Pageant of Murder

“Haunted? Whatever makes you think that?”

“Deeds what is done in the dark of the moon carries their ghosties about with ’em.”

“Ah, you mean the death of Mr Luton. But that wasn’t a dark deed, you know. There was some stupid fooling about with the swords which were used in the play. Mr Luton got hurt, and nobody liked to own up to doing it.”

“Oh, that’s what they say,” said the woman, “but there’s them of us as knows better.”

“How do you mean? You can’t go against the verdict at the inquest.”

“Ho, can’t I? Then p’raps you’ll tell me just one thing: what ’appened to me keys which turned up missin’ and which ’asn’t been seen from that day to this? If that don’t mean sommat fishy, well, I don’t know what funny going-ons is.”

“First I’ve heard of this,” said Laura, in a studiedly casual tone. “Why didn’t you tell the police?”

“I told Mr Castle. It was up to ’im to pass it on, if he’d a mind to, and I s’pose ’e did.”

“Would Castle be the caretaker?” asked Laura, with a vivid recollection of the fermenting John at the end of the Town Hall rehearsal of The Merry Wives of Windsor.

“Yes, it would. John Castle, ’im as lives in Brocklebank Way, off the ’Am.”

“What about the keys?”

“Well, it bein’ an evenin’ do, I comes in at ’arpast four and has a look round to see as everythink’s as it should be, leavin’ me keys in this door, same as I allus does, not to lose ’em, you see, or forget ’em, and so’s to be all ready for when I comes to tidy up the next mornin’. Well…”

“You mean you left your keys in this lock all night?”

“That’s what I’m a-sayin’, ain’t it? Well, when I comes in in the mornin’ I looks for me keys and they isn’t there, so I goes to find Mr Castle and I says to ’im, “ ’Ere, John,” I says, “what you done with me keys? I can’t get in to clean them rooms, not without no keys I can’t,” I says.”

“Oh, so this isn’t the only room you keep clean?”

“Gawd, no! I does all the rooms this end. There used to be a time when us cleaners swopped the jobs around, but Councillor Mrs Skifforth, she put a stop to all that. “The way things is,” she says, “you don’t know who to blame if the place is a pigsty,” she says. “Hin my opinion,” she says, “each cleaner did ought to ’ave ’er own part of the premises to be responsible for, and to take a proper pride in,” she says, “and then if things is left in the disgraceful way the ante-room to the Council Chamber was—all cigarette ends in dirty ashtrays and a half-ate macaroon underneath the table, not to speak of two coffee-cups as I washed up with me own hands,” she says, “well, we’ll know where we stand”, she says.”

“So none of the other cleaners would be likely to walk off with your keys?”

“Not no good to nobody ’ceptin’ me. So I goes to Mr Castle…”

“Who hadn’t got them, either?”

“That’s what ’e says. “You must of left ’em at ’ome,” ’e says. “That’s just like you women,” ’e says. So I up and informs of ’im as I never takes no keys ’ome, there bein’ nothink worth burglin’ in the rooms ’ere as I ’aves to see to, so I borrers a lend of ’is master-key and ’ands it straight back as soon as I’d unlocked, and there you are. And a nice bit of box-fruit them dressing-rooms was, I don’t mind tellin’ you.”

“And the keys have never turned up?”

“That’s exactly what they never ’aven’t. Mr Castle ’ad all the locks changed and a noo set of keys to go with ’em. That’s what ’e thought would be best, and I ’as to ’and ’em back to ’im each time.”

A good deal of clatter from outside the door of Bouquets was sufficient evidence that Henry VI had concluded his anti-scrofula campaign and that the stage was to be re-set as the principal room at an inn.

“Only one more thing,” said Laura. “When you did get this room unlocked with the master-key, was it in the state you expected to find it?”

“It was the only clean and tidy room in the place.”

“Yes. You didn’t notice anything which struck you as being different, or out-of-place, or anything? Just some small point that perhaps no-one but yourself would notice?”

The cleaner scowled thoughtfully before shaking her head.

“There wasn’t nothink at all. It was only them keys bein’ took like that as was hodd. Somebody done it for devilment, p’raps. You never know what kids ’ull get up to, do you, and there was a hundred on ’em ’ere that night, so Mr Castle told me, and chewin’ gum all over the place.”

Laura was back in her seat in time to see the curtain go up on a room at The Leopards and Lilies, the feasting begin, and the raising of two gentlemen of the neighbourhood to the status and rank of the Knighthood of the Garter. When the curtains had come together for the last time, she went in search of the caretaker and found him on the front steps of the Town Hall standing at the salute as the Mayoress was driven away by the Mayor’s chauffeur in the Mayor’s official Rolls Royce.

“A word with you, Mr Castle,” she said. “You remember me, I expect? Yes, well, the police, as you probably know, are still interested in the deaths of Mr Luton and Mr Spey, and as I’m, so to speak, connected with them through my husband, who is in the C.I.D., I want to know what happened to Mrs What’shername’s keys—the cleaner who looks after the dressing-rooms, you know.”

“Councillor Perse told me about your husband, ma’am. What’s more, the police are in the right of it. There wasn’t no horseplay where Mr Luton was concerned. After all, they wasn’t a lot of College lads, or nothing of that, to go fooling around with swords and stabbing each other to death. What I says is as what was done was done deliberate. As for Carrie Busby’s keys, well, I did think at first as how she must ’ave left ’em at ’ome, but when they never turned up no more—and her swearing as she’d left ’em in the lock outside the door—I ’ad another think about it.”