Act of Murder (13 page)

‘O Constancy, be strong upon my side!’

*

They were both surprised when Ethel Grundy opened the door to the Cowburn house and gave a snort of disgust. ‘Well, if it isn’t one of the three blind mice!’
was the way she addressed a red-faced Constable Bowery. ‘My Nat’s had to miss a day’s work ’cos o’ you an’ your bully boys. Come to pay yer respects an’
stand him a round, have yer? We’re only next door.’

‘We did consider bringing him in and charging him with impeding the pursuit of a fugitive,’ said Slevin, coining a new offence and watching her anger turn to concern.

She gave a nod to the Cowburns’ front room behind her. ‘Well, I can’t stand here wi’ you lot. Young Vi’s inside. I’ve been lookin’ after her.
There’s no bugger else’ll do it, is there?’ She moved quickly from the doorstep and entered her own house, slamming the front door with pointed force.

The Cowburn door being left conveniently open, they gave another cursory tap on the knocker and went inside.

Violet Cowburn was seated in an armchair facing a roaring fire. She didn’t turn around, even though it was obvious she was aware of their presence.

‘Afternoon, Violet,’ said Slevin, who introduced himself. ‘You’ve already met Constable Bowery.’

‘Oh aye. Fair made me heart stop when I woke up in yon hospital bed and saw that ugly face starin’ down at me. Thought I’d died an’ gone to hell.’

‘I can sympathise,’ Slevin said, with a sly wink at his colleague, and took a seat in the chair opposite the girl.

He saw the pain etched deep in her face, a face which, under other circumstances, would have been quite fetching. Her light brown hair was tightly parted down the middle, although wisps of hair
hung limply above her eyes, which had a dull, glazed cast. Both her cheeks were flushed red from the intensity of heat from the coals, and as she sat there he noticed how she placed her right hand
from time to time against her ribcage, and how at such times her eyes narrowed into slits expressive of an intense agony.

‘We need to ask you a few questions, Violet.’

‘He’s not here.’

‘Who?’

‘Me dad. Not been back. I was thinkin’ of sendin’ for you, matter of fact.’ She gave a weak laugh, then clutched her side as the pain seared through her body.

‘My constable tells me that your fall yesterday was an accident.’

‘’S’right.’

‘And the row between you and your father was just a coincidence.’

‘Me dad did nothin’.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’ He paused and gave Bowery a glance.

‘So you lot can stop houndin’ him. He’s done nowt wrong.’

‘It’s actually about someone else that we’ve come to see you, Violet.’

‘Oh?’

‘According to our information, there was a man here when your father came home from work.’

‘Ethel bloody Grundy.’

‘Pardon?’

‘That one should keep her ear from our bloody wall. Funny it’s not got mildewed. She’s just been in now, fussin’.’

‘It’s what neighbours do. She must be worried about you.’

‘She wants to know what’s what.’ But from the subdued tone of her voice, it was apparent that she had welcomed her neighbour’s concern.

‘But the man who fled . . . shall we say your father’s wrath? This man. Who was he?’

Violet shrugged. ‘Don’t know what you’re on about.’

‘A man was seen running away from here, Violet. A man who was being chased by your father. We have an idea who he was, by the way.’

‘Well then, why ask me? You can’t arrest a man for just . . . bein’ here. Can you?’

‘No, indeed not.’ Slevin looked up at Bowery, who was standing near the front door and watching the girl intently.

‘But if you could tell us his name, it would help us in a completely different . . . situation.’

‘Why? What’s he done then?’

‘Nothing,’ said Slevin truthfully. ‘Nothing that we know of. Nothing unlawful, that is.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Violet, last night a man was brutally murdered in the Royal Hotel.’

She caught her breath, clutched once more at her ribs. ‘What?’

‘Please can you tell us the name of the man who ran from your house last evening?’

He saw her eyes dash frantically around the room, focusing on nothing in particular but searching for something to hang on to. She reminded Slevin of a cornered animal. He knew what desperate
thoughts were racing around her mind, and most of them concerned not Mr Richard Throstle but her father.

‘Who got murdered?’

‘I’m afraid it was Richard Throstle.’

Her eyes grew wide with shock. He could see tiny images of flames reflected in her pupils.

‘He was the man your father went after, wasn’t he?’

Violet merely sat there, unable for a few seconds to comprehend the horror of what she had just been told.

‘We just need to speak to your father, Violet. It would help if we knew where he was likely to be.’

‘I don’t know!’ she screamed. ‘Leave me alone.’

She tried to get up, but the pain was too much and she slumped back in the armchair. At that moment, the front door flew open and Constable Bowery was struck with tremendous violence by a
flailing fist. Before he could respond, Slevin was pinned to the chair by several men who tore through the back door with the force of a hurricane. Within a few seconds he was staring at the
sharpened blade of a hunting knife as it moved ever closer to his throat.

5

Benjamin waited for Herbert to arrive from Mrs O’Halloran’s.

Herbert had complained of a headache and severe tiredness, and so their good landlady had allowed him to return to his room once he had breakfasted. During the night, he and Benjamin had slept
together for the first time, and they had giggled and joked about having first-night nerves. Then the warmth, the proximity of their bodies and the heated embraces that seemed to go on for ever,
had combined with the still-lingering sense of elation at their first-night success to give both of them a feeling of not just liberation but wild abandon. Herbert had been drunk, of course, but
that made him no less attentive, and the night had passed so quickly that it had come as quite a shock when Mrs O’Halloran had knocked on Benjamin’s door with her veiled admonition.

They had giggled almost like schoolchildren as her heavy tread receded, and, after Benjamin had carefully checked that the landing was clear, Herbert had stolen back to his own room.

The night had made Benjamin feel much younger, given him a sensation of well-being that was almost intoxicating. He had not demurred when, with a conspiratorial wink, Herbert had told Mrs
O’Halloran of his mythical headache.

‘I just need some bloody sleep,’ he had whispered in Benjamin’s ear when she left the small front room. ‘I’ll be along later.’

So instead of catching the omnibus into town, Benjamin had felt a good brisk walk would be in order, his mood still one of such contentment that it was all he could do to refrain from smiling
inanely at anyone who passed him.

He should have known it wouldn’t last.

As he sat in the front row of the empty theatre, gazing up at the stage and the painted scene depicting the garden at the Grange where Will Denver is finally and happily restored to his family
and all wrongs have been righted, he felt his earlier elation transform itself into a dark presentiment of sadness.

Herbert had lied to him.

‘And how’s Mr Koller this morning, sir?’ the stage-doorman had asked as he entered the theatre by the side entrance.

‘He is very well, Norman,’ Benjamin had replied jovially.

‘Must have the constitution of a lion, then.’

Benjamin frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, he seemed quite partial to the stout. Quite partial.’

‘Stout? What on earth are you talking about, man?’

So the stage-doorman told him.

It was always the way, wasn’t it? Was it for ever his life’s curse that any joy should be merely ephemeral, like the flash of lightning that inevitably heralds the storm? Back in
London there had been a succession of young men – stage-hands, aspiring actors, even a dramatist for one delicious summer – yet they all flared brilliantly like a thousand lucifers
until the inevitable darkness came. Convention, fear of discovery, leading to the inevitable shame of exposure and incarceration, combined to turn burning passion into cold feet.

Until Herbert. They had been together now for two months – secretly, of course. Yet until last night they had never fully consummated their feelings. Wasn’t it the cruellest of
ironies that such glorious abandon should be followed by suspicion and betrayal?

Questions buzzed around his brain like persistent and angry wasps. He recalled their heated words of the previous night, as Herbert, accusing him of dallying with one of the supers, had suddenly
stormed out of the reception. And before he could give chase, that poltroon of a mayor had insisted on introducing him to a succession of colliery owners, bankers and ‘eminent
merchants’. The mayor had then insisted on arranging for a hackney to be brought ‘at the town’s expense’, and he had been beside himself with worry as he clattered through
the thick fog with Jonathan Keele’s words of warning ringing in his ears, only to find Herbert looming out of the fog like an apparition, walking hurriedly along Darlington Street, a few
doors away from Mrs O’Halloran’s.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ he had roared.

‘I’ve been wandering round this Hades like a lost soul,’ Herbert had snapped. ‘I wanted to be alone.’

‘Alone!’ He had almost fallen out of the cab in his haste and his anger. As the carriage rattled off into the oblivion of mist, he had felt the strongest of urges to throttle the
young swine.

But then Herbert had smiled. Such a disarming smile!

‘Alone, Benjie, because I wanted to be sure.’

‘Sure? Sure about what?’

‘About what I want us to do when you invite me into your bed.’

He would remember those words, uttered with such gentleness, such passion, for the rest of his life. They had entered the house then, making sure to sound the closing of both their doors, before
Herbert came silently into his room, into his bed, and into his arms.

He heard footsteps backstage, and braced himself for what he must do. From the wings came Herbert’s tall, familiar figure, and he strolled on stage with that casual, lithesome confidence
that just stopped short of a swagger.

‘Benjie! What on earth are you doing down there? We did the acoustic test yesterday, remember?’

‘Yes. No, Herbert, please don’t come down. Not yet.’ He raised an imperious hand, and Herbert, who was about to descend, stopped centre-stage.

‘What’s this? An audition? I thought you said last night I fitted the part perfectly.’ There was a lascivious leer on his face, and a mocking tone in his voice that Benjamin
hadn’t heard before. Or had it been there all the time and he simply hadn’t detected it?

‘No. I just want to talk. Don’t worry, there is no one here at the moment. The stage-hands aren’t due for another hour.’

‘You want to talk? Is that all, Benjie?’

Again, did his words contain parody, a trace of mockery? In the absence of the gas lighting in the auditorium, Herbert’s face was shrouded in shadow, the only illumination coming from the
wings.

‘Last night,’ Benjamin began.

‘Oh, by all means let’s discuss last night.’ His voice – seductive and alluring, or teasing and derisive?

‘I mean after the mayor’s reception.’

‘You had better explain, Benjie.’

‘I have discovered that you weren’t exactly honest with me.’

‘
Discovered
? Good Lord, this sounds like the work of an informer. Or a tattle-tale. Yet again!’

‘You told me you wished to be alone.’

‘Correct.’

‘But now I find out you went to a hotel.’

Herbert laughed loudly, raising his head and holding out his arms. When he spoke, it was in the words and the sharp Cockney tones of Henry Corkett. ‘I say, you know – I’ll just
tell you how this happened – now it ain’t my fault, it’s my misfortune.’

Benjamin recognised the lines from
The Silver King
, at the climax of the play, where young Corkett is caught red-handed with Lady Blanche Wynter’s jewels and taken into custody by
Detective Baxter. ‘It would become you better, Herbert, if you refrained from frivolity and simply told me the truth.’

In spite of the exhortation to remain where he was, Herbert took a sudden run towards the orchestra pit and overleaped it with amazing agility. Benjamin gasped at the physical audacity of the
move.

‘Now then,’ Herbert moved along the row of seats until he came to the one beside Benjamin. ‘May I?’

Benjamin nodded, thrown somewhat by the display of gymnastics he had just witnessed.

‘First of all, who let the cat out of the bag, shall we say?’

‘I was told in confidence.’

‘Confidence? Ah. Wonderful word, that.’

‘I simply want to know why you went to the Royal Hotel, which lies, incidentally, in the opposite direction to Darlington Street and the bed we shared in the early hours . . .’

‘I wished to be anonymous. Alone. Where I could allow myself to become one of the audience. Before assuming a role I have wanted for so long now.’ He grinned salaciously. ‘A
part I have longed for.’

‘But you didn’t tell me.’

‘Why on earth should I?’ He leaned closer so that his voice became a whisper. ‘Do you want me to admit that I was nervous? That I really did have first-night nerves? And I
needed a drink to steady myself. Is that what you want? Because it’s true. I did need a drink. As I told you last night, I have never done what we did.’

Benjamin looked down into the darkness.

‘Well, then. Allow me sometimes to breathe, Benjie. Besides, you know there are times when I need to be away from those I am working alongside so closely. It’s a form of release.
Please don’t be angry.’ He placed a hand on Benjamin’s clenched fist and stroked it slowly, curling his finger along each knuckle, opening out and caressing his palm in tiny,
sensuous circles.

‘I am not angry,’ said Benjamin. It was barely a whisper. He glanced up at the stage, dark and soulless now, and felt his heart beat at a lighter pace. They would be alone for some
time yet.