Don Gutteridge - Vital Secrets

“Ya mean it’s too good to be true.”

“Precisely. Unless, of course, they’re all lying and in this thing together.”

“Well, Major, we gotta remember these folks are actors.”

Marc sighed. “And I can’t see Thea Clarkson being a gunrunner or fire-breathing republican.”

“But she might’ve been jealous enough to’ve helped somebody else do him in.”

“Like Beasley, who also had his eye on Tessa, I’m sure.”

At this point the latest potential suspect arrived, and the last of the interviews began.

Since Beasley had already given Cobb, Sturges, and Spooner an account of his actions and reactions last night, Marc saw his task as having Beasley go over the narrative and flesh it out with details, details that might indicate a lie or an uncertainty. If Beasley’s account and corroboration of it by Jeremiah and Armstrong went unchallenged, Rick Hilliard would hang.

Beasley was maddeningly co-operative, forthright, ingenuous almost. He listened to each question with the care he would have offered a director giving notes, paused to take it in, then answered in plain and unambiguous language, keeping eye contact throughout. If this were acting, then Beasley was destined for stardom.

“The number of minutes between Tessa’s cry wakening you and your reaching her room are critical to our understanding of what happened,” Marc said. “Tell me exactly what you did when you awoke.”

“I sat upright. I recognized Tessa’s voice, and there was terror in it. That’s the first thought I had, and then that I must go to her as quickly as possible.”

“And did you?”

“No. My bed is partly under the roof-line and, in my panic, when I went to jump out of bed, I bumped my head against a rafter. I did not black out, for I was aware of falling back onto the bed and then onto the cold floor. But I was dizzy and momentarily confused.”

“You heard no further cry or other sounds from Tessa’s room?”

“No. And I remember being very worried that I did not. ‘Has she been murdered?’ was my thought, and I staggered to my feet into the pitch dark, feeling about for my tinderbox and not able to remember where I had left it. I was cursing myself all the time and knocking things over.”

“But you found it?”

“Yes, where it was supposed to be: on my night-table. My hands were shaking so badly, it took twenty or thirty seconds for me to get it working and light a candle. By then, my head was throbbing-right here-but I was no longer dizzy.”

Cobb put his pipe down, came around, and dutifully inspected the lesion and modest bump on the top of Beasley’s head.

“I half ran and half staggered out into the dark hall, but I could see a tiny wedge of light coming out of Tessa’s doorway at the far end. I hurried up, and stubbed my toe on that spittoon near Armstrong’s door-I think it was ajar, but I can’t be sure-righted myself, and crashed into Tessa’s room. What I intended to do I do not know. I am not a brave man. I had no weapon except the saucer holding the stub of candle. But its glow and the candle near Tessa’s bed were enough light to show me the situation.”

“So, if you did not black out when you bumped your head, the time between your hearing Tessa’s cry and your arrival could not have been less than, say, a minute, and not more than, say, two minutes?”

“That is my own estimate, yes.”

Beasley then repeated the description of the scene that was now depressingly familiar to Marc: Hilliard standing over the victim with both hands on the haft of the bloodied sword.

“Why didn’t you go to Tessa immediately? You ran out of the room like a madman, hollering and banging on doors.”

“I did not see Tessa, or if I did, the horror of Jason’s body stuck like a pig, and blood everywhere, and this soldier standing over him-all that blotted her out. I ran, like a coward, to get help.”

“Leaving Tessa, to whom I believe you are strongly attached, with a vicious killer?”

Beasley coloured. “Yes,” he whispered. “I am ashamed to say I did. But I will not lie to you. I stumbled back into the hallway and headed across to Dawson’s door. It was already open and I saw him lying inside in a pool of his own vomit, still drunk or hopelessly hungover, and I just carried on to Mrs. Thedford’s door, and pounded on it like a child trying to waken its mother. The racket alerted Jeremiah, who joined me, and we went in there together.”

And the rest they already knew.

Beasley was about to get up when Marc stopped him with another question: “Do you know any reason why Mr. Merriwether would be in need of money? Desperately in need, perhaps?”

Beasley sat back down and thought about the question, giving no sign that it might have some malign purpose or raise matters that could implicate him personally. “Yes, now that I think back on it, he did.”

Cobb removed his pipe and leaned forward.

“Please, go on,” Marc said. “Strange as it may seem, your response to the question could be vital to this investigation.”

“As you wish. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead-even though I did not like Jason or his arrogance, he gave me professional advice and was not unkind in his way-but just before we set out on this tour, I overheard him talking with a theatre manager named Mitchell, a rival if you will, and they were discussing the possibility of opening a new theatre on Canal Street as joint owners. But it was obvious that, at that time anyway, Jason did not have the kind of capital required. Nor would he ever, I thought, if he stuck to acting for his livelihood.”

“Was this not a betrayal of Mrs. Thedford, who had given him a second chance when nobody else would?”

Beasley was amazed. “You don’t know the theatre world in New York, sir. Mrs. Thedford might have been disappointed in him, but in the end she would have wished him well. When it comes to the crunch, every actor, director, and manager is ambitious for himself. In that regard, Mrs. Thedford is the miraculous exception. But she understands the world she’s lived and survived in now for twenty-five years.”

Beasley was thanked and went back to the actors’ quarters.

“Well, Cobb, we now have a motive for Merriwether’s pathetic attempt at gunrunning: money.”

“Least it ain’t politics,” Cobb rumbled.

“True, though it would be simpler if some crazy Orangeman had broken into the rooms up there looking for the gunrunner, found him already knocked senseless on the floor, stabbed him with Hilliard’s sabre to finish the job, and bolted.”

“Ogden Frank’s an Orangeman, ain’t he?”

“But not a rabid one. And why would he risk ruining himself financially with such a messy assassination in his own nest when Merriwether could have been killed more conveniently elsewhere? Or merely turned over to Sir Francis. Besides, no one seems to have been snooping around the guns but us.”

“Plus the fact none of them actors saw Frank up there till he was summoned.”

“Nor any other Orange lunatic.”

Cobb sighed, accidentally sucked in the putrid contents of his pipe-stem, spat furiously, and said, “We been at this all mornin’, Major, an’ we ain’t found much to ex-culprit your friend Hilliard. I’m beginnin’ to think things’d be a sight easier if it turned out he done it.”

Marc and Cobb were sitting in the taproom with a nervous-looking Ogden Frank, drinking a draught of his best brew, on the house.

“I gotta tell them actors pretty soon if it’s okay for them to start gettin’ ready for tonight. An’ my tapster an’ assistant’ll be comin’ through that door in fifteen minutes to help me open the premises an’ get some heat an’ light into the theatre. And if I don’t let one of the maids up to the actors’ rooms soon, questions’ll be raised about what’s goin’ on. An’ we can’t let that corpse fester an’ stink up there much longer.”