Murder on Stage (12 page)

That should be enough for Sarah, he thought with satisfaction. Sarah had brains. She would understand to look at the number one word on the first line –
find
; the number two word on
the second line,
Joseph
; and the third word on the third line,
lucky
. The message would be clear:
Find Joseph, Lucky, clowns and actors
. Hopefully the two clowns would repeat
the gossip about the actors, Francis Fairburn and John Osborne. Tomorrow, he remembered, was her half-day holiday so surely she and the rest of the gang would visit him. There definitely could be
no objection to him handing her a prayer.

‘I’ve finished, sir,’ he said softly, just as a loud rap and the words, ‘You all right in there, your reverence?’ sounded from the door.

‘Perfectly all right, officer,’ said the clergyman in a slightly impatient voice.

‘Would you read what I said, sir?’ pleaded Alfie. ‘Will I be able to give that to my sister if she visits me?’

‘Well!’ The man was a fast reader. He scanned the page, put it down and looked searchingly at Alfie. He seemed surprised by the words so Alfie hastened to explain.

‘She wants to go on the stage, my sister, sir. I want to try to stop her. You know what happens to girls who go on the stage. My mother would never have let her do that.’

‘Quite right, too! Well, Mr Elmore used to tell me that he had some very bright, clever pupils and I can see that you must be one of them. That’s a clever piece of verse. I’m
sure your sister will take that to heart.’

‘Mr Elmore used to say that people remember things better if they are in verse,’ murmured Alfie, hoping that he hadn’t been too clever for his own good. The man had picked up
the page again and his eyes seemed glued to the words.

‘Quite right, quite right! And did he teach you some of the beautiful psalms?’ To Alfie’s great relief he moved his eyes from the paper and looked at Alfie with a smile.

‘Yes, sir. I think I had better go now, sir, the warder is getting impatient. I’d like to come again, sir, some time, if I could . . .’

‘The boy would like to come again some time, officer,’ said the clergyman, opening the door. He still kept the paper in his hand. ‘I’ve given him this prayer so that he
may read it to himself and if his sister visits tomorrow he wants to give it to her. Will that be all right?’ He moved the prayer slightly as the turnkey seemed about to snatch it from
him.

Quite a courageous old cove, thought Alfie, making sure to keep his face bland and innocent. He, himself, could not afford to annoy the turnkey in any way.

‘Not up to me what he gives to the sister – that will be up to them in the lodge, but he can keep that with him if wants to,’ said the turnkey. He gazed with such a blank face
at the prayer that Alfie immediately suspected that the man could not read. His spirits rose. A warder might have been more suspicious of his strange poem than an innocent old clergyman.

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Alfie with relief. He made a respectful bow to the clergyman, muttered his thanks again and clanked his way down the stone passageway feeling a little more
hopeful. Was it possible that he had taken the first step towards freeing himself from the most dreaded, most fearful prison in the world?

‘Tom,’ said Sammy.

‘What?’ asked Tom in a bad-tempered manner. He chewed on the remains of the crust from the loaf that Sarah had brought yesterday. He was in a furious mood. He was annoyed with
himself and that made things worse. Jack had asked him to go down to the river, but he had refused irritably.

Why had he allowed himself to sick up that pie? It was the best piece of food that he had seen for a month. He felt really hungry this morning and the bread wasn’t helping much.

That was not the worst thing, though.

Why had he been tricked into telling Sarah that he was the one who betrayed Alfie? He’d never hear the end of it, he thought gloomily. Even Jack was hardly speaking to him this morning.
Jack, unusually for him, had even gone so far as to say firmly that neither he, Sammy nor Sarah would have told.

He had been fool enough to tell that cove about Alfie, Tom told himself savagely, but he was even more of a fool to let it out to Sarah. There was no need. After all, the man could have found
that bit of information from lots of people – Betty for instance.

‘You know that fellow who got you to tell him about Alfie,’ began Sammy.

‘Oh, shut up,’ said Tom viciously. ‘Shut up or I’ll hit you; blind or not, you’ll feel the weight of my fist.’

‘I was thinking that we could put our ideas together,’ said Sammy mildly. He took very little notice of Tom. Tom was always all bark and no bite. In any case, Mutsy would never allow
him to hurt Sammy. Mutsy was lying very close to Sammy this morning, bewildered by the absence of Alfie. Never before had a whole night gone by without Alfie appearing and somehow the big dog knew
that. Sammy stroked him gently and felt the dog nuzzle up to him.

‘What ideas?’ Tom sounded more sullen than angry now.

‘Well, I was wondering if you noticed anything funny about this geezer – anything about his hands?’

‘His hands? Nah, I didn’t notice nothing – he had gloves on.’

‘Yeah, leather ones.’ Sammy thought hard. ‘What did the gloves look like?’

‘Couldn’t tell you. I didn’t take no notice.’ Tom was getting bored.

‘Did he take them off when he handed you the pie?’

‘What do you want to know that for?’ Tom sounded suspicious, as if he felt that Sammy was trying to trap him into something.

‘Just wondered.’

‘You can stop talking about the pie. I’m sick of the pie. It’s all right for you. People look at you and say, “Oh, that poor itty blind boy, let’s give him
something to eat”. They don’t do that to me. There you were, stuffing your face with chestnuts, and me so hungry that I thought I would faint if I didn’t get food. How was I to
know that Alfie would be fool enough to hang around the theatre for the whole day? I’d have thought he’d have found a good hiding place as soon as he got in there, and stayed
put.’

Sammy ignored this. ‘It’s just that I keep thinking about the hand on my arm. There was something funny about it.’

‘What was funny?’ Tom began to sound interested. ‘He was wearing a glove, you said so yourself.’

Sammy nodded. ‘Yes, I could feel it and I could smell it, as well. But I don’t think it was a thick glove . . .’

‘You’re right,’ Tom broke in excitedly. ‘You’re right, Sammy. Is that giving you an idea? He was wearing gloves all the time, fancy ones – sort of yellow
leather – very fancy, with stitching on them. I’d say they would be thin gloves, too.’

‘So that he wouldn’t need to take them off in the ordinary way,’ said Sammy.

‘Let me think. Yeah, you’re right. He didn’t take them off when he . . .’

‘Handed you the pie,’ said Sammy in a matter-of-fact way. ‘Are you sure? Think hard, Tom. We’re doing great, the two of us. Think hard. Get a picture of them in your
mind.’

Tom shut his eyes. It was funny, he thought, how that helped you to remember things. Everyone remarked on how smart Sammy was, but when he closed his eyes he, also, had a feeling of being
clever. Perhaps being blind sharpened your wits.

‘Two hands, or one, on the plate?’ came Sammy’s voice.

‘Two,’ said Tom, still keeping his eyes tightly screwed up. He knew what Sammy was at – trying to get him to remember the scene as clearly as possible. ‘Two,’ he
repeated, ‘and – I’m certain now – the gloves were on his hands, definitely.’

Sammy smiled with satisfaction. It was not proof, but at the same time the very fact that this mysterious man had kept on his gloves, had risked the valuable yellow leather being stained by a
splash of gravy – this seemed to back up his own memory. He held out his own hands, trying to visualise how a metal plate would be carried.

‘Thumbs on top and fingers underneath,’ said Tom. ‘Definitely gloves!’

‘You know the way, when someone grabs your arm, that you feel the fingers?’ Sammy reached out, his hand fumbling until it met Tom’s arm and then gripped it tightly.

‘You’re right – I do feel your fingers. Every single one of them.’

‘And now?’

‘You’ve bent one of them back; I can only feel three!’ cried Tom.

‘That’s it! That’s what I felt! The man was missing a finger from his right hand!’

‘Is that a clue?’ Tom sounded hopeful.

‘I think it could be. It’s a reason to keep his gloves on, anyway. That missing finger could give him away,’ said Sammy. ‘Now we have something to tell Alfie. But how are
we going to do it?’

Alfie thought it was the longest night of his life. There were only enough mats for about half the prisoners and Alfie didn’t even try to get one. He just stayed where he
was, sitting on the cold bare stone floor, his knees hunched up, his shackled ankles sore from the weight of the iron. He put his head into his hands and tried to sleep, but the cold iron of the
manacles kept waking him up. The fire began to die down and the moon shone through a tiny window high on the wall. By its light, Alfie could see a large rat emerge from its hole and scuttle along
the side of the crumbling wall. It sniffed at the pocket of one of the prisoners who yelled and lashed out with his shackled foot and the frightened rat scaled Alfie’s legs and returned to
his hole in the wall. After that Alfie dared not sleep. He stayed awake watching the lice crawl across the stone floor, their hard, shiny backs glinting in the moonlight. What time was it, he
wondered. He hoped that half of the night was over, but he guessed from the height of the moon that it was probably only about midnight.

And then he heard a bell ring. It seemed to come from under the flagstones. He started violently. He wasn’t the only one. Everyone woke up and listened. ‘It’s the bellman from
the Old Bailey church,’ said an elderly man to Alfie. ‘They ring one minute after midnight for the condemned man.’

‘Just to give him a good night’s sleep,’ said one of the boys and all the others laughed.

One of the boys began to chant in a loud, cheerful voice as if the whole thing was just a joke:

‘There will be another poor soul tomorrow,’ said the elderly man to Alfie with a sigh. ‘You get used to the nightly lullaby in this place.’

‘Visitors for our Holy Joe here,’ said the turnkey with a sneer. He jerked his head at Alfie.

Alfie got quietly to his feet, feeling his pocket to make sure that the piece of paper with the prayer was still there safely. At noon he had slept for a few hours and now he was stiff from
lying, shackled and handcuffed, on the bare stones of the floor. It was all beginning to seem like a bad dream to him.

But now, at the turnkey’s words, every fibre within him was quivering and ready for action.

He followed the line of men who had been summoned. No one had come to visit the boys and they seemed a bit glum about that, calling out jeers and swear words after him.

‘Is it my sister?’ he asked the turnkey as the key was being turned in the lock.

‘How do I know? I just obey orders.’ He was extra bad-tempered with Alfie. Probably he sensed that, in some way, Alfie had hoodwinked him during that long session in the church with
the chaplain.

The turnkey stopped when they reached the felons’ quadrangle, where Alfie and the other prisoners, all heavily shackled and manacled, had dragged their legs around for half an hour that
morning. ‘Stand!’ he roared and lashed out with his truncheon at one old man who had not stopped quickly enough to suit him.