I held up my hand. “Please! Don’t stand on ceremony. I work for the Guv’nor just as you do. I’m Harry Rivers, by the way. You can call me Harry. I’m the stage manager at the Lyceum.”