The Medieval Murderers - The First Murder

Doll grimaced, thinking the poor boy had made a mistake. He had been hurried into doing a job he knew nothing about, and had dropped the counterweight.

‘It was the wrong rope, lad.’

This was Will Mossop’s voice coming from the stage. It shook with anger and emotion. The boy looked up at Doll, ashen-faced.

‘It wasn’t, lady. Look. The cleats are all marked.’ He pointed at the clear, hand-painted black letters on the cleat that no longer had a rope attached. The deadly rope. Doll read the letters: ‘US3.’

‘Upstage backcloth number three,’ the boy explained.

Mossop by now was in the wings too. He strode over to the cleats, and yanked on the rope secured round the next cleat to US3. Following the angle of the rope as it soared into the flies, both Mossop and Doll could see the Garden of Eden backcloth shuddering in response to his tug on its rope. Mossop pointed at the cleat the backcloth was on.

‘FL1. Fly one. The ropes have got crossed over. This is Jed Lawless’s fault.’

Doll peered back onto the stage, where a small knot of actors stood around the heavy sack.

‘Is Morton…?’

Mossop nodded.

‘Dead for sure. I shall have to call for the magistrate, but it is surely nothing more than a tragic accident.’

Doll was about to offer a different opinion, but saw the far-off look in Will’s eyes. She knew he was already thinking of the implications for the play. She took his arm and drew him to one side, casting a glance at the whimpering boy.

‘Will, look after the boy.’

Mossop shook his head, as though trying to clear his thoughts.

‘What? Oh, Tom, you mean? Yes, I will get a doctor to put some salve on his hands. He will be fine.’ He looked at his disconsolate band of actors onstage, then at Doll.

‘You had all better wait for the magistrate, and when he is finished, you can all go home. I will send a message round telling what I propose to do when I know myself.’

Doll could see her chance at stardom slipping away. But for now there were other matters to deal with, and she didn’t propose to be held up by some interfering magistrate. She threw a cloak over her diaphanous shift, slipped out the stage door of the theatre, and called a cab.

‘Morton Stanley has been murdered?’

Malinferno had reacted in shock at Doll’s pronouncement. Bromhead’s dire prediction was still uppermost in his mind, and now it seemed the warning had not been for nothing. He was pacing the landing that separated their two rooms, trying to convince himself that it wasn’t so. He called out to Doll, who was changing into something more decent in the bedroom.

‘Couldn’t it have been an accident? If the kid released the wrong rope, then it was just unlucky that Stanley was underneath the sack of sand.’

Doll stepped out of the bedroom, and would have spoken, but she noticed that their landlady, Mrs Stanhope, was hovering at the bottom of the staircase all agog, so she steered Joe back into their living room. She closed the door, and leaned against it. Her bosom, now clad in more demure white cotton, heaved.

‘It was no accident. The boy knew what he was doing, and chose what should have been the correct rope.’

Malinferno frowned, still unconvinced.

‘He wore spectacles, didn’t he? That may have caused his confusion.’

‘No. He chose the correct cleat. But the ropes had been switched, and I think it was done deliberately.’

‘Who would have cause to murder Morton Stanley?’

Doll barked out a laugh. ‘Nearly everyone who had been in the theatre the previous day. Percy Tristram and Morton have been at each other’s throats for years, apparently. Percy used to get the leads, but now he’s older and fatter, Morton has replaced him. He gets Morton’s goat by calling him Stan. It seems that when he started out on the boards, Morton Stanley was plain Stan Morton. When his star began to wax, he suddenly emerged as Morton Stanley. Percy doesn’t let him forget the old days.’

Malinferno held up a cautionary finger at this point. ‘Yes, but if they have been old enemies, why kill him now, and so openly, too?’

Doll sighed. ‘The very same thought had occurred to me. And I can’t give you an explanation. But it had to be someone theatrical, who knew about all the ropes and pulleys.’

‘Will Mossop must know.’

‘What makes you think Will murdered Morton?’

Malinferno recalled the rehearsal he had attended when Stanley’s ineptitude had driven Mossop to distraction.

‘He actually said to me something about wanting to get rid of him if he could. I can recall his very words. He said, “In fact I would murder him, if only I had a replacement.”’

Doll shook her head. ‘Nah. That’s just theatre-speak. They all go to excess like that.’

Malinferno was not so certain.

‘We should not rule him out nevertheless. Who else is there with a motive?’

Doll grimaced, thinking of the exchange between Morton and the chief stagehand.

‘The obvious suspect has to be Jed Lawless.’

She told Malinferno of the incident in the wings when Morton threatened to kill Lawless, grabbing the club-footed stagehand by the scruff of his neck.

‘It was when Jed accused him of being a player of backgammon in a rather loud voice. Morton threatened him with violence, and Will had to separate them. They cooled down, but I heard more than I was supposed to when Jed stalked off. He made a threat, spoken in a whisper.’

‘What was it?’

‘“Kill me, Molly? Not before I have killed you first.”’

This time, she didn’t have to explain to Joe that ‘molly’ was a derogatory name for a man who liked to dress as a woman. The euphemism ‘playing backgammon’ had been sufficient education for him.

‘But doesn’t the same apply to Lawless as to Will Mossop? Could that not just have been all wind and bluster?’

‘Not the way he said it.’

Malinferno gathered up his garrick greatcoat, and tossed her cloak at Doll.

‘Come on.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘To the theatre, of course. I need to see the scene of the crime.’

Doll groaned, and was about to complain that the last place she wanted to go right now was the Royal Coburg. In fact, she wanted to say that she was heartily sick of the place, but Joe was already halfway down the staircase.

She called after him. ‘Go to the end of the lane, and find a Tilbury. I’m not walking there this late at night.’

The little Tilbury cab came to a halt outside the imposing front of the theatre. A mist had risen from the river, and it drifted down the Waterloo Road, turning the façade of the Royal Coburg into something from a Mary Shelley novel. Malinferno paid the cabby, and watched as the Tilbury disappeared back over the river. Despite his heavy coat, he shivered as the cab was swallowed in the swirling fog. Doll grabbed his arm.

‘Come on. It’s bleeding cold out here. Job will have a nip of something in his cubbyhole.’

‘Job?’

Doll dragged him down a dark side street that ran between Waterloo Road and Webber Street.

‘Job is the stage-door man. He always has some gin tucked away somewhere.’ She grinned. ‘I call it his little comforter.’

Malinferno groaned at the pun, but allowed himself to be led to a dingy door set deep in the recesses of the grimy brick wall at the rear of the theatre. Doll pushed it open, and it creaked theatrically.

‘Job? It’s only me, Doll Pocket. Are you there?’

There was no reply, and the little office with its window on the corridor that led backstage was empty. Doll frowned.

‘That’s odd. He should be here. He practically lives in that office.’

Malinferno glanced nervously over his shoulder. There was something eerie about an empty theatre, devoid of actors and the noise and bustle of performance.