The Innocents, page 9
Wright nodded. ‘The caretaker’s spare set of keys have gone missing. Must have been what the killer used.’ He paused. ‘The worst of it is, the doctor reckons he might have survived if he’d stayed away from that far wall. There’s a furnace on the other side of it. It weren’t on while the workmen were in, but it would have stayed warm in here for a while, ’cos it heats the bricks. The doctor wondered if Peter curled up against that wall for warmth. It might have been his undoing. If he was warm, he’d have dehydrated quicker.’
Minnie peered into the darkness, imagined ending her days in a tiny space like that, not even realising your actions were speeding you closer to death. She shuddered. Wright gave her a sympathetic look then rifled in his pocket. He held out a sheet of paper, crumpled and stained. There were markings on it, more like scratches.
‘We found it underneath the mattress when we removed the bed. I was gonna take it to the coppers, but seeing as you’re investigating the case – don’t know if it means anything.’
Minnie looked at the markings. Were they letters?
‘You reckon Peter did this?’
He shrugged. ‘Who knows? Might be something. Might be nothing.’
She thanked him, made her way back outside into the rain and turned towards the Palace. They weren’t getting anywhere. The only clue was a scrap of paper that might have been there for years. But the more she heard about Peter Reynolds, the more determined she became to find his killer. Minnie could think of a few people the world would be better off without: Teddy Linton and Three-Fingers just for starters. But they continued to thrive, and poor Peter Reynolds had died a lonely and horrendous death.
Minnie slipped in through the rear of the Palace and walked wearily to her office, shaking the rain off her coat and umbrella. On the way, she popped her head into Wardrobe. Bernard was there, holding the head of his animal skin and deep in conversation with Frances Moore, the dressmaker.
When Bernard had first proposed the idea of the magical menagerie, Minnie had suggested he play the part of a cat, recycling an outfit from a production of Dick Whittington a few years back. Bernard had decided this was not enough of a stretch. The costume had been problematic from day one.
‘What are you doing here, Bernard?’ she asked gently.
‘I am seeking the expert opinion of the lovely Frances. As you know, I am a professional, Minnie. When Mr Charles Davey is undertaking a new animal mime, he acquires the animal and keeps it in his home for at least a month to study its behaviour, its mannerisms. He has a team of seamstresses on hand to create a facsimile of the animal’s skin. I, on the other hand, have received no assistance with my costume. And I have had to resort to visiting the Zoological Gardens to study the creature. In November, might I add, when they are remarkably reluctant to venture into the open air.’ Every sentence was punctuated by a stab at the costume with a needle and thread that seemed to be making matters worse with every stitch. Frances made nervous motions to intervene with each thrust of the needle, but she was clearly reluctant to distress Bernard any further.
‘You’re playing a rhinoceros, Bernard. I’m not sure even Mr Charles Davey would consider housing a rhino in two small rooms in Bermondsey. They ain’t known for their hygiene.’
‘Be that as it may, Minnie, I am an artist. This’ – and here he held up the rhino head, which Minnie had to confess looked like a coal sack stitched by a blind man – ‘this monstrosity is simply not good enough. “I waste my light in vain, like lamps by day.”’ He threw her a questioning look.
‘Much Ado?’ she ventured. Most of Bernard’s favourite Shakespearean quotations came from Much Ado about Nothing. It could be worse. His favourite play could be Titus Andronicus.
Bernard shook his head, grimacing as if she had committed the most shameful faux pas. ‘Romeo and Juliet, dear heart,’ he said. ‘Had you but followed the arts, you would know that. But I am – as I have long suspected – surrounded by vulgarians. Thankfully, Frances has a degree of expertise sadly lacking elsewhere in this establishment.’ He gave her a grateful smile. ‘She has offered to wield her needle and work some magic.’
‘Well,’ Frances said, looking at the costume with undisguised alarm, ‘I’ll do my best. I can’t promise miracles.’
‘That’s very kind of you,’ Minnie said. ‘Bernard, don’t take this the wrong way, but should you be here at all? Ain’t you got nowhere else to be?’
He lowered his head and said nothing for a few moments. Then he turned to her, all his bravado stripped away, his eyes brimming with tears. ‘Don’t ask me to go home, dearest one. That way madness lies.’
She pulled him to her, held him close. It felt as if he’d lost weight, and there was something else. It took her a moment to realise. He hadn’t applied his goose-grease pomade. His hair was hanging loose and unkempt and this, more than anything, made her heart catch in her throat.
‘Let’s have a cuppa,’ Minnie said. ‘Tell you what, let’s go to Brown’s and I’ll treat you to a slice of cake. You too, Frances. Then, when we come back, you can have a look at that thing,’ she said, gesturing towards the rhinoceros head and wondering if she could persuade Frances to lose it in a bin somewhere.
‘Tansie says you’re looking for a room,’ Frances said, removing her coat and bonnet from one of the rails.
‘News to me,’ Minnie said sharply.
‘Oh, I must have got it wrong. I just thought – after that fella got in the other night. Forget I said anything.’
Despite Minnie’s best efforts to keep Three-Fingers’ visit quiet, word had spread quickly. Tansie and Kippy insisted it wasn’t safe for Minnie to live in the Palace. Minnie had put on a brave face, maintaining that a change of lock was all that was needed. But, deep down, she knew they were right. She certainly hadn’t been sleeping as soundly since Three-Fingers’ visit.
She softened at Frances’s discomfort. ‘Sorry. It ain’t you I’m annoyed with.’
‘Tansie?’
‘Who else?’
‘He’s got a point though, Minnie. I wouldn’t feel safe sleeping here after what happened. And I reckon I could squeeze you in at my place. I’ve got a spare room. It’s tiny, but there’d be room for a bed once I’ve moved out my fabric and bits and pieces. And it’s only on Wellington Street, no distance from here. I thought it might work until you find yourself something more permanent.’
Minnie considered the proposal. Even before Three-Fingers’ midnight visit, she’d been thinking about moving out of the Palace. And this would provide a short-term solution. Besides, she liked Frances. There was a quiet, calm air about the woman that Minnie found restful.
‘You could come round and have a look?’ Frances said.
‘All right. Let’s go to Brown’s first, and then I’ll pop round for a butcher’s.’
As they turned to leave, the entire fabric of the building shook from a thunderous din beneath their feet.
‘Christ! What the hell is that?’ Minnie cried.
‘Tansie’s latest project,’ Bernard said. ‘There’s been the most horrendous racket coming from below stage all morning.’
Swallowing a curse, Minnie ran down the stairs, following the sound of raised voices.
‘And what exactly is that?’ she said as she reached the area below the stage. Whatever the answer, she had a feeling it wasn’t going to be good.
A pile of metal sheets was taking up most of the area directly below the stage, with a rack of costumes and newly delivered stage flats pushed to one side to make room. Each sheet looked to be about six feet high, maybe three feet wide, and there were at least a dozen of them. Jack was using a block and tackle to lift one of the sheets upright, while Kippy and Tansie were fastening it to those already assembled. Once the thing was fully built, Minnie figured you’d need to edge sideways to get round it. With the way Tansie’s waistline was expanding, he might not manage it at all.
‘This, my dearest Minnie, is the future of the Variety Palace,’ Tansie said. His use of ‘dearest Minnie’ told her immediately that he knew he’d done something wrong and was desperately hoping to forestall her wrath.
‘You still ain’t answered my question,’ Minnie said, struggling to remain calm. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s a water tank,’ Tansie said, as if the answer were obvious, ‘and this little beauty is going to deliver us from our financial distress overnight. The punters’ll be piling in, just you wait and see.’
‘That,’ Minnie said, measuring her words carefully as she watched Jack struggling to haul another of the panels upright, ‘is neither little nor beautiful. It is a bleedin’ monstrosity.’
‘It is a little larger than I anticipated, I’ll give you that,’ Tansie said, stepping swiftly to one side to avoid a collision with the panel, which had developed a life of its own.
‘And – assuming you bought it from Handy Mick – it will almost certainly end up drowning someone. Or flooding the audience. Or both.’
‘Now, that’s where you’re wrong,’ Tansie said, smiling broadly in a way she found very ominous. ‘Handy Mick swears blind there’s nothing wrong with it. And’ – he paused for dramatic effect, punching her lightly on the arm to reinforce his point – ‘if we ain’t one hundred per cent happy with it, he’ll take it back.’
‘And you believed him? This being the same Handy Mick who cheated you out of all your marbles when you were kids, and has still never replaced them? The same Handy Mick who stole your girl and then stood her up at the altar? The same Handy Mick who sold you a pigeon and convinced you it was a rare African dove? You’ve got a history with that man and you’re the loser every time. You are seriously telling me he’s gonna take this back if we ain’t happy with it?’
‘He will,’ Tansie said, his voice dropping to a disturbingly soothing level.
‘If we can ever get it out of here,’ Kippy interjected. ‘Given that it’s taken half a dozen of us to get it in here, two of whom are sitting out in the lane suffering from exhaustion, and one of whom is now on his way to hospital. My advice is that we make it work, ’cos I reckon the only way we’ll ever get it out is if we dismantle the Palace around it.’
Jack nodded his agreement. ‘Seriously, Minnie, I’d rather spend the day with Tansie’s monkey than have to move this bleedin’ thing again.’ He looked over her shoulder, to where Frances was standing behind her. A noticeable blush crept up his neck into his cheeks. Frances didn’t seem to have noticed. Or, if she had, she wasn’t interested. Minnie looked again at Jack. Good-looking lad. Stocky. Nice hands. Frances could do worse. Although Minnie wasn’t sure she could take another Palace romance; if it followed their usual track record, Frances or Jack would end up dead.
‘Well, we ain’t moving it today, that’s for certain,’ she said. ‘If you can make it work, Tansie – and I mean if – then maybe we’ll think about keeping it. But if there is the slightest problem, I’m holding you personally responsible for getting rid of it. Now, if you can all get out of here quick smart, I’m treating everyone to a Chelsea bun at Brown’s.’
Two hours later, everyone’s sugar levels suitably replenished, Minnie and Tansie were seated in her office. Minnie had spent the last half-hour listening to Tansie’s ambitious plans for the water tank, including renaming the music hall the Water Palace. In an effort to shut him up, she handed him The Era, while she opened the post.
A few minutes of blissful quiet ensued, then Tansie passed her the newspaper, tapping an article halfway down the page. ‘Remember him?’ he asked her. ‘Freddy Graham?’
‘’Course I do. He was the caretaker when I started here. Bit of a grumpy bastard, but he was kind once you got on his right side.’ She scanned the article, read of the man’s sudden death by heart attack and immediately regretted calling him a bastard.
Tansie nodded. ‘It was a bit of a step down him working here. He’d been a stage manager before, the Adelphi at one point I seem to remember, but then I heard he hit a hard patch.’ He mimed drinking from an imaginary glass. ‘Must be what done for him in the end. Still, he was no age. Nice fella. No family. Makes you think, don’t it?’
‘About what?’
‘Well, say I dropped the cue tomorrow, I’d leave no one behind. My ma and pa are both gone, no brothers or sisters, no wife. No kiddies.’
‘That you know of.’
‘You know what I mean, Min. Who would care?’
‘Christ, fetch me my violin. We’d care, wouldn’t we? All of us here?’
‘It ain’t the same though, is it? I thought – with Cora – I really thought—’ He tailed off.
‘I know, Tanse. I thought so too. But there’ll be someone else. You’re still a good-looking fella. And lots of girls like a short chap. Gives them someone to look down on.’ She opened another envelope, glanced at the contents and tossed it in the bin. ‘No news on Monkey, I take it? Not that I’m suggesting he’s an alternative to a wife and children.’
His face darkened. There was no getting away from it, he loved that monkey. ‘Nothing so far, although I’m pursuing a few leads, as Albert would say.’
‘Such as?’
He tapped the side of his nose conspiratorially. ‘That’s between me and Jinks the barber at this precise moment.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning I have my informants, and I am investigating some lines of enquiry. Much like you and Bert.’
Minnie grunted. He’d tell her soon enough. There was no point in trying to wrestle a secret out of Tansie; he only held on to it tighter. She tore the brown paper off a small box and opened it.
At first, she couldn’t understand what she was seeing. Then she screamed, hurling the box and its contents onto the floor.
‘Christ, Min, what is it?’
She pointed at the floor, her other hand over her mouth. She wasn’t sure if she was going to scream again or throw up.
Tansie bent down to retrieve the contents of the box. As realisation dawned on him, he emitted a long, low keening. In his hand lay one tiny monkey’s paw.
ELEVEN
Minnie handed Albert the slip of paper she’d been given by the manager of the Fortune Theatre. Albert crossed to the window and held it up to the light while Minnie sipped her tea and tried to suppress her disappointment at the lack of cake. Mrs Byrne had apologised when Minnie had arrived, said she could nip out for some. Minnie had insisted she was fine and now she was regretting it. A cuppa hardly seemed worth bothering with if there wasn’t a nice slab of fruitcake to go with it. Maybe a scone. At the very least, a slice of plain sponge.
‘It could be letters,’ Albert said. ‘Possibly a name?’
‘It’d be handy if it was the name of his killer, wouldn’t it? But if it’s letters, I can’t decipher them.’
‘Or maybe it’s nothing,’ Albert said, handing Minnie back the paper. ‘We’ve no idea how long it’s been there, even. Never mind if it’s a message Peter left about the identity of his killer.’
‘I know,’ Minnie sighed. ‘Clutching at straws. But it feels like we’re getting nowhere. And I have to face Bernard every day, watch the anticipation die in his eyes as I tell him we’ve got nothing new.’
‘Give it time, Minnie,’ he said, finishing the last of his tea. ‘Lots of murders take months, sometimes years, to figure out. You think you’ve hit a dead end, and then a tiny little clue emerges, and the whole thing opens up in front of you like a Chinese puzzle.’
Minnie gave him a sardonic look. ‘Ain’t you the poet this morning. Making headway with the Eddings case?’
‘No, I’m not as a matter of fact. John had a quiet word with the decorator, Gordon Peters.’
‘And?’
‘He’s kept his nose clean since he was released, working with his brother. He was at the Eddings house that day, but he ran out of paint and was done by two o’clock. He met his brother and a friend for a bite to eat and then they had a few at their local. Plenty of people saw him there.’
‘And Judge Eddings was still alive at two o’clock, you said.’
Albert nodded. ‘According to everyone I spoke to, he was. So it’s not Peters. But I swear, there’s something there.’
He crossed to the writing desk and removed his notebook. He read aloud his notes from the interviews at the Eddings house. Nothing. Idly, he flipped back a few pages, then slammed his hand down on the desk so hard it made Minnie jump.
‘It’s the sweep,’ he said. ‘Fowler’s widow told me she hung back that morning because she needed to speak to the sweep. The fire in the back bedroom wasn’t drawing properly and she wanted to ask him if there might be anything blocking it. But he was late and she had to leave.’ He handed Minnie the notebook: ‘Sweep late.’
‘Who’s Fowler?’ Minnie asked.
‘A case I had before Eddings. Fowler hanged himself. His wife thought there was something suspicious about it all, but I couldn’t find anything. It turns out both Fowler and Eddings were owners of a company called Capital Holdings. And now it turns out there was a sweep at both their houses on the day they died.’
‘Easy way to get inside someone’s house. You’d have access to pretty much every room. And no one really notices you.’
Albert rang a bell by the side of the fireplace. Moments later, Mrs Byrne appeared.
‘Our sweep,’ Albert said. ‘What’s his name?’
She gave him a bemused look. ‘Why? Are you thinking of adding him to your stable of detectives?’
‘His name?’ Albert said, betraying a hint of impatience.
‘Henry.’
‘And what does he look like?’
She frowned, then saw he was serious and took a moment to consider. ‘Dark hair. Middling height.’
‘Anything else?’
‘I don’t pay him a great deal of mind, Albert. I’ve got a lot else to do.’
‘Exactly,’ Albert said. ‘No one ever notices the sweep.’
‘Or the housekeeper, much of the time,’ Mrs Byrne murmured as she cleared away the tea things and left the room.
‘She forgiven you yet?’ Minnie asked. ‘For the other night? I did tell her it was my fault, but she weren’t having none of it.’
