Don Gutteridge - Vital Secrets

“On Wednesday, then,” Marc said, leaning forward, “and this is crucial, the Shakespeare program must go ahead in some fashion.”

There was a perplexed pause. “We can most assuredly put together a program of short scenes from Shakespeare using the five remaining members of the company,” Mrs. Thedford said, “but they will not have the power that-”

“But you miss my point,” Marc said, savouring the drama of the moment. “Sir Francis, for reasons of security that I am not at liberty to reveal, wishes the public not merely to believe that Mr. Merriwether is alive but to observe him in action on Wednesday evening.”

“Do you intend to bring Old Hamlet’s ghost on stage with us?” Dawson Armstrong snorted.

“Not at all. Jason Merriwether will, to all those in the audience, be performing as usual. But the body inside the costume and the face under the makeup will be mine.”

Marc himself supervised the surreptitious removal of Merriwether’s corpse. He emptied the trunk in the actor’s room of its costumes and, leaving the rifles secure beneath the false bottom, dragged it into the hall. There Jeremiah and Cobb were waiting with the body wrapped tightly in a canvas sheet supplied by Ogden Frank. They squeezed the near-six-foot figure into the five-foot trunk in as dignified a manner as possible, shut the lid, and then locked it with the key Marc had used Monday night.

Wilkie was called up from below to help Cobb and Jeremiah lug it downstairs and through the tavern. Fortunately, while blissfully uncurious and lacking entirely in ambition, Wilkie was as loyal as a spaniel. He simply did as he was bid, happy to be relieved of the tedium of sentry duty. The barroom was crowded, but the regulars, having witnessed the comings and goings of such trunks since Saturday, paid them little heed. Then, with Marc keeping watch, the trunk was slipped into the small ice-barn behind the stables. Blocks of ice were freed from the straw and chopped up, and the pieces packed around the corpse. Poor Merriwether would keep until Thursday. The icehouse was then padlocked.

Marc and Cobb repaired to the dining-room, where they sought out a quiet table in one corner, ordered a flagon of ale and some cold meat with cheese, and reviewed the events of the day.

“Well, Major, you left them thisbe-ans without a word to spout, that’s fer sure.”

“Do you think I convinced them that I can pull this off?”

“Dunno. But they ain’t got a lot of choice, have they?”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

Marc had done his best to persuade Mrs. Thedford and the others that, at five foot eleven inches, Merriwether was a man to be noticed; indeed, he had been noticed during the troupe’s social activities on the weekend. But Marc was just as tall, with a similar build: muscular without being heavyset and very wide across the shoulders. Their colouring was roughly the same except for Merriwether’s dark eyes, but then Marc would be seen, even by those who might have dined with the tragedian on Sunday, only as a costumed figure up on a distant stage under flickering candles and above the glare of footlights, bearded and bewigged. He would have to make a conscious effort at lowering his voice to the basso range, but the declamatory style of delivery and exaggerated gesturing currently in vogue would assist in the deception. And Tuesday’s announced “illness” would be used as an excuse to forestall impromptu requests for backstage visits. It was Mrs. Thedford herself who suggested that the absence of company members from the environs of the theatre be attributed to the news of a death in her family. Her fellow actors would naturally go into mourning in deference to her sorrow.

It had been at this juncture that the only serious question regarding Marc’s scheme had been raised by Lieutenant Spooner from the wings. Could Mr. Edwards actually act and, if so, could he memorize and sufficiently rehearse his lines and cues well enough to deceive the playgoers of Toronto? To that, Marc had replied: “I’ll know the answer at dinner-hour tomorrow.” And before he had left to oversee the removal of the body, Mrs. Thedford said she would put together the pages of script he would have to learn by rehearsal time at one o’clock the next afternoon. In the meantime, the actors, surprisingly animated, set about preparing something to entertain the sophisticates of the colony later in the evening.

“I’ll be upstairs while the rehearsal is in progress, having a close look at Tessa’s room and doing a thorough search of the other rooms. Though any evidence there will likely have been hidden or destroyed,” Marc admitted to Cobb.

“Well, they couldn’t’ve taken it very far. Wilkie’s kept them cooped up there tighter’n a maiden’s purse, an’ he tracked Madame Thedford all the way to the dining-room when she went to meet Major Jenkin.”

“There are stoves in each room for burning whatever might need to be.”

“You could grovel through the ashes.”

“If grovelling will help Rick, I’ll do it,” Marc said, and Cobb, to be polite, chuckled.

After assuring himself that there was no microscopic trail of blood along the hall carpet-a trail that would have led him to the killer’s room-Marc went to Tessa’s door. The wax plug, replaced by Cobb after he had removed the body, had not been dislodged or tampered with. The room was as they had left it last night, minus Merriwether’s remains.

The beige carpet had acted like a blotter, recording each spill of blood in blurred but indelible outline. The position of the body, on its back with legs splayed, was thus limned except for the head area. There a ghoulish brown ripple indicated where the skull had been smashed and bled thickly. The slash in the carpet where Rick’s sword had stuck in the wood below was clearly visible, surrounded by a dark crimson parabola.

What interested Marc much more, however, were the smudges between the feet of the corpse and the settee about eight feet away near the window overlooking Colborne Street. According to the corroborated testimony of Beasley, Rick was standing over the corpse, holding the sword in his hands. Presumably, his jacket, breeches, and boots had been sprayed with blood from the victim’s still-pumping heart, and in order for it to have got all over Rick’s hands and the haft of his sword, he would have had either to bend down and immerse himself in it or to rub it all over himself in some sort of ritual triumph. Neither act befitted the man he knew as Rick Hilliard.

But the smudges between corpse and settee, indicative of footprints, however indistinct, were very curious indeed. They had been made by a boot, though the size and nature could not be determined. Without question, however, they went in only one direction: from the settee to the corpse. Only toe-prints were unambiguously visible and he could find none of them pointing the other way, though there were, to be sure, enough random smudges here and there to make any firm conclusion problematic. Beasley and the police had regrettably contaminated the scene while the blood was still fresh. Still, if Rick had done the deed, he would have had to rise from the settee at Tessa’s cry, knock the villain down, and skewer him-after which he would have been more or less bloodied, especially around the boots. Then, presumably, he had staggered to the settee, where there were blood-smears on the edge of the seat. The killer had sat down: two fully outlined boot-prints and a palm-print attested to that. Why? To savour his murderous act? Weather the aftershock? Suffer remorse? Whatever the reason, this pause could have lasted mere seconds because when Beasley arrived-say, two minutes after Tessa’s cry-Rick was already back over the body and was still there when Mrs. Thedford and Jeremiah appeared on the scene.