5 Check-Out Time (20 page)

A cloud moved over the moon as their footsteps echoed across the cobblestones of the yard. The shadow seemed to sweep over them, plunging them into darkness as it engulfed the dimly lit area.

Cecily shivered. She was becoming fanciful. This wasn’t voodoo or a dangerous black magic that no one could understand or control. Hypnotism was an acceptable science, and as such they surely had some resistance to it.

Her self-reassurance didn’t offer much comfort to her as Baxter rapped on Arthur’s door. The sound of it faded away into the darkness, and then the door abruptly opened.

Cecily’s pulse danced when she saw Arthur standing in the doorway, his face in shadow as the gaslight played on his back.

“Well, to what do I owe this very pleasant surprise, ma’am?” Arthur said, sweeping them a slight bow that was purely theatrical.

“We wish to talk with you, Arthur,” Cecily said, forcing a firm tone. “May we please come in?”

The doorman hesitated. “Could it possibly wait until the morning, ma’am? I have not had time to tidy up the place, and I’d be ashamed for you to see the mess—”

“It’s important, Arthur.”

He stood perfectly still while long seconds passed, then he sighed. “Very well.”

He stood back to let them pass, and Cecily stepped into the tiny room, followed closely by Baxter. A quick glance
told her the whole story. A suitcase lay opened on the bed, halfway filled with clothes.

“Are you planning to leave us, Barrett?” Baxter enquired, his voice dangerously quiet.

“Well, I was hoping to, yes.” Arthur pulled out a chair from under the tiny table and waved a hand at it. “Please, make yourselves at home.”

His friendly grin looked so familiar, Cecily almost doubted what she knew to be the truth. A dangerous mistake that would be, she reminded herself.

She sat herself down on the very edge of the chair. “Where are you going, Arthur? Were you not planning to inform us of your departure?”

Baxter moved to stand directly behind her, as if ready to protect her at the slightest provocation. She had to admit it gave her a most warm and welcome sensation.

“I had thought to go back to London.” Arthur sighed and directed his gaze at the ceiling. “Something tells me I won’t be doing that now.”

“I think you know that we have guessed the truth about Sir Richard Malton’s unfortunate demise,” Cecily said, clasping her hands in her lap for comfort.

“I did suspect as much, yes, ma’am.”

“And we assume that his son suffered the same fate.”

Arthur didn’t appear to be at all surprised. “I saw the boy carried from the beach. I was watching from the roof garden. I knew it would be only a matter of time before the truth came out.”

“You are a miserable cad, sir,” Baxter said forcefully, surprising Cecily into silence. “To end a man’s life is despicable enough, but to rob a young child of his life is beyond belief or understanding.”

“As it happens,” Cecily said as Arthur stared down at the floor, his face unusually solemn, “Master Stanley survived. He was able to tell us the truth.”

Arthur’s face seemed to crumple. “Thank God,” he whispered.

“We know what happened,” Cecily pressed on relentlessly, “but we’d like you to tell us the details.”

Arthur sat down heavily on the bed and rested his head in his hands. “Very well,” he said, his voice muffled, “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

CHAPTER
20

“I suppose,” Cecily said, “that we should begin with the reason you wanted Sir Richard Malton dead. I assume it’s because he caused you to lose your career.”

Arthur’s head shot up in surprise. “Career?”

Cecily smiled. “Baxter and I paid a visit to the Hippodrome in Wellercombe tonight. We met a man by the name of Harry Mattson.”

Arthur stared at her for a moment, then slowly nodded his head. “The dog handler. I remember him.”

“Yes. He told us about the theater being closed down.”

Arthur got to his feet, and Baxter moved a little closer to Cecily’s chair.

“Yes,” Arthur said, “it was the finish of my career. I’d been in show business all my life. It was all I knew. I had nothing else. When Malton had the theater closed down, he
did more than put a few entertainers out of work for a while. Much more.”

He paused, his throat working as he struggled with his emotion. “He destroyed me,” he said at last, his voice breaking. “That man took away the one thing in the world I lived for, just to satisfy his wounded pride.”

“So it was Sir Richard,” Cecily said, beginning to feel sorry for the dejected doorman. “I assumed as much.”

“It was Malton.” Arthur moved over to the window and stood with his back to the room, his hands clasped behind his back. “I swore that I would get even with him.”

Cecily exchanged a quick glance over her shoulder with Baxter. “Why did he close down the theater?” she said. “What did you mean by wounded pride?”

Arthur’s sigh seemed to settle over the entire room. “Sir Richard Malton was a well-known patronizer and benefactor of the theater. He had been attending the shows at the Royal for several months. He was also well known for using his generosity as a means of pressuring the show girls to …” Arthur coughed, appearing to be searching for the appropriate words.

“To show him special favors,” Cecily finished for him.

Baxter cleared his throat, as if embarrassed, while the doorman turned and gave her a wry smile.

“Very delicately put, ma’am. Yes, that’s what I meant. He became interested in one of the dancers in our troupe. Pretty little thing, she was, tiny and quick on her feet, with a laugh as sweet as an Irish ballad.”

Arthur stared into space, as if seeing the girl he was describing. “Anyway,” he said, coming back to earth with a start, “she would have nothing at all to do with him. She had her heart set on the stage manager, who was a good deal younger and more handsome than Malton, though to be sure, he didn’t have his money. That didn’t bother Irene, of course. She was in love, and that was all that mattered to her.”

“And so Sir Richard resented the rejection,” Cecily said, guessing where the story was heading.

“He was boiling mad.” Arthur came back and sat on the bed. “He threatened to fire her, but she paid no heed to the man. Malton went to the stage manager and ordered him to fire her, and it was then he discovered who his rival was. It didn’t take too much effort on Malton’s part to close the theater down. It was barely breaking even as it was, and he knew where to pull the strings.”

“And so you lost your booking,” Cecily said as Arthur gazed moodily at his feet.

“I lost my life,” he said quietly. “I couldn’t get work anywhere after that. The entire concept of Music Hall was changing, and I couldn’t compete with these Variety artistes. All young whips, they are, full of bright ideas, always trying something new, taking risks … I was a hypnotist. What else could I do but send people to sleep and make them do silly tricks?”

“You could have used your voice,” Baxter said dryly. “Surely there is always work for a decent singer.”

Arthur stared up at him with a faint smile. “Why, Mr. Baxter, that’s indeed the very nicest thing you have ever said to me.”

Cecily caught sight of Baxter’s scowl and said hurriedly, “Is that the reason you applied for the job at the Pennyfoot? To find an opportunity to kill Sir Richard?”

Arthur shook his head. “The thought never entered my mind at that point. I heard about the job from an acquaintance of mine. He used to work for you. Ian Rossiter is his name.”

“Ian!” Cecily felt a pang of nostalgia. “Yes, he worked for us. I hope he is happy in his new life.”

Arthur shrugged. “He seems to be doing all right, though how can you ever tell if a man is truly happy?”

“You can tell when they’re not,” Baxter said.

Cecily lifted an eyebrow at him, but he avoided her gaze.
“So it was by chance that you came upon Sir Richard Malton?” she said.

“’Twas a stroke of ill luck for both of us, I reckon.” Arthur rubbed his eyes with his long fingers. “I was attending the door one fine morning last week, and there he was. Looking just as mean and ugly as when I last saw him.”

“Did he recognize you?”

“No, no.” He dropped his hand. “He never took much notice of the male performers. He had eyes only for the women. But I recognized him all right.”

“How did you get close enough to him to hypnotize him?” Cecily asked. It was a question that had puzzled her ever since she’d suspected how Sir Richard had died.

“It wasn’t that difficult. He walked right into my hands.” A look of grim satisfaction stole across the doorman’s face. “He came back to the hotel late one night, and when I enquired about his well-being, he told me he had a very bad headache. He’d had an argument down at the George and Dragon and wasn’t too happy about it. He kept muttering about closing the place down.”

“Yes,” Cecily murmured. “Michael told me.”

“Anyway,” Arthur continued, “him mentioning closing down a business was like setting a match to an oil wick. It was adding fuel to the fire. I knew then that I wanted him dead.”

He was silent so long that Cecily thought he had said all he was going to say. But then he added, “I told him I had the perfect cure for a headache. He told me he’d tried all manner of cures, but none of them worked.”

Arthur stared at the wall, his voice dropping to a monotone. “I told him I could use hypnotism on him. That I’d learned it from my brother, who was a medical doctor. I explained how they used it in hospitals to cure all kinds of ills. I told him that not only would I take away that headache, but also I’d make sure he’d never have another one.”

Cecily felt a chill as Baxter made a strangled noise in his throat.

Arthur looked up at him. “Well, that much was true,” he said.

“So he allowed you to put him to sleep,” Cecily said, wondering how she could have misjudged this man so completely.

“Yes, I put him to sleep. I couldn’t have succeeded if he hadn’t been willing. A subject has to trust the hypnotist or he will be too tense to respond to the hypnotic suggestion.”

“Yes, I thought as much.” Even though repelled by the result, the subject continued to fascinate her. “You then told him to perform his last dance on top of the railing.”

“Yes.”

Arthur paused, and Baxter took the opportunity to say, “But he was awake when he obeyed your command?”

Arthur nodded. “Posthypnotic suggestion. The subject is put into a trance-like state, and his mind is then acceptable to suggestion. When he wakes up he will have no memory of the trance or what was said during that time. He will, however, carry out the command at the given time, without ever knowing the source of the instruction.”

“And Stanley saw you do this to his father?”

Arthur’s sigh was even louder this time. “Yes. I wasn’t aware of that fact until later. I found him trying to hypnotize himself, using his reflection in the pond. He was repeating actions and phrases that he’d seen me use with his father. I knew I had to do something before someone else saw him and eventually put two and two together.”

“So you decided to kill him,” Baxter said in disgust.

There was a long silence, then Arthur said softly, “If it makes any difference, I’m very glad the boy will survive.”

“We don’t know that,” Baxter said, earning a warning glance from Cecily.

Arthur looked from one to the other of them in surprise. “But I thought you said—”

“I stretched the truth a little,” Cecily said, feeling no shame at all.

Arthur gave her an appraising look. “A woman after me own heart. Now, if only things had been different—”

Baxter uttered a low growl, and Arthur’s shoulders slumped. “How is he doing?” he said, looking as if he were about to cry.

“I think he’ll be all right,” Cecily said, praying she was right. “We’ve sent for the doctor.”

Arthur nodded. “My prayers will be with him.”

“You’d better pray for yourself,” Baxter said harshly.

Ignoring Baxter, Arthur’s gaze sought Cecily’s. “I’m glad it’s over. My life was finished the day I left the theater for the last time, and I’m much too old to be running hither and thither, constantly watching over my shoulder.”

“I’m sorry, Arthur,” Cecily said, rising to her feet. “The constable will be arriving shortly.”

Arthur nodded. “I’ll be ready for him.”

He seemed quite pathetic, and Cecily had to force herself not to pat him on the shoulder for comfort. “We will trust you not to run, Arthur,” she said softly.

Baxter made a small sound of protest, but she shook her head at him.

“I’ll not run,” Arthur said heavily. “Where would I go? What would I do? I might as well face the music. I have nothing more to live for.”

With an ache in her heart Cecily followed Baxter out into the night and left the doorman alone with his memories.

“You look bleeding awful,” Gertie said the next morning as Ethel walked into the kitchen looking as if she’d just climbed out of bed.

“I feel awful,” Ethel muttered. “I was up all night, wasn’t I. All that worrying about Joe made me feel so sick I couldn’t sleep. I thought I’d lost him.”

“I couldn’t sleep neither.” Gertie dumped a copper urn onto the stove, slopping water over the side. “Couldn’t get
that poor kid’s face out of me mind. I hope he’s all right. I’m afraid to ask, that I am.”

She faced Ethel, who looked at her with bleary eyes. “What if he died, Ethel? How can I live with that, knowing it was my bloody fault?”

“Madam said it wasn’t your fault.” Ethel yawned and sank onto a kitchen chair.

“I know, but she was just being nice, like she always is. It was my fault, I know that. I told him lots of times he belonged at the bottom of the sea. I just know the poor kid took me at me word and flipping walked in there.”

“Well, Mrs. Chubb will be back soon, so you can ask her how he is.” Ethel pushed herself to her feet. “I suppose I’d better get some work done or I’ll be in trouble.”

Gertie peered at her friend. “’Ere, what happened with you and Joe? Did you tell him you’d marry him?”

Ethel’s face went through a remarkable transformation as she clasped her hands to her breast and smiled. “I did that. I told him as how I would go to London with him, or anywhere in the world, as long as I was with him.”

“Oo, ’ow romantic.” Gertie put a daft look on her face, clasped her hands, and gazed up at the ceiling.

Ethel snorted. “Just ’cause you’re off men, Gertie Brown, don’t mean you have to be so snotty with me.”

Gertie lowered her chin and laid an awkward arm across her friend’s shoulder. “Sorry, luv. I didn’t mean it. I think it’s wonderful that you and Joe are getting married, and I’m happy for both of you. But I ain’t half going to miss you.”

Ethel uttered a quiet sob, then thoroughly embarrassed Gertie by throwing her arms around her neck. “Oh, Gertie, luv, I’m going to miss you, too. You will come and see me, won’t you? And bring the baby? I do want to see the baby.”

“I’ll dump the little horror on yer for a week or two,” Gertie said, extricating herself from the hug. “I’ll most likely need a bloody rest now and again.”

“You don’t sound too thrilled about the baby,” Ethel said,
staring anxiously into her friend’s face. “You are all right, aren’t you?”

Gertie managed a fairly genuine laugh. “Course I’m all right, why wouldn’t I be? I just haven’t got the maternal instinct yet, that’s what. Mrs. Chubb says sometimes it doesn’t happen until after the baby is born.”

“What’s that Mrs. Chubb says?” The housekeeper’s voice made both girls jump.

Gertie’s heart started beating very fast as she looked at Mrs. Chubb’s plump face. “What about Master Stanley?” she said nervously. “Is he going to be all right?”

Bustling into the kitchen, Mrs. Chubb gave her a look of amazement. “Well, bless my cotton socks, you sound almost as if you really care.”

“I do.” Gertie took hold of the housekeeper’s arm. “It was my fault he walked into the blinking sea. Please, Mrs. Chubb, don’t bleeding keep me in ’orrible suspense. Tell me if he’s going to be all right.”

Mrs. Chubb smiled, patting the hand that gripped her arm. “He’s going to be just fine, don’t you worry about that. He’s sitting up demanding his breakfast. As a matter of fact, I was just on my way to fetch it for him. But seeing as how you are so anxious to see him, I’ll let you take a tray in to him.”

“I didn’t say as how I was that worried about him,” Gertie mumbled. “But it was my fault he nearly drowned.”

“No, it wasn’t.” Mrs. Chubb paused, then shrugged. “You might as well know, since it will be all over the hotel before the day is out.”

Gertie stared at her. “Know what?”

“It was Arthur Barrett. He used to be a hypnotist on the stage. He hypnotized Stanley and told him to walk into the sea. Madam told me all about it after the doctor and P.C. Northcott had left.”

Ethel made a small sound of astonishment, while Gertie’s jaw dropped. “Bloody hell,” she whispered. “Why’d he do that?”

“Because Stanley saw him hypnotize his father. That’s why Sir Richard fell off the balcony.”

Gertie and Ethel listened in amazement as Mrs. Chubb told them the rest of the story. “Cor blimey,” Gertie said when the housekeeper had finished. “Just goes to bleeding show, you can never tell about a bloody man just by looking at him.”

“You never said a truer word,” Mrs. Chubb said. She sighed, then added briskly, “Now, about Master Stanley’s breakfast.”

“I’ll take it in to him,” Gertie muttered, “even if it weren’t my fault. Then if he gives me any lip, I can dump it in his lap.”