Act of Murder (7 page)

Bowery, who felt it unnecessary to offer a verbal response, opted for silence.

‘Yet this someone was a completely innocent man who just happened to be walking home through the alleyway?’

A nod. He held back the excuse offered by the other two constables – that all these bloody miners looked the same when covered in coal dust.

‘An innocent man whom your men knocked into the middle of next week? So, Constable Bowery, tell me this.’ He walked over and put his face inches from the perspiring constable.
‘Where in God’s name is William Cowburn? Hum?’

‘Don’t know, sir. But we’ve got a notice out to all the lads. Keep a sharp eye out for the bugger.’

Captain Bell smiled, but there was no warmth in it. ‘Sharp eye, eh?’

‘Yes, sir. He’ll turn up. Where can he go?’

His tormentor treated the question as rhetorical. ‘Any idea why he threw his daughter downstairs?’

‘His neighbour said she’d heard a racket earlier when Cowburn got home. Seen a man running past her window. Hell for leather.’

‘What man?’

‘Dunno, sir. She only caught a glimpse. Then Cowburn licks out after ’im. I don’t reckon he was offerin’ him a cup of tea.’

‘How’s the girl?’

‘Paintbrush – I mean, Constable Turner – is up at the infirmary now. I sent him to sit with her till she come round.’ Bowery lowered his helmet as he spoke, quite proud
of this show of initiative on his part.

‘Well, get Constable Turner back and take his place. It’s called clearing up your own mess. It’s what makes us different from animals, constable. Don’t you
think?’

Captain Bell watched Bowery turn and leave the room. Damn the fellow! Time was that such slackness would have brought forth a charge and a spell in an incarceration cell with extra duties and
loss of privileges. Even that was comparatively lenient. There had been a time in the army when incompetence like that shown by Bowery would be punishable by flogging. He even remembered ordering
one feckless individual to be branded, the letters BC on his forehead denoting Bad Character. Only in Constable Bowery’s case it would stand for Bovine Clown.

He glanced up at the clock hanging on the wall of his office. Six-twenty. He was cutting it fine. Of all the nights to be called upon to issue a reprimand! If he moved quickly he just had time
to dress for the theatre. Briskly he lifted his topcoat from the peg by the door and left the room. As he did so, he almost collided with his detective sergeant, Samuel Slevin.

‘Ah, sergeant!’

‘Sir.’

‘You finished for the day?’

‘Yes, sir, unless . . .’

‘Oh no. There’s nothing that can’t wait.’ The chief constable was halfway down the corridor when he called over his shoulder, ‘Only our constables making a
pig’s ear of something that should be a simple arrest.’ He turned as he reached the far door.

Slevin saw the unusual glint in his superior’s eye, a flicker of anticipation that animated his normally cadaverous features. It wasn’t his place to ask the obvious question, though.
It would smack almost of insubordination.

‘Well, I must dash, sergeant.
The Silver King
awaits, eh?’ With that cryptic pronouncement he breezed through the door and disappeared from view.

Slevin gave a shrug and followed at a similarly rapid pace. If he hurried, he could be home in ten minutes – and then he might get half an hour with his son Peter before Sarah took him
upstairs.

As he passed the entrance to the Royal Court Theatre, he saw a crowd was already forming along the pavement for the evening performance, and some of the more elegantly dressed were already
inside, talking animatedly. He caught sight of the huge playbill advertising the production,
The Silver King
, and smiled to himself. Some detective he was. This notice had stared him in the
eye for the past week as he made his way home to Wallgate, and yet he had appeared confused when Captain Bell mentioned it.

He raised his hat to the bored young lady who sat in the tiny booth in the foyer, and the response he got – a sort of puzzled frown and a scowl for his impertinence – only served to
heighten his good humour.

*

Enoch Platt stood outside the Public Hall, clapping his hands together as fast as he could. He was of average height and sturdily built, his shoulders curved downwards from a
thick, sinewy neck. He was somewhere in his late forties, and his grey-black hair hung in matted strands like dead snakes. He wore a dark brown overcoat, open to the waist to reveal a filthy
collarless shirt that must have once been white. His thick black moustache hung over his mouth, obscuring his upper lip completely.

Those queueing to go in, most of whom knew him at least by sight, gave him glances ranging from sympathy, amusement and annoyance to barely concealed antipathy. Enoch, in return, gave each one
of them a glowering scowl and scrutinised their faces with especial and disconcerting closeness. Or rather, not so much their faces as their eyes. Once he had fixed someone with his eyes, that
person had only two options – to look away or to challenge and confront. For most people, the former was infinitely preferable.

Some did take verbal exception to his penetrating glare. But once it reached the point of physical contact, Enoch generally came out on top, straddling the one who had suddenly become his enemy
and drooling saliva onto his face as he thumped and cursed in rapid succession.

Now he was clapping his hands with such ferocity that he suddenly reached a crescendo of manic applause; then he stopped and stared intently at one of the people queueing, a man standing with
one foot on the stone steps of the building. He was a man of similar age to Enoch, but smaller in stature, the faint traces of black etched around his eyes betraying the slightly haunted look of
the miner. Beside him his wife held onto his arm and pulled it closer to her.

‘I see you!’ cried Enoch in that curiously hoarse rasp of a voice. He had raised an arm and was pointing a thick finger in the man’s direction. ‘Another waitin’ at
t’doors of hell!’

Unlike most of his selected victims, this man turned his gaze fully upon Enoch.

‘Sod off, Enoch,’ he said with a snarl.

Enoch stepped forward until he was a matter of inches from the man’s face. Their eyes locked together.

‘I been there!’ Enoch rasped. ‘I seen hell!’

Those behind were rather startled to see the man lean forward, so that his nose was almost touching Enoch’s. Only the ones standing closest to the tableau heard what the man said next.

‘Aye. An’ I’ve seen it too. An’ I’m not likely to forget it. Now piss off!’

There was what appeared to be a flicker of recognition in Enoch’s eyes. Whatever the cause, it was sufficient for him to pull his head back and divert his glare elsewhere. He stepped back
to survey the queue and once more began to clap, slowly this time, as he scanned the faces for another victim.

*

All eyes were on the splendidly ornate box where the mayor of Wigan and his lady wife were about to take their seats. The first sight the audience got was the brightly
glittering chain of office made of sterling silver, the gilt shoulder-pieces with the seal inscription ‘
Sigilum Comune Villae et Burgide Wigan
’ resting proudly on his broad
shoulders. His worship beamed down on the audience with a paternal pride and gave them all a hearty wave. The Royal Court Theatre was packed to the rafters, and surely this gave the lie to those
who had mocked the idea of such a prestigious touring company spending time in the borough for the entertainment and edification of not just the middle classes but, hopefully, the labouring classes
too.

Suddenly there was a hush in the theatre as the orchestra struck the opening chords and the various lamps around the upper boxes and down below began to dim slowly. Then the curtain opened, and
the audience applauded – and some of them ventured an appreciative whistle – at the bright and startling colours that depicted the skittle alley at the Wheatsheaf, Clerkenwell.

*

Meanwhile, as the audience at the Royal Court Theatre were watching that faithful old servant Jaikes wander into the Wheatsheaf in search of his dear master Will Denver,
another audience, composed mainly of those from the labouring classes, was being entertained in a far more dramatic and macabre fashion not fifty yards away.

Having weathered the storm of righteous outrage Enoch Platt had unleashed upon them, they were given a foretaste of what to expect as they entered the hall through an elaborately constructed
passageway covered in black cloth. All along the winding route to their seats, they saw lurid figures of hooded monks with faces hidden deep in the shadows cast by heavy cowls. There were drawings
of gravestones shifted from the perpendicular with gaping black holes beneath, and wizened bodies hanging from gibbets, ravens pecking at their bloodied eyes.

The Public Hall, where Richard Throstle’s
Phantasmagoria
was about to begin, was abuzz with anticipation. Word had spread around the town that this was no ordinary magic lantern
show. Some who had already witnessed the performance had sworn vehemently that darker forces were at work here, that the sudden and ghoulish appearance of spirits and goblins was not solely the
product of Mr Throstle’s legerdemain and expertise, and that the things they had seen (and, according to some, the things they had
felt
) owed some of their existence to the forces of
the Devil, for surely it was only Lucifer himself who could create such devilish and gruesome scenes. They were unwilling to discount Enoch’s warnings out of hand, whatever they might say to
the poor fool.

‘Another full house,’ Georgina whispered as Richard stood behind the makeshift curtain prior to his dramatic appearance.

‘Yes,’ her husband replied, although the way he scanned row after row of excited customers betrayed a less than enthusiastic appreciation of another rewarding night’s work.

‘Whatever is the matter?’ she snapped.

‘Nothing.’

Georgina frowned and placed a hand on his arm. Now was not the time for him to perform below par. Audiences were notoriously fickle, and the platitudinous saying still held true: you were only
as good as your last performance.

‘You surely don’t think those ruffians will be in the audience, do you?’

‘Of course not.’

‘If they were, as you say, card sharps, well it would do them no good to pursue you simply because you accused them. It would draw unwarranted attention to themselves. Besides, look at the
number of witnesses we can call upon.’

‘I know,’ replied Richard, whose eyes were looking for someone else entirely. If that brute of a father, who didn’t seem to be the sort of chap who would baulk at the presence
of a thousand witnesses, should barge his way into the auditorium and launch his accusations before launching his fists . . . He could still hear the clang of heavy iron against the metal frame of
the tram window as the vile beast had hurled his poker in a final, frustrated attempt to injure him.

But he could see no such person. Perhaps hiding behind the bedroom door as the cretin burst into Violet’s bedroom hadn’t been such a bad idea. He couldn’t have had a very good
look at him. Might only have seen his retreating back, for he had certainly kept his head down. And he felt sure young Violet would have kept his name firmly from her lips. Oh, if only he had shown
some restraint and spurned his baser instincts! It was only another romp, and she had warned him of the imminence of her father’s return. But he knew what his baser instincts were like:
impossible to refuse, impossible to satisfy. They would get him into serious trouble one day, he had no doubt.

Georgina watched as the assistants made the final checks on the lanterns. The biunial projector, a masterpiece of mahogany and brass, was their most expensive and effective piece. It was already
lit, but she went over to ensure the supply of oxygen and hydrogen, controlled by two small valves within the frame, was correct. Once the combined force of the gases became lit, it produced a
powerful jet that illuminated the block of limelight, which in turn gave off the brightest of lights, the equivalent of a thousand candles, more than enough illumination to enable both the
photographic slides and the hand-painted images to fill the screen with a crystal clarity.

‘It’s time!’ urged his wife. ‘No more delay!’

‘How do I look?’

‘Suitably ghoulish, Richard. Just the right amount of white powder to bring out the evil in your cheekbones.’

Richard Throstle took a deep breath and walked slowly, with his usual funereal gait, to the raised dais at the front of the hall to face his audience. Behind him, a chromatrope display of
kaleidoscopic images in sombre reds and blacks was slowly rotating, creating an almost mesmeric backdrop to what he was about to say.

The applause had barely died down when he raised his hands and pointed to the large screened area behind him. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began in sonorous, heavy tones, ‘there
are forces at work in this world of ours that we have no control over. Death is with us always, and the shadows that pursue us beyond the grave are the very stuff of our nightmares. Tonight, we are
going to see a display of evil, a display of such terrifying vividness that I urge – nay, I beg – each and every one of you to remain firmly seated in your places and grasp the hands of
your loved ones. For it is only by the love we feel for each other, that strength of Christian fellowship that burns so strongly inside us all, that we can defeat the wild and savage spirits that
we will see displayed all around us this night.’

He paused, as he always did. Now he had them. He looked into their eyes, wide and sparkling, saw the clandestine way even the largest of fellows held on to his wife’s hand in a show of
manly support. He held the silence for a further minute before walking slowly to the rear of the hall, where the first of his machines – the praxinoscope – would lull the audience into
a false sense of well-being, with its early slides of dancing dervishes rapidly flashing through the drum to give the appearance of movement. Then, the rising skeleton would be next, after which he
would move to the centrepiece of his show, the
Phantasmagoria
and the unearthly visions it cast all around the room, rendered even more sinister by his ghoulishly compelling narrative. He
patted the triunial lantern resting nearby, with its stack of three lenses and its brass and mahogany outlines displaying something far more polished, far more powerful than anything these people
had ever seen before. Soon it would be used to its full potential, dissolving and mixing those special effects that would align themselves with the other wheeled lanterns to create a spine-tingling
spectacle they would talk about for years.