Peter Lovesey - Abracadaver

‘You’ve no idea where you were kept?’

‘It cannot have been more than a mile from here, Sergeant, allowing for the time the carriage took. I think I was in a cellar of some description. They didn’t ill-treat me, but I was so terrified, Papa. Please take me home now.’

‘Try to help the Sergeant, Ellen,’ Plunkett appealed. ‘Did you recognise either of their voices?’

‘I couldn’t, Papa, except to say that one was a woman.’

‘Sergeant,’ said Major Chick suddenly, ‘can you hear anything?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘From inside the hall.’ The Major pushed open the door. ‘Curious sort of smell, too. I’m going to look inside.’

‘Go with him, Thackeray.’

They crossed the vestibule together. The noise was clearer there, and certainly coming from the hall itself. To Thackeray it sounded like someone trying to wrap a small present in a huge sheet of brown paper. He opened the door leading to the hall. Smoke billowed out.

‘My God! The place is on fire!’ Like the monstrous creation of some demented scene-designer, the stage was ablaze from end to end. Huge yellow flames leapt to the full height of the proscenium, achieving a brilliance quite beyond the powers of gas and lime. One of the main curtains crashed downwards in a shower of sparks.

‘My hall!’ shouted Plunkett, suddenly with them.

‘The Major’s gone to sound the street fire alarm at the corner,’ said Cribb from behind. ‘There’s nothing you or I can do with a fire like this, sir. It’s a job for Captain Shaw and his men. Albert’s clearing the buildings on each side. Come away, sir. We’ll meet the Brigade at the door.’

They persuaded the manager to sit on the marble steps, with Ellen comforting him. ‘Next Tuesday would have been the greatest honour of my life,’ he was moaning. ‘To have that snatched away like this—it’s unendurable. Who could have done this to me?’

‘It must have been the limelight, Papa. It was unattended for so long. You’ve always said they are dangerous. There was probably an explosion in the lime-tank.’

Albert rejoined them. ‘There’s nobody in either of the adjoining buildings, Sergeant. There shouldn’t be any casualties, even if there’s a lot of damage to property. You’re quite sure there’s no one in the Paragon, Mr Plunkett? It’s a large building and—’ He stopped and turned to Cribb. ‘What’s happened to Beaconsfield?’

The sergeant was dangling the leash absentmindedly in one hand. ‘The dog?’ He glanced into the vestibule, thick with smoke. ‘He shouldn’t be long.’

Albert turned on Cribb in horror. ‘He’s in there, you mean? You let him go into that inferno?’

‘It was before we knew the place was on fire—when Miss Blake came out, in fact. He was curious to have a look inside so I slipped him off the leash.’

‘That doesn’t sound like Beaconsfield to me,’ said Albert bitterly. ‘Poor old animal must have been burned alive. How shall I tell Mama? She’ll call you every name she can lay her tongue to.’

‘You can tell her he was assisting the police in the execution of their duty,’ said Cribb starchily. ‘Just a moment. Take a look through here.’

He pulled the double doors fully open. Through the suffocating smoke wreathing hideously ahead of them it was just possible to distinguish something small and white coming towards them in jerking movements. Beaconsfield’s rump. He was struggling heroically to drag something held firmly between his jaws. Cribb ran to assist him. Man and dog gripped the valise together and brought it to the steps outside.

‘Well done, Beaconsfield! A trifle singed about the ears, and in need of a good bath, but none the worse for your escapade.’ Cribb opened the valise, brought out something and handed it to the grateful bulldog. ‘Aniseed. A powerful attraction to any of the canine species, even a lethargic old beast like this one. Now what’s this also in the bag? A monkey, Mr Plunkett. In other words, your five hundred.’

Plunkett shook his head in bewilderment. ‘But I thought the man and woman who kidnapped Ellen had taken it.’

Cribb patted Beaconsfield’s back. ‘And but for the efforts of my slightly scorched assistant here, I’d have found it difficult to prove they hadn’t.’

‘But why did they go to so much trouble if they didn’t take the money, for God’s sake?’

Cribb opened his hands like a conjurer at the end of a trick. ‘Because they never existed. Your daughter, Miss Blake, invented ’em, didn’t you, Miss? Nobody kidnapped her. She’s been as free as you or I this twenty-four hours. Wrote that letter in some comfortable lodging-house, I dare say.’

Ellen Blake plunged her face into her hands.

‘That’s an infamous suggestion!’ said Plunkett to Cribb. ‘Why should Ellen do a thing like that to me?’

‘That’s a question only the lady can answer, sir, but I fancy it has something to do with Albert.’

‘Me, Sergeant?’

‘You see what she’s achieved, gentlemen: the Paragon in flames and likely to be gutted unless the Brigade gets here soon, Tuesday’s performance cancelled and Albert’s honour saved. If I weren’t about to arrest her she’d be making plans to marry you, I reckon, Albert.’

‘Arrest Ellen? On what charge, for Heaven’s sake?’

‘Take your choice, sir. Obtaining money by false pretences. Arson. Or murder. The murder of Miss Lola Pinkus by administering poison. I’ve got a police van waiting at the end of the road, Miss, and I’ll be obliged if you’ll accompany me to the nearest police station.’

Plunkett placed an arm protectively in front of his daughter. ‘This is madness, Sergeant. I’ll have you cashiered. I’ve got friends at Scotland Yard, you know. You can’t make accusations like this without—’

For the first time, Ellen spoke, in a voice of studied calm. ‘Father, at least do me the kindness of letting me face what is to come with dignity. Can’t you see that your intrigues brought me to this? I want no more of them. Stay here and watch your music hall burn, and pray that the flames will purify your soul. Albert, my dearest, my poor innocent, if you ever come to understand my actions, believe that there was nothing you could have done to alter them. You will visit me if they allow it, won’t you? I can hear the fire-engine, Sergeant. I am ready to go with you.’

‘I HAVE BEEN PERUSING your report, Sergeant,’ said Inspector Jowett at the Yard the following Monday. ‘Miss Blake has made a full confession, you say?’

‘That’s correct, sir. Appendix One.’

‘Ah yes. What makes a young woman as vicious as that, do you think?’

‘A strong streak of Puritanism,’ said Cribb. ‘And infatuation for a young man. A powerful combination, sir.’

‘Puritanism—in a music hall singer?’

‘Her songs were strictly respectable, sir. She disapproved most strongly of the ditties they sang at the midnight shows. And she took a pretty poor view of her father’s method of recruiting performers.’

‘The accidents?’

‘Yes. When an accident was planned for the hall where Albert was appearing she became most upset. Didn’t want the young man she admired to come to grief, you see, so she sent an anonymous message to us.’

‘Thinking that the police would prevent the accident?’

‘Possibly, sir. We’d be on the stage as soon as it happened, at any rate, and so we were. That’s when we first met the young woman. Later, when we’d tracked Albert to Philbeach House and found the connexion with the Paragon she did a queer thing, sir.’

‘What was that?’

‘She knew we were police officers when she sold us tickets for the show—the regular show, not the midnight one. But she didn’t warn her father who we were. And she actually offered to take us behind the scenes, and left us there to go off to her turn at the Grampian. That was almost like throwing a clue in our faces, sir. Naturally we looked about a bit and discovered Bellotti’s barrels, the second positive link with Philbeach House. We’d seen Beaconsfield’s basket arrive when we bought the tickets, if you remember. That was when I first began to be suspicious about Miss Blake. It was plain from her conversation that night that she disapproved strongly of her father.’