The Pantomime Murders, page 1
Contents
Title Page
Also by Fiona Veitch Smith
Map of Newcastle
Map of York
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Epilogue
Historical Notes
Acknowledgements
About the Author
About Embla Books
Also by Fiona Veitch Smith
The Miss Clara Vale Mystery series
The Picture House Murders
The Poppy Denby Investigates series
The Jazz Files
The Kill Fee
The Death Beat
The Cairo Brief
The Art Fiasco
The Crystal Crypt
First published in Great Britain in 2023 by
Bonnier Books UK Limited
4th Floor, Victoria House, Bloomsbury Square, London, WC1B 4DA
Owned by Bonnier Books
Sveavägen 56, Stockholm, SwedenCopyright © Fiona Veitch Smith, 2023
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
The right of Fiona Veitch Smith to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 9781471414565
This eBook is created using Atomik ePublisher
Embla Books is an imprint of Bonnier Books UK
www.bonnierbooks.co.uk
For Megan.
As you start on the next chapter of your life.
‘All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive.’
G. K. Chesterton
Prologue
Saturday 14th December 1929, York
‘It fits!’
The smallest children stood on their parents’ laps to get the best view of the girl in rags as she tried on the silken slipper. Cinderella turned to the audience, her eyes alight with joy. ‘So ends our play, my dream at last come true, I always thought it would though, didn’t you?’
No, I didn’t, thought Sybil, as she waved her jewel-encrusted wand over the happy couple and the chorus of townspeople broke into their final song and dance. No, she thought, I never thought it would come to this. But professional to the last, her smile did not betray her melancholic thoughts and was as bright and fixed as the spotlight bathing the beautiful young lovers in eternal bliss.
Sybil kept the beneficent smile on her face all through the three curtain calls, as the theatregoers of York said their final goodbye to the pantomime troupe who had entertained them for two weeks. Next stop on the tour was Newcastle – the Theatre Royal – where Sybil and the cast would have to do it all over again. Sybil felt sick. Not just sick at the thought of having to perform the silly songs and the silly dialogue ad nauseum, but literally sick. She rushed into the wings, barged past Baron Bombard, the Uglies and Billy Buttons – the latter swearing at her with a broad Geordie accent – and just made it into the dressing room before she fell to her knees and vomited into a wastepaper basket.
She had been feeling ill all day. And that on top of a rash she’d developed a few days earlier. She’d put it down to sensitivity to the new brand of tinted face cream she was using. She had smeared it on her face, arms, neck and chest, to give the fairy godmother an ethereal quality, but had had some kind of reaction to it. She had a week now before rehearsals started again up in Newcastle. Time to let her skin recover. She would revert to her old cream after that.
Sybil wiped her mouth on the hem of her skirt. She was shaky and clammy and had a blazing headache. The lights around her dressing table mirror were like sharp pinpricks stabbing into her eyes. She rose unsteadily to her feet and made her way to the stool, slumping onto it. Still quivering, she removed her elaborate Marie Antoinette wig, then used cotton wool and cold cream to take off her make-up.
She looked at herself in the mirror, her image blurring in and out. Was she coming down with the flu? She should probably have an early night. She didn’t have the energy to take off her fairy godmother gown, so she just put on her coat and hat over the top of it and made her way unsteadily to the dressing room door. As she reached it someone knocked and said: ‘Miss Langford?’
She opened it to see a stagehand standing with an envelope in his hand. ‘Miss Langford? A letter for you.’
Sybil leaned unsteadily on the doorframe.
‘Are you all right, Miss Langford?’ he asked, his voice tinged with concern.
‘I – I – I’m feeling a little unwell. Will you tell Mr Brown I’ll be missing the after-party? I’m going back to the boarding house for an early night.’
‘Of course, Miss Langford. Can I help you at all?’
‘Can you call a taxi for me?’
‘Yes, miss. There are taxis lined up outside. I’ll get you one in two ticks.’
Sybil went back into the dressing room and sat down, the envelope from the lad in hand. The handwriting was familiar. She opened the envelope and read the note, the words jumbling in her vision before finally coming into focus. Then her eyes grew wide. ‘Oh, dear God, not now. He’s the last person I want to see. But I don’t have a choice …’
Fifteen minutes later Sybil was sitting in the back of the taxi, her cheek pressed against the cool of the window glass.
‘Are you sure you want me to drop you here, miss? It’s dark and there’s no one about.’
‘Oh, there’s someone about,’ said Sybil, her voice barely above a whisper.
The Stage, 16th December 1929
LAST-MINUTE CAST CHANGE FOR CINDERELLA
Newcastle upon Tyne – The role of the fairy godmother in the Newcastle leg of the Starlight Players’ northern tour of Cinderella will be played by Miss Isobel Baxter. Miss Baxter will be waving the magic wand in the popular Christmas panto due to the sudden withdrawal of Miss Sybil Langford at the end of the York run.
Mr Tubby Brown, the tour manager, told The Stage that Miss Langford withdrew from the tour by telegram, stating that she was unable to continue due to personal reasons and would be returning to London. He said she did not elaborate on what those reasons were.
Fortunately, Miss Baxter, who hails from Sunderland and has played the role before, has been able to step in at the last minute.
Newcastle audiences last saw the classically trained Miss Langford – who was born in the north-east city – twenty years ago in her most memorable performance as Ophelia. They will be sorry not to see her on this tour. The Stage has been unable to reach Miss Langford for comment at her home in London.
Chapter 1
Wednesday 18th December 1929, Newcastle upon Tyne
‘Oh for heaven’s sake! Why do you have to be so athletic about it? Can’t you just sit on the side of the pool and look pretty like the rest of the girls?’ The voice of Lady Vanessa Vale intruded, unwanted, into Clara’s mind. She suppressed it, as she always did, then pivoted her head to the side and took in another lungful of air. Her body coursed through the water, straining to get an extra inch of reach on her arms and consciously reminding herself to straighten her legs at the knees and to kick from the hip. She was on her thirtieth length of the swimming bath and trying to improve her technique. She noted, with some satisfaction, that she had repeatedly overtaken two male swimmers during her thirty-minute session and, at change of ends, one had scowled at her; the second had averted his eyes. Her mother, she thought to herself with a chuckle, would be very disappointed.
Clara reached the end of the pool and lowered her feet to the floor, leaning her back against the marble edge, as her chest heaved up and down. She slicked back her black bobbed hair and wiped excess water from her face. Then congratulated herself, for the umpteenth time, on how she’d managed to get free membership to the Newcastle City Pool and Turkish Baths, in part payment for some detective work.
Clara had inherited Wallace Enquiry Agency from her late uncle in the summer of 1929 and renamed it Vale Inves
One of them was the bizarre case of the water in the Turkish baths turning blood red every full moon. The sumptuous baths, next door to the City Hall concert venue, were opened in 1927 and had been doing a booming business until the spring of 1929, when on the 23rd of April, customers turned on the shower taps and were covered in blood. It was later discovered not to be blood but some kind of dye that had been added to the water tanks. A lunar month later the same thing happened, this time with graffiti in red paint in the gentlemen’s changing rooms declaring: Repent! The Apocalypse is nigh. And the month after that increasingly annoyed patrons found printed flyers in their lockers reminding them that water turning to blood was the first plague of Egypt. It went on to say that God had decided to skip the next eight and go straight to the last: the death of the firstborn. Are your children safe?
Uncle Bob died before he could solve the case – not as the result of any divine smiting. When Clara came across the file ‘Turkish Baths’ in September 1929, she contacted the management only to hear that there had been no further incidents since the July full moon and – touch wood – that was the end of it. But then Clara received a telephone call the day after the October full moon to tell her the water was red again. Might Miss Vale care to investigate? Miss Vale said she would.
The details of the case were well recounted in the local press, with intriguing details of how a lady detective used her scientific skills to prove the water had been stained red, what had been used, how the scoundrels had performed their trick and how, after some old-fashioned sleuthing that old Bob Wallace would have been proud of, the culprits were identified and brought to book.
Clara got paid and closed the second of Uncle Bob’s files. And received free membership to the baths for life.
With her hair still damp under her beret, she stepped out into a crisp Newcastle morning, the sunrise bathing the light carpet of freshly fallen snow in sparkling freshness. She enjoyed the crunch of her heels in the snow as she headed along Northumberland Road, then Northumberland Street, and at St Thomas’ church, left onto busy Percy Street. By the time she got there, the wheels of the morning traffic had turned the snow to slush. She picked her way carefully across the thoroughfare avoiding puddles and potholes to the relative safety of the pavement on the other side. Past the Grand Hotel and the Haymarket tram station, the Palace Theatre on the corner of St Thomas’ Street, then down towards her office on the corner of Percy Street and Leazes Lane.
She waved through the window of Levine’s Costumes as Jonny Levine was opening for business, then whipped round the corner to the door at the side of the building. A few moments later she was up the stairs and into her office with the kettle on for a cup of tea. As she sat down at her desk she looked at her watch and waited until the second hand ticked to nine o’clock.
‘Right on time.’
She let out a contented sigh and opened a case file.
Chapter 2
Clara reached her arms over her head, intertwined her fingers and stretched. It was half past eleven and it had been a fruitful morning so far. She had worked her way through half a dozen of Uncle Bob’s files and made a series of telephone calls to see if the services of Wallace Enquiry Agency – now Vale Investigations – were still required. Two of the cases were now resolved, two had been passed on to other enquiry agents; one told her that he would never in a million years employ a lady detective, and one remained open. It was Fenwick Department Store and involved shoplifting.
Yes, the manager told her, when the operator connected them, they still had a problem. They did employ in-store security, but it was suspected that one or more of the in-store detectives themselves might be taking bribes to turn a blind eye. With the run-up to Christmas, theft was on the increase, and they would value some outside help. Might Miss Vale consider taking on the case? Miss Vale said she would. She agreed to meet Mr Carlton at noon to further discuss the case. Thereafter she’d pop into the Fenwick Terrace Tea Room, which had become her favourite luncheon spot.
Clara grabbed her coat, hat, scarf and gloves and readied herself for the short walk to Fenwick’s. Stepping out onto the street, she noted that the snowfall had continued all morning, lying like icing on the roof of the red post box on the corner. The usual Percy Street traffic had ground to a halt, with two vehicles that had collided in the hazardous conditions blocking the road and half straddling the tramline. A group of men, including two policemen, were trying to push the cars out of the way, with some fulsome Geordie expletives warming the air.
‘Howay, man! Get ower, ya bugger! Shift ya arse!’ were the ones she could make out. The rest was beyond her limited lexicon. She stayed clear of the kerfuffle and hurried past, grateful that the corporation had taken the trouble to grit the pavement. Through the windows of the Grand Hotel she could see patrons warming their hands around hot toddies, with a blazing fire in the grate. All right for some on a workday, thought Clara.
She crossed the road opposite the Haymarket tram and omnibus station, then skirted the giant angel atop the South African War memorial, before heading down Northumberland Street. The trams were still trundling along here but Clara wondered how long it would be before the Percy Street congestion would have a knock-on effect. Halfway down the busy shopping thoroughfare, Clara came to Fenwick’s, which boasted a splendid Christmas tree, worthy of Trafalgar Square, in its entrance foyer. Children, clutching their mothers’ hands, stood spellbound at the tinsel and baubles, while a Salvation Army band trumpeted ‘Joy to the World’.
Clara wafted through the heady perfume department, dallied, briefly, in the millinery department and considered buying a new beret, and then headed to the lift. She told the bellboy she was there to see Mr Carlton and he pressed the button for the fifth floor. Five minutes later and she was seated in an oak-panelled office, with a bird’s-eye view of Northumberland Street, saying she didn’t mind if the gentleman behind the desk lit his pipe.
The portly Mr Carlton – managing the day-to-day running of the store on behalf of the Fenwick family – took a few puffs of his baccy then turned his attention to Clara. ‘My condolences on the passing of your uncle, Miss Vale. He was a well-liked man.’
Clara inclined her head. ‘Thank you, Mr Carlton.’
Carlton paused a moment, allowing the smoke and his words of sympathy to hang in the air between them. Then, after a decent amount of time, his eyes lit up and he leaned forward. ‘I followed your remarkable investigation into his death in the papers, Miss Vale. Utterly sensational! He certainly knew what he was doing when he left the business to you. Bet he never realised his own demise would be your first case!’
‘Part of my first case,’ she corrected. ‘The main investigation was about arson and the death of a picture house projectionist.’
Carlton nodded, looking suitably subdued at the tragedy. ‘Quite, quite. And you nearly lost your life too, I believe. And your accountant! How is he, by the way?’
‘On the mend, thank you.’
‘Well, I’m sorry this little job won’t be quite as dramatic as that. When I first spoke to your uncle about it, he said he would put one of his girls on to it. Do you have access to those girls?’
‘I have a list of female agents he used in the past, yes, but I haven’t made contact with them yet. In fact, if you don’t object, I might do this one myself. I’m trying to get as much experience in as many different areas of detection and investigation as possible. Of course, if you prefer, I can appoint someone else …’
