Peter Lovesey - Abracadaver

Swords! His thoughts raced back to the unfortunate conjurer languishing in Newgate, and his abortive trick with the girl in the cabinet. Would the perpetrator of these ‘accidents’ (if there were such a person) have the audacity to repeat his wickedness here? Cribb’s words came back to him: ‘Carry out your orders . . .’ He walked to the middle and found the blue spot. The swords had one good effect on him, anyway: his mind had cleared itself of illusions and was fully alive to the dangers in the present situation. Another order was barked at him: ‘Only the table now. On the yellow square.’ That looked harmless enough, thank goodness. A silk-covered card-table with conjurer’s impedimenta, a silk hat, wand, gloves and a glass containing a red liquid.

The curtain was up again almost before he was back in the wings, and from the other side a performer in white tie and tails had taken the stage. Thackeray recognised him at once as one of the guests at Philbeach House, and it shortly became quite clear why he had been there. The man picked up one of the swords, thrust back his head, opened his mouth wide and slowly inserted the blade until the hilt was six inches from his teeth. The sword-swallower!

He withdrew the blade, and repeated the feat twice, with broader swords, accompanied by drum rolls. In the wings, Thackeray breathed with relief as the weapons came out as clean and shining as they had gone in. Not for long, however. As though sword-swallowing were not spectacular enough, the performer produced a box of matches, lighted a spill and began a demonstration of fire-eating. Really! Did people like that deserve police protection?

‘My Lords, Ladies and gentlemen, for my final trick,’ said the sword-swallower, when the fire-eating was safely completed, ‘and for your delectation, I should like to introduce my charming assistant, Miss Lola!’

She ran on to the stage from behind Thackeray, brushing him with her cloak as she passed. Lola Pinkus, like Miss Tring, had found a new forte in the profession. She curtsied most appealingly, tossing her blonde curls back as she straightened. How refreshing to see at last a young woman decently covered from neck to ankle!

‘Take it off!’ appealed some philistine in the audience.

‘Patience, sir, if you please,’ remonstrated the sword-swal- lower. ‘You may think, my friends, that you have seen all too little of Miss Lola. Soon you shall see less. In fact, she shall vanish altogether, before your very eyes.’ He picked up the glass. ‘In here is the most marvellous fluid in the world—’

‘Gin!’ shouted someone.’

‘No, sir! Not even gin has the properties of this particular brew. Take one draught of this and within seconds you will disappear completely. And I feel obliged to announce that it may not be purchased afterwards by gentlemen wishing to experiment on their mothers-in-law. Now, Miss Lola, would you care to give me your cloak? Our friends in the audience may wish to be assured that you are, in truth, flesh and blood and no mere illusion.’

Even this act! Thackeray noted a depressing sameness in the entertainment. Whatever their billing, the object of the performances seemed to be to display the fair sex in various degrees of indecency. Lola Pinkus was more adequately covered than Miss Tring, but somewhat less than respectability would have required in, say, a swimming-bath for females only. And the audience were behaving intolerably, whistling and shouting as though they had never seen a half undressed woman before. Perhaps they had not. Thackeray sniffed. There were compensations, after all, in a humble upbringing.

‘I shall now invite Miss Lola to drink this glass of the magical fluid,’ announced the sword-swallower, when he could get a hearing. ‘And then you must watch closely, for to see is to believe!’

Lola approached him and took her stance with particular care. Thackeray watched keenly. He already had an idea of how the disappearance might be effected. The drum-roll began. The sword-swallower made some spectacular movements with the cloak. The footlights and the side-lighting dimmed, leaving a single beam directed on the performers from the gallery. Lola held the glass high, lowered it and drank. Simultaneously the sword-swallower shielded her from the audience with the cloak. With a most convincing scream she dropped through the trap-door on which she was standing. The lights came on. The cloak was swept aside to show the disappearance accomplished. Gasps of amazement were heard from the auditorium.

‘To see is to believe!’ shouted the sword-swallower.

‘And here I am!’ a voice came from high in the gallery. Everyone turned to see. There she was in her spangles and little else, waving triumphantly. A thunder of applause greeted her. Few of those present could have realised, as Thackeray did, that they were not looking at Lola Pinkus, but her sister, Bella.

The sword-swallower extended a hand towards the gallery, bowed, took a step back, and bowed again. The curtain was rung down. As he made for the wings one of the stagehands ran to meet him. He seemed to anticipate what was to be said. ‘That scream . . .’

‘That’s right, sir,’ said the stage-hand. ‘We heard it too, from down below, a moment before she came through the trap. She was dying before she hit the mattress, sir. She wasn’t conscious. She twitched once or twice and then went still.’

CHAPTER

11

THE NEWS FROM UNDER the stage had an odd effect on Thackeray. Naturally, he was shocked by the sudden death of such a young and charming artiste. But, sad as it was, the passing from the scene of Lola Pinkus gave a significant lift to his morale. He now had a clear justification for being on the stage, and he could once again think and act as a simple policeman. And what a relief that was! His mortifying experiences as a stage-remover actually began to look like part of an inspired plan. Even that harrowing journey across the stage with Miss Tring took on a heroic quality. In fact, he could picture himself already in Number One Court listening to the Lord Chief Justice: ‘It should not pass unrecorded that this case would never have been brought to trial but for the devotion to duty in the most unimaginable circumstances of a certain Detective Constable . . .’

Once he had satisfied himself that Lola was undeniably dead—and by her expression and attitude the moment of death had been violent in the extreme—he realised that it was not, after all, going to be possible to carry out the duties of a simple policeman. ‘After the finding of a body,’ decreed the Police Code (which all self-respecting members of the Force knew by heart), ‘the Coroner should be informed on the appropriate form.’ That was all right for the occasional corpse you found along the Embankment after an uncommonly cold night, but it didn’t quite meet the present case. He mentally thumbed through the pages of the manual, searching for something more appropriate. ‘When a dead body is found and there is no doubt that life is extinct . . .’ He peered closely at Lola’s mortal remains—‘. . . it should never be touched until the arrival of a constable who should forthwith note carefully its appearance and all surrounding it.’ His hand went to the place where his notebook should have been. No reason to panic, though; he would commit the details to memory. Countenance bluish and revealing unmistakable signs of pain. Eyes bolting open. Teeth bared and clenched. Body contorted, with legs bent unnaturally from the fall. Hands outspread but tensed, like claws. Body found on a straw mattress below the star trap. Pieces of broken glass scattered about nearby. That would do for the present. Time was too precious to waste over details. What next? ‘If he suspects that death was caused by violence he should not move the body or allow any part of the clothing or any article about it to be touched or moved by any person until the arrival of an Inspector, who should be sent for by messenger.’ Devilish difficult. Cribb would pass for an Inspector, of course. He was always telling everyone he carried all the responsibility without the rank. But contacting him through a messenger was next to impossible; the trap-man who had first reported Lola’s death had gone away complaining of dizziness, leaving him alone with the body. What could he do by himself? Stop the show and ask ‘Is there a detective sergeant in the house?’ A question like that in this hall was liable to start a stampede for the exit.