Don Gutteridge - Vital Secrets

Looking now at these toe-prints, one must conclude that Rick had staggered backwards after being bloodied, then staggered forward again, leaving more prints in the same direction. Possible, Marc thought, but not probable. There just didn’t seem to be enough prints to satisfy this interpretation. And as far as he could make out, the backward staggering depicted here did not resemble the way any man would actually have done it: the print-pattern was simply too regular. Moreover, Rick had told him that the first thing he remembered upon waking was noticing blood on his tunic. If that were true, and Marc believed it was, then Rick would have struck and stabbed Merriwether while unconscious and with no memory of either act. Besides which, Rick’s jacket had seemed to Marc, when he had examined it closely last night, to be too free of splashes and splatter. The smeared patterns were inconsistent with spouting blood. What that portended he could not guess. All he knew was that, despite the contrary eyewitness testimony, there was reason to doubt that Rick Hilliard had committed murder.

Until he could come up with a more plausible alternative, however, he recognized that he had little chance of convincing the governor or the magistrates of Rick’s innocence.

Marc now began to search the other rooms. He opened each actor’s trunk, finding no more false bottoms, went through the pockets, sleeves, and cuffs of every costume, and sifted through any ash left in a stove. Merriwether, Armstrong, and Beasley had obviously not lit fires yesterday evening, so that only a residual ash remained from fires earlier on the weekend. And nothing was to be found there beyond the ash itself. Mrs. Thedford, however, had put on a small fire in her parlour room, and as Marc rummaged about he did find several charred bits of what appeared to be linen paper or the cloth cover of a book. At the moment, though, he could find nothing sinister in the discovery. Mrs. Thedford would have many papers, playbills, script-pamphlets, cue cards, and the like as part of her business. What he was searching for specifically was the container for the laudanum that had been poured into Tessa’s sherry decanter, even if it had been shattered into shards. Chances were it was somewhere on this floor. He even opened Mrs. Thedford’s perfume bottles and sniffed, precipitating several sneezes but no clue. He picked up a candlestick and shoved a forefinger up the hollow stem of it. No vial there.

Discouraged, Marc went back out into the hall. He put himself in Merriwether’s shoes for a moment: he waits till the others have gone down for supper or later perhaps when they’ve headed for their cramped dressing-rooms to put on makeup. Then he slips across to Tessa’s room, vial in hand, pours the contents into the decanter, and slips out again. He can’t very well leave the vial there, and he would not be foolish enough to hide it in his own room lest something go awry with his plan. But where else? Maybe he had taken it down to the theatre with him; Marc would have to search the dressing-rooms at least.

It was then that he noticed the ornamental spittoon sitting near Armstrong’s door. It was not used as a spittoon up here, but its brass filigree, when polished, would gleam handsomely. Gingerly, Marc pressed his right hand into the narrow opening and down into the wider body of the piece. He struck sand. Frank had probably filled it with sand to act as ballast. Wriggling two fingers, Marc managed to delve down far enough to strike something harder than sand. Seconds later he drew out a glass apothecary bottle, its stopper in place. He turned it upside down and there, on the bottom, in very tiny type, he read: Michaels. Ezra Michaels operated a chemist’s shop near the corner of King and Toronto Streets. And while this empty unlabelled bottle didn’t guarantee that the laudanum had come from Michaels, containers often being re-used, it strongly suggested that the narcotic had been purchased somewhere in the capital.

Marc sighed. If only he had found the vial in Merriwether’s room. It could have been placed out here by anyone-including Rick. However, if it had been purchased at Michaels, there would likely be a record of the sale and perhaps even a physical description of the buyer. Old Michaels, he knew, boasted that he never forgot a face. He would put Cobb onto this immediately. Remembering a pencil sketch of the actor, out of costume, on Merriwether’s desk, Marc returned to retrieve it. He would have Cobb take it to Michaels and, if necessary, to every apothecary and quack homeopath in the city. He might not be able to prove Rick was innocent of murder, but he’d be damned if he’d let the young man go to the gallows as a rapist.

When Marc came down to relieve Cobb and send him off to make the rounds of the chemists, the rehearsal for the impromptu evening ahead was in full swing. Marc took up a stool and sat unobtrusively in the wings to watch. He had little fear that any one of the five actors would suddenly decide to sprint to the double-doors at the front of the theatre, fling back the bar, and make a run for it down Colborne Street.

On the stage in front of him, illumined only by a single, half-lit chandelier, stood Dawson Armstrong in top hat and tails, surrounded by the three women in old-fashioned bonnets and Beasley, with a carter’s cap on his head. They were in the midst of a dramatized reading of Cowper’s “The Diverting History of John Gilpin.” Armstrong, as the hapless Gilpin, who cannot control the horse he’s borrowed to ride with his wife and family to their seaside holiday spot, was miming to perfection the struggle and strain of the runaway, even while he narrated the tale. The chorus around him added the comic commentary of his wife and various bystanders. The whole thing was highly professional and very funny. Certainly, in a town where runaway horses and wagons were not infrequent, this piece should go over well tonight. Marc himself was impressed by the intensity of concentration that these five managed after the trials of the past fifteen hours, but only Jeremiah had noticed his arrival, offering a brief smile of welcome. When “John Gilpin” came to its risible conclusion, Marc announced his presence by clapping out his approval.

Mrs. Thedford turned, caught his eye, and said with amusement, “I hope those watching this evening are so easily entertained.” Then, addressing the others, she said, “Dawson, I think you didn’t come in quite soon enough at ‘The dinner waits, and we are tired.’ Your response here should draw the biggest laugh of the piece, so we don’t want to mistime it.”

They re-did the middle section of the poem, agreed among themselves that it was improved if not perfect, then Mrs. Thedford said, “Tessa and I will now do ‘Lenore.’” Jeremiah stepped smartly forward with several bits of costume for the next number. Tessa, pale but remarkably composed, shook out her blond curls, draped a gossamer wrap over her bare shoulders, and sank to the floor in a lifeless pose. Mrs. Thedford donned a black lace shawl that covered her head and shoulders. Staring sorrowfully at the still, beautiful form at her feet, she began to recite one of the most haunting laments Marc had ever heard. Who the poet was he had no idea, but the grief of the speaker for the dead Lenore was agonizingly real:

See! On yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore, Come! Let the burial rite be read-the funeral song be sung!-

An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young-

A dirge for her doubly dead in that she died so young. By you-by yours, the evil eye-by yours, the slanderous tongue That did to death the innocence that died, and died so young.

Then, partway through, the sobbing diminuendos of a violin joined the grieved speaker, and Marc tore his gaze from the heartwrenching scene of woman and girl to glance over and see Clarence Beasley with the instrument under his chin. Tears welled up in the woman’s eyes as the poem neared its mournful conclusion: