The Golden Butterfly

by Sharon Gosling

  Mr Hibberd emitted a sudden, loud guffaw. The sound made Luciana smile, for she remembered it, as much as she remembered that everything she had seen of Mr Hibberd in the past five minutes was perfectly indicative of the man’s character. He was larger than life, as a man of the theatre should most definitely be.

  “Well, I never did!” he said, throwing his arms wide. “I never thought to see you again, and look here – so grown up! Come in, my dear, and your companion too. What a very long time it has been!”

  Mr John Hibberd, the long-standing building manager of the Peacock Theatre, took Luciana and Charley into the room where he spent most of his time. Being below street level, it was lit by an oil lamp that rendered the room dim and the air clogged even in the middle of the day. In one corner stood a large and comfortable armchair. In front of it was a small footrest, and on the floor beside it was a discarded blanket. The rest of the room was in a similar state of disarray, from the desk that was covered with piles of papers, books and posters, to the coat rack in another corner that seemed so laden it might topple over at any moment.

  “Make yourselves at home, my dears, while I find some more chairs and light the stove for some tea.”

  Over tea they discovered that Mr Hibberd did not know about the death of the Magnificent Marko.

  “I am so sorry, Mr Hibberd,” Luciana said. “I assumed you would know.”

  Mr Hibberd retrieved a creased kerchief from his top pocket and dabbed at his eyes with it. “No, my dear,” he said. “I had not heard. But then, we none of us had heard a peep from the great master of magic ever since he withdrew from the stage. Such a shame, that was, such an awful, terrible shame. There will never be another like your grandfather, Miss Cattaneo. He lit up the stage with a fire of the kind that had never been seen before and surely will never be seen again. In fact, with his departure went the golden age of magic in England. It has been fading ever since, like a flower past its best. We haven’t had a magician here since he left the stage, you know. There are fewer and fewer of them about.”

  Luciana glanced at Charley and then said, “Mr Hibberd, I am going to be honest with you now, because I believe I can trust you.”

  The theatre man looked at her, eyes bulging a little in surprise. “But of course you can, my dear. Your grandfather could always rely on my discretion and support, and of course I will forever extend the same to you.”

  Luciana smiled. “I am very grateful to hear you say that. You see, Charley and I are on the trail of a mystery, and we came here in the hope that a visit may help us to unravel it.”

  “A mystery!” Hibberd repeated in astonishment that seemed to Luciana to be tinged with excitement. “To do with the Magnificent Marko, you mean?”

  “Yes,” said Luciana. “Mr Hibberd, can you tell me anything about a man called Thursby?”

  The look that settled on Mr Hibberd’s face took her by surprise, not least because it so closely matched the one she had seen on her grandmother’s when confronted by the man himself.

  “Thursby,” rumbled Mr Hibberd angrily. “That demon in a man’s guise. Oh yes. I can tell you about him.”

  “Who is he?” Luciana asked. “My grandmother could not even bring herself to tell me that.”

  “Ah, well,” said Mr Hibberd, “a sensible precaution, for who would want to summon the devil by describing him? I shall risk it, however. Carl Thursby is the Master of the Grand Society of Magicians.”

  There was a pause. Mr Hibberd had announced this as if it had been accompanied by a drum roll.

  “I never knew there was such a thing,” said Charley. “The Grand Society of Magicians, I mean. It sounds very … grand.”

  “Oh, it is, young man,” said Hibberd. “Grand and extremely important. Or it used to be at any rate. No magician in England can perform magic in public without being a member and holding a licence to do so. The Society decides who is fit to be on the stage: who, indeed, may use the name ‘magician’.”

  “I see,” said Luciana slowly. “How do they do that, exactly?”

  “Each magician must apply for his licence and must prove himself fit to hold it by pledging to uphold the Society’s laws. It is a most grave offence for a licensed magician to disgrace himself by breaking any one of them and doing so means immediate rejection from the Society.”

  Luciana stared into her empty teacup, watching the tea leaves as they settled in their patterns at its base. “I suppose … that loss also means the loss of earnings – of livelihood. If a magician cannot perform.”

  “Absolutely,” agreed Hibberd. “It is a most terrible situation. I can only think of it ever happening once in my memory, in fact.”

  “My grandfather,” Luciana said, her mouth growing dry. “He lost his licence, didn’t he? That’s why he left the stage?”

  A sad frown passed over Mr Hibberd’s face. “Yes. And it was Thursby who masterminded his downfall. And let me tell you, it might be the first time he’d got a fellow thrown out of the Society, but the scuttlebutt is that it isn’t the first time he’s got rid of a rival by nefarious means.”

  Luciana felt a cold pit open up in her belly. “What happened? I want to understand. What magician’s law was my grandfather accused of breaking?”

  “Thursby accused him of teaching the secrets of magic to a non-magician.”

  Luciana was confused. “What does that mean, exactly?”

  Mr Hibberd shrugged. “Only licensed magicians are permitted to know the secrets behind performing magic. One is first granted an apprentice’s licence, then a full licence once a commitment to the profession is proven. It helps to keep the profession streamlined. If just anyone could learn, where would we be then, eh? We’d be overrun with amateurs and then why would anyone pay to come to a theatre? You’d have cheap tricksters performing on every street corner for a measly handful of coins!”

  Luciana and Charley looked at each other with alarm. “Who was my grandfather accused of teaching?”

  “Ah, well. That’s where it becomes murky,” said Hibberd, apparently oblivious to their discomfort. “He was accused of teaching his assistant, Adeline Morrell. Do you remember her?”

  Luciana frowned. “I saw her on stage with my grandfather, of course. I can’t recall ever meeting her properly though.”

  “She was a very clever girl, a very good magician’s assistant, and this is where Thursby showed his true snake-in-the-grass nature. Because there has always been a grey area when it comes to magicians and their assistants. Every assistant is herself a member of the Society and there is an understanding. After all, how is an assistant to assist her master without knowing at least some of what goes into his routines? So in that sense, the Magnificent Marko probably had taught some of his magic to Adeline. But no magician had ever been held up against the laws of the Society for that. Not until –” and here Hibberd fairly spat the name – “Thursby. He saw a way of getting rid of Marko and he took it.”

  Luciana was finding it more and more difficult to breathe. After all, Marko had always taught magic to her. “Then … perhaps the accusation was because he was also teaching another?”

  “Oh no,” Hibberd said with utmost confidence. “It was Adeline all right. It was because of the Golden Butterfly. And of course the whole debacle wasn’t really about the rules at all. It was about Thursby wanting that trick. He was infuriated that he could not copy it. He’d love to be able to call himself the greatest magician of the age, but he doesn’t have the talent. He has lied, bullied and bought his way into the power he has, and he has done the same to diminish every magician better than he – which is all of them. If magic is dying, then he is the sickness killing it. At first he tried to steal the Golden Butterfly, as he did with all his other tricks, and when he could not, he resolved to force your grandfather from the stage so that at least no one was performing it. The accusation of teaching Adeline was what it took.”

  Luciana’s head was spinning. She couldn’t even begin to make sense of what Hibberd was
telling them. “But I thought you said that Adeline Morrell was also a member of the Society?”

  “Oh yes, of course. She was registered as an assistant.”

  Charley cleared his throat. “The Golden Butterfly,” he said. “That’s what Thursby and his men were looking for when they turned up at Luciana’s home on the day of the funeral.”

  “What?” Hibberd asked, aghast. “My God, the sheer nerve of the man, to disturb a grieving family. What evil!”

  “He didn’t find it,” Luciana told him.

  “Well, thank heaven for small mercies,” said Hibberd. “That really would be the icing on the cake, to have that damnable slug crowing from the paste-boards that he was to revive the Golden Butterfly.”

  “But … but I think we might have,” she added. Reaching for her bag, Luciana pulled from it the velvet pouch and drew out the triangle of golden metal. She passed it to Mr Hibberd in silence. “Or part of it anyway. This was hidden in my grandfather’s study,” Luciana said. “We don’t know what it is. Do you think this is what Thursby was looking for?”

  Mr Hibberd turned the device over in his hands for a few moments, then handed it back with a shake of his head. “Possibly, my dear, but I really could not say.” He smiled wistfully. “Of course, I never have been privy to the secrets of the magicians’ world, not even with all the years I’ve spent looking after this place.”

  Luciana slipped the golden wing back into its pouch. “I suppose the person who could tell us is Adeline Morrell. Do you know where she is?”

  “No idea, I’m afraid. Magicians are a superstitious bunch, even more so than stage folk in general. No one would employ her after she was caught up in that scandal.”

  “If she supposedly knew the secret of how to perform the Golden Butterfly,” Charley asked thoughtfully, “then why didn’t she? Later, I mean, once the Magnificent Marko had left the stage? She could have carried on.”

  “Yes, why didn’t she just do it herself?” Luciana asked.

  Hibberd stared at her for a moment, and then burst out laughing. “Oh, my dear,” he said, “you have such comportment that for a moment I clean forgot that you are still a child, with the capacity to say things of such hilarity. Of course she could not do that.”

  “But why not?” Luciana asked, still confused.

  Hibberd stopped laughing, as if only realizing then that she was asking a genuine question. “Why, women cannot perform magic, my dear.”

  The idea that women could not perform magic made no sense to Luciana. After all, if that was the case, what exactly was it that she herself had been doing in that crowded market square in Rotherton not six hours earlier? Perhaps, she thought, what Mr Hibberd actually meant was not that women could not perform magic, but merely that they were not allowed to perform magic. Although that seemed as absurd as the idea that women could not perform magic at all.

  “But then – what was the point of Adeline being a member of the Grand Society?” Luciana asked.

  “Well, of course,” Mr Hibberd said, “every magician’s assistant must be licensed themselves. They have their own separate list. It is a very great honour to be admitted,” he said, leaning forward a little, as if he was somehow giving her a gift. “The assistants are very lucky. Each and every magician must prove himself worthy, no matter his parentage. But with assistants – each new daughter born is automatically inducted as a member. It’s an acknowledgment, you know, of how hard they work.”

  “But they are not allowed to perform magic themselves.”

  Mr Hibberd leaned back with another huff of laughter. “Why, my dear, it is well known that a woman’s mind does not possess the necessary levels of natural intelligence that are required to master the magical arts.”

  Luciana nodded absently as the words of the dismissive butcher returned to her from that morning. “And yet,” she said quietly, “a few hundred years ago they were burned as witches. Is that not strange?”

  There was a short silence, during which Mr Hibberd shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Luciana looked over at Charley. He shrugged and then glanced down at her bag. She knew what he was suggesting – that she should get out her cards and demonstrate just what a woman’s mind was capable of. Luciana wondered what Mr Hibberd’s reaction would be.

  “Well,” said the man. “Perhaps there is wisdom there too. Who knows what dangers a woman would be opening her mind to were she to push its capacities beyond its natural boundaries? All manner of evil could find its way in to corrupt her gentleness. But as helpers, they are unparalleled. Miss Morrell, for example, was the best in the business by far. I will readily admit that without her, I am sure the Golden Butterfly would not have been such a spectacle. Such a pity that she vanished from our esteemed London stages.”

  “There’s no hope that we might be able to find her?” Charley asked. “Perhaps she would be able to explain the importance of this device.”

  Mr Hibberd waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, I’m sure if she ever knew, she’d have forgotten by now. Besides which, she will only have known in the very vaguest terms, enough to make the trick work. She will be somewhere abroad – far enough away that she can find another position and use for her talents without the scandal following her. Performing folk really are a peculiar bunch. Why, did you know that no one will take your grandfather’s dressing room, even now? No one has touched it since he departed.”

  Luciana started in surprise. “You mean – it’s just as he left it?”

  Mr Hibberd nodded. “Oh yes. I wrote to Mr Cattaneo a month or so after the incident, asking what I should do with everything still in the room. In his reply he said I could dispose of everything as I saw fit, and he trusted me to forward anything that looked important. But it never felt right to throw anything away, and since no one ever wanted to occupy the room … well, I simply locked the door and left it as it was.”

  “Did Thursby’s men ever search it?” Charley asked.

  “Oh yes. Thursby came down himself with one of his lackeys the week after the final performance. He demanded the key and sent me away. I was watching as he left. His companion was carrying a box of various things – I saw papers and other oddments in there – but neither would tell me what they were or why they wanted them.”

  Luciana looked at Charley. “Whatever was in the box, it can’t have been about the Golden Butterfly,” she said. “Otherwise why would he have come to our house this many years later, still looking for it?”

  Charley nodded, then looked at Mr Hibberd. “Could we see the room ourselves?”

  “Of course,” said Mr Hibberd with a generous smile.

  *

  Mr Hibberd turned the lock on the painted dark blue door and pushed it inwards.

  “Wait just a moment,” he said, disappearing inside. “I’ll light the old oil lamp.”

  Luciana tried not to think about the flame that Hibberd had gone to light in the stuffy, dusty space beyond the door. Everything is fine, she told herself. It’s perfectly safe, just as much as a fire in a grate. You know it is. To calm herself she focused on the door in front of her instead. It was so familiar. She could recall scampering towards it, excited to visit her grandfather after he’d stepped off stage. When she had been very young, she would reach up for the smooth silver doorknob. It had loomed above her head like a miniature moon. Then would come her grandmother’s words, calling after her to admonish her to always knock first. From within, her grandfather’s voice would call for her to enter, and a moment later she would find herself scooped up into his warm arms and hugged, hard. Often there would be others in the room too, ladies and gentlemen in theatre-going finery, admirers of the Magnificent Marko who had wished to meet the man in person. He’d always had time for her though. She had always come first.

  A warm flower of light bloomed within.

  “There now,” came Mr Hibberd’s voice. “Come in, come in.”

  Another flood of memories eddied around Luciana as she stepped over the threshold. At one end was an
area half concealed by a folding screen. The space beyond it, she remembered, was where her grandfather had retired to change before and after each performance. Opposite, against the wall, was a dressing table and mirror where he would put on his stage rouge and arrange his hair.

  In front of the screen were a chaise longue and two armchairs, set around a small occasional table inlaid with the pattern of a backgammon board – this was the area where he would entertain guests. Against the wall was another desk with its own chair. Luciana went to it, but it was too plain to hold a secret compartment. It had no hidden puzzles to solve.

  Luciana knew instinctively that nothing here was going to help them understand what the device was. Her disappointment was acute and bitter. With Adeline Morrell out of reach too, perhaps, after all, they had had a wasted journey.

  “I shall leave you a while,” Mr Hibberd said, “let you mull over your memories. I have a few things to attend to upstairs.”

  He left, pulling the door shut behind him. Luciana and Charley looked at each other.

  “There’s nothing here,” she said.

  Charley smiled. She could tell he thought the same. “Still,” he said. “We should search properly. Since we came all this way.”

  Luciana nodded. He was right, of course, and so they examined every corner of the room and its dusty furniture. Charley even went to the lengths of carefully turning over the armchairs to check their feet for secret compartments, but there was nothing.

  “Come on,” Luciana said eventually, her dejection complete. “If we leave now, we could get the three o’clock train home and be back in time for supper.”

  She held open the door while he shut off the oil lamp. They were making their way back towards Mr Hibberd’s office when Charley stopped. He looked back down the corridor with a slight frown on his face.

  “What?” Luciana asked.

  He looked at her. “What about Adeline Morrell’s dressing room? Where was that?”

  Luciana searched her memory and then pointed to a door on the left. “It was that one, I think.”