Murder At The Music Hall: (Auguste Didier Mystery 8) (6 page)

At five to seven the faces pressed to the glass began to disappear, as each straightened up on its body to prepare itself for the grand charge ahead. It was, Auguste realised with dread in his heart, time for his first customers. An aged gentleman who had apparently crept from the hearthside of one of Mr Dickens’ novels, judging by his attire, had now taken his place at the bar – presumably the ‘old Jacob’ to whom Jowitt had referred. It was conceivable, Auguste supposed, that he might move with lightning dexterity when customers appeared, but improbable. There would be fewer now than later, he understood, for it was more important to secure and defend one’s place than to feed one’s stomach for those who had paid their shilling for a
fauteuil
or ninepenny seat in the circle. And at any moment from now, he realised to his horror, Will Lamb might be arriving at the stage door, where he could be greeted by a crazed assassin or by the ghost of William Terriss. The fever pitch of excitement in the queue communicated itself to him through the window: his stomach now lurched again with something he did not at first recognise. When he identified it, he would not fully acknowledge it, but he recognised it as fear.

Thomas Yapp prepared to haul himself from his slouched
position over the bar at the back of the grand circle, and to face up to his responsibilities as chairman of the evening’s festivities. He pushed the second brandy aside. He needed all his wits about him tonight. It would be a full house, and keeping order was hard enough in the Old King Cole at the best of times. Audiences knew what they liked – and what they didn’t like, and were far from shy about letting the artistes know their opinions. This happened frequently for Jowitt couldn’t afford to pay the good acts, and had to rely on old stagers like Our Pickles and Max Hill – and, Thomas faced facts, his own wife Evangeline. Their one regular asset, Horace, the Great Brodie, had just told Jowitt he was going up West to the Alhambra. That was the last they’d see of him, even though it was the Old King Cole had made him. That was the way things went. One song caught the popular fancy, and the singer thought he was made. Horace had struck lucky with ‘Don’t Wait Up’, so off he’d trot on the golden path of West End audiences, publication, agents, pantomime work, and he’d never look back. Or would he? He was a good sort at heart. Like Nettie Turner and Will Lamb: they started here and now
they
were coming back – though not for long, thank goodness. He slumped over the bar again. Perhaps he needed a drink after all. The thought of Will Lamb and Evangeline would make anyone turn to drink.

Not to mention the Shadwell Mob!

Panic-stricken, he drained the brandy at one gulp, as Evangeline swept through the door.

‘Ah, Thomas, I’ve decided to render “I Dreamt that I Dwelt in Marble Halls”.’ She trilled happily and
untunefully, her bosom heaving in passion. “‘That you loved me, you loved me still the same”.’ The top G missed, which was just as well. Thomas Yapp watched his brandy glass gloomily; he could swear it was shivering, and about to shatter. He sympathised. It did not escape his notice that Evangeline was wearing her red satin, choker and all. She looked enormous and undefiable. Yet as her husband he felt duty-bound to try.

Evangeline was built on generous proportions, five foot ten with a width to support it that left whalebone stays creaking in protest. Her voice, she claimed, demanded sustenance. Why she should have fallen for Will Lamb, a foot shorter than herself and half her width, when she already had a fine upstanding figure of a man in Thomas Yapp had left him puzzled. Will had fortunately departed ten years ago,
but tonight he was coming back.

‘Why not sing “The Lost Chord”, my love?’

She peered at him. ‘I do believe you’re jealous,’ she said archly.

‘It’s the Shadwell Mob!’ he shouted, irritated beyond endurance.

‘What of them?’ Evangeline was scornful of pit and gallery.

‘They’re sending a chirruping mob.’

‘My dear Thomas, a Hooligan gang! The police stopped that blackmail gambit years ago.’

‘And the Shadwell Mob have revived it. They’ll kill “Marble Halls” stone dead.’ And the chairman too probably, he thought wildly.

Evangeline was used to barracking from those that
did not understand or appreciate her art, and Will had to be told her true feelings. ‘Marble Halls’ it was going to be. She’d sing ‘The Lost Chord’ over her dead body, she decided confusedly.

‘“Marble Halls”.
And
,’ she added menacingly, ‘I shall
not
sing directly after the interval. Move me!’

Yapp’s heart sank even further. True, to play the turn after the interval was the most unpopular since people wandered back late or even stayed in the bars, and when Evangeline’s number was put up on the boards nearly everyone stayed there. But didn’t she realise if it wasn’t for him, she wouldn’t have a spot at all? Oh, the unfairness of it.

‘Put young Orsini after the interval.’

‘I can’t,’ he moaned.

‘Oh, I think you
can
, Thomas,’ she replied, disappointed. ‘After all, it is for darling Will.’

Thomas’s face went as white as his starched shirt front. Suppose she realised who had had this foolish idea of inviting Will Lamb back here? She would get entirely the wrong idea. No, the sooner Will disappeared, the better. ‘I’ll do my best,’ he told Evangeline listlessly. He lurched to his feet and blindly staggered towards his position of torture for the evening.

Lizzie licked her thumb approvingly. ‘I does a good custard,’ she told Auguste proudly.

Auguste looked at the stagnant yellow pile in the canister, now minus one thumbful, and shuddered. No self-respecting egg had lent itself to that horror. Outside the last defiant wail of the tinny violin ground to a halt, and the tap-tap of the hornpipe dancer ceased as the
queue for the hall vanished entirely. Frederick’s raspy voice could be heard thanking his public for their valued custom and exhorting them to return tomorrow, and be further amazed and stupefied at his dangerous feats of sword-swallowing.

From his office upstairs, Percy Jowitt beamed as he saw the crowds vanishing into his beloved hall, and congratulated himself on being such a good employer that he could attract the likes of Nettie Turner and Will Lamb back to it. Even the threat of bailiffs ceased temporarily to worry him. Everything was lovely in his garden. He did not notice the Shadwell Mob staggering towards his kingdom.

‘Ain’t it exciting?’ Lizzie shrieked blissfully to Auguste, eyes shining.

‘This?’ Auguste lifted his head from frying battered cod with one hand and grilling mutton chops with the other. ‘Not precisely exciting. An experience.’

‘Nah. Nettie Turner coming here. “Whoa, Nellie, don’t you go too far . . .” That Donkey Song, I
luvs
it.’ Lizzie wriggled her non-existent hips in a way that suggested the Old King Cole music hall was not above pirating songs on occasions, since Auguste doubted whether Lizzie had ever visited the Empire or the other West End halls.

A flying skeleton in the form of Frederick Wolf rushed in to take up his interior position on the potatoes. Chairs scraped against floor, mutton pies passed in an endless chain to two harassed barmen who doubled as waiters, or passed direct to the clutching hands of impatient diners, the smell of mutton chops on the gridiron intensified, mingling with the smell of cooking kippers.
Mutton chops and glasses of beer apparently flew through the air to their recipients with the same dexterity as the young man on the flying trapeze. Potatoes cascaded in white crumbly torrents on to plates. Tonight Auguste would dream of potatoes, wielded with the flashing dexterity of Frederick’s hands as he first slit it open, lifted it high in one hand, the plate in the other and shot the contents of the first onto the second, turned it out in a mound of succulent crumbs. Alump of butter followed it, a dash of pepper. . . yes, tomorrow he would try spices, curry powder and cream perhaps, a dazed voice at the back of Auguste’s mind promised, as he gazed down at the smelly ha’porth and ha’porth he’d just dished up from the unappetising pans.

A roar went up from the hall, which could be heard even over the racket in the eating-room.

‘What’s that?’ Had something happened already? Surely Will had not yet arrived? Auguste dropped a chop in alarm, splashing grease on to his spotless apron.

‘Old Yapp, the chairman, taking his place, I expect,’ Lizzie replied offhandedly. ‘I like ’im. He’s a gentleman. He don’t let old Jowitt get away without paying me. His wife don’t like me, though. You wait till you see the size of her. She sings.’ Lizzie paused briefly to evaluate the truth of her words, then bawled out: ‘Come into the garden, Maud’, meanwhile doing a passable imitation of a woman four times her width. ‘Jowitt keeps them on because the crowd like him, and her because of him . . . But Yapp couldn’t control a bunch of coconuts.’ She giggled. ‘Hear that?’

Auguste did. The roar was no longer friendly.

‘Oh, it’s going to be a good evening tonight,’ Lizzie told him happily.

Auguste was not so confident, as he rushed from the eating-room to assume his duties as Will’s protector.

Some fifteen minutes earlier Nettie Turner’s carriage had drawn up outside the lodgings in Whitechapel where Will Lamb still lived, despite his fame and prosperity. No one cooked sausages like Mrs Jones.

‘All set for the costers, Will?’ she asked brightly as he climbed in beside her.

‘Oh yes.’ He beamed.

‘You’re a love, aren’t you, Will? Don’t matter to you whether we play the Empire or Hackney Coalhole just so long as you can make people laugh.’ He grinned. ‘Doesn’t it worry you at all going back, Will?’ she asked anxiously.

He shook his head vigorously. ‘No.’

‘I suppose not, with Mariella there.’ Better to get it in the open, Nettie thought to herself. The red-headed bitch would cause trouble one way or another, that was for sure.

‘Mariella,’ Will repeated excitedly, drawing out each syllable.

‘You’re still fond of her, aren’t you, Will?’

He said nothing, but even in the dim light she could see his blush.

‘Like I used to be of Harry – once.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘Fools, weren’t we? Mariella wouldn’t marry you, because you were nobody. Harry was all too eager to marry me because I wasn’t. We should have married
each other, Will, and put an end to it. Are you still fond of her?’

For answer, he took her hand in his and squeezed it. His felt more like a child’s than a man’s, and perhaps that was just how he thought of her, as a mother figure. Nettie sighed. Marriage wouldn’t have worked with Will, of course. She was vigorous, earthy, robust – and she liked a bit of fun. Will was an idealist, fragile, only half living in the real world; and as for sex, did he even know what it was? Sometimes she doubted it, though perhaps she was wrong. He wasn’t very stable, and in her experience that sometimes put the old privates into a frenzy. There was a suppressed excitement about him tonight, like a kid going to a pantomime. Only Mariella wasn’t a pantomime, from what she remembered of that young madam.

The carriage rattled over the streets towards the Old King Cole. Suddenly Will spoke. ‘Will you miss me, Nettie?’

‘What do you mean, Will?’ she asked, startled. ‘You don’t really think you’re going to get murdered, do you?’

‘I don’t know.’ He giggled nervously.

‘Don’t go.
Please,’
she said urgently. ‘I’ll stop the carriage, take you home.’

‘I
want
to go.’ He set his lips stubbornly.

She said no more, but she was even more worried than before. There was a half-smile on his lips. The smile of a kid with a secret.

Our Pickles, or to give him his full name, Harry Pickles, Cockney
comique
, stood morosely in the wings, his mind divided between the moment when in response to old
Yapp’s introduction and a flourish from the orchestra he would leap on to the stage, sweeping off his high stove hat and shout out ‘Wot cher, pals!’, and the fact that Nettie would soon be arriving at the Old King Cole. Not to mention Will. He wasn’t looking forward to seeing either of them, especially together. Nettie because she would undoubtedly want to know what he needed extra dosh for so urgently when she made him an excellent allowance to stay away from her, and Will because he’d blasted well ruined his career. Him and Brodie. Will had taken all the laughs deliberately, so there’d been none to spare for when he came on. Will deliberately made him take that spot. He was as bad as the Great Horace Brodie. At least he’d soon be rid of him in the East End halls. Brodie had had it in for him ever since they’d started over ten years ago. He’d taken all the best
comique
songs and left him with the Cockney ones. The Great Brodie didn’t like Lamb any more than he did, didn’t want the glory being taken away from his act. Brodie reckoned he was the big star round here, and it was going to spike his guns to have Lamb back. Pickles smirked. That’s why he’d suggested the idea to Jowitt. ‘Why don’t you ask Will Lamb back for a week?’ ‘Good idea, Harry,’ Jowitt had said.
‘And
Nettie, too . . .’ Pickles had added. She’d come, of course she would, if Will was coming. Lamb was the reason for Nettie’s staying away from him — must be. Why else would anyone want to leave Our Pickles, particularly an old hen like her? She said she was forty, but she must be pushing forty-five at least. He was handsome, thirty-four, five foot eight; Will was ugly, forty-five, four foot nothing and hadn’t enough ammo in his gun to fire a
shot. Not Nettie’s usual style. There must be more to it. Meanwhile tonight he was going to show her what she was missing. He grinned. Some blasted coster done up to the nines with a moustache and apron on chose that moment to wander in. ‘Piss off,’ he snarled at a startled Auguste Didier.