Abracadaver (3 page)
‘I think I’ve seen the trick, Sarge,’ said Thackeray.
‘Probably you have, my dear fellow,’ Woolston said, now almost gushing in his volubility. ‘It is not original. I’ve seen it done by the famous Dr Lynn and by John Nevil Maskelyne, but they don’t use my method. And of course there are scores of provincial performers using rubber swords or girl contortionists.’
‘Really?’ said Cribb. ‘What’s your method then? You’ll have to explain it in court, so you might as well tell us now.’
Woolston hesitated. An illusionist likes to preserve his illusions, but Cribb’s logic was irresistible. So was the invitation to expound his genius. ‘Very well, gentlemen. My trick is worked this way. You will understand that the audience sees the face of my assistant and her feet and presumes therefore that she is occupying the central part of the box, and that her body too is facing them, and so is exposed to the swords which I plunge through the front.’
‘I would think so.’
The conjurer leaned forward confidentially. ‘Now suppose, Sergeant, that what you believe to be my assistant’s feet protruding beneath the box are in fact only her empty boots. She has withdrawn her feet from the boots—which are several sizes larger, for this purpose—and now she can move her body freely inside the box. It is a simple matter to make a turn to the left without moving the head, so that the body is in profile, as it were, while the head remains facing the audience.’
‘Ingenious!’ said Cribb.
Woolston beamed. ‘However that is not all of the deception. If you will kindly remove your elbows from the table . . .’ Cribb obeyed, half-recollecting Mr Blade’s promise of help in case of trouble. ‘Now, gentlemen, I shall demonstrate. You will see that this table is no more than a flap on hinges fixed to the wall. When it is down as it is now it forms a kind of ledge supported by the two chains. But when I push it up . . . thus . . . it lies against the wall almost on a plane with it. This simple idea was incorporated in my box. Once she was free of the boots, my assistant released a secret flap on her right. She then turned her body—but not her head—and seated herself on the small ledge thus formed. It was not comfortable, you understand, but it gave her the support that lifted her body clear of the points where the swords penetrated. When the trick was done and the swords withdrawn it was a simple matter to replace the flap and slip her feet into the boots. I then opened the box and showed the girl unharmed.’ He straightened his bow tie.
‘Marvellous,’ said Thackeray.
‘What went wrong?’ said Cribb.
Woolston shook his head. ‘The flap collapsed as soon as Lettice rested her weight on it. My first sword missed her by good fortune, but the second went straight through the thick part of her leg, you understand.’
‘Didn’t she warn you?’
‘She may have tried, Sergeant, but it is a feature of the performance that she looks alarmed as I thrust the swords home. If she shouted I could not have heard her for the drum-roll that accompanies the climax of the illusion. Of course, I realised what had happened when the second sword met some resistance inside the box.’
‘So I imagine. What happened then?’
‘Confusion, Sergeant. Deplorable confusion! The curtain was rung down and then rung up again immediately. A policeman climbed on to the stage and a doctor appeared from nowhere. Nobody would open the box for fear of aggravating Lettice’s injury. In my own distress I failed to appreciate that to everyone but me it appeared that she had been penetrated through the stomach. We turned the box into a horizontal position and you would not believe the screams from the audience when one of the boots became detached and fell on to the stage. How they imagined I had severed a leg I cannot fathom. Fortunately, someone had the sense to lower the front cloth and soon a comedian had them singing patriotic songs, while a carpenter sawed open the box backstage. Lettice, of course, was discovered with her leg pinned, and the doctor withdrew the sword and took her in a brougham to Charing Cross Hospital.’
‘Then you were arrested?’
‘Yes!’ said Woolston in a shocked voice. ‘In her discomfort the wretched girl became positively vindictive towards me, and several times accused me of deliberately arranging the injury. It was just too preposterous! I thought nobody would believe such a thing! She wasn’t her normal self at all.’
‘Had you known her a long time?’
‘Eighteen months—which is a confounded long time in the theatre, Sergeant.’
‘Had you quarrelled recently?’
‘Quarrelled? Well, hardly quarrelled. Earlier that evening we had a few wry words together, you might say.’
‘What about?’
‘Her figure, Sergeant. I told her she was putting on too much weight, and she was, damn it. Chocolates and gingerbread, you know. One has no business being overweight when one’s in a box trying to avoid being skewered by half a dozen swords.’
‘Did she object to being told about her figure?’
‘Without going into details, yes. I was right, though, wasn’t I? It seems she was too blasted heavy for that secret flap. It’s odd, though. I thought it would have taken much more weight than that. I check the hinges and supports regularly.’
‘Did you check ’em that evening?’
‘Well, not that evening, Sergeant.’
‘I see. How many people knew the secret of your trick?’
‘Very few,’ said Woolston. ‘The carpenter who made it for me. A stage-hand or two. And Lettice.’
‘And the girl before Lettice?’
‘Oh yes, Hetty. And Patty before her, now you mention it.’
Cribb sighed. ‘Did you examine the flap after the accident?’
‘In the confusion, no.’
‘Pity.’
‘You won’t be able to find it now, Sergeant. No stage-manager keeps useless wood backstage. The whole trick will be firewood by now.’
‘Evidence shouldn’t be destroyed,’ commented Cribb. ‘It’s probably saved. What were you charged with?’
‘Assault. Didn’t you know? But I was told that other charges are to be preferred. The damned girl’s not in any danger, is she?’ he added on an impulse.
‘I believe not,’ said Cribb. He studied Woolston’s face. ‘You wouldn’t have wanted to hurt her, would you?’
The conjurer considered the point. ‘Not at that moment, and in those circumstances.’
Cribb lifted an eyebrow. ‘In other circumstances, perhaps?’
Woolston paused, wary of a trap. ‘Now listen to me, Sergeant. I am a professional illusionist, known throughout the London halls, and that girl was a first-class assistant— magnificent proportions, a wonderful suffering expression and legs she wasn’t coy about displaying. But you have to train a girl, and training’s a matter of discipline, like any form of schooling. Without me, she’d still be just a figurante at the Alhambra on ten shillings a week, taking drinks from soldiers between dances.’
‘She was in the ballet, was she?’
‘Until I rescued her, yes. She has a lot to be grateful for. I lavished hours of my time teaching her to move in that box. Hours, gentlemen.’ He scanned both his listeners for a glimmer of sympathy. Cribb was expressionless; Thackeray plainly regarded packing young women in boxes as no hardship. ‘In the end,’ continued Woolston, unabashed, ‘she knew that movement better than any dance-step she’d ever executed.’
‘More’s the pity she put on weight,’ commented Cribb, nudging the conversation in the direction he wanted.
‘Feckless female! Yes.’
‘Wouldn’t put it beyond a man of your application to teach a girl like that a sharp lesson.’
‘By Jove, yes!’ exclaimed Woolston enthusiastically. ‘A scolding’s no use at all.’ Then, recovering himself, ‘I wouldn’t do anything on stage, though. You don’t think I’d destroy the act for a silly little slut that can’t keep her hands out of a chocolate-box?’
‘What I think ain’t of any consequence,’ said Cribb, who had heard all he wanted, ‘but I’m grateful for your plain-speaking.’ He got to his feet. ‘Well now, Thackeray, we won’t detain Mr Woolston any longer. I’m not much of a sorcerer myself, but if my nose is any guide there’s a pot of Newgate stew being cooked not far from here, and I wasn’t planning to stay for lunch.’
SERGEANT CRIBB, IN OPERA hat and Inverness cape, whistled a music hall tune to the rhythm of the cab-horse’s canter along Southwark Street, while Constable Thackeray, equally dazzling beside him, wrestled with insubordinate thoughts. The plain clothes allowance for detective-constables was a shilling a day: generous on the face of it, even allowing that there were long intervals of uniformed duty. Indeed, his total allowances for this year must have come close to Cribb’s statutory ten pounds. But plain clothes, in Thackeray’s opinion, were plain clothes. When a man spent a week’s wages on a swallow-tail suit for an occasional evening’s melodrama at the Lyceum he did not expect to be ordered to wear it to a common music hall. Scotland Yard might own you body and soul, but it was a confounded liberty to assume they owned your best suit as well.
He was not comforted by the spectacle of the crowds along the approach to the Grampian. Each Saturday evening the unwashed of south London converged there in hundreds for threepenny gallery tickets. On a wet evening like this one, when they huddled together under the gaslamps, you could positively see a noxious yellow vapour rising from their clothes. It was all very well for Cribb to make a lofty promise to book a stage-box. What was that worth against a jostling from a coal-bargee’s corduroys as you struggled through the lobby? For Thackeray at that moment, in his tailor-made twill, it was very nearly a resignation issue.
At the entrance, an enormous Corinthian portico, quite outrageous in the architecture of Blackfriars Road, you had to pass a phalanx of salespeople before you even joined the throng struggling to obtain tickets. The cabman had scarcely reined in when a barefoot boy jumped on to the step, wrenched open the door and demanded a tip. Behind him converged match-girls, and walnut-men, beggar-boys and a troupe of young women who gave Thackeray sufficient grounds for arresting them at once. Instead, he observed a studied indifference, nonchalantly stroking his beard while Cribb paid the fare.
At what cost to his suit Thackeray dared not contemplate, he edged towards the first-class box-office behind Cribb, grimly clutching the brim of his hat. The stench of the crowd brought water to his eyes; he was ready to abandon the sergeant altogether if they were unable to book a box, where the fumes rising from the footlights usually obliterated all other odours. At length they arrived at a hole in the wall and Cribb pushed a florin forward. An oddly-illuminated face inside creased into a grimace. Perhaps for a small consideration the two gentlemen might like the management to arrange for a pair of dainty companions to share their box? Cribb turned and lifted a wicked eyebrow. Thackeray shook his head so emphatically that he felt his hat slip round. He hoped to Heaven Cribb was joking.
Taking the numbered tin disc which served as a ticket, an old crone, their boxkeeper, led them through a darkened passage not unlike the corridors of Newgate, except that this one was lined with unaccompanied young ladies. The detectives marched resolutely past, their feet crunching on a carpet of walnut-and filbert-shells. They mounted some stairs, paid the old woman her due and entered their box.
‘Now there’s a high old scene!’ said Cribb with undisguised relish. The position of their box, some ten feet above stage-level and actually built on to the fore-stage, gave a view of the entire auditorium, brilliantly lit by six huge sun-burners turned fully on. Nine rows of tables extended from the orchestra pit along the length of the sanded floor into shadow and smoke beneath the circle. There, shopmen and clerks sat in hundreds, in snowy shirts and dress-suits with recklessly cut-down waistcoats and protruding crimson handkerchiefs—the swells of Southwark that night for two shillings and the price of a buttonhole. A barrage of gin-born good humour passed between tables, punctuated by occasional sharp reports and cheers as somebody collapsed an opera hat or withdrew a cork. Women with cigarettes and painted eyes sat bonnet to bonnet with respectable wives and saucer-eyed children. At intervals the chorus of a music hall song rose and died somewhere in the hall to a measure of stamping feet. At the sides of the seated area beyond the railings and the promenades were the bars, glittering with brass and pewter, polished beer-pumps and gilded mirrors, where overworked waiters urged barmaids to hurry with their orders. Even when their trays were loaded, they still faced the frustration of struggling for a passage between the press of promenaders to reach the tables.
Corinthian columns sprouted here and there as supports for the sixpenny gallery, which was fronted by an army of plaster and gilt cherubs pursuing buxom nymphs among the gas-brackets. Less lavishly, the bowler-hatted customers above were ranged on plank-seats without cushions. In the cheapest gallery above that, where up to a thousand of the lower orders massed, there were no seats provided—only crowd barriers to prevent a disaster.
‘Seeing it from this viewpoint,’ remarked Thackeray, ‘I’m uncommon thankful I don’t have to give a performance.’
‘At a wage of ten pounds or more I’d sing a couple of songs all right,’ said Cribb. ‘That’s more than the Chief Superintendent himself takes home. They say the Vital Spark—Miss Jenny Hill—is booked for more than fifty a week.’
‘I think they earn every penny of it, Sarge, skedaddling across London in cabs to fit in three or four halls a night.’
Cribb sniffed. ‘I suppose you think you’re better off padding your hoof round Bermondsey all night for thirty-five bob a week, after thirty years’ service.’
The opening of the door behind them stifled Thackeray’s reply.
‘Now ’ere’s two ’andsome gentlemen what look the sort to ’ave one of me kidney-pies,’ said the fat woman. ‘You won’t? They’re ’ot and fresh, I warrant you, gents. No? Perhaps I could fetch you up a plate of natives, then? Swill ’em down with your fizz.’
Cribb glanced towards Thackeray, who had a weakness for oysters.
‘Not on thirty-five bob,’ the constable said with a smile.
Action below, the arrival of the orchestra, was greeted with hoots and cheering from the auditorium. The sun-burners were turned low and the footlights flickered into tall, yellowish flames. The conductor took his stance among the instrumentalists and bowed with great seriousness. This evoked a storm of good-natured abuse, which he summarily quelled with the overture to ‘Carmen’.
A waiter arrived in the box and was sent for two pints of Bass East India, ‘But don’t for a moment forget you’re on duty,’ Cribb warned Thackeray, shouting to compete with the orchestra. ‘At the first sign of an accident you’re going down on to that stage.’
The constable nodded, and peered over the drop to the boards. He was no coward, but he had a shrewd idea that fourteen stone descending ten feet that way would add another name to the casualty-list. Fortunately the moulding on the front of the box suggested a safer route. By taking a hand-hold on a cupid’s upturned rump he could reach the curtain of the box below. From there, if nothing gave way, a sliding descent would bring him smoothly to stage-level.
‘Sometimes they make something look like a mishap to give the audience a thrill, Sarge. Like a trapeze-artiste dropping off his trapeze and then being caught by his partner. I wouldn’t want to make a—’
‘What are you saying?’ bawled Cribb.
‘It don’t matter,’ said Thackeray, philosophically.
The overture ended with a clash of cymbals, and a beam of limelight from the circle picked out a small table at the front of the hall. The chairman, a hulk of unbelievable girth, doffed his hat.
‘On your feet!’ demanded the audience.
He shook his head. His chins quivered like a freshly turned-out blancmange.
‘Up! Up! Up!’
Unperturbed, he lit a cigar, and the chanting rose to a frenzy.
He placed his hands on the edge of the table, leaned forward slowly, flexed, strained and then subsided, shaking his head.
‘Lord bless you, Billy,’ somebody shouted. ‘You can’t manage it no more!’ Half the audience doubled up laughing.
Three knocks from Billy’s gavel restored order. ‘Stow your jaws!’ he commanded in a voice that brooked no nonsense. ‘And watch this.’
He handed the gavel and his cigar to one of the guests at his table and another cleared its surface of tankards. With profound concentration, Billy placed his palms flat on the table like a medium, took a huge breath, and commenced rocking slowly forward from his chair-back. Then with a decisive grunt he projected himself suddenly forward and up from the seat. There was an agonising second of uncertainty as his arms took the strain, before his legs straightened and he stood erect, his small eyes darting contemptuously over the audience. Thunderous applause revived his good humour. Again he sounded the gavel.
‘Well, you merciless rabble, since I ’appen to be on my feet I might as well tell you what you’ve got in store tonight. It’s a regular jamboree of delights—a bill that’ll touch your ’earts while it’s ticklin’ your fancies at the same time.’ (Exaggerated groans from the regulars and shrieks of scandalised laughter from the pit.) ‘And not a word nor a sight to offend even the most delicate-minded females among you.’ (‘Shame!’) ‘You think so, madam? So do I. Meet me after the show and I’ll remedy that deficiency.’ (‘Oy! Oy!’ from the gallery.) ‘But now without more ado to the first delicacy of the evening. Fresh from ’er successes at the London Pavilion’ (an awed shout of ‘Ooh!’) ‘the Metropolitan’ (‘Ooh!’) ‘and the Tivoli Garden,’ (a prolonged, suggestive ‘Ah!’) ‘here to charm you with her ditties,’ (‘Lovely!’) ‘Miss Ellen Blake!’
A flurry of violin-bows; the strains of Fresh as the New-Mown Hay; the irresistible chink of curtain-rings; and Miss Blake was revealed in a long satin dress with broad white and lilac stripes, palms extended across the safety-rail and head thrust back to catch the glow of the footlights on her neck and chin. Wayward wisps of blonde hair fluttered against her bonnet in the upsurge of warm air. Constable Thackeray found himself reconsidering a spectacular leap to the rescue.
‘She’s a stunner, ain’t she, Sarge?’
‘Keep yourself in check, man. Lord, you’re foaming at the mouth.’
‘That’s the head on the ale, Sarge,’ protested Thackeray, wiping his beard with a large chequered handkerchief.
Miss Blake’s assault upon Fresh as the New-Mown Hay may have lacked somewhat in gusto, but the rapid transition after that to ‘Moonlight Promenade’ was executed with undoubted professionalism. This was a stronger melody, and involved a few mincing steps to right and left in which the emphasis was diverted from her voice to her figure, to the general satisfaction of the audience. Even so, she was having to compete with pockets of conversation from the galleries and open lack of interest at some of the tables. And when the opening bars of a third song were played, there were blatant groans.
‘Take a hold on yourself, Thackeray, for God’s sake,’ said Cribb. ‘You look as solemn as a blasted tombstone. She’s getting a damned good hearing. Wasn’t many years ago they covered the orchestra with netting to protect them from rotten fruit that fell short of duff performers.’
The sprinkle of applause at the end was more in relief than enthusiasm, but Miss Blake seemed satisfied, took her curtseys, blew kisses to someone still enthusiastic enough to whistle, and left the stage.
‘And now to chill your precious ’earts,’ announced the chairman from his seated position, ‘we ’ave a visitor from the wilds of North America. You’ve ’eard of ’Iawatha? Yes, my friends, a genuine Red Indian. What do you think ’e calls ’imself? Not Runnin’ Water—no-one cares for that ’ere. Not Bleedin’ Wolf—there’s enough of them about already. No, ladies, it’s your ’eart-throb, the man with the ’atchets—Gleamin’ Blade!’
Cymbals crashed, the front-cloth was lifted up into the flies, and the mediums, sets of coloured glass worked on the lever principle, filtered the footlight flames, to immerse the stage in Satanic crimson. A prancing Red Indian, with a tomahawk in each hand, dominated the centre, whooping and chanting. Upstage was a board the size of a door, surmounted with a totem-like carved head. The redskin momentarily interrupted his war-dance to hurl a tomahawk in that direction. It cut into the wood with a fearful thud. The audience’s unified gasp died in their throats as the second tomahawk was buried deep beside the first. With a shriek, the Indian retrieved both weapons and leapt round to face the audience. Thackeray tensed. Cribb’s restraining hand touched his arm. A drum-roll promised fresh horrors. ‘My God, Sarge! Look over there!’ Waiting out of sight of the rest of the audience in the wings opposite was a young woman in fleshings and a skimpy bodice and breech-clout. A single vertical feather was attached to her head. The hatchet-thrower now ran to the side of the stage, grabbed her wrist and pulled her, apparently struggling to escape, towards the board. There were screams from several parts of the hall.
‘Be ready, then,’ said Cribb, ‘but wait for the word from me!’
Thackeray leaned forward, poised for sudden movement, like the survivor in a game of musical chairs. On the stage below, the girl was being secured by rope to the totem. The Indian spoke a few words to her and then backed some twelve feet away. She waited, helplessly spreadeagled, as the drum-roll began again.
‘Not yet,’ muttered Cribb.
At the Indian’s feet were six tomahawks, glinting in the sinister illumination. He stooped for the first two. The drums reached their climax. His arm swung back behind his head and with a fiendish shriek he flung the first weapon. It hit the board, shuddering, six inches to the left of her waist.
‘One!’ shouted those of the audience able to speak.
The second tomahawk matched the first on the right.
‘Two!’
He picked up two more. The first came perilously close to her left knee.
‘Three!’
‘Four!’
The last two. They would have to be aimed at each side of her head. The Indian sighted his throw and, with awful menace, slowly drew back the weapon. A yell!
‘Five!’ Within two inches of the ear.
A final drum-roll.
The hurtling blade shimmered in flight.
‘Six!’ Shouted in huge relief, and topped with a storm of clapping and stamping.