‘Unmistakable. Never wash your armlet in soda, young Oliver. Makes the colour run like you’re going to run back here from Little Moors Place as soon as you’ve got any news for us. That’ll do, then. Fine cup of cocoa!’ He turned back to Thackeray, as P.C. Oliver left to begin his vigil. ‘You can relieve him at six. I don’t think anything’ll happen before then, but I can’t take the chance. Well, Thackeray, I know the symptoms. Your face has been as long as Big Ben all evening. You want to speak your mind to me. Very well. Now’s the time. Just wipe the cocoa-skin off your moustache and I’ll give you my complete attention.’
‘Well, Sarge,’ said Thackeray a moment later, ‘I suppose it’s just that I can’t take all this music hall stuff seriously. It don’t seem nothing like your class of investigation to me. It’s not really worthy of you, Sarge. A blooming bogus bulldog in a basket and a strong man with a twisted ankle—that don’t seem worth losing a night’s sleep over. We’ve taken on some odd cases, I know, but there’s always been a corpse to make the whole thing worth while.’
‘You might have got one tonight if that dog had rabies,’ said Cribb. ‘I understand you, though. On the face of it, tonight’s affair at the Grampian seems pretty small beer. But look at it as the latest episode in this string of accidents on the stage—and remember we had a warning that something would happen tonight—and it becomes a deal more sinister. What we saw at the Grampian certainly wasn’t murder, Thackeray, but from Albert’s viewpoint it was professional assassination. You heard him yourself saying he was finished as a strong man. We heard Woolston saying something similar in Newgate. That’s serious enough for me, Constable.’
Thackeray admitted that it was.
‘Let’s recall the incidents,’ continued Cribb, reaching for a sheet of paper. ‘I’ll list them here. First there was the collision of the Pinkus sisters on their shortened trapezes; then Bellotti’s tumble from the greasy barrel; the shameful alterations to Sam Fagan’s song-sheet; the accident to the sword-swallower; the unspeakable calamity suffered by Miss Tring; and the sword through the leg of Woolston’s assistant. And now Albert’s attack by a fraudulent bulldog. What do they have in common, would you say?’ He handed the list to Thackeray and returned to his cocoa.
‘I’ve given this a lot of thought, Sarge, because I expected you to ask me sooner or later.’
‘Good. What conclusions d’you draw, then?’
Thackeray drew a deep breath. ‘I haven’t been able to conclude anything, Sarge. The more I think about it, the more ridiculous it all seems.’
To his amazement Cribb pitched forward, laughing. ‘Thackeray, you’re incomparable! I knew you wouldn’t fail me. Of course it seems ridiculous, man! That’s the point of it all!’
‘The point?’
‘Damn my eyes, you still don’t see it! The common element, Thackeray, is ridicule. Absurdity. There’s no better way to ruin a serious performance on the stage. Imagine your precious Irving falling through the stage-trap in the last act of The Bells. He’d be finished! Just as Albert was finished when the bulldog bit him tonight. Can you see a music hall audience ever taking him seriously again? Of course they won’t. As soon as he appears anywhere you’ll hear barking and growling all over the theatre. Ridicule, Thackeray—it’s a devastating weapon.’
Thackeray agreed, drawing comfort from the private thought that a man of Cribb’s stamp ought to know more about the offensive use of ridicule than he did. ‘So somebody plans to make laughing-stocks of all these performers, Sarge. Then we’re looking for someone with a grudge against each one of them. Shouldn’t we interview ’em all to find out who they’ve fallen out with in recent months?’
‘And find one common name? That’s what I thought until I tried tracing them. Do you know, Thackeray, they’ve all quit their lodgings and disappeared except Woolston? At least he won’t find it easy to do a flit from Newgate.’
‘Why should they all do that, Sarge?’
‘Could be they can’t afford the rent any more, being out of work,’ said Cribb. ‘It’s cheaper in a common lodging- house. That’s where half the missing persons in London are, in my opinion. It’s no use asking the keepers who they’ve got under their roofs, when their only obligation is to report infectious diseases and limewash the walls and ceilings twice a year. Yes, that’s where they could very well be. For all the spangles and champagne, your music-hall artiste is just a step from the poor-house.’
‘Didn’t they leave forwarding-addresses?’ suggested Thackeray, on an inspiration.
‘I had the same thought,’ said Cribb, ‘but it seems you don’t do that in the theatre. You move around so much that you use your agent’s office as your official address, and collect your letters from him periodically. Inquiries were made this morning at five different agents in York Road—just up the street from here—“Poverty Corner” they call it in the halls. Well, none of our accident-prone friends have visited their agents. There’s a pile of letters as tall as your hat waiting for the Pinkus sisters, and they weren’t badly hurt, by Sergeant Woodwright’s account. It’s a rum business, Constable.’
‘We could list them among the missing persons in the Police Gazette.’
‘Already arranged. But the fact remains that six people have come to grief on the stage, lost their jobs and disappeared in the space of four weeks. With Woolston it could have been seven. D’you see now why I want to keep a watch on Albert?’
Thackeray was on his feet. ‘Blimey yes, Sarge! We can’t leave a job like this to that young cub who brought in the cocoa. I’ll get round there straight away!’
Cribb raised his hand. ‘And a precious fine plain clothes man you’ll be, standing in a Lambeth street all night in your opera hat and cape. Better leave it to young Oliver and get yourself some sleep. Ask Sergeant Flaxman if there’s a section house with a spare bed. And borrow a set of clothes for the morning. What’s the time?’
‘Just above your head, Sarge. Ten minutes past midnight.’
‘Capital! I’ll snatch a quiet glass of rum and shrub before they close. Look out for me in the morning.’
CHAPTER
6
FOR THE SECOND TIME in five minutes Thackeray eased a forefinger between his neck and the collar of Sergeant Flaxman’s shirt. Borrowed clothes! If they didn’t chafe you because they were so tight, they constricted your circulation somewhere. What was the matter with the Kennington Road Constabulary, that they couldn’t produce a set of toggery to fit an average—well, slightly larger than average—man? Were they all stunted, or worn thin by beat-bashing, or something? You would almost think they had got together to produce the least comfortable set of ‘plain clothes’ possible. They couldn’t have known he had tender skin in the area of his neck when they gave him the coarse flannel shirt. But knickerbocker tweeds! He had, on rare occasions, seen Londoners wearing such things; only in parks, though, never the seedier backstreets of Lambeth. Yet when the moment of choice came in the mess-room, and he stood in his underwear with a pile of discarded, undersized clothes behind him, there were just two survivors; the knickerbockers and a red velvet smoking-suit. Lord! What a picture that presented of the off-duty hours at Kennington Road! Knickerbockers it had to be, then, with a deerstalker and elastic-sided boots to match. And now he shrank into the shadows of the asylum wall, half-expecting some nervous passer-by to suppose he had just climbed over.
About twenty past six. Too early, perhaps, for anything dramatic to happen, but he could not afford to relax. There was a hint of October mist in the air, but from where he was, sheltering against a buttress formed by two rows of bricks, he could already see lights appearing at windows in the terrace opposite. No sign of life from Albert’s room yet; being a theatrical, he would be accustomed to a later start than most working men. The poor beggar was going to wake up stiff this morning, too; there wasn’t much to tempt him from a warm bed.
Activity at the end of Little Moors Place: three cats came running from the shadows to meet the milk-cart. The milk-woman hitched two large cans to the wooden yoke slung across her shoulders and moved to the first house to fill the jugs on the doorstep from her tin measure. The cats waited, mewing, for some to be spilt.
She was the first person he had seen in the road since he relieved P.C. Oliver on the stroke of six. A promising member of the Force, young Oliver. Hadn’t batted an eyelid at the deerstalker and knickerbockers. Recognised who it was straight away; perhaps the beard was the clue. Thackeray hoped it was nothing else. Section 11 of the Police Code was constantly in his mind: It is highly undesirable for detectives to proclaim their official character to strangers by walking in step with each other or in a drilled style, or by wearing very striking clothing or police regulation boots or by openly recognising constables in uniform or saluting superior officers. Just
