Antidote To Murder (14 page)
O
utside the theatre, visibility was grainy. The streetlamps would make little difference until the descent of night proper. It was not yet time for the music halls to spill their audiences into the street, and the still air carried the raucous applause and even the words of the songs to Florence and her group waiting outside the Empire Theatre.
I’m not too young, I’m not too old
Not too timid, not too bold
Just the kind you’d like to hold
Just the kind for sport I’m told
Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-aye!
“Disgusting,” Florence’s colleague, Miss Jane Lithgow, said.
“Not nearly as disgusting as what’s going on here,” Florence replied, nodding to the poster of the partially clad Mata Hari tacked to the wall beside the Empire’s front entrance.
“I agree. That woman is a traitor to our sex. She has no right bringing her foreign pollution to our shores.” Jane handed Florence her basket of eggs, reached for the top of the poster, cried out, “Votes for women, chastity for men!” and rent the thing down the middle.
“Bravo!” cheered Florence and her companions.
Their opposition, a group of painted women standing on the other side of the promenade, shouted obscenities and called them “prying prudes.” The women were waiting to offer themselves to those of the theatre’s male patrons who had been enjoying Mata Hari’s performance unescorted. If what Florence had heard about the show was true, the men would be well and truly primed.
The small group of suffragettes attempted to drive the street women from the promenade, prodding them with their wooden signs, trying to send them on their way with gifts of money or suggestions regarding how they might reform their ways. The women wouldn’t budge, not when many of them had hungry children to feed or pimps to beat them for failure.
Florence and Daphne stepped away to distance themselves from some of their more vocal companions. “How many times,” Florence said to Daphne, “have I tried to point out to the others that it’s not the prostitutes we should be targeting, but the men who are using them?”
“Cast aside your shackles and join the fight for female suffrage—” Jane cried.
“Back to your ol’ man, prying prude!”
“Don’t ya please ’im, love?”
“Want some lessons?” another coarse woman called out, waggling her tongue obscenely at Jane.
“If the men weren’t so driven by lust, there would be no demand,” Daphne said.
Indeed,
Florence thought. The prostitutes needed saving and their customers reforming, which was why women needed to be granted equal voting rights. A female vote, women members of parliament even, was their only hope to temper the rash, immoral, and corrupt behaviour of men.
Daphne dug Florence in the ribs. “I say, Flo, I have a splendid idea. Why don’t we sneak around to the back of the theatre to surprise the performers as they leave? Mata Hari will know better than to exit from the front. I mean, it’s not as if she hasn’t been mobbed before.”
That’s more like it,
Florence thought. The street women might be victims of the system, but Mata Hari certainly wasn’t.
Florence glanced over at Jane Lithgow, the Bloomsbury Division’s second-in-command since the events of the previous year had all but shattered their group. Jane had given up on her heckling and was sorting through her basket, holding eggs up to the light to identify the most rotten. Florence had never liked Jane, but circumstances had forced them to form a shaky alliance. The woman was a prying prude to the extreme, and Florence could not discount the possibility that she might have been behind some of the hate letters Dody had received. Florence needed no excuse to distance herself. “What a splendid idea! I’ll get us some eggs.”
“No need, Flo,” Daphne said, holding up a string bag of tomatoes. “I got these from Cook just before I left home.”
They whispered their intentions to some of the others and then scurried down the alley separating the theatre from the building next door. The further they travelled, the darker and more dingier their surroundings became. The smell of effluent from leaky drains almost made Florence gag. Her eyes strained, scanning the cobbles for dustbins, piles of manure, and the legs of a drunk protruding from a doorway.
The theatre backed onto a small cobbled yard, just large enough to take a lorry or cart. A ramp paved the way to a huge delivery entrance door. Rusted iron steps parallel to this led to the smaller backstage door set in a wall of soot-blackened bricks veined with twisting metal pipes. This yard was a reflection of the theatre’s black heart, Florence decided. The rest of it, the lavish front lounge, entrance, and promenade, made the place nothing but a whited sepulchre.
“How is Dr. McCleland?” Daphne asked as they waited there in the gloom.
“She has an experienced lawyer behind her. Poppa thinks the charges will be dropped before she gets to court. But she is understandably upset and quite ill from the worry of it.”
“I can only imagine how she feels. I helped her once with an abortion—the mother was haemorrhaging, would never have survived carrying the baby to term. It was dreadful, and Dr. McCleland was no less affected by it than I was. I know she would never be involved in anything like this, and I hope I get the chance to testify.” Daphne paused. “Flo? You haven’t told Dr. McCleland about the, er, tea party, have you? I had only tried it once before, you know, and I don’t intend doing it again. Only, if your sister was to hear about it, I’d probably be in huge trouble and—”
Florence turned to her friend, whose round face glowed like the moon through the descending darkness. “Of course not, silly goose. But
please
don’t do it again. Where did Harriet get the stuff from anyway, do you know?”
“I think the first batch was left over from her husband’s cholera treatment. As for the second, I have no idea.”
“Well, let’s not worry about that for now: first things first. Daphne, I’ve been thinking,” she said and then paused, trying to adopt a tone that would not make her sound like a child about to devise a mischievous prank.
“Yes?”
“If I could find the true abortionist, I’d be able to save Dody’s reputation and bring this whole affair to an end—even sooner than her lawyer, I suspect—as well as ridding the streets of one more ruthless killer of women and children.”
“But how would we do that?”
Florence liked the sound of “we”—it was what she had been fishing for. Besides, Daphne owed her a favour now. “Well, we know that he or she operates in the Whitechapel area, don’t we?”
“Yes, but that’s about all. There must be dozens of abortionists in the area: old ladies with knitting needles, amateur doctors, and disreputable midwives. Criminal abortion is a lucrative business, Flo, and we only find out about it when something goes wrong—”
Daphne’s words were swallowed by the sound of thunderous applause. The theatre shook to its foundations, and the yard was flooded with yellow light.
T
he crowd hooted and roared. They were not cheering for him, of course, and Pike did not care. He was not a natural showman and disliked the attention. His mother, a talented pianist herself, had attempted to school him for a career she could never have as a woman, and the pressure to perform had driven him from home. He had joined the army to avoid the audition she had organised for the Royal Academy and to spare her the disappointment of his almost certain rejection. He took his final bow on the stage and murmured a prayer of thanks to God for allowing him to follow his instincts.
He had enjoyed the rehearsals, but judging by this opening night, the performances were bound to be anything but satisfying. Perhaps he was too much the perfectionist. The oboe was breathless and out of sync with his colleagues, the lead violin scratchy and off-key. And the drummer, Ahmed—or whatever it was the little Cockney called himself—had not once looked up for his prompt, resulting in a pounding rhythm more akin to African tribal than the exotic mysticism of a sultan’s dancing harem. Lucky for him the crowd couldn’t have cared less; it wasn’t the music they had come for, after all.
Pike exited stage left, away from the heat of the lights and into the cooler, darker embrace of the wings. He was in a hurry to leave. Dody had refused to answer his telephone calls or his note, and the only course of action left was to call in person. If she barred his admittance—as she might—he would do whatever it took to muscle in on the investigation. Inspector Fisher owed him that much at least.
He paused for a moment to look back upon the stage. Face flushed with triumph, Margaretha tipped her head back and extended her arms to the rose petals and calling cards raining down from the dress circle. Her handmaidens had already helped her replace most of her costume, but her enticing shape was still visible through the thin folds of veils.
A brazen youth mounted the stage, presented her with flowers, and greedily eyed her breasts.
Not again,
Pike muttered as he strode back under the lights, reaching the youth the moment before he lunged. The audience booed and hissed as if he were the villain of a children’s pantomime. To their disgust, he put the young man in a headlock, dragged him to the edge of the stage, and shoved him from the top of the steps into the arms of his jeering mates.
He needed to get Margaretha safely ensconced with the admiral before he could go about his other business, and this wasn’t helping her speedy departure. Taking her by the hand, he marched her from the stage and into the wings. “That’s enough,” he said. “Any more of that and we’ll have a riot on our hands.”
“Oh, Captain, you are such a killjoy.”
“Someone’s got to look after you.” Pike glanced around backstage where stagehands were hauling in backdrops of pyramids and painted elephants. “I don’t know where Klassen’s got to.”
“Flirting with one of the ushers, probably. But darling, I didn’t know you cared.”
“Where will I be if you are lynched?”
Margaretha pouted and ran her hand up the firm buttons of his waistcoat. “
Godverdomme,
Captain. Have you got ice in your veins? Am I just a meal ticket to you—meat and potatoes?”
“No.” He removed her hand and patted it. “Lobster and champagne—which is what you will miss out on if you keep the admiral waiting.”
“Bah, the old man is such a bore. Ships, ships, and more ships; that is all he ever talks about.”
“I thought you wanted him to take you to Portsmouth.”
“Well, yes, of course. Anything for an outing, a chance to get out of this miserable, stinking city.”
And the chance to look over the latest Dreadnought being built at His Majesty’s Shipyard, no doubt, Pike thought. “And don’t forget Klassen wants you to sweet-talk him into sponsoring the Army and Navy Club tour.” Margaretha pulled a face and snatched her hand from his. “Please get yourself dressed,” he said. “I’d like to get home and go to sleep as soon as possible.”
Margaretha swore again in Dutch and stalked in a thundercloud of veils down the passage towards her dressing room. Pike pushed his way through a floating crowd of half-dressed chorus girls and looked over the various gentlemen visitors who had bribed Klassen for backstage visits.
He spied Van Noort standing a head taller than most, battling his way through the throng towards Margaretha’s dressing room. Their eyes connected. Van Noort raised his hand.
They met outside the door marked with a painted star. The tall man gripped Pike’s arm. “Well, did you ask her? Did you ask?”
While Margaretha was still high on his list of suspects, it confounded Pike to think that this pathetic Van Noort creature could also be a threat to national security.
“I’m sorry, sir. Mata Hari is unable to meet you,” he said. “She’s very grateful for the flowers, but says she can’t take your money.” Pike extracted the envelope of money the man had attempted to press upon Margaretha after the final rehearsal from his trouser pocket. “She asked me to return it.”
Van Noort reached to take it, but his shaking fingers failed to close and the envelope fell to the floor, spilling its contents. “Can you taste them?” he murmured, leaning into the passage wall in a faint.
Pike retrieved the scattered notes and straightened. “Taste what?” He looked at Van Noort. The man’s face was masklike, his eyes glazed. A twitch began at the corner of his mouth and crept its way up both cheeks. And then his lips began to smack and his eyes to blink as if he was having some kind of a fit.
“The guns, the guns—” he cried, massaging the scar on his temple. Sweat streamed down his face, and he launched into a monologue of gibberish.
Alarmed, Pike took Van Noort by the arm and guided him to a wooden chair set against the wall. He looked about him. The backstage throng were paying them no attention; they had other things on their minds. After loosening the man’s collar, Pike grabbed a passing stagehand by the arm and asked him to fetch a glass of water. Gradually Pike sensed that whatever had gripped the doctor was loosening. Van Noort straightened, took a sip of water, and then mopped his brow with a handkerchief.
“I’m sorry for the disturbance. It’s something I cannot seem to help,” he said quite lucidly.
Pike handed him the envelope of money. “You’ve plenty there for a taxi. Better get home and have some rest.”
“Yes, yes, of course, thank you.” Van Noort climbed to his feet and took a few wobbling steps. Pike beckoned to the hovering stagehand and told him to escort the gentleman from the premises and help him find a cab. As Van Noort turned to leave, Pike said, “The guns. What did you mean by the guns?”
Van Noort stared at Pike. He finally said, “You should know, you were there—weren’t you?”
The ragged boy Pike had seen with Van Noort at the tram stop suddenly appeared at their side. Pike searched his mind for the boy’s name. “Jack, how did you get in?” he asked.
“It’s all right, the manager has given him permission to enter. He knows Jack is with me,” Van Noort said. “Find me a cab, will you, lad?”
“Sure thing, Doc. Off ya go, mate,” Jack told the stagehand. “I’ll ’andle this.” He pulled Van Noort’s long arm over his own shoulder.
The child’s done this before,
Pike thought as he watched man and boy disappear into the crowded passageway. He shook his head, puzzled for a moment, and then turned his mind to more important things: Margaretha.
He tapped on her dressing room door and entered at her command. The floor was strewn with petticoats, underclothes, and feather boas. She sat at her dressing table in a silken robe of oriental design. The lightbulbs around the mirror shone down upon a cornucopia of makeup pots, crystal bottles of scent, tubs of powder, and wilted flowers. On a small table next to this sat her elaborately carved water pipe, similar to the ones Pike had seen in the Sudan. Mata Hari revered the object not only for its decorative appearance; its soporific fumes had almost overcome Pike on more than one occasion.
She removed her jewelled headdress, looked at Pike through narrow eyes, and took aim. With a sweep of her hand, she sent the headdress flying through the air straight at him. He dodged and it smashed to the ground. Shattered faux rubies dotted the dressing room floor like drops of blood.
“Shall I call your maid?” he asked with deliberate calm.
“I heard you outside with him, that slobbering oaf! I don’t want anything to do with him. Tell Gabriel to cancel the remainder of his tickets.”
“Can’t be done. He’s paid in advance. Shouldn’t Betty be here now, helping you to dress?”
“I sacked her. She was stealing from me. Gabriel will find me another maid.” She ripped the pins from her hair, tossed them onto the dressing table, and seized her hairbrush. “Sometimes I feel I am nothing but a whore, a prisoner of you men, with Gabriel and you as my pimps.”
The hairbrush caught in a clump of hair at the back of her head. She yanked it, crying out with pain and frustration as the brush became even more tangled.
“Careful, you’ll hurt yourself.” Pike moved in on her from behind and relieved her of the brush’s handle. With as gentle a touch as possible, he attempted to extract the brush from the tangled nest of hair. “You shouldn’t have sacked your maid,” he said. “She should be doing this.”
Her shoulders curled as his fingers brushed against the skin of her neck. She lifted her hand to his, but he avoided her touch by moving to another knot. “You tease me,” she said.
To prove that this was not the case, he ripped the brush out of her hair with a yank that made her gasp.
Glancing in the mirror, he saw there were tears streaming down her cheeks. Pike closed his eyes briefly; the torture of women was not to his taste. Did she really want him this badly? Pike doubted it; to his mind he was nothing but ordinary—poor, ordinary, and half crippled. This woman could have almost any man she wanted. She got through more lovers than most women got through silk stockings, confound it. She only wanted him because she could not have him, because, unlike most men, he refused to succumb to her allure. Was this the personality trait that drove her to espionage, he wondered—the love of a challenge, the glory of success, the adoration of men?
He tossed the brush back onto the table. Trying to understand her would not get his job done. “Hurry up,” he said, “the admiral will be waiting.”
“Pimp!” The brush thumped against the door as he closed it behind him.
* * *
I
t didn’t take long for the others to follow Florence and Daphne’s lead. Soon there were almost as many of them waiting outside the back of the theatre as there had been at the front; protesting suffragettes, young men lusting for Mata Hari, and a starstruck group from a nearby restaurant who had heard the commotion and wanted to join in the fun.
Mata Hari’s appearance at the top of the back steps caught Florence by surprise. She was expecting the woman to appear as in her poster, wearing more jewels than clothing, but the spotlight on the back door illuminated a tall, lithe woman, fully dressed—although the silken blouse visible through her open summer coat was cut a little lower than respectable. Her figure-hugging skirt appeared so tight at the ankles that it made her take Geisha-like steps, and she descended the iron stairs leaning heavily into the arm of the gentleman in white tie and tails escorting her.
“That’s the conductor,” Florence heard one young man say to his companion.
“What I wouldn’t give to be in his shoes tonight,” the friend replied.
As they reached the bottom of the steps, Mata Hari pulled a feather from her hat and began to tickle the conductor’s cheek in a manner most provocative.
Florence dug her elbow into Daphne’s side. “Give me some ammunition.” She reached into Daphne’s bag and selected the softest tomato she could find. More suffragettes followed Florence’s lead, screaming out their protests. Reinforcements, led by Jane Lithgow and her rotten-egg brigade, joined them from the front of the theatre.
A group of ushers came running down the steps and linked protective arms around the pair. The conductor took the dancer’s hand and shouted something above the din, then indicated the taxi ranks in the neighbouring street with his cane.
Florence took aim with her tomato and, with a strength gained from years of playing Fabian hockey, struck the silk hat from his head. The man touched his bare head with surprise and glared angrily into the crowd, seeking the direction from which the missile had been thrown.
Florence drew her breath with a gasp, blinked, and looked again. Mentally, she shaved off the beard.
Pike.
Of all the duplicitous men she had known, she would not have expected this from him.
In that instant Pike recognised her, too. He put his fingers to his lips and tried to hush her.
Florence was damned if she would be hushed. “Pike!” she screamed with righteous indignation, her blazing anger lifting her voice above the din. “You traitor, you cad, you . . . you . . . crippled weed!”
Pike whispered something to Mata Hari, placed her into the care of one of the ushers, and pushed his way through the crowd to Florence’s side. Before she knew it, he had tipped her back in his arms and forced his lips to hers, pressing her screams of protest into silence. When they broke for air, he rubbed his cheek against hers. “I told her you were a friend of mine,” he said, sotto voce. “Florence, listen, please, don’t call me Pike. This is not what it seems.”
Florence’s head was still reeling from the unexpected kiss; it was a long time since she had been kissed like that. And by Pike, of all people—the very cheek of it! She drew back and walloped him hard across the face. Pike flinched, grabbed hold of her hand, and glowered down at her. He was not a tall man but in this instant he appeared to Florence like a giant. In the tension of the moment she was vaguely aware of Daphne Hamilton creeping up behind him, hefting her
VOTES FOR WOMEN
sign above his head. “Meet me in one hour at the Queen’s Hotel, in the Oyster Room, and I’ll explain—”
His words were cut short by a sharp crack and the sound of splintering wood.
