Imogen Robertson - Anatomy of Murder

“Afternoon, Mrs. Bligh. Something for you from the kitchen? Does Boyo here like a scrap?”

Jocasta looked down at her dog. He widened his eyes, and she narrowed hers.

“No. He’s getting me into trouble again. He’ll have to wait.”

Boyo got down on the floor and put his front paw over his nose.

“What I need from you, Ripley, is a place. You know the Mitchells? Young ones. He’s a clerk, she sells perfumes somewhere. Married. Room with the mother. I need to know where they stay.”

The boy rubbed his nose for a second.

“Yeah. I know the old woman. And he comes in here for his dinner three days a week. Clerks for the Admiralty, doesn’t he? They’ve got a place in Salisbury Street. He’s all right. His mother’s a sharp-faced old bitch though. Works their girl into the ground and lives like they’ve nothing to eat but sawdust, though if she’s got enough blunt to front a coffeehouse, they can’t be hurting that much. Mind you, a month ago he was whining that the landlord’s putting up her rent and they might lose it. Guess that’s why they still send the girl out to the shop to sell Mr. Broodigan’s perfumes.” The boy looked a little startled at having said so much. “She ain’t a friend of yours, is she, Mrs. Bligh?”

Jocasta winked and pulled her cards from the pocket of her skirt. “Pick a card, Ripley,” she said, fanning them out.

The boy bit his lip, then with sudden decision, yanked one free from the middle of the pack and passed it to her. From the back of the room, a man, his apron held together by grease and bad memories, his belly so wide he could hardly waddle between his tables, shouted out.

“Oi, Ripley! Why ain’t you serving, you whelp?” Jocasta flicked up her eyes from the card Ripley had chosen. The fat man coughed. “Er, sorry, Mrs. Bligh. Didn’t see you there for a second. You look after her, boy.” Ripley didn’t even bother looking round.

“Well? Anything for me, Mrs. Bligh?”

Jocasta scratched her nose. On the floor, Boyo growled. “Watch yon weasel-faced fellow, middle table, blue coat with a mourning band. He’s going to try and pass you false coin for his dinner.”

Ripley turned slowly with his eyes narrowed and spotted the man. He gave a little hiss between his teeth, then swung back to Jocasta, blinking.

“You got all that from one card?”

“No. He’s been going through his coin under the table all the time we’ve been talking and trying it with his thumbnail to find the bad stuff. He’ll mix it in. Don’t break his arm though. He got took, now he’s trying to take. Card just says ‘watch your back,’ though if any one of us stopped doing that, we wouldn’t be stupid for long.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Bligh.”

“Much obliged to you too, youngling.” And with a nod to the fat man, Jocasta turned to go. Boyo sat up, and having given the room his own commentary in the form of a short sharp bark, trotted out on her heel.

It took some little time for Harriet and Crowther to make their way through the theater and find the offices of Mr. Harwood. The corridors were crowded with people, each making their own, very determined way in several directions. Harriet spotted a cluster of Roman maidens turning into their path. From a distance they looked as lovely as goddesses, but as they approached they coarsened. Their gold hairpieces turned to painted card, their soft white robes were in fact not entirely clean, nor securely fastened, their faces were vivid with paint. Harriet pondered as they passed the mystery of drama. At forty paces these ladies were beauteous examples of Ancient womanhood, at five they were monsters.

Sounds of a band at rehearsal drifted past the pair-the throb of a cello and the scattered bright tones of a harpsichord. A fat little man barreled toward them, almost hidden by the load of feathered skirts he carried in his arms. A boy turned a corner too fast, still shouting something over his shoulder, and collided with Crowther. The lad stumbled and let go an armful of manuscript paper with a slithering rustle; music still caught between lines on the stave pooled like water around their feet. He cursed and scrabbled them together again. Harriet bent to help him and he grinned at her boldly before dashing off again with the pages clamped to his chest. And everyone they passed seemed to find it necessary to speak, continually, and at unnecessary volume. Those who were not braying at their companions or to the air, sang. Scales and fragments of tunes fell about them in a constant clatter; a dawn chorus of competing human voices. Crowther had to draw on all his reserves not to cover his ears.

Then, when they managed to find the door to the main theater lobby and went through it, the scene became unnaturally calm. Harriet, used to being in such establishments with a great crowd, was unnerved. It was as if all the confusion they had just stumbled through had been swallowed in a single gulp. She felt as if she had fallen from a carnival into a cathedral. The place was decorated with devotion. Along the corridors they had just walked, the walls and ceilings were plain and serviceable-all unpainted plaster and the sort of lamp holders Harriet used in her kitchen or servants’ quarters, but here the doorways were slung with plaster garlands picked out in powder blue with little golden cherubs floundering happily among them; the lamps, great torches in clouded glass swirls, were held in the white hands of semi-clad goddesses who seemed to be pulling themselves free of the flat walls behind them. The carpet was crimson, thick, and flowed up the stairs toward the private boxes like a mounting wave. The ceiling showed the Muses of Dance, Song and Epic seated among the clouds, sharing the duty of holding a laurel wreath above the lobby: it circled the glass rotunda through which the weak daylight crawled. Yet with the lamps unlit, and the hubbub of the building suddenly stilled, the atmosphere was eerie rather than splendid. Harriet thought of the shadows in Justice Pither’s outhouse, and shivered. Crowther’s voice seemed oddly loud when he spoke.

“I believe this place must have shared a decorator with the former inhabitants of Berkeley Square. Ah, there.” He pointed to a door that led off the landing above them. “I believe that to be the sort of situation a manager would choose for his office, do you not agree, Mrs. Westerman?”

She nodded. “Indeed-just where he can put his head out of the door to see how the crowd is filling out.” They ascended the stairs, and all was silent but for the swish of Harriet’s skirts on the carpeted steps.

Harriet had to admit that the words “theatrical manager” had conjured a certain image in her mind. Mr. Winter Harwood seemed fashioned to destroy it. Where she had expected a character of high color who bore the signs of a life of fine food and plentiful wine, Mr. Harwood was a trim man, long-limbed, but with enough breadth in his shoulders to carry his height, clean-skinned and with pale-blue eyes; where she had expected someone who dressed in the colorful and ornate style of the building he managed, Mr. Harwood was simply dressed in a close-fitting dark-blue coat and fawn breeches; his waistcoat was free of fobs or chains, and his wig made none of the slightly hysterical claims to originality that seemed to be the current fashion. He dressed like Graves, in fact, and where she had suspected a manner slightly overenthused, highly sensible, innately dramatic, Mr. Harwood showed himself, on hearing their news, to be a master of understatement and emotional control.

“Fitzraven is dead, you say? Thank you for the information.”

His desk, Harriet noticed, was too tidy. Mr. Harwood’s writing equipment was laid out in front of him as if it had been placed there with the aid of a set square and ruler. To his right sat a neat pile of letters, unopened. To his left, several sheets smoothed out flat and others folded and ready, it seemed, for the penny post. Having spoken, he took another letter from the pile to his right and broke the seal on it. Then glanced up again at his visitors, as if surprised to find them still there.