Murder on Stage (13 page)

‘Wait,’ he yelled again and then two other warders came out of the lodge, swishing heavy truncheons to warn the prisoners not to bolt.

It would have been useless to try anything. They were in a concrete yard with twenty-foot high walls around the four sides of it. They waited, shivering in the rain. There seemed to be something
going on in the building on the right-hand side – a clanking of iron bars, creaking sounds and hammering. The wait was long and dreary. The rain was heavy and the prisoners’ rough
clothing soaked up the wet.

‘Have to search the visitors, lads; that takes time,’ said one of the warders eventually.

And then there was another wait. Alfie thought he would scream if it were any longer. He began to worry about the prayer in his pocket. Would they search the prisoners as well as the visitors?
Perhaps he should mention the prayer first before it was found on him. These two warders did not look too bad.

One had almost a pleasant face, and Alfie approached him, moving slowly and watching his reactions carefully. He raised his right arm as he had been taught to do in school and the movement
brought a reluctant grin to the man’s face.

‘What’s the problem, young shaver?’ he asked.

‘Please, sir,’ said Alfie with extreme politeness. ‘The turnkey said that it would be all right to give this to my sister. He said to tell you that it came from the chaplain in
the prison church, sir,’ he lied with a sudden happy inspiration. They seemed to think a lot of religion in this prison so that might work.

The warder gave the prayer a keen glance, but did not bother turning it over. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll pass it over.’

Why can’t I give it myself? wondered Alfie. He was disappointed, as he had meant to give Sarah some sort of signal as he handed it over that this piece of paper was of significance. He
just had to trust that Sarah would really get the paper – and realise what it meant.

However, when they went into the visiting room, he could see why it had been taken from him.

It was a fair-sized room, but it had been divided into three sections by bars, only six inches apart and stretching from floor to ceiling.

The prisoners, with their warders, were at the nearest side of the room and the visitors, with two more truncheon-bearing warders, were at the far end.

And the middle – a space of about six feet – was completely empty, barred off from prisoners and visitors.

No visitor, no prisoner, could hand anything, whether it was a tasty cake or a weapon, across that space.

There were plenty of visitors that day. An old woman in rags, a few warmly dressed men who seemed very uneasy in the prison surroundings, women with children clutching to them, most with a baby
in their arms, a few others who were well known to the warders and engaged in jokes and banter with them. And then there were Sarah and the three boys. Sarah held Sammy’s hand and Jack had
his arm around Tom’s shoulders. Tom’s face looked white through the grime, but Sammy was his usual calm self. They had not brought Mutsy – that was probably sensible, but Alfie
got a lump in his throat as he wondered whether he would ever see his poor old faithful dog again.

One by one the prisoners were called to come up, to stand like wild tigers peering through the bars. None of the visitors stayed long, Alfie noticed. It was very difficult to talk across that
empty space and especially to talk with all the listening ears. He had imagined that they would be private.

And now it was his turn. He moved to the bars and stood there. For the first time since he was a baby he could not think of anything to say. He just stared at them. It occurred to him that he
was now completely powerless – he, Alfie, who always managed to find a solution. His belief in himself had ebbed away.

‘Alfie, I got your prayer.’ Sarah’s voice was calm and matter-of-fact and carried well across the space. Alfie was very thankful about that – thankful for her casual,
collected manner. ‘You needn’t worry about us, Alfie,’ she went on. ‘We’ve got everything under control. I hope a gentleman that we know will be able to help
you.’

What did she mean, wondered Alfie. Did she mean that she had found the murderer? Could that be possible? But she couldn’t have. She didn’t know enough. None of them knew enough. More
work needed to be done, more investigation. Still, he felt consoled. She had got the paper and she had brains, he told himself.

‘Would you like Sammy to sing you a song, Alfie?’ asked Sarah and without waiting for a reply she turned to the warder. ‘Would that be all right, sir, if the blind boy
sings?’

There was a moment’s silence. One warder looked at the other and then they looked across at the warders in the opposite cage.

‘Sing?’ said one in a dubious tone of voice.

‘I don’t suppose there can be anything agin it.’

‘Might be against regulations.’

‘They can talk, can’t they? No difference, ain’t there?’

‘That’s right,’ agreed the other reluctantly. ‘T’ain’t no difference. Go ahead, sonny, sing your brother a lullaby.’

Then he whispered something and the other warder roared with laughter – something about hanging, probably, thought Alfie. Warders seemed to find that a great joke.

And then Sammy began to sing. He sang a song about a woman stitching a shirt. It was always a great favourite with the well-dressed lady shoppers in Covent Garden: they seemed to love songs
about poor people!

There was another joke from one of the warders and a roar of laughter, echoed immediately by the visitors and those prisoners who looked for favour. The audience had got bored with the singing
and had stopped listening.

And then Sammy began to sing the chorus and only Alfie, who had heard his brother sing that song hundreds of times, realised that Sammy, instead of singing the chorus:
stitch, stitch,
stitch
, had substituted the words
fingers, fingers, fingers.

Another joke from the comedian warder, another roar of laughter and Sammy went on fearlessly, his high voice penetrating through the shouts of laughter and the filthy jokes to reach his brother
on the other side of the divided room.

And then Sammy sang the rest of the verses of the famous melody ‘Song of the Shirt’, his face serious.

When the song ended, he stopped and waited unselfconsciously. This was always the moment when the applause came, and after a minute one of the warders said, ‘Very nice, lad – now
number thirteen.’

And number thirteen came forward to listen to his aged mother complaining about his conduct and asking him how he expected her to live without anyone to support her.

Sarah bobbed politely to the warders and led the boys from the room without even a backward glance. But she left Alfie’s mind buzzing.

Three fingers! We saw three fingers alone
, Sammy had sung. It made him think of . . . What was it?

It could be a vital clue, if only he could remember!

But it would be another week before he could have visitors again.

Would he still be alive by next Monday?

Alfie racked his brains as he followed the turnkey down the long passageways, and through all of the locked gates. What was that picture that kept flitting into his mind and
then oozing away again? What could it be? Something about fingers . . .

It was only when he was back in the prison room that suddenly he remembered.

Harry Booth, there in front of the curtains. The intensely white limelight. Alfie clenched his hands and willed the vision to become clearer. Yes! Harry Booth had walked on stage. The riot
began. The noise, the smell, the sights of that night at Covent Garden Theatre came back to Alfie. Harry Booth there, yelling at the top of his voice but no one listening. The curtains parting
– just a crack. The hand coming out, coming from behind the gap between the two curtains. A frilly sleeve, edged with a thin fringe of orange fur – the colour of Joey’s wig . . .
A clown’s sleeve. The hand moved down. It was pouring now. Pouring something from the glass phial. Something strange about that hand.

It had bothered him all of the days since and suddenly now his memory was clear and pin-sharp.

The hand that poured that deadly dose into Harry Booth’s port had been missing a finger.

What was it that Sammy had sung? ‘
We saw three fingers alone.’

Alfie put his head in his hands and thought hard.

Who was the man with a missing finger?

Did he have anything to do with John Osborne, or Francis Fairburn, or even the manager?

‘
Yellow gloves,
’ Sammy had sung. Alfie kept his hands over his eyes. He could not afford to allow anything to distract him at this vital moment. His mind was clear and working
fast and at once he knew where he had seen yellow gloves. The picture was very clear in Alfie’s mind. Himself and Mutsy, juggling, turning cartwheels, dancing – desperately doing
anything that would attract the attention of the rich people who only wanted to get indoors out of the freezing fog . . .

And the man that stopped. The small, fat man with his hat pulled down over his face. The man that praised his performance – this man was wearing yellow gloves as he pulled out a bunch of
tickets from his pocket.

Why wear gloves when you are handling something as thin as paper tickets?

Unless, of course, that you have something to hide – like a missing finger!

But why start a riot? Why hand out tickets for a performance where you have planned a murder?

It just didn’t make sense.

Did something happen that made the man in yellow gloves decide to murder Harry Booth?

What was it that the clown had said about Harry Booth?

‘Always had his nose in other people’s business; that was Harry Booth for you.
’

Alfie sprang to his feet and gazed desperately around the crowded room, eyeing the couple of small windows high up in the wall and the locked door. He clenched his fists. Frustration was boiling
within him. He felt like screaming, or kicking the door, or trying to scale the chimney above the tiny, smoking fire.

He needed to be out there, snooping around, asking questions, finding out if his suspicions were correct, with the help of his gang, not stuck in here, waiting to be hanged!

‘What are they doing?’ asked Tom fearfully. He, Jack, Sammy and Sarah had just come out of the prison and had been stopped by a guard at the gate. Stout boards,
painted black were being placed around the entrance to Newgate and in front of the yard beside it.

‘Getting ready for a hanging,’ said the warder cheerfully. ‘They have to keep the crowd back. Tomorrow morning they’ll stop the traffic until it’s all over.
It’s a great sight. People pay any money to rent one of the windows around here so that they can look down and see everything. The more hangings there are, the more money is made. Listen!
Hear that hammering. They’re starting to put the gallows together. Look over there in the yard. Can you see they’re building a platform outside that door? What’s the matter with
the boy?’

‘He’s sick,’ said Sarah. She stood still for a moment, holding tightly to Sammy’s arm. Jack had gone after Tom who was vomiting into the gutter.

‘A relation of yours? The man for the high drop tomorrow?’ enquired the warder. ‘Sorry if I upset your brother.’

‘No, no relation of ours,’ said Sarah calmly. ‘Tom’s eaten something that disagreed with him.’

‘Greedy, eh?’ The warder laughed. ‘You can go now; you’ll get through over there. That fellow will let you past the barrier.’

‘You all right, Tom?’ asked Sammy as Jack and Tom joined them.

‘Yeah,’ said Tom. ‘Get off.’ He shook his brother’s arm from his shoulder. ‘I’m going back,’ he said. ‘Mutsy’s been on his own for
long enough.’ He set off at a run, dodging in and out of the crowd that was flocking to Newgate to see the spectacle of the gallows being raised.