Read Dread Murder Online

Authors: Gwendoline Butler

Dread Murder (5 page)

BOOK: Dread Murder
9.54Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
‘I think he'd tell what he knew,' Willy said at last. ‘He seemed an honest lad to me. And bonny. He'd described the woman.'
‘It was a woman, was it? You did see then?' Tosser was surprised.
‘I was looking that way. Very tall …thin …hard.' Willy did not miss much.
‘You've got good eyesight.'
‘I have,' agreed Willy with some complacency. ‘Right eye, left eye. I always trust my left eye … what it sees is true.'
" Tosser did not take up the left eye/right eye problem, about which Willy had spoken before. Often, in fact.
‘Be good to find the boy,' he said.
‘What's his name?'
Tosser shook his head. ‘Might know in the Theatre.' Willy nodded. ‘I might find out there. I am known.'
 
Charlie plodded through the town, down the hill from the Castle, deep in thought. He was angry. He had been made use of.
He walked round the Market Place because he found comfort there. The small shops with their bow-fronted glass windows looked cheerful and prosperous. It was the sort of world he would like to live in, but he knew this was not going to happen. He would be caught and dragged back to London. To the blacking factory – unless he managed to run away again.
He would escape again, of course, and again if necessary. He could not be tethered forever; he knew he was clever. He knew that inside him was a force that could not be beaten. But age came into it; at the moment he was too young to have the use of all his powers.
He hated being a child.
‘I've been done,' he said with resentment as he walked on, back to the Theatre. ‘I was picked on to carry those bundles to the Castle to give them to the Major. I could go to the clink or be transported.'
Miss Fairface saw him entering the Theatre. ‘You look glum.'
‘Feel it.'
The actress put her hand in the bag she carried. ‘Have a humbug.'
Charlie accepted the sweetmeat which he popped at once into his mouth. Then he smiled. ‘Thank you.'
She took one herself. ‘So, what's up?' He was silent. ‘Or anything more than usual?' she asked with sympathy. She realised that he had had a lot to make him wretched; life was not being kind to him. And she knew how it felt; life often pinched her too.
‘Women and children,' she thought, ‘we get it worst.' It was sex, really; she would stay with that disability on her shoulders all her life. But Charlie, if he lived that long, would end up triumphant – a successful man. She could see it in his face, hear it in his voice; he knew how to use words. But now something had happened to him which he couldn't work out.
‘This isn't just a story,' she thought. ‘He's a lad that attracts stories.' She was sensitive to such things; it was what made her a good actress. She knew she had it in her to make a great actress, but life had to offer you the opportunities.
She looked in Charlie's face; in another decade or so,
perhaps less, he would be the sort that no woman could resist. And he would certainly have a story to tell — more than one, if she was any judge.
She was surprised that any lad so young could have such a perceptive stare.
‘Charlie …'
‘Yes?'
‘Don't you think you should go back to London? To your family?'
‘If they want me.' Charlie thought about his father; he might come looking for him, or had perhaps done so already …although it was more likely in another week or so. After all, he had only been missing from his workplace two weeks, and who was going to worry about that? Not the man who employed him, and only his father when he wanted to borrow some money off Charlie. ‘Always keep some money aside and in your pocket,' his father had said when he got him the job in the blacking factory, not revealing that he wanted the pennies there so he could borrow them.
‘Your mother?' He could hear Miss Fairface's voice hinting.
His mother? She would weep when she heard he was lost. She had wept when she said ‘Goodbye', yet she had told him how lucky he was and how much he would enjoy himself. No, he concluded on reflection, she would not be looking for him in a hurry.
The actress stared at his face and thought that no boy his age ought to have that look in his eyes. Not that she knew for sure what his age was, and she wondered if he
knew; sometimes he seemed ageless.
Then he smiled and the happy boy came back.
Miss Fairface sighed with relief. ‘Got a job for you … A walk-on in the play tonight.'
‘What's a walk-on?'
‘No dialogue. You just go on and follow the crowd.'
‘Will there be a crowd?'
‘Well, not much of one.' It was all being done on the cheap. In fact, Charlie might be the crowd.
‘Do I get paid?'
She told him how much, and he nodded as if satisfied. She saw the approval flash in his eyes. ‘Just one night,' she said quickly. ‘You can't count on the theatre as an earner.'
Depends where you start from, was what Charlie thought. A day walking-on paid better than a week in the blacking factory.
‘It's the writer who makes the money,' said the actress. ‘A play can go on for years.'
‘Like Shakespeare,' said Charlie thoughtfully. The play that night was
Macbeth.
He knew about Shakespeare; his mother used to recite passages, flirting with her big eyes. He had not admired her performance, however.
‘You don't have to be Shakespeare.' Miss Fairface thought of all the poor romances and comedies in which she had appeared that had run and run. ‘Just give the audience what it wants. You have to find that out, of course, or stumble on it by luck by finding a hole and filling it.'
Charlie thought he would look for that hole. ‘How will I know where to go tonight?'
‘Follow the stage manager; that's Jack Eden. He's the one with the big nose and the red hair.' Attributes which had prevented Jack from making a success as a performer. One physical drawback you can overcome, but not two.
Charlie had noticed the nose.
He followed the nose later that day, down the corridors, towards the dressing rooms and the stage. Here he was stopped by a harassed-looking woman who told him all that she could allow him for the crowd scene was a cloak. ‘Which might be on the big side for you, lad.'
The cloak was black corded silk and velvet. ‘Stand up as straight as you can, lad,' said the wardrobe keeper. ‘Pity they couldn't get someone taller.' But Charlie dragged the cloak over his shoulders and gave it a kind of a tuck at his neck which shortened it.
He soon discovered that all he had to do was walk behind Miss Fairface. He had the feeling that the stage and performing came naturally to him.
From the front row, the Major and Denny, sitting side by side, had an excellent view. Shakespeare was not the first choice of a play to see for either man, but they had received complimentary tickets from the Manager – a man one did not scorn in Windsor social circles. Also, there was to be some conviviality on stage after the performance that the Major meant to attend.
Denny recognised Charlie and pointed him out to the
Major. ‘That's the messenger boy.'
‘I saw him too,' said Mearns impatiently. He had handed over a few more coins to the lad after the last delivery. You had to admire such cheek. Except it was not cheek, the Major had been around the world enough to recognise the difference. It was a kind of deep self-assurance. ‘What's he doing here?'
‘Earning. He'll get paid.'
The Major gave a short laugh; he felt sure the boy would get paid. ‘He ought to go home …if he's got one.'
He watched the performance, deciding glumly that Macbeth had not been much of a soldier and was certainly a poor leader of a country's army. He wouldn't blame it on the man, being a Scot; but Shakespeare he could blame. Clearly the great bard had not understood military matters.
And as for Lady Macbeth – she was such a beauty, mad or otherwise. He could see it was a good part for such as Miss Fairface.
He watched Macbeth advance across the stage to his wife.
‘If I'd had him in the army, I'd have made him carry himself better than that,' he thought as he looked. ‘Not sure if her ladyship likes his lordship very well either.' Her body seemed to curve away from him rather than cling. But it had been some while since Mearns had had anything to do with a woman (although the Castle always presented offers) and perhaps ways had changed.
The Major's powers of observation had not misled him. Miss Fairface was not happy with her Macbeth.
‘You smell,' she whispered, very quietly, her back turned to the audience so that they would not hear. But Charlie with his youthfully acute hearing heard her.
‘And I know of whom …' he thought.
Beau kept his Macbeth stance, but managed to mutter something under his breath.
‘I bet it was that sluttish Dol Worboys,' Miss Fairface hissed back.
‘Had nothing to do with Dol for ages.' He pulled away, going into one of his biggest speeches. He had a lovely voice and he did not want to waste a syllable of it.
The audience sat hushed, even as he spun around, treading on Charlie's toe and letting Miss Fairface know that if she made any more trouble he would kill her.
The Theatre was lit by great chandeliers, while wicks in oil held in tin containers lit the stage.
As Beau marched about the stage, proclaiming Macbeth's fate, somehow the bottom of his robe, made of imitation fur, caught Charlie's foot and hobbled the royal progress. He was a good enough actor to build it into his action so that it looked natural, but the glance he gave Charlie suggested that the death threat included him as well as Miss Fairface.
Macbeth
is a short play so the party on the stage was soon assembling. There was to be a short interval, with refreshments for those who wanted them, before finishing off the night with a comedy. Charlie abandoned his stage cloak and slid into the crowd.
Major Mearns and Sergeant Denny had also arrived at the party. Across the room they saw Mindy. No surprise there, as the Castle and the Theatre mingled happily. Wine, beer, tea and coffee with cakes and cheese savouries passed between them. Everyone there was laughing as they talked, at least pretending to be happy. In this world, you had to act as though you were successful even if you were not.
Across the room was Mr Pickettwick, who was no more an admirer of the Bard than Denny and Mearns, but liked to be in the social swim. He was talking to the boy, Charlie, beaming broadly and nodding his head, and apparently making a little joke because they were both laughing. He liked the boy – but the boy was likeable.
Denny looked at Mearns with a query.
‘It's all right, Denny, he doesn't want a boy; he's just a friendly old man. There are a few around.'
‘I like the boy myself. He has something …' Denny hesitated. ‘He's clever; but more than that – you see him looking at the world and telling himself what it means …
‘You're confused,' said Mearns kindly.
As they watched, Pickettwick and the boy started to talk to a tall, thin woman who had been standing near them.
‘An actress?' asked Denny. ‘Don't know her.'
‘We don't know them all …'
‘Had a jolly good try.'
This was true of the Sergeant, although his great
protection was that he was never taken seriously – otherwise, as the Major put it, he would have been married off a hundred times since.
The woman was talking away and waving her hands. One had begun to stroke Charlie's head – a hard, strong hand.
Hand still on the boy, she began to promenade round the room, talking to as many as would answer back. Not all did.
Mearns gave a quick laugh. ‘Ask her to march.'
‘What?'
‘Look at her ankles, man, and the way she walks. Women don't use their feet like that.'
He gave another laugh. ‘She's a man.'
Slowly, Mearns added, ‘and the boy knows it. I think he recognises it.'
‘Let's go talk to the man-woman. Bound to be an actor.'
They were walking towards Charlie and the strange-looking figure, who had just been joined by Mindy, when a high scream tore into the air.
The scream came from one of the young actresses – not one whom Mearns knew well, but he thought she was called Henrietta.
Henrietta was standing at the edge of the stage where a passage led into the dressing rooms. She leaned back against the wall, her face white; she was trembling.
BOOK: Dread Murder
9.54Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Twain's End by Lynn Cullen
12 Borrowing Trouble by Becky McGraw
Stroke of Genius by Emily Bryan
A Traitor Among the Boys by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Alpha Alien: Abducted by Flora Dare
True North (The Bears of Blackrock Book 4) by Michaela Wright, Alana Hart