Murder on Stage (4 page)

‘Don’t do that,’ said Betty. ‘Leave them down. Now perhaps they won’t notice that you have no shoes. I’m sure that clowns shouldn’t have bare
feet.’

The shirt was better. It was made from silk, he thought, and had fancy cuffs at the ends of the sleeves. They reminded him of the hand that had come from behind the curtain and dropped the
poison into the glass of port. What was the odd thing about that hand? He shut his eyes and tried to visualize it.

‘Be careful with that shirt,’ warned Betty. ‘I’ve put hours of work into it.’

Alfie pulled it over his head. It was extremely large. Although he had left his jacket on underneath, it drooped in folds down to his waist. The sight seemed to send Betty into a fit of
laughing.

‘Shut up,’ hissed Alfie. ‘Don’t make such a noise. You might rouse that devil.’

‘Alfie!’ wailed Betty, clutching his arm.

‘Only joking,’ said Alfie hastily. ‘Do my face now. You got any of that white stuff? I’d like to be one of them scary clowns – I’ve seen one once – big
white face and black all around his eyes.’

‘You’ll have to make do with this.’ Betty showed him a small pot. ‘Got it from a gentleman friend of mine,’ she said proudly. ‘Ever such nice stuff. Shame to
waste it on . . . oh my God, what was that?’

‘Just a bit of mist,’ said Alfie quickly. He himself didn’t like the way a strange clump of white mist seemed to be oozing through the opening high above their heads, but he
did his best to make his voice sound casual. He didn’t want Betty running off before she finished the job of turning him into a clown.

‘I should have washed your face first,’ said Betty as she applied the creamy stuff to his dirty skin. ‘It’s all turning grey.’

‘That’s good,’ said Alfie. ‘That stuff looks too biscuity-coloured. Grey will look better. Now do my eyes. What have you got for them?’

‘Got a pot of lampblack, here,’ said Betty. ‘I just rub a bit on my eyelids, but you can have as much as you like. That’s free. Grandmother’s eyes are getting bad
and she is always fussing me about cleaning the soot off the inside of the lamp.’

‘Make big circles around my eyes,’ ordered Alfie. ‘Giant-sized ones! Make me look like the devil . . .’ He tried to remember what the clergyman had said about the devil
when he had gone to church with Sammy once. Something about him roaming the earth with a mouth like fire and eyes like smouldering coals – that would be the right look, he thought with
satisfaction. ‘Make me a huge red mouth,’ he said, baring his teeth.

‘There,’ said Betty after a few minutes. ‘That’s the best I can do. I’m sorry, Alfie, I must go. You know what Grandmother is like. When Tom come I told her that he
had a message to say that a place on Bloomsbury Street had thrown out some old clothes. She’ll be expecting me back any minute. I’ll have to tell her that it was all old
rags.’

She didn’t wait for his answer but seized her basket and slipped out of the door.

After she had gone Alfie took up his father’s old cloak from the ground and put it around his shoulders. Then he put on the bowler hat. In spite of the hole, it would keep his head
warm.

But his bare feet were freezing. He crouched down upon the stone floor, tucked his feet under him, wrapped his two arms around him, hunched his shoulders, sank his chin down upon his chest
– and shivered. And then, extraordinarily, he must have fallen asleep. He woke with a start. The bells of St Martin-in-the-Fields chimed the call to vespers.

Alfie jumped to his feet. He had little interest in churches, but one thing every Londoner knew was that once one bell started then every bell in the neighbourhood followed. He had better get
out of here, he thought, and grabbed the door handle.

But he was too late.

Heavy footsteps were tramping down the path. Voices raised.

‘No, constable, haven’t seen no boy around here. Ask the Punch and Judy folk. They’re just packing up now.’

And then the door was pulled open.

Sammy knew that someone was looking at him. Nobody, not even Alfie, knew how Sammy could do this. He had been blind from the time that he was a tiny child, completely and
absolutely blind, but somehow the sense that had been taken away from him had left him with his other senses sharpened to an almost supernatural degree. His sense of smell was extraordinary. His
hearing was pin-sharp. He knew every step, every cough – and could identify most of the people around by some combination of hearing and smell.

And, perhaps by some sixth sense, Sammy, like a dog, could tell whether someone meant harm, or meant good.

And this person, he reckoned, meant harm.

Who was it? A man, guessed Sammy. Somehow the restless movement seemed more like a man than a woman. He could hear something now, perhaps it was the creak of leather boots, and then the rubbing
together of leather gloves, the faint whiff of cigar smoke – yes, decided Sammy, it definitely was a man.

But what did he want? He was standing nearby – not too close. The song had ended. The man had not put anything in the cloth cap on the ground. Even if Sammy had missed the fall of a coin
into the empty cap, Mutsy would have wagged his tail – he always wagged a polite thank you when anyone gave coins – and that would have been impossible to miss. Mutsy had a very long
tail and it was fringed with tangled plumes of long hair. When Mutsy wagged his tail, it was like a storm wind rising and fanning everyone in the near vicinity.

Why was the man interested in him? A blind boy singing? Was it the song? Sammy sang it again, hopefully. Perhaps now a coin would fall.

But nothing happened.

Sammy could not understand. He had begun to feel a little uneasy.

And then he heard the man take a few steps towards him.

For a moment nothing was said – none of the usual, ‘You have a beautiful voice, what’s the name of that song?’ or, occasionally, some charitable person,
‘Aren’t you cold singing out here in this weather?’

This man said nothing. What did he want?

And then he spoke, a strange voice. ‘Is that your dog?’ was what the man said.

Sammy felt relieved. So the man was just admiring Mutsy.

‘Yes, it is,’ he said.

‘Clever dog.’ The man had come nearer now. The smell of fine cloth, good leather and of expensive cigars was more distinct. This was a toff; Sammy was sure of that.

But he didn’t speak like a toff. He spoke like a cockney – like a cockney, but with a strange high-pitched voice. He puzzled Sammy.

‘Can do a bit of juggling, that dog, isn’t that right?’

‘That’s right,’ replied Sammy. He wished that Alfie were here. Alfie would have enjoyed this. The man was no more a cockney than Queen Victoria herself. A cockney would have
said:
ain’t that so
, not
isn’t that right?

‘I’ve seen him with another boy. Your brother was it?’

And now, suddenly, Sammy knew who the man was. What had Alfie said:
Funny voice – a bit squeaky, like
. This was the mysterious stranger who had given Alfie the tickets.

But why did he want Alfie? Was it just to give him the promised shilling? Or was there some other reason?

Why had this man arranged a riot to happen minutes before Harry Booth was murdered?

‘You might as well go home. I’ll go with you. I want to see your brother.’ The squeaky-voiced stranger broke through Sammy’s thoughts. ‘No harm,’ the voice
continued. ‘No harm to him, none at all. Just want to have a word with him.’

And it was that expression,
no harm
that made Sammy’s mind up. Why say that?

‘Just going, sir,’ he said. He fumbled on the ground, felt Mutsy’s cold nose guiding his hand, picked up the cap, held it in front of his face and behind its cover, put his
mouth close to Mutsy’s hairy ear and said in a whisper quieter than a sigh, ‘Smithfield, Mutsy’, then he straightened up and took a firm grasp of the knotted rope around
Mutsy’s neck.

‘Don’t you have to give him some order?’ Did the man sound curious – or perhaps slightly uneasy, tense, maybe?

Sammy laughed in a natural way. ‘Mutsy knows what to do,’ he said.

‘I’ll follow you, then,’ said the high-pitched voice.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Sammy. Smithfield market with its hundreds of people, hundreds of stalls, hundreds of animals would be a good place to get lost.

Sammy certainly was not going to lead this man to the cellar in Bow Street.

Alfie had been seen on the stage; this man might be planning to hand him over to the police. Or worse.

Sammy did some hard thinking. Could this man have anything to do with the murder on the theatre stage?

Could he, perhaps, be the murderer?

Sammy had once met a murderer and he knew one thing.

A man who has murdered once will murder again.

Alfie knew there was no way that he could escape. Even if he could get past the bell-ringer, there was still the policeman outside – not far away. He shrank into the
corner and turned his face towards the wall.

And then a beam of light lit up the wall ahead of him. It was no good. He had been seen. He turned around slowly. The man had a bull’s eye lantern in his hand and he was shining it
directly at Alfie.

But the man did not call out. Why not?

In a second, Betty’s story about the devil flashed through Alfie’s mind. He bared his teeth, picturing the effect of his huge red mouth and the black-circled eyes. He did not move,
just stayed very still. The man backed away, and then turned and fled. Alfie was tempted to follow him, but didn’t. Surely the fellow would come to his senses if he saw Alfie run.

Instead he reached out, seized the bell rope and slowly clanged out the hour – four strokes – that was what the bell from St Martin’s had pealed.

When the echo from the last bell died away, Alfie peered out. There was no sign of the man. The devil ringing the church bell had just finished him off, thought Alfie with a grin. He slipped
along beside the wall.

‘I saw him, your reverence! I saw him as plain as I see you. And he rang the bell! I didn’t ring the bell! The devil himself did that!’ The man’s voice was trembling.
Alfie grinned to himself as he crept silently along in the shadow of the wall.

‘Have you been drinking, man?’

Alfie crammed a knuckle into his mouth to stop himself giggling. He saw the queue of clowns as soon as he rounded the corner. It was even bigger than last night’s. The news of the murder
had not put anyone off. On the contrary, it had brought fifty or sixty others, all dressed as clowns and all eager to have a part in this notorious theatre. Alfie joined them. He looked nervously
at the costumes and the face paint. Everything looked so much more professional than his. Even to himself, when he looked down, he thought that he looked pretty shabby.

There were no policemen around, luckily. It was getting dark and in the vegetable market the stallholders were placing their unsold wares into carts, barrows and baskets. Alfie kept his
father’s bowler hat pulled well down over his face; he had glimpsed an old enemy, a woman called Mary Robinson, and he had no wish to encounter her.

A lot of the clowns were quite elderly, he thought. They would not be as good as Alfie when it came to turning somersaults and juggling. On the other hand, they might be better at telling
jokes.

Still, he had many times managed to hold an audience at a street corner on wet and foggy days, so surely he would be as good as these old fellows.

That’s if he got a chance to perform. The queue seemed to move very slowly.

He was beginning to get worried when the church bells chimed for the half hour. Would he even get a chance to prove how good he was?

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

Two clowns, dressed alike except that one had green spangles and a blue wig, and one red spangles and an orange wig, were ahead of him in the queue. They had been chattering about various
theatres – Drury Lane, The Royal at Haymarket and the Lyceum on the Strand. They seemed to know a lot about these places, but Alfie had lost interest and had stopped listening until he heard
the last words.