The Medieval Murderers - The First Murder

‘Shouldn’t we just go?’

Doll laughed. ‘Nah. You wanted to see where Morton snuffed it, and see it you will. It’s only along here.’

She led the way confidently down the darkened corridor, and Malinferno followed, groping along the wall uncertainly. At the end of the corridor, which he presumed led onto the stage, there was a glimmer of light. The yellowish glow of candles. As they got closer, Doll suddenly stopped. Malinferno came up behind her.

‘What is it, Doll?’ he whispered into her ear.

‘There’s someone on the stage, and he has candles lit.’ She looked around the wings. ‘Where the hell is Job when you want him?’

Malinferno peered over Doll’s shoulder.

‘Could that be him lying in the middle of the stage?’

Doll turned her gaze where Joe had indicated, and gasped. The body of an elderly, unshaven man lay face up right where the sack had plummeted down onto Morton Stanley. She turned to Joe, and was about to speak, when he held a finger up to her lips. He pointed towards the wings on the other side of the stage. Jed Lawless limped out of the darkness, his club foot clomping on the boards. He bent over the body of the stage-door man, and peered at his face. Doll gasped involuntarily.

‘Poor Job, what’s Jed gone and done to him?’

‘It’s easy to find out,’ Malinferno responded decisively. ‘He can’t run far with his gammy leg.’

He rushed out of the wings towards the murderer. His approach surprised Jed, who fell back from the body. But just before Malinferno could grab him, the body reared up.

‘What the hell…?’

Malinferno was stunned, and stared at Job, who appeared to have come back from the dead. It was Jed who broke the deadlock.

‘What you doing here? And who are you, anyway?’

Doll emerged from the wings to settle the impasse.

‘Jed, this is Mr Malinferno. He has been to see the rehearsals, don’t you recall?’

Jed waved a dismissive hand. ‘Ahhh. I don’t have time to look out beyond the proscenium arch. I’m too busy backstage.’

Malinferno couldn’t help himself, and threw out an accusation: ‘Setting up traps to kill innocent actors?’

Lawless gaped at Malinferno, and then he barked out a derisive laugh. ‘You don’t think I did for him, do you?’

Doll added her voice to Malinferno’s. ‘You did say you would kill him before he killed you.’

The diminutive stage-hand frowned. ‘Did I? When?’

‘When you cast that slur on his masculinity, Jed.’

‘Oh, that. You mean when I called him a backgammon player and a molly.’ Lawless was unperturbed. ‘That was just talk. But if you think his murder has to do with his private proclivities, you should look at that Bankes fellow. Him what put up all that money, and got Stanley the part.’

It was Malinferno’s turn to frown.

‘William Bankes, the MP? What has he to do with Morton Stanley?’

‘I don’t know if he is a Member of Parliament or not. What I do know is that him and the molly-man was close friends.’ He winked. ‘Very close friends, if you take my meaning.’

Malinferno suddenly recalled the frosty atmosphere at an earlier rehearsal between Bankes and Stanley. The actor had deliberately snubbed Bankes. Was that the start of a row that had led to murder?

Lawless turned his back and proffered a hand to Job, who was still on the floor. The old man was having difficulty getting back to his feet, though apparently not having been murdered at all. When Doll asked what they were up to, Jed explained that he wanted to find out what had been done with the counterweight and the fatal rope. Job had been lying where Stanley had been in order to see up into the flies. The old boy turned to Lawless, and pointed upwards as if to God.

‘You were right, Jed, the pulleys have been moved.’

Jed snapped his fingers. ‘I knew it. And the counterweight reversed.’

Malinferno was puzzled. ‘Reversed?’

Lawless snorted at Malinferno’s ignorance of matters theatrical. ‘The sack should have been in the wings, and the other end hooked onto the actor, who would have been onstage. That’s how the flying rig works. We manipulate the weight in the wings and make the actor rise or descend onstage. The weight should never have been above the stage, so someone deliberately put it there, if you ask me.’

Job pointed at the chalked cross drawn on the stage.

‘Right above where Stanley was due to hit his mark.’

Doll stared at the scuffed mark, and felt a chill run down her spine. She clutched at Joe’s arm.

‘Come on, Joe. We won’t get any further standing here.’

‘But-’ Malinferno wanted to share his suspicions of William Bankes, but Doll was determined to go.

‘Come on!’

She dragged the puzzled Malinferno off the stage, leaving Jed Lawless to sort out his tangled web of ropes and pulleys. As they retraced their steps along the dark corridor leading to the stage door, Malinferno asked her what the hurry was, bursting with his new idea.

‘We were just getting somewhere there. Just imagine if it was a…’ He sought the right word. ‘… a lover’s tiff between Bankes and Stanley. Or if Stanley was about to let society know of Bankes’s leanings, it could have destroyed his reputation. That makes it a very good reason for Bankes murdering Stanley.’

Doll remained silent until they had escaped the gloomy confines of the backstage area of the Royal Coburg. But once they were out again in the street, she took a deep breath, and the words tumbled out of her mouth.

‘You’re exactly right, Joe. It makes a good reason for murdering Morton. But the problem is that we aren’t looking for someone who set out to kill Morton.’

Malinferno stared at Doll, not comprehending her meaning. ‘We aren’t? Why not?’

‘Because Morton Stanley wasn’t the intended victim.’

She pointed over her shoulder at the large and looming edifice that was the Royal Coburg, still shrouded eerily in mist. Malinferno was completely lost.

‘Then who was?’

Doll Pocket pulled a grim face. ‘Me.’

Doll promised to tell Malinferno all if he first bought her a meal.

‘The truth has made me feel famished.’

Now, they sat in the anonymous chop-house in Unicorn Passage, just off Tooley Street, where Malinferno had first become acquainted with Bromhead’s copy of The Play of Adam . He was beginning to feel that the warning written at the end of ‘Cain and Abel’ had some meaning to it after all. And that it was his fault that Doll’s life had been placed in jeopardy. It was he who had suggested that she should audition for a part in the play. As they ate, he confessed to Doll that the play was cursed, but that he’d only learned this much later. He wanted to know why she thought the deadly trap had been set for her. But Doll refused to enlighten Joe until she had finished the food placed before her. Finally, she wiped the brown gravy from her lips with a napkin, and dabbed the splash that had marred the pristine white of the front of her gown.

‘I hope that doesn’t stain. I paid a lot of money for this gown.’

Through gritted teeth, Malinferno begged Doll to explain why she thought she had been the target of the heavy bag of sand.

‘It was when Job pointed at the chalk cross marked on the stage.’

‘Yes. He said it was Morton Stanley’s mark. You yourself told me he couldn’t remember all his positions. Mossop must have put it there to make sure he was in the right place.’

Doll smiled fleetingly.

‘Yes, we thespians call it hitting your mark.’

‘And the sandbag certainly hit Morton’s mark. With deadly results.’

Doll spat on her napkin, and worried at the gravy stain that marred the material over her cleavage.