Antidote To Murder (4 page)

Chapter Four

SATURDAY 12 AUGUST

M
argaretha paused as her handmaiden took hold of the edge of her veil. The piano player struck three sharp chords and out she spun, twisting her way to the edge of the splintered stage to dance seductively for the lone man in the front row, who rewarded her with a shudder and an intake of breath.

She kept her eyes on him as she danced, her remaining veils floating about and enhancing her succulent curves. It must help to have someone in the audience to focus on, the pianist supposed, although this was not the face he would imagine her choosing. Tall, gaunt, and yellow-eyed—not even Gabriel Klassen’s type—this lone member of the audience must have crossed her manager’s palm generously to be allowed in for the rehearsal.

Tomorrow they would rehearse with the full orchestra. Gabriel Klassen was in the shadows at the back of the hall now, writing notes, organising the publicity posters and the costumes for the sham Indian musicians. Once, apparently, at a show in Rome, the musicians had sweated so much their brown greasepaint had run and they’d arrived onstage looking like a band of lepers. The piano player smiled at the conjured image. Gabriel had better not make that mistake again—the Londoners were a tough crowd to please.

The pianist slowed the tempo. Margaretha turned her back on her lone admirer and faced him. From the corner of his eye he saw her touch her breast beneath the floating veil. Despite his knowledge that the performance was now for him, he remained focused on the music and the way the sweat stuck his white shirt uncomfortably to his body. He would give her no satisfaction. He would not take his eyes from the music. He would not play one false note.

Her handmaidens danced well, slinking to imaginary cymbals and bells. If they danced like this to a barely tuned piano in a rundown London hall, imagine how they would perform to a full orchestra at the Empire—better still, on the eagerly anticipated tour for the Army and Navy Club? He knew the thought of all those uniforms excited her: she had told him so as one of her many attempts to make him jealous.

He raised the tempo again, heard the rattle of her coin-covered brassiere. Conscious of her small breasts, she never removed her top, leaving the silver coins to enhance the mystery. She knew well the thoughts of the hungry-eyed audience, their collective anticipation, their desperate hope that this performance might prove the exception to her rule.

Margaretha glided on bare feet across the stage, her handmaidens following with choreographed steps. Another veil floated to the ground. The music swelled, her belly rolled. He threw a glance to determine her position on the stage, and she responded to it greedily. Arms extended, she flew across the stage and fell to her knees next to him, leaned backwards, arched her hips, and simulated masturbation.

Matthew Pike dashed the sweat from his brow and returned to the musical score. It was a complicated piece.

* * *

P
ike packed up the sheet music and slipped it between the sleeves of his leather case. From the wings he heard the sound of bright female laughter, Cockney voices. Someone tapped him on the shoulder. He spun on the piano stool and found Gabriel Klassen all but hidden behind an extravagant bouquet of red roses.

“Take these in to Margaretha, please, Captain.” Klassen’s guttural Dutch accent grated on Pike’s nerves, set his teeth on edge, and took him back to places he wished he could forget.

“I am a piano player, not a delivery boy,” Pike said, reaching for his cane and climbing to his feet. “You’ll have to take them yourself—who are they from anyway?”

Klassen sighed and placed the flowers on the piano. “She will not be pleased. They are from the gentleman in the front row. He is becoming a pest to her, I think. Such a face. He looks like a corpse.” The manager shuddered and Pike tried very hard not to sigh.

“I’ll speak to him if you like. Is he waiting in the front entrance?”

“You would rather speak to him than Margaretha? It must be a coward who is more frightened of a woman than of a man.” Klassen laughed nervously.

Klassen was more on the money than Pike would let on. He was a coward, with one woman certainly. His thoughts threatened to wander to Dody, as they had constantly during the last few weeks. He knew that the longer he put off contacting her, the less likely she was to forgive him. But something illogical seemed to have taken hold of him—the fear of fear itself perhaps—and seized him in a grip that would not let up. He glanced at the flowers on the piano. Perhaps he should send Dody a gift, something to articulate the words he was unable to say. But what? God, how useless he felt.

Klassen was looking expectantly at him. Pike flicked him a tight smile. “Tell me more about this man. I noticed he was here yesterday, too.”

“He has been watching her since we arrived in London, sending her notes and flowers, giving me money to allow him to sit in on the rehearsals. He has already reserved a box for the first few nights of the performance.”

“I wouldn’t worry. I’m sure Margaretha can take care of herself.”

Klassen gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “
Ach
. One lovesick admirer does not matter. It is not unusual; she attracts them wherever she goes. It’s everything else that worries me. I told her we should never have changed the show, it’s causing nothing but trouble.”

“Our London fathers are still making a fuss over the Dance of the Seven Veils?”

“Indeed they are. Don’t they realise how much we are compromising? This is nothing like the original; it’s just a small portion of it. Nothing more risqué than any of the other acts she has danced countless times before on the London stage. But someone must have got to the musical director and frightened him off. He left me a note—his aunt is ill or some-such; he can no longer do the job—and the musicians are expected tomorrow.” Klassen threw up his hands. “Englishmen and their scruples.”

Pike headed for the stage steps, showing with his turned back that the manager’s problems were of no concern of his. “Tomorrow you owe me a week’s pay.”

Klassen followed him. “Captain, wait and tell me this: what were you doing when I came across you in the tavern?”

Pike regarded him over his shoulder. “I was out of a job. I was about to ask the publican if he needed a piano player, but you got to me first.”

“Yes, yes. And what will you do next week, when the orchestra starts, when we have no more need for an accompanist for rehearsals? Will you start whoring yourself in the public houses again?”

“I take each day as it comes.” Pike’s footsteps rang on the steps at the edge of the stairs. He knew what Klassen was getting at—sensed what was coming next. He wondered how many of the hollow steps he would take before Klassen called him back: one . . . two . . . three . . .

“Wait there, Captain. I have something more to ask you.” Klassen jumped like a dancer from the stage. “Margaretha and I, we both admire you greatly . . .” He licked dry lips.

“Yes?” Pike wondered when he had picked up the habit of making people so nervous. It was a handy skill for the interrogation room, but it seemed to happen these days whether it was his intention or not.

“We, that is, Margaretha and myself, were hoping you might take the musical director’s place. You are obviously a talented musician. You are well acquainted with the score and we will pay handsomely.”

Pike rubbed his chin and made a show of raising his eyes to the damp-stained ceiling. “How much?”

“Two pounds for the remaining rehearsals with full orchestra, then one pound per performance.”

“Three pounds for the rehearsals,” Pike countered, not wanting to appear too easy.

“Done.” Klassen slapped Pike on the back. Pike’s knee locked and he almost fell over. Damned knee. No longer just a reminder of the war, the pain would forever dog him as an opportunity not taken—in more ways than one. “Margaretha will be delighted.”

“Shall I still have a word with the gentleman from the front row?” Pike asked.

“Please. But you must not put him off; he may have influential friends, and we need all the sponsors we can get.”

“He obviously wants to impress Margaretha.”

“As does Rear Admiral Millbank, a much more likely candidate, I think. If she pleases him, he will guarantee more bookings in the north of the country and, with luck, the Army and Navy Club, too.”

“The admiral won’t find fault with the performance, I’m sure.”

“The contracts rest on more than the stage show. I need not tell you that.” And then Klassen’s eyes widened and he whispered, “Don’t turn now, but the gentleman in question, the admiral, has just entered the hall.”

“Is he carrying his briefcase?”

“Yes, Captain, cuffed to his wrist as usual. He must be a very important man.”

Or a pompous fool,
Pike thought,
one who endeavours to appear more important than he is.
Pike did not need to turn; he knew the rotund, snowy-haired Admiral Millbank well enough by sight. He doubted he would be recognised, but pulled his bowler over his brow just in case and feigned to notice something on one of the seats, a piece of litter perhaps, some distance from the admiral’s rolling approach.

As Pike moved away, Klassen spoke through the side of his mouth. “Find out how useful that tall man might be. See what he has to offer us. I’ll deal with the admiral.”

Pike nodded, resigned. So now he was to be Margaretha’s pimp. Well, he had done worse. He made his way down the side of the hall, his suit jacket slung over his shoulder, just as the admiral boomed out a dinner invitation to Klassen and the “dear lady.”

Pushing sordid thoughts aside, Pike allowed himself the luxury of contemplating his new role in the exotic show. The greater part of the performance consisted of bits and pieces of music and dance that Margaretha had picked up during her travels in the East, but the climax was undoubtedly the Dance of the Seven Veils, borrowed from the Strauss opera. Any musician would leap at the chance to be musical director of this piece, even if it was only an excerpt. A part of him hoped he would find nothing incriminating against Margaretha and her troupe. If he did, the show was doomed to a limited season.

He passed through the hall’s empty front entrance and found the man from the front row in the street, gazing longingly at a poster recently tacked to the exterior wall. The man stood fixed to the spot and stared as if mesmerised by Margaretha’s image.

Pike cleared his throat to get the man’s attention and tipped the rim of his bowler. “Good afternoon, sir, I hope you enjoyed the rehearsal.”

The man tore his gaze from the poster and stepped back. He was gallows tall and his face was flushed.

“Yes, I did, thank you,” he stuttered, taking a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and mopping his brow with it. An ugly scar, like crumpled tissue paper, creased the side of his head and extended to the outer rim of his left ear. “You are the piano player?”

Pike put out his hand. “They call me the captain.”

“That is all?”

“All that is necessary.”

The man looked at Pike, one fraud regarding another. “Archibald Van Noort.” The whites of his eyes, Pike noticed, were jaundiced yellow.

“You are Dutch, too?” Pike nodded to the poster.

“No, British with Dutch ancestry,” he said, his eyes drawn once more to the poster of the near-naked woman.
He should enjoy it while he can,
Pike thought. It wouldn’t be long before someone concerned about public decency ripped it down.

“Did she like the flowers?” Van Noort asked.

“Her manager was taking them to her as I was leaving.”

“Just now I saw another man—a naval officer?—enter the theatre.”

“Rear Admiral Millbank, one of the organisers from the Army and Navy Club. He’s thinking of making a booking.” Pike’s reply was open, responsive. If he wanted to glean anything of interest from this man, he would have to give something first.

Traffic rattled by, the jingle of harnesses, the sighs and gasps of motor vehicles. “Ah,” was all the man said.

They stepped closer to the wall to allow a sandwich-board man to pass. The man wore the blue uniform of a Prussian soldier with a spiked helmet, his board advertising the latest invasion book. The country was obsessed with German spies, and not all of it was unwarranted, in Pike’s opinion. There had been several sightings recently of mysterious airships floating over the east and south coasts near military installations, and several foreigners had been caught taking photographs at navy shipyards. There was even rumour that a heavily manned German vessel had been seen navigating the Humber, though it was long gone by the time the relevant authorities caught wind of it.

Pike looked to Van Noort for the faint flick of an eye, an increase in respiration—any kind of reaction at all—but saw nothing.

“I expect she’ll send you a note,” Pike said to fill the awkward silence.

The man’s mouth twitched. “A note. Yes.”

Pike snapped off his sleeve holders, shrugged into his worn suit jacket, and turned to leave. Getting to know this man and his motives was not going to be easy.

“Wait,” Van Noort called as Pike began to make his way to the tram stop; miraculously these vehicles had not yet been affected by the strikes. “I have to ask you something.” He looked directly at Pike. Away from Margaretha’s image and no longer dazzled by it, he seemed quite lucid. “Forgive me for asking, but your knee is giving you trouble. I can tell by the way you walk, yet when you play the piano, it doesn’t seem to worry you at all. I am a doctor, you see; I have an interest in such things. Are you aware that it is often possible to have those kinds of injuries repaired?”

Pike had not expected this. The man did not match his idea of a doctor at all. Then again, neither had Dody upon first meeting.

“No,” he replied curtly. Assignment or not, he was sick of the attention his knee attracted.

“Shrapnel?”

Pike nodded. He was wondering if the doctor’s disfiguring scar might also be a result of the war when a ragged boy of eleven or twelve appeared from the alley beside the theatre and tugged at the tall man’s sleeve. “C’mon, Doc, it’s time to go. ’Aven’t you been ’angin’ round ’ere long enough? We got work to do.”