by Fleurie
This tale is complete in Six Chapters which will be posted at approximately weekly intervals
This, the first chapter, is entitled
The Quiet Woman.
Readers should be aware that this is primarily a Ghost Story.
The TV/TG element is crucial to the plot but occupies a comparatively minor part of the text.
Those wishing to absorb a little of the ambience prior to reading should visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW4ThXetHkI&NR=1 and listen to Helen Shapiro sing the last verse and refrain of the song that runs like a thread throughout the tale.
The boy I love is up in the gallery,
The boy I love is looking down at me,
There he is, can't you see, a-waving of his handkerchief,
As merry as a robin that sings on a tree.
The boy that I love, they call him a cobbler,
But he's not a cobbler, allow me to state.
For Johnny is a tradesman and he works in the Boro'
Where they sole and heel them, whilst you wait.
Refrain
If I were a Duchess and had a lot of money,
I'd give it to the boy that's going to marry me.
But I haven't got a penny, so we'll live on love and kisses,
And be just as happy as the birds on the tree.
Refrain
'The Boy I Love' was composed by George Ware in 1885 and made popular by Marie Lloyd.
An interesting historical side note is that it was also apparently sung by Belle Elmore who was one of Dr. Crippen's murdered wives
“With a handle. Please.”
The man behind the bar grunted, switched the straight glass for a mug, tilted it under the pump and the amber stream of Well's Bombardier foamed and swirled round and down. Two practised pulls. A quick additional squirt to chase away the excess foam and the pint sat there waiting. Inviting.
“I was looking”, the customer said, “for the Old Alhambra”.
It was dark in the pub. Behind him three tall windows, frosted and engraved with curlicues containing the names of long vanished whiskies, reluctantly let in slanting beams of late morning sunlight which tried, but largely failed, to illuminate the interior. The old brass on the pumps, on the foot rail, on the ancient gas light fittings, dully drew the light but seemed to absorb rather than reflect it.
The barman nodded an acceptance of the customer's desire to impart this information but seemed unaware that a question might lurk therein.
The customer cradled the beer mug. Three fingers slipped under the handle as if he feared it might try to evade his grip. The dimpled glass was cool to his palm. He sipped slowly, appreciatively.
“I was wondering”, he said, “whether you could help? Whether you knew where it was? Well is I suppose.”
The directness of the question seemed to disconcert the barman. As if in self defence he seized a cloth and began to polish a glass, paused, held it up to the light, resumed polishing. Then ....
“I might. Which one is we talkin' of?”
It was the customer's turn to look disconcerted.
“I didn't know there were two. Well of course I knew that there was an Alhambra in Leicester Square years ago, but I mean the 'Old Alhambra'. They said it was here. In Havelock Road, but I'll be damned if I can find it.”
“No doubt. You wouldn't be the first neither.” The barman replaced the glass on the rack above his head, selected another and began polishing again. “But if it's the theatre you're looking for, or what left of it, it's about 30 yards down on your left. Nearly opposite in fact.”
“I didn't see it. Been up and down this street like a bloody yo-yo but no sign of a theatre. Just a few decrepit shops, mostly empty, a brick wall and some corrugated iron hoardings. It's hardly the West End.”
The barman shrugged. “If it were,” he said, “that bloody pint would 'ave cost you twice as much.”
The man sipped his beer. Waited.
Then “Never the same since the bleedin' war. Gone down 'ill it has. Whole bloody street. The Old Alhambra's behind the brick wall. They built that to stop people getting in and to .... to stop people getting in.”
A pause. The barman's hands stilled on the half polished glass. Resumed, moving in a mechanical, distracted way.
“About four, five, years ago. After the accident. The accidents.”
“Accidents?”
“Two kids killed a few years back .... Just before I got 'ere. Trespassin' they were. An accident. And then, before that .... before that were before my time 'ere. A lot of the old people 'ave gone anyway. Those remaining don't remember now, or don't want to. Not that they ever wanted to talk of it much. And the new ones never knew. Just things 'appened.”
The bitter was cool on his palate. The pub may have been somewhat run down, the barman scorning the finer points of customer relations, but they knew how to keep their beer in prime condition. The sunlight gave it an extra golden sparkle and he was tempted to prolong the session but he had work to do. And there would be other opportunities. Best savour this pint. Make it last.
The barman had moved away to the other end of his bar. Was busy straightening the beer mats on the counter. Busy avoiding further questions.
“He knows sod all anyway.”
A dry thin voice. A voice that carefully enunciated as if trying out the words in the mouth. Finding out how they felt, how they sounded. As if the very words were strangers.
“Not about the Old Alhambra he don't.”
The speaker was seated at a small table for two in an alcove just behind him. He had not noticed her when he had entered, not surprising as the alcove was dark and she small and dressed in black. That he had not subsequently been aware of her presence was surprising, as she was only a few feet from him, must have overheard him, and the place was grave-quiet apart from the perfunctory glass cleaning activities of the barman. So surely ...?
“Not many do now. The Blitz did for many, and the years have mostly tidied up the rest.”
Her accent was difficult to fathom. Lower middle perhaps, with a touch of affectation, but no distinctive regional influences. It was the voice itself that caught and held the attention. A husky sandpaperish voice, that would have been at odds with the frailty of her figure, if it were not for the careful, almost tentative, whispering, articulation.
“Nothing much left of the old Havelock Road, apart from here and the Old Alhambra, when the Jerries had had their fun.”
The customer moved across and took the chair opposite her.
“I heard,” he said, “that it was a V2 that did the damage.”
“There wasn't much left to damage. Most of the street had gone in forty-one. It was just the final nail in the Old Alhambra's coffin. It had already closed .... after the bombs and incendiaries, after the fires .... and then been repaired, botched together, and re-opened. 'Keep the bleeding home fires burning and all that'. But it was never the same afterwards. To much had happened. Too many memories. People .... those that were left .... didn't want to know.”
The voice dropped so that he had to lean forward to hear. The musty smell of an old fashioned floral perfume surrounded her. Two faded eyes that must once have been of a deep violet hue, must once have been a compelling feature of rare beauty, stared back at him. Her face was a mask of carefully applied make-up. Eyebrows, above the once startling, still beautiful though now pastel, eyes, carefully arched and the lids shadowed to emphasise. Lips perhaps too red. Everything perhaps too .... An old woman's face, ravaged now, whose lines no art could conceal. An old woman's face but one that still had the bone structure wherein what was once beauty could still be seen. Remembrances of the girl that once had been. Not ever pretty pretty perhaps, but handsome, striking indeed, certainly.
“Buggered the front of it, the façade they called it, that V2 did. But it didn't matter. It didn't cause the decay. It was deeper, older, than that. Spread throughout every stone, every beam like dry rot. You couldn't see it, but after the death it was everywhere. You could sense it, smell it, taste it even. And it weren't the bombs or anything that Jerry dropped.”
The voice died, the whisper stilled, and then briefly revived. “ If you asks me, that V2 did us a favour. It gave us a reason, an excuse. Whenever afterwards .... anything happened .... anything failed .... whatever happened, people could always say 'If it weren't for that bloody Jerry bomb ....'. Not 'If it weren't for the death'.”
“The death? What death? What difference does one death make? Surely death was commonplace then?”
A long silence.
The old lady's eyes seemed to lose their focus. She herself seemed no longer aware of the man's presence. Lost to the present; looking back into the past.
“The death?” He repeated.
The voice came back. The scratchy words faint in her throat.
“There have been many deaths, then and afterwards. And you are right, death is fundamentally always the same. Always ultimately commonplace. An ending. A finding of peace. Only this one ....”
“This one ....?”
“This one .... was different. Not the death itself, although .... but in the finding of .... peace .... or rather ....”
She shook her head as if to rid herself of the thoughts therein.
“Why do you want to know anyway? What's the Old Alhambra to you? It's been undisturbed for these twenty years. Best not to meddle. Safer not to awaken .... old memories.”
The voice was stronger now. Fierce even. The man found himself on the defensive before its new-found vehemence.
“It's just a job. I have to do a survey for the developers. Structure, fabric, area, foundations, that sort of thing. It's been empty for years. Nobody's touched it. Now there's an interest. In the site. Not the theatre.”
“It doesn't matter what you call it. The past don't care what you call it.”
The hand that seized his wrist was surprisingly strong. Blue veins raised like cords on the seemingly translucent hand by the urgency of its grasp. Long fingers that tapered to long nails taloned with ovals of blood. Nothing faded about the eyes now. Twin sparks burnt with violet intensity.
The customer felt a sudden chill descend. The alcove seemed suddenly isolated, shuttered away from the rest of the sun streaked bar.
“Don't meddle. Not you, especially not you. Leave the Old Alhambra be. Leave it and its dead to those who would profit by it. Let them meddle if they must. Not you.”
“It's just a job,” he said. “ My job. It's what I do.”
“Do it elsewhere. But leave the Old Alhambra to its past. Leave it and its dead alone.”
The eyes dulled again. The fingers released their grip. The hand withdrew.
“Not you.” The words so faint that afterwards he thought that they perhaps had only ever existed inside his own head. That they were just imaginings.
The darkness in the alcove seemed to gather closer around the figure opposite him as the silence between them deepened.
He felt somehow embarrassed. Somehow felt that he had failed her, disappointed her. He looked down at his nearly empty glass. Concentrated on it, trying to find the words to explain, to get her to understand that it was only a job. Something that he did everyday. Another old building to be demolished to make room for a new one.
He was conscious of movement, of a sigh. There was a scrape of chair legs on the bare wooden floor. A hand, ice cold through his jacket, on his shoulder as if in a valediction, and when he looked up she was no longer there. Her departure as unobtrusive, as silent, as her arrival.
For a long moment he sat there. What did it matter anyway? Some loony old bat long past her sell by date. Never clapped eyes on her before, probably never would again. Just some loony old bat. He shook his shoulders chase away the chill that had settled on him. To chase away the final echoes of 'Not You.' A broken line of sunlight had unnoticed crept across and lay on the table now, reflecting sparkle back from his glass. The alcove seemed lighter, once again an integral part of the room. All shadows gone. Warmer even.
He took his empty mug back to the bar. Tapped its base a couple of times on the counter to draw the barman's attention. Lifted an eyebrow in his direction to confirm that he had not finished. The barman rather pointedly finished rearranging an already perfectly symmetrical pattern of beer mats and wandered back to him.
“D'you want another of those”, he nodded towards the customer's mug, “or are you just intent on wasting my bleedin' time?”
“Sorry to distract you from your duties,” the man smiled away the discourtesy. “You keep a good pint and I'll be back later to enjoy more but for the moment I just wanted to ask about the other one.”
“Thought you didn't want another one?”
“No. Not that. Not now. But when I first enquired about the Old Alhambra you asked which one. So there must be another. So where is it?”
“You've been drinkin' in it. It's here. It were called the 'Relief of Lucknow' originally. Then when the theatre were in its 'eyday it became known as the Old Alhambra by a process of association. Theatre goers just got into the habit of calling it that at first because it were 'andy for a drink and a snack before or after performances and I s'ppose the then landlord just saw the opportunity and adopted the name. After all Lucknow was by then long ago and far away.”
'But your sign says 'The Quiet Woman'?”
“And the locals say the ''Eadless 'Ore'.” For the first time on the barman's face there appeared a flicker of the lips that might have been mistaken for a smile. “As a name the 'Old Alhambra' in time lost its attraction. As all things do. No more theatre goers with fat wallets. And .... and too many things had happened there. A bit of a liability all round, that name. The 'Quiet Woman' was safer.”
“A liability? Safer?” Again that word. First the woman .... 'safer not to meddle' .... and now ....
The barman shrugged. If the flicker of his lips had been a harbinger of humour, it had been a false dawn. Moroseness reigned again. “As I said it were afore my time. Any ways it's all water under the bridge now. What does it matter? People lived 'ere for centuries before the Old Alhambra was dreamt of, nor Lucknow 'eard of. Buildings lined this street 'undreds o' years afore Havelock's time. The place is riddled with their remains. You should see our cellars. You could probably get to the theatre through them if you had a mind. It's a labyrinth down there. What's on top bears no relationship to what's below.”
The customer looked at his watch. “I have an appointment there in a couple of minutes. I'll be back later for the other half. Do I have to climb the wall or can you lend me a sledge?”
“There's a ginnel at the far end. Only a couple of feet wide. Easy to miss if you don't know it's there. A door on the left at the end of that. It's always kept locked but you can try it. If you really must.”
The barman turned away in dismissal. Looked back over his shoulder. “And we close at three. And don't open till six. So your appointment had better be either very short or very long if you want another pint.”
Outside the sun was high overhead now, casting the silhouette of the pub's sign at his feet. Looking up he saw the painting of a woman in Tudor costume with her head nestling under her right arm. So they hadn't quite escaped the influence of the Music Hall.
As he crossed the road towards the dark slit that marked the entrance to the ginnel, the refrain of the old Marie Lloyd song echoed through his head.
“Wiv 'er 'ead tucked underneath 'er arm, she wa-a-lks the Bloody Tower,
Wiv 'er 'ead tucked underneath 'er arm, at the midnight hou-ou-r.”
This tale is complete in Six Chapters which will be posted at approximately weekly intervals
This, the second chapter, is entitled
The Murder of Beatrice d'Auray.
Readers should be aware that this is primarily a Ghost Story.
The TV/TG element is crucial to the plot but occupies a comparatively minor part of the text.
Those wishing to absorb a little of the ambience prior to reading should visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW4ThXetHkI&NR=1 and hear Helen Shapiro sing the last verse and refrain of the song that runs like a thread throughout the tale.
The boy I love is up in the gallery,
The boy I love is looking down at me,
There he is, can't you see, a-waving of his handkerchief,
As merry as a robin that sings on a tree.
The boy that I love, they call him a cobbler,
But he's not a cobbler, allow me to state.
For Johnny is a tradesman and he works in the Boro'
Where they sole and heel them, whilst you wait.
Refrain
If I were a Duchess and had a lot of money,
I'd give it to the boy that's going to marry me.
But I haven't got a penny, so we'll live on love and kisses,
And be just as happy as the birds on the tree.
Refrain
'The Boy I Love' was composed by George Ware in 1885 and made popular by Marie Lloyd.
An interesting historical side note is that it was also apparently sung by Belle Elmore, the wife of Dr. Crippen.
Chapter Two — The Murder of Beatrice d'Auray.
“'Fraid there's no electricity connected. No bloody wiring that you'd dare to connect it to, come to that. We've rigged up a temporary, rather basic, circuit that does provide a little light in the stage, auditorium, and foyer areas.”
Mr. Scrivener was rather portly, his eyes a washed blue behind rimless half lenses, small chubby hands clasping a mock leather folder. A lesser Pickwick without the benevolence.
“So you'll probably need a torch for the darker recesses. And anyway the light goes at about 6 o'clock, although doubtless you'll want to be out and away before then.”
They were standing at the front of the stage looking out across the auditorium. It was more or less intact with even a few rows of seats at the rear. Above it the galleries loomed, already dark in shadow and, high above them, the richly sculpted roof
The man smiled. “I'll manage. I have a lantern torch for emergencies but generally I'll be gone. I have another appointment at six. With a bombardier. And I should have finished the survey tomorrow long before that.”
“Here's the keys. Remember to lock up when you do leave. And drop them into our offices when you've finally finished; we don't want any repetition of kids getting in creating mayhem.”
“Getting killed?” suggested the man gently
“Yes. Silly little bleeders. Although what their parents were thinking of, letting them roam around at that time of night I don't know. No discipline. What can you expect?” Mr. Scrivener concluded gloomily.
“Bad for business I imagine?” But the sarcasm was lost. Had little chance against the irritation engendered by the memory.
“I'll say. We were on the point of concluding a contract when it happened but the purchaser didn't want to know after the little blighters were killed. It had been bad enough before, but that was the last straw.”
“Before?”
Mr Scrivener snorted.
“It had, has, a reputation. For deaths. An unenviable track record .... I shouldn't be telling you this I suppose .... You working for the new buyers .... Don't want to put the kybosh on that too .... Leave it empty for another twenty years.”
“Don't mind me. I'm just a surveyor. I don't make buying decisions. I just tell them how big it is, whether it is going to fall down, or how much it would cost to knock it down. That sort of thing.”
“Well it's nothing really .... just that it has this reputation. After the V2 ended its days as a theatre, it served for as a cinema until the projectionist got pissed one night and got badly burned, blinded, in a fire caused by his own drunken incompetence. It was briefly a Bingo Hall until the caller fell dead on stage with a massive coronary and his replacement went the same way two months later ....”
“But that must have been decades ago .... Surely ....?”
“There were gaps. Then someone would try again. It had the advantage of being dirt cheap. Spells as a warehouse which invariably ended in a fire, usually with someone getting killed, usually a night watchman suffocated by the resulting toxic fumes. Or just found dead 'by natural causes' without need of fire. An amateur Theatrical Group tried to revive it about thirty years ago and the lighting engineer fell from the flies and was killed on the Opening Night. Not to mention at least five workmen killed at one time or another during its many restorations, damage repairs, patchings-up, making safe, call them what you will.”
“I was speaking to someone ...,” the man began tentatively, “who told me that there was another death. Before the V2. Sometime earlier in the war ....”
“Yes there was. The murder of Beatrice d'Auray .... During the Blitz .... On the night that Havelock Road copped it.”
“Murder?”
“Murder. She was stabbed to death. Here. In her Dressing Room. She was top of the bill. A bit of a star in her day.”
Mr. Scrivener paused. Took of his spectacles, wiped and replaced them. Settling them on his nose, adjusting their balance. Considering. Then.
“I come from around here. Born in Cawnpore Terrace. It was all long before my time of course, but my folks remembered. Not that they talked of it much. But they knew. Everybody did. It had .... had made an impression.”
He looked embarrassed. More human.
“I .... I .... as a lad, a young man even .... I wanted to be an actor. Was passionate about anything to do with the stage. When other kids were kicking a ball about, I played with Pollock Theatres, dreamt of being an actor .... And so I took an interest.”
A nervous laugh; the embarrassment deepening.
“I know it sounds silly. I'm not exactly cut out to be a leading man, and when you're seventeen it's a long wait before you can qualify for character parts. And yet I was .... passionate about it.”
The surveyor made an encouraging, soothing noise, intended to express mild dissent from this over modest assessment of thespian ability.
“I was part of the cast here that Opening Night. When the lighting engineer was killed. Just had a walk-on part of course. And only an amateur. The nearest I ever got .... And I know a little about Beatrice d'Auray. Even have a copy of the old play bill .... She was a male impersonator .... in the style of Vesta Tilly .... she sang straight as well of course, but her speciality was male impersonation. At the beginning of the war there was quite a vogue for old fashioned acts harking back to the Music Hall days.”
“Finding comfort in the security of a Golden Age. Far-flung Empire on which the Sun Never Sets. Britannia Rules the Waves. Thin Red Line o' Heroes sort of thing I suppose?”
“I suppose so. I leave that to the psychologists. Or you might say that there is a limit to the number of times an audience will listen to 'There'll be White Birds Over' and 'Run Rabbit Run', whilst 'Hang out Your Washing on the Siegfrieg Line' enjoyed a rather short time span.”
The man nodded, smiled. “Yes. Perhaps that's more likely. But you were telling me about Beatrice d'Auray?”
“I doubt if that was her real name. Anyway there isn't much more to tell. She had three spots in the evening. One straight, one where she sang duets with another girl called Lucy Sheldon who also served as her understudy, and finally she closed the show in her rá´le as a male impersonator. ”
“And that's all?”
“All I know. Perhaps all anyone knows now. That last act. And when the curtain came down on her last song, it also came down on her and .... and on the glory days of the Old Alhambra. It was never the same again. Perhaps nothing was ever the same again.”
“At least it all ended with a song.”
The surveyor moved to the front of the stage. Looked up to the sweeping semi circles of the galleries tiered above him. Tried to imagine what it must have been like on that last of the glory days.
Mr. Scrivener moved up alongside him.
“I suppose it did. But even that .... even that is a little odd.”
“How can a song be odd?”
“Well .... inappropriate perhaps.” Mr. Scrivener hesitated. “Her last song would have been her signature. It's mentioned on the play bill. An old Marie Lloyd number and not really suitable for a male impersonator. It should be sung from a female perspective.”
“Perhaps the audience just liked it. Must have done I suppose. Anyway it's not as if they thought she was really a man is it? As you said she did have a straight act also and on the same bill.”
“Of course. Anyway it doesn't matter. It is just that I have always thought it a bit .... odd.” He smiled. Looked more like Mr. Pickwick. Almost benevolent.
“What was the song? Do you remember?”
“Oh yes. It's well known. I'm not sure of the title but the refrain starts 'The boy I love is up in the gallery.'”
“.... in the gallery.”
“Yes I know it. And that really was all?
“That really was all. On that night .... October 15th 1941 .... when the curtain came down that was the end. She went to her dressing room and no-one saw her again. No-one except her murderer that is.”
“And they never found him .... or her. Never found out who did it?
“No. Not surprising really. One hundred and seventeen other people died that night in Havelock Road and neighbouring streets. And many more wounded, maimed and crippled. Mostly women and children. The men were away at war of course. One more death was neither here nor there.”
“ I don't care...”
“And I don't suppose there were many coppers around either. Away at the war along with everyone else, including the criminals. London was never so crime-free, safe as houses it would have been. Although of course the houses weren't.”
Mr Scrivener nodded. “The Old Alhambra had been hit too. A couple of small bombs and the usual incendiaries starting small fires. Beatrice was found amongst some rubble in the corridor leading from the dressing rooms. She .... she had been burnt quite severely. It was only by chance that the stab wounds were noticed. How you died in those days wasn't so important. Finding the living and burying the dead took precedence.”
“ So they didn't really look?
“...looking down at me.”
“Look for what? Who could it have been? Where would they start? It was largely a transient population. Most who had lived here were away, most of those here came from elsewhere, where just passing through. The Old Alhambra was damaged and the other performers scattered to the four winds. And they, what police there were, had no resources. Other things to do. Just bury the dead before the bodies rot and hope that the next day someone wouldn't have to bury you or your family.”
Mr. Scrivener shook his head sadly in a kind of wonderment at the horror.
“I suppose,” he continued, “that they just put it down to an intruder, or a thief, or maybe even a thwarted admirer or lover ....
“...I've got a lover.”
.... or who knows? There was a rumour that she was with child so perhaps ....”
“If her murder made no impact at the time, why do people still remember it? Seems still to be regarded as a turning point, something to be in awe of .... seems to have gained in importance?”
It was Mr. Scrivener's turn to stare into the darkness of the high vaulted ceiling.
“Because there was something else. I suppose you could call it a sort of legacy,” he said quietly, as if speaking to himself. Reluctantly exploring an old suspicion.
“After about three months they reopened the Old Alhambra. A bit battered. Missing a lot of gilt and plaster cherubs. And with smoke and water stains evident on some of the seats. But open for business. They had cleaned up the dressing rooms too; carefully redecorated the one which Beatrice d'Auray had used. Only .... only no-one would use it. Not for longer than for one performance they wouldn't. So it was locked up. And barred. As were later the adjoining ones. And things happened, things went wrong, there were accidents .... A trapeze artist was killed, a dancer fell into the orchestra pit and broke her spine. There was talk of a jinx, a curse. Word spread until the acts didn't want to come here any more. Wouldn't come any more. Whatever the money offered.”
“...a lot of money.”
“I'm not surprised,” the man said. “If the acoustics were like this then .... Do you hear it?” He asked. “Or is it just me?”
“Hear what?”
“I keep hearing a faint echo .... distorted .... not quite right. I thought I was imagining things at first .... but .... I keep hearing it.”
“No. I can't hear anything. Nothing at all. You must be imagining it.”
Mr. Scrivener moved away, back down stage. Distancing himself. Suddenly all business-like again.
“I must be getting on. Not paid to stand here gossiping all day. The rest you know anyway. The V2 finished a theatre that was, to all intents and purposes, already moribund.”
Then “You'll be needing this.”
He slipped the folder from underneath his arm and handed it the surveyor.
“The building's details, including floor plans, are all here. Just one thing. They finally bricked up the corridor to the end dressing rooms. They had to .... to get any acts at all. We opened it up again last week but the end room .... her room, Beatrice's room .... is locked. We're trying to sort out the keys, we have a box of them, or they might even be amongst those I gave you, but if you can't wait ....”
“ ...whilst you wait.”
“There it is again .... Surely you ....?”
“No. Nothing,” Mr. Scrivener said abruptly. “The wind must be getting up. Old buildings play tricks. Always creaking as things settle. It's structurally unsafe I expect. And I must go. Late already.”
Already heading off the stage towards the corridor leading to the side exit, he half turned “If you can't wait, just force it. The door. Nobody's going to mind now.”
A few more steps then, over his shoulder, “Remember to lock up. And don't leave it too late ....
“...allow me to state.”
“.... Not after dark. You won't be able to see anything then and .... and ....”
His voice faded away, his parting words lost as he turned a corner and disappeared.
This tale is complete in Six Chapters which will be posted at approximately weekly intervals
This, the third chapter, is entitled
Faces in the Mirror.
Readers should be aware that this is primarily a Ghost Story.
The TV/TG element is crucial to the plot but occupies a comparatively minor part of the text.
Those wishing to absorb a little of the ambience prior to reading should visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW4ThXetHkI&NR=1 and hear Helen Shapiro sing the last verse and refrain of the song that runs like a thread throughout the tale.
The boy I love is up in the gallery,
The boy I love is looking down at me,
There he is, can't you see, a-waving of his handkerchief,
As merry as a robin that sings on a tree.
The boy that I love, they call him a cobbler,
But he's not a cobbler, allow me to state.
For Johnny is a tradesman and he works in the Boro'
Where they sole and heel them, whilst you wait.
Refrain
If I were a Duchess and had a lot of money,
I'd give it to the boy that's going to marry me.
But I haven't got a penny, so we'll live on love and kisses,
And be just as happy as the birds on the tree.
Refrain
'The Boy I Love' was composed by George Ware in 1885 and made popular by Marie Lloyd.
An interesting historical side note is that it was also apparently sung by Belle Elmore, the wife of Dr. Crippen.
Chapter Three — Faces in the Mirror.
The sound of the side door closing seemed loud, amplified by the sounding box of the great emptiness that the building contained. There was a sort of finality to it, emphasising his isolation from an outside world that suddenly seemed impossibly remote. Cocooned with the past in this high musty space with the memories of the long dead as his only companions.
And as the sound of the door shutting died away he heard, or imagined for a moment he heard, the echo again. Only this time not an echo, if it ever had been an echo, this time no words, but the distant faint trill of a girlish laugh, which in its dying fall provoked its own true, ever fainter, echoes from high above in the darkling gallery.
Angrily the man turned on his heel. Shook shoulders and head to dispel the feeling of lethargy that had kept him there those long moments during Mr. Scrivener's departure. Not just lethargy. Almost a foreboding. Christ! He was letting that loony old bat in The Quiet Woman get to him. She, together with the absurd theatrical reminiscences of that Guilgud manqué, Scrivener.
Work. He had a job to do. Best get on with it.
And so he did. All the rest of that afternoon, he measured and calculated, rechecked and recalculated. Explored and examined the empty carcase of what had once been a vibrant living theatre. A building that had once witnessed the hushed expectancy of audiences, the holding of breath, the gasps of excitement; that had heard the tears and the laughter and the applause. A building that must have been as close to living as any edifice of brick and stone, plaster and timber, can be.
No sound to disturb him now though. No more echoes or distant laughter to trouble his reason. Just the high vaulted silence such as fills an old cathedral. A deep silence hallowed by past generations of listeners. An expectant silence.
And sometimes, just sometimes, when he paused and looked about him, or when he turned a corner, he had the impression that he had just missed seeing something, someone. That if he had looked up, turned the corner, just that split second earlier he might just have glimpsed ....
But only sometimes. For the most part his afternoon passed in the routine that had become second nature to him in the three years since he had joined the company after leaving university. A professional absorption in work that was still new enough to be all engrossing. So much so that he did not remark at first the gradual dying of the natural light that filtered in. Was not aware of how the shadows were slowly reclaiming for their own the far recesses and crannies of the building; of how the few bare lamp bulbs glowed brighter in protest against the encroaching darkness.
If he had he might also have noticed that the darkness itself cloaked, was itself made deeper by, a certain fogginess, a foreign presence in the air that was perhaps more usual in the old days when chimneys of more than a million coal fires spewed out their filth into the London skies. The bygone pea-soupers that Holmes and Jack the Ripper would have known when hands could not be seen in front of faces. Now reborn inside this building, invading it and bringing with it a cold clamminess that crept into its very fabric.
Perhaps it was the increasing chill that first drew the man's attention to the passing of time. It was later than he had realised. Nearly time to exchange the dankness of his present surroundings for the warmth to be found, the surly barman not withstanding, in The Quiet Woman.
Tomorrow should finish it. Just the Dress and Upper Circles, the Gallery, and back of stage to do. If he started first thing he should be away by two o'clock. Possibly even before lunch. Perhaps it would be a good idea to check if one of his keys did fit Beatrice d'Auray's dressing room though. Otherwise he would have to get Mr. Scrivener back. Make him work for his living. If there was to be any breaking down of doors, let him do it.
He shivered. Christ it was getting cold though. And dark. Bugger this for a game of soldiers. The sooner he and the golden bombardier were reacquainted the better.
With this incentive urging him on, he headed backstage and through the wings towards the dressing rooms. No emergency lighting here but high up away to his right there was a small, dirty, skylight through which early evening light made a half hearted attempt at illumination.
At least Scrivener had been right about the corridor being opened up. Even if not all the rubble had been cleared away. Why was it that builders generally had a natural distaste for picking up what they had knocked down? As if it somehow reflected on their masculinity? It was probably against the brotherhood's rules. 'Thou shalt not tidy up any debris nor permit unto thy colleagues to so transgress, eschewing all consideration for the comfort or safety of thy fellow creatures, under pain of ..... '
.... But there was something odd, something unexpected. At the end of the corridor, about twenty paces away, he could see, through the rapidly gathering gloom, a thin line of light. A thin line of light marking the bottom of a door. A door on which the outline of a star could still be seen. A smear of tarnished gold on the panel's blackened surface.
The door to Beatrice d'Auray's Dressing Room.
The skylight's feeble glow hardly reached this end of the corridor and his own faint shadow stretching before him was hardly visible in the deep gloom, only serving to blank out the remaining light. The dank chill seemed more pronounced here and an overall pervasive mustiness assailed his nostrils. Perhaps not unsurprising in a place that had been bricked up for sixty years or so.
Perhaps.
There was something else besides. A sweetness. Not the strange earthy sweetness of decay, although that was there too, masking the other. This was like long dead flowers, and the man searched his memory for it for he had come across it, or something like it, recently .... in The Quiet Woman? .... The old lady's perfume? But no not quite. This was different. Old London street cries. “Who'll buy my sweet lavender?” Lavender. Old Norfolk Lavender. That was it. Underneath the mustiness, entwined within the long undisturbed decay, was the scent of lavender.
Looking down, the light under the door appeared merely as an unsubstantial glimmer. Merely an wavering reflection from uncarpeted floorboards grimed by decades of dust. From under a door that had been locked for forty years and more.
He sorted through the impressively heavy bunch of keys that Mr. Scrivener had handed him. There were several that might fit, in fact all, apart from the side door yale deadlock, were similar. Selecting one at random he grasped the doorknob as he bent forward to insert the key .... and the door swung open at the first pressure catching him off balance so that he staggered across the threshold, dropping the redundant keys, before coming to an ungainly halt several paces into the room.
Behind him the door clicked softly shut again.
Directly facing him there was a dressing table upon which two tall candles burnt in two tall candlesticks. On the dressing table, dominating it, there was a large mirror edged with defunct light bulbs. From each side of the mirror projected, like Ká¢li's arms, three candle holders each containing a lighted candle so that his own reflection appeared framed before him. His own reflection to welcome him. A long awaited guest.
There was little else. A small triangle of a washbasin in one corner. A straight backed chair to one side of the dressing table and a built in wardrobe that stretched the whole length of the wall to his right. There were a few autographed photographs of fellow artistes and entertainers on the walls. Faded and dog eared now, all that was left of a transient fame.
One small rug on the floor, its tired colours finally obscured by decades of dust.
The scent of lavender quite distinct now. In the ascendant above the mustiness, the damp, the insistent odour of camphor, the smell of candles.
The candles! That bloody man Scrivener, he who had said the door was locked, playing silly buggers! Christ who would have thought that the pathetic old bastard would regress to second childhood pranks and ....?”
But why? And when? He looked again. All the candles, the two tall ones and the shorter, smaller ones were new lit. Their domed tops still largely intact. Surely Scrivener wouldn't have come back just to ....? Anyway he would have heard him. Would have heard anybody, anybody at all. He could swear that no-one could have moved in the theatre without .... without his knowing.
The man sat down at the dressing table, pulling the chair round and fitting his legs under the knee hole between the fancy bowed drawers that flanked it. He looked into the mirror and saw only puzzlement in the face looking back. The side candles guttered slightly, the flames swaying in response to his breath.
It didn't make sense.
In his distraction his hands toyed with a small box lying to his right behind one of the tall candles. Turned it over, first one way and then the other. Round and over and back again. It was about the size of the cigarette boxes he had seen in friends' houses, once kept by their grandparents' generation for the convenience of visitors. They had been usually been in silver or in pewter, this was in old dark cedarwood. And this had a small key, so not for cigarettes ....
He idly turned the key and opened it.
A light tinkling melody. A musical box. Another childhood memory. He had always been charmed by them and .... and he recognised the tune. How could he not? It was the one Scrivener had spoken of. The words of the refrain formed in his brain.
Inside two keys. That was all. The box was empty except for two keys on a scarlet ribbon.
Keys were meant for locks. The dressing table drawers had key holes but they would accept neither of the two keys. They were all unlocked anyway and looked as if such had for a long time been their permanent state. Nothing in them to hide. Quite empty apart from the shallow centre drawer above his knees that contained a jumble of cosmetic and make-up products dating from the glory days.
He looked around him. Nothing evident. Unless one was for the built-in wardrobe? No. It was only a cheap painted structure with sliding doors. Unless .... On an impulse he rose, crossed to it, and slid the left hand side across. It was cheaply built and after half a century of disuse it took some effort. A wasted one. It was empty. He tried the right hand side but that was jammed solid. Immovable. Finally with one final despairing, futile, tug he turned away. It wouldn't budge. It was all a waste of bloody time.
It was getting late. He glanced at his watch. Quarter past six. He was late for his appointment with the pint at The Quiet Woman. He shivered. And the temperature was dropping too. Time to leave.
Put the candles out first. Don't want the bloody place burning down. Although there might be a lot to be said in favour of it. Not on his watch though. He turned back towards the dressing table and as he did so he kicked something that, with a metallic jingle, skidded across the floor coming to rest back against the wardrobe door.
The keys that he had dropped when he had first staggered into the room. He remembered Scrivener's strictures about locking up and went over to retrieve them. Straightening up from the right hand corner where they lay he saw that there was a gap of about one inch between the sliding door and the wardrobe frame. Odd he hadn't noticed it before. He slid his fingers into the gap and for a last farewell heave and .... the door slid smoothly away at the first touch of his fingers. Almost as if it had been waiting for him, wanting to atone for its past obduracy.
And there behind it, also waiting for him was another door, another wardrobe door. Wheels within wheels, doors behind doors. Only this was a heavy mahogany affair. A fine example of solid mid Victorian workmanship which must have been easier to build round than to remove. Two large clenched-fist brass handles and between them an ornate brass escutcheon waiting, waiting ..... waiting for a key.
He knew without thinking. How could it be otherwise? He knew. Without willing it his hand brought out the red ribbon and its two keys and as if it were a daily routine, as familiar to him as opening his own front door, he slid the larger of the two keys in the lock and, seemingly without conscious effort on his part, it turned.
The camphor of old mothballs, the scent of past fineries, of old lace and silks and satins, flowed out and wrapped him in perfumes of another age. There hung before him a whole row of dresses. Long Edwardian styles in satin and silks, lavishly adorned with ivory lace. Above ornate hats with ostrich feathers caressing their crowns and below a jumble of elaborate shoes; delicate, ridiculous, shoes which would never have survived fifteen minutes of London pavement duty. At one end of the rack there was a solitary frock-coat matched in the shelf above by a shiny top hat and a silver topped ebony cane, whilst below, nesting amongst the high heels, a pair of patent leather men's shoes. And behind the shoes .... in the far left hand corner .... something more substantial ....
An old gladstone bag. The leather polished to a deep mahogany colour that still gleamed dully through the fine dust. He reached down, brushing aside the hanging silk and satin of the skirts, releasing more musty camphor and perfume mix, and pulled it out through the entangling shoes and into the room.
The two straps were already unbuckled and, kneeling besides it on the floor, he slipped the smaller scarlet ribboned key into the solid brass lock. Slipped it in and turned it as with unconscious familiarity. Inside his hands found files, bundles of letters, and a heavier hard backed book or an album possibly, and underneath that ....
He stood up and, grasping the bag's leather handles, moved back to the dressing table's pool of light. Placing the bag on the floor he sat again on the old straight backed chair and pulled out the top files. Press cuttings. Yellowing pages, faded print and grainy indistinct illustrations. All carefully preserved witnesses to the career of Beatrice d'Auray. And beneath them an album full of photographs of her. Posed studio photos of her both as a straight singer and as a male impersonator. Sepia, selenium toned, hand tinted, even a couple of early colour photos. In coy, serious, laughing, flirtatious attitudes. Always glamorous.
And others less formal. Photographs taken of her amongst friends, by friends. At parties, on picnics, on the beach, on boats. Less glamorous perhaps but always vivacious, always at the centre. A princess surrounded by courtiers. Photogenic she certainly must have been, not perhaps a classical beauty, if indeed such a thing exists, but striking certainly and possessing a magnetism that could still be felt in these old faded images.
And often appearing with her, sometimes even in the studio portraits, another girl. Younger, prettier perhaps, with delicate features and a fine boned, heart shaped face. A fawn with a fawn's long sweeping eyelashes. Not quite a background figure but seemingly, even in the studio photographs of just the two of them, a secondary presence.
Under one such image had been scrawled 'Myself and Lucy - Brighton 1939'. He remembered that Scrivener had mentioned a Lucy ... Lucy .... something or other. The name escaped him but he was sure it was a Lucy something.... Perhaps in the files, in the press cuttings? He picked up the top file, opened it and as he did so a brown foolscap envelope slipped out and fell at his feet. Bending to pick it up he saw 'BLOODY GREASEPAINT!!!!' written on it in large angry letters.
Again he shivered. God it was cold. The temperature seemingly in free fall. He thought of the warmth of 'The Quiet Woman's bar and the pint of bombardier awaiting him. All this was nothing to do with him. Curiosity was one thing but this was interfering with more pressing pleasures. He slipped the envelope into his inside pocket. Something to read over his pint. Or two. And the rest could wait. Or he could give it all to Scrivener to add to his theatrical memorabilia. Bugger all to do with him.
He started to shovel the files back into the bag, hesitated, and then responding to a sudden inner prompting replaced them on the desk and, lifting the bag onto his knees, peered into its dark recesses, his hand ferreting about until his fingers encountered something hard, thin, metallic .... a chain. A thin, almost weightless chain that as he drew it out he felt was attached to something a little heavier .... something that swung as a pendulum as it emerged into the candlelight. Swung, and in swinging slowly turned, splintering the light from the candles and throwing it back into the room.
A locket. Oval, about an inch by one and a half, in finely chased gold. He cradled it in the palm of his hand staring at it. Why he did not know but he felt that he had seen it before, that he had always known of it, that he always knew he would find it again; that he knew it had been in the bag. There. That it had been waiting for him.
Time slowed, stopped.
No movement in the room save for the slight flickering of candle flames and their dancing reflections from the locket. No sound but his own breathing.
In that pause, in those seconds .... no minutes, he felt the locket draw the warmth from his hand. Become a centre of warmth itself. Comforting, familiar.
Familiar because it was as if it were expected. And because he knew .... he knew what was in it. He knew if he opened it he would find ....
But he dare not. Could find neither the will to put it down, to drop it back in the gladstone bag, nor the will to open it, to see what he knew he would see. Not that he feared what was in it. But that he feared knowing. Feared the confirmation that he knew. Because if he did know ....
And then the slow realisation that he had no longer any choice. And with the realisation time moved on again and he turned the locket in his fingers feeling for the small raised ridge at the side that served as a catch. Found it and pressed it and the locket opened to reveal, as somehow he knew it would, two hand tinted photographs each framed in a plaited lock of hair. A man and a woman in their twenties, he late, she early, forever now in their twenties, looking out at him one on each side of the locket. Looking out at him from the open locket, looking forever into each others eyes when the locket was closed.
He had known they would be there. He felt he should know them. Felt he did know them but .... the woman was neither Beatrice nor Lucy if the photographs in the album bore any resemblance to reality. And the man? Perhaps he had featured amongst the lesser characters but .... but both seemed familiar .... . At the fringes of memory.
The man closed the locket again. Closed his eyes as if to erase the images. Closed his eyes to escape from the unreality of this world of memories, others' long dead memories, into which he had been drawn. Still saw against the inner dark velvet of his eyelids the two portraits which seemed now to be gazing into his own soul.
He turned the locket round in his hand, flicking it over with his thumb, again and again. A mechanical repetitive action which brought a sort of comfort. He found that if he concentrated on it, on the simple action, it dispelled the thoughts that seemed to crowd at the door of his consciousness.
Turning, turning, round and round, the locket warm and comforting in his hand. His fingers ceaselessly moving, feeling the gold worn smooth by the wearing. By being worn close to another skin, close to a smooth skin down in the long vee of a neck.
Turning, turning, round and round, until his hands stilled and then moved upwards spreading the chain wide. Moved upwards and back over, slipping it over his head, back over his head, settling it around his neck. letting it fall so naturally into place. So familiar ....
And his eyes were now open again. Open and looking at himself in the mirror. His own eyes looking back at him out of a candlelit reflection. The backs of his hands were towards the mirror, his fingers pointing inwards resting on the thin golden chain. pinning it to the bone at the base of his neck. As a woman might do. Checking the lie of the locket, admiring it, admiring herself.
He moved his head slightly to one side to see the effect. As a woman preening herself. The reflected eyes of a deep violet blue, so much his best feature, smiled back at him confirming the rightness of what they saw.
He watched his hands leave his neck, forsaking the locket's chain, and touch his cheek in a delicate feminine gesture as his head turned slightly in the other direction.
Perhaps it was the quality of the candlelight but the mirror now seemed to throw his face into soft focus gentling the profile, refining the bone structure. The man felt a deep feeling of detachment invade his body. He saw his face but not as his face, but rather as the face of someone he might have been. Perhaps was in some other parallel dimension. He watched as the hands in the mirror moved to open the centre drawer, even moved his chair back slightly to ease their access. Watched as they brought forth the cosmetics therein. saw them unscrew, open jars and dip inside. He even leant forward and obligingly smelt the contents proffered.
He felt less cold now. More a sort of insulating numbness. And through and over-riding the scents of the cosmetics the smell of lavender hung heavy in the air. He watched the hands in the mirror move to his face's reflection. Felt his hands touch his face. Felt the coldness of cream, the softness of powder, closed his eyes to give those hands access to the lids, opened them to welcome the brush that teased out his lashes' length, pouted his lips and with his tongue aped that other mirrored tongue and tasted their new waxiness.
The mirror seemed cloudy now, the edges indistinct. Only his face .... no not his face .... but her face that was also his .... looked back at him. Smiled back at him. Greeting him, acknowledging her.
And then of a sudden the numbness faded and the coldness returned. But another level of coldness. An iciness that caught the breath in his throat. Not permeating but instant. Paralysing him. Replacing the sweet lavender with a stench of decay that pinched his nostrils in sickening disgust.
And with it there was a swirl in the cloud at the mirror's edge, a thinning in the veil through which he saw .... Dear God .... through which he saw another face. A face as of smoke that drifted, indistinct. A face that formed and reformed, swirled in the mirror's thinning cloud, and then reshaped, became ever more solid.
A face of someone looking over his shoulder. Looking over his shoulder into the reflection of his eyes. Into his eyes, into his soul. A face he knew from the album photographs. But a face so very different from that portrayed there. The beauty that had then so captivated now transformed into a twisted mask of hatred in which blazed eyes of a malevolence beyond mortal imaginings.
This tale is complete in Six Chapters which will be posted at approximately weekly intervals
This, the fourth chapter, is entitled
~ The Gift of Remembrance ~
Readers should be aware that this is primarily a Ghost Story.
The TV/TG element is crucial to the plot but occupies a comparatively minor part of the text.
Those wishing to absorb a little of the ambience prior to reading should visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW4ThXetHkI&NR=1 and hear Helen Shapiro sing the last verse and refrain of the song that runs like a thread throughout the tale.
The boy I love is up in the gallery,
The boy I love is looking down at me,
There he is, can't you see, a-waving of his handkerchief,
As merry as a robin that sings on a tree.
The boy that I love, they call him a cobbler,
But he's not a cobbler, allow me to state.
For Johnny is a tradesman and he works in the Boro'
Where they sole and heel them, whilst you wait.
Refrain
If I were a Duchess and had a lot of money,
I'd give it to the boy that's going to marry me.
But I haven't got a penny, so we'll live on love and kisses,
And be just as happy as the birds on the tree.
Refrain
'The Boy I Love' was composed by George Ware in 1885 and made popular by Marie Lloyd.
An interesting historical side note is that it was also apparently sung by Belle Elmore, the wife of Dr. Crippen.
Chapter Four ~ The Gift of Remembrance ~
The silent scream came unbidden. Wrenched from him. Born of the terror that seized him. The mirror in front of him was suddenly frost-etched with fantastic fern and feather shapes, distorting, destroying the reflections, as his breath mist-plumed through the icy atmosphere and wreathed over its surface.
Equally unbidden was his body's reaction that jerked him upright, sending his chair tumbling over and over as he whirled round to face the horror behind him.
Fog had invaded the room, blurring its edges and thickening in its corners. In front of him tendrils of it had gathered, writhing and twisting into a thicker column. An amorphous mass whose insubstantial nature seemed just a veil concealing a more recognisable form. Concealing a being to whom the face glimpsed in the mirror gave identity.
His body's primitive reaction to absolute fear overrode now any remnant of a thought process. The fear unleashed adrenalin propelled him blindly towards the door. Towards the door, brushing through the fringes of the pillar of swirling fog before him.
As a boy he had once stayed overnight with a friend and they had had a pillow fight. One of the pillows burst and the boy's mother had next morning been furious. But what had stayed in his memory was not her anger but the feel of the cloud of soft goose down on his half naked body as it had drifted thickly around them. And for a moment it was like that. Just for a fleeting moment. But now the down was ice cold, like snow but colder; but not like snow because snow is too solid, too of this world. This was an ethereal, insubstantial, gossamer-fine sensation of a myriad touches which together made a definable entity.
Not like snow, not like down either because there was another difference. The smell of putrefaction. Seemingly as tangible as the column itself. A stench that wrapped itself around him, dragging at him, choking him, seizing him for its own.
And then he was through. Through to the door, grappling with the handle, wrenching it open, staggering outside into the corridor's welcoming darkness. Stumbling steps along the debris strewn passage.
And then he heard the voice singing. Pure and clear. The voice of a young woman in girlhood's innocence.
"The boy I love is up in the gallery."
The man's foot caught a small pile of bricks and he stumbled, bounced against a wall and sprawled full length, grazing his face in the rubble.
"The boy I love is looking down at me."
He picked himself up, a pain in his wrist and a deadness in his knee that presaged pain to come. Felt the warmth of blood trickling down his face.
"There he is, can't you see, a-waving of his handkerchief."
Every breath fed fire to his lungs although he had run but twenty yards. His heart pounded against his chest's walls as if trying to escape. Thin moonlight filtered through from the skylight lighting the last few yards to the door that led to the blessed outside.
"As merry as a robin that sings on a tree."
The song's dying fall echoing in his ears as he all but fell out through the door. The limpid, pure, voice still ran hauntingly through his head. Mocking him.
For a moment he leant against the wall of the old theatre filling his lungs with the evening air. Filling his lungs to clear them of the corruption that they had so recently inhaled. Never had London air seemed so fresh and wholesome. Then on again to put more distance between himself and .... that .... what ever it had been. He found he could no longer remember exactly .... only the horror of it. And that he knew he would always remember.
Back down the ginnel towards the road. And then the road itself with its street lights to welcome him and to his right the soft glow from the windows of "The Quiet Woman" and the slight creak from its inn sign as it eased itself slightly in the breeze. His breathing slowed to something approaching normality. And as the adrenaline rush slackened so he became yet more aware of the pain in wrist and knee. He could barely hobble now and glancing down he saw on his right trouser leg red brick smears, dark in the sodium street light against the white dust that coated his dishevelled suit. A hand to his neck and he felt the blood sticky on his fingers, a thin rivulet running still into his collar.
Badly though he needed a drink, he needed to spruce up first. What would he tell them? That he had been mugged? And by whom? Best to clean up and say nothing; best to ....
And then he remembered. He tentatively ran his tongue over his lips and tasted the perfumed waxiness of lipstick. Remembered his face in the mirror. His face and his hands. Remembered how .... how those hands, his hands, had so expertly applied ....
If the locals of 'The Quiet Woman' saw him made up as a woman, he could expect little sympathy. Jesus he could imagine the barman's reaction! And his chance of being accepted as a fare by a taxi was equally problematical. Not that there was much chance of finding a cruising taxi in this area. They probably only ventured here in twos.
His only chance would be to clean up first. He remembered that the loo was on the left of the horseshoe bar and he gently pushed open the door on that side and peered in. Three or four customers were sullenly clustered in a small group on the other side of the bar under the morose gaze of the barman. He slipped in and, trying to minimise his limp, hastened to the door of the gents' at the far end. He was fortunate in the lighting. At best bordering on the inadequate, several of the bulbs had in fact given up the unequal struggle against the encroaching shadows and fulfilled now only a symbolic rá´le. The barman did look up, but disinterestedly, and by that time the man, his right hand held high to shield the side of his face, was passing through the far door.
The suit was not a problem. The dust brushed off, more or less, and even the red smears on the knee responded largely to persuasive rubbing, albeit the trousers were ruined forever with small tears underneath the marks. His face proved less responsive to treatment. A contributing factor being that effectively all had to be done with his left hand alone. He padded the missing patches of skin and attendant scratches with wet tissues from the dispenser and cautiously wiped away the surrounding dried blood. The result wasn't pretty but it would no longer frighten the horses.
His make-up was in a different league of obduracy. He was acutely aware that he had applied it himself. That his own hands had expertly feminised his face. Try as
he might to obliterate the memory of what had happened, what he had done, whilst seated before the mirror, and great the horror that had followed and overshadowed it, the knowledge gnawed away at him. The knowledge that he had watched his hands at work and in some way had approved of what they did.
And the make-up was surprisingly difficult to remove. The three soap dispensers were all empty. The water was only a couple of degrees above lukewarm and the lipstick in particularly was possessed of a surprising tenacity. He had seen claims that various brands were 'kiss-proof' but such was proving to be the understatement of the all time. The rubbing required left his lips redder than the colouring itself. The eye shadow was almost as tricky. In some ways more so as by then his one good hand was also trembling as reaction set in.
Finally it was done. Done to the best of his ability. He was beginning to care less and less about the finer details. One final check in the loo mirror and .... Christ! He had forgotten the locket. He eased it over and off his neck and slipped it into a jacket pocket before re-entering the flawed but comfortable world of the bar of 'The Quiet Woman' that he had left but a few short hours ago.
Both hands flat on the counter. Then one moving to grasp the other just above the throbbing wrist in an effort to still the trembling that affected them both.
The barman took some time in considering the appearance of the new customer and the probable inconvenience that such would afford him but finally ventured across and adopted an attitude that might be interpreted by the charitably disposed as non-committably helpful.
"A cognac. A double please. Neat." If there was a flicker of interest in the barman's expression it was hidden as he turned to select a glass and to give it a double thrust against the optic. But as he took the money he bestowed a grudging degree of recognition.
"Took yer time," he said. "Gone off the bitter 'ave yer?"
The customer sipped the brandy, sipped and then sipped again, feeling the the neat spirit burn down throat and gullet.
"In a minute, in a minute .... after .... but this first ...."
Curiosity lurked in the barman's dark eyes. "Looks like you needed that. Work took a bit longer than expected did it? A bit more complicated like was it?"
The man swallowed the remaining brandy and shook his head. He had nothing that he wanted to share. Nothing that he could share. It wasn't something that could be discussed, explained, rationalised. And even if it were .....
"I'll have that pint now", he said. On its arrival he waited until the barman turned away before lifting it carefully in both hands and counted it a minor victory that he managed to carry it, with only slight spillage, to a table in an alcove were at least there was a small circle of illumination.
For a while he sat there, without touching the drink. Truth to tell he did not want it. Waves of tiredness swept over him and all he wanted was sleep. His only sensible course of action was to ring for a taxi and go home. But he could not face being on his own for fear that the longed-for, care-charmer sleep would not come to blot out what lurked behind his eyelids. Or for fear that sleep would come and bring with it only the re-enactment of the living nightmare.
His chair scraped back as he straightened his leg to ease the the nagging pain in his knee and as his body adjusted he was aware of the bulk of the envelope in his inside pocket. Not really knowing why, perhaps seeking distraction, perhaps putting off the time when he would have to move, he pulled it out.
The flap was just tucked in but the questing fingers of his left hand had some difficulty in extracting the tightly fitting wad of paper that the envelope contained. It consisted mainly of sheets that had been torn from magazines: a few of them cuttings that had been carefully selected but the majority pages that had been ripped out hastily, in anger. Many had words or sentences underlined, some few had violent red strokes running down by the side of whole paragraphs. At first sight they could have been taken for press cuttings, written accolades to pander to the ego of a star, but there was anger, rage almost, in the ferocity of those red vertical lines, and when he looked more closely, the articles weren't really reviews of performances ....
The magazines were all from the theatrical world with names like 'Stage', 'Spotlight', and 'Greasepaint'. The latter was particularly well represented with a regular column entitled 'Gossip from the Green Room' seemingly having merited the bulk of the red line treatment.
The man thumbed through them. Most seemed to date from the late summer and autumn of 1941 although there were a few that reached back to the turn of that year. The poor quality war time paper had not aged well and the print face was small to take best advantage of paper's restricted availability, so that reading it required effort and some concentration.
Effort and concentration that were really beyond him. He reached tentatively for his drink. Sipped it without enthusiasm. Tasted still the waxiness on his lips. So much so that he checked its rim for lipstick traces before lowering gently it back onto the table. It was increasingly difficult to keep his eyes from closing, increasingly difficult to ....
But then it wasn't. Then he was again fully awake. In that moment, as his head nodded, he saw .... the face that he had been trying to erase from his consciousness gazing back at him in sepia intensity from the old yellowing pages. By some fluke it alone of the few images there had retained a clarity and crispness that made it instantly recognisable. But even if it too had been blurred and indistinct he would have seen it; have known it for what it was. Known her for who she was.
The face seen in the mirror looking over his shoulder. Gazing into his eyes. A face then contorted in malice. The face of Lucy Sheldon.
It was as if he were suspended from reality, isolated from the world of men. The face in the photograph so very beautiful with that entrancing lift of an eyebrow, that tilt of one corner of her mouth presaging a smile. So very beautiful and yet capable of twisting beyond recognition into a mask of unimaginable malevolence.
The image was implanted in an article in 'The Spotlight' dated March 1941, entitled the 'New Generation of Nightingales', which promoted Lucy as one of the brighter stars of tomorrow. It was all harmless enough at first sight. Certainly Lucy must have been greatly encouraged and flattered by all its talk of her 'realising her true potential' and 'the pure lyrical quality of her voice'. But there was something else, something that was not really apparent on first reading but which on a second, and even more strongly on a third became more tangible .... something which hinted an unwritten something else. Just the odd unnecessary word or phrase.
Something to account for the red question mark that, presumably, Beatrice d'Auray had placed alongside the text. Beatrice herself was never mentioned, but there was the snide inference that Lucy Sheldon's future was in her own hands, that she could do better, would do better, if she could cast off old influences, that in some vague way she was being held back, that her talent was being sacrificed to sustain others less gifted. Nothing as blunt, as definite as that, but something was there. something that doubtless would have been more obvious to the theatrical world of the day.
And then, right at the end of the article when the focus had shifted from Lucy to general trends in entertainment including a certain renaissance in the old Music Hall styles, there was the mention of how some of the old favourites were enjoying a renaissance. The example cited being George Ware's 'The Boy I Love' which had been so effectively being reborn as Lucy Sheldon's signature tune.
Only that must be wrong. Or at least didn't tie in with what Mr. Scrivener had told him. Had made a point of telling him, even pointing out the song's unsuitability for a male impersonator. And claiming to have the old playbill to prove it.
Not that it mattered. Christ his one aim now in life was not to hear of Lucy Sheldon ever again. To erase her from his memory. Above all to efface her image from his memory. Not, he feared, that he ever would but ....
He shuffled the assorted cuttings and torn pages back into some semblance of a rectangle, started to fold them before seeing by his foot a page that had escaped. Painfully he leant down to retrieve it and was about to add it to the rest when he saw Beatrice d'Auray looking back at him from it. Although the low contrast, fuzzy outlines of the reproduction had drained the quality from the carefully posed studio original, there was no mistaking her striking features. Shown not as a male impersonator though but as an Edwardian beauty with an elaborate hairstyle and her dress high on her throat in a cascade of lace.
And below the lace, where the material swelled down to her breasts, lay a locket. Just discernible in the faded 3" x 2 ½" image was a locket. Easy to convince himself that it was the same as the one now nestling in his own pocket but in truth difficult to be sure. Apart from the poor quality of the image, it was partially hidden by the lace and ....
He felt in his pocket for, and brought out, the one that had so recently adorned his own neck. Turned it over in his one good hand, held it close to the printed image. It could be but .... so could many others. Perhaps in the original photograph. Perhaps in the album he had left behind in her dressing room, it might be possible to see, to judge, to decide, but not here.
Idly his fingers clicked on the catch and again he saw the two faces looking out at him. The two strangers who weren't really strangers at all. Not to him. Not to Beatrice d'Auray either. If it were indeed her locket then they must have been people important to her, dear to her. Parents perhaps? No their clothing was wrong for them to be older .... they must have been her contemporaries. He stared at them again until they began to swim before his eyes, merging one into the other. God he was tired.
If only he had brought the album that might have helped, If only he had brought the other press cuttings and the letters, maybe amongst them there was a clue. Maybe .... but he felt that there was more to it than that. A memory going back far further than that. Stretching back to something that he had always known. Something that was enlarged, reinforced, by all this but which had always existed.
His mind searched back in time trying to find the elusive thread. Searching, searching for the faces, for he was gripped increasingly by the certainty that he knew them. Or knew at least the woman. The man too although there was confusion there, less clarity. But the woman .... she he knew in another context.
His brain was not functioning properly. Just a mass of wadding into which thoughts wandered, circled around, and finally disappeared or were transmuted into irrelevancies which in turn were absorbed into a woolly nothingness. Exhaustion swept over him. His eyes closed. The fingers of his hand holding the locket loosened their grip so that, still open, it half slipped onto the image of Beatrice d'Auray lying on the table in front of him.
He was conscious of the of the pain in his wrist and knee but even that seemed far away. Something that belonged to being awake. The warmth of the bar surrounded him, enfolded him, so that he became a world within a world, existing within himself.
Into this private world there came a voice. Another presence that spoke to him, which he acknowledged, to which he responded at some semi-conscious level. A thin, dry, sandpaperish voice.
"I warned you. Warned you to leave the Old Alhambra and its dead alone. You especially."
Through closed eyelids he could see her. Sitting opposite him as she had earlier that same day. Earlier when time could be measured by such words.
"Yes. But then I did not know .... And it was a job." He was not sure if he spoke the words or if they were only in head but the woman must have heard for she nodded an acknowledgement.
"You know now," she said. "You found the locket."
Her perfume hung in the air between them. And perhaps his eyes were open after all because he could see her quite clearly now. See a look of what might be compassion in those faded violet eyes.
"The locket only asks questions," he said.
"Only one question. A question to which you know the answer. Or should. Give that answer to the locket and it will give you answers in return. Then you will know, although ...."
"I need to know."
".... for you best not to know. Best not to meddle with the dead and their secrets."
"I need to know who the couple are though .... the couple in the locket."
"Then be content with that. Do not meddle further. Leave the Old Alhambra to its dead. There is nothing there for you. Not for you."
A thin blue veined hand stretched out, a fold of paper held between long nails of blood.
"This will unlock the locket's secret. Then with its answers you can then perhaps guess the other darker secrets that lie beyond. Be content with that. Do not pry beyond."
God he was tired. He had difficulty in focussing on her so that she seemed to be increasingly indistinct. He tried to summon up the effort to concentrate, to fight off the fatigue, but ....
A hand was gently shaking his shoulder.
Her voice, she herself, fading, just the remembrance of words in his mind. "Leave the Old Alhambra to its dead."
The shaking rougher now. His eyes opening to the shadowed half light of the bar.
Another voice. "'Ere mate. Wake up. Your taxi's 'ere."
The barman bending over him, shaking him.
"I sent for a taxi for you mate. You looks done in. You need to get 'ome an' rest."
Then gruffly, as if regretting any suggestion of charitable concern, "Don't do the place no favours, 'avin people pass out over their drink. Better send you home now than 'ave an ambulance take you to 'ospital later."
The man nodded his understanding. "Thanks. I don't know ...." He swivelled in his seat, flinching as pain lanced up from knee and wrist. "You're right. I need to go home. I need to sleep."
"Maybe 'ospital wouldn't be such a bad idea mate. Looks like yer've had an argument with a JCB. I don't know what 'appened in there, but if I were you I'd ....
"No. Just sleep. I'll be all right. Thank you."
He slipped the locket back into his side pocket and, adding the cutting with Beatrice d'Auray's image to the other papers, slid them inside his jacket. Hobbled to his feet.
"Yer've forgotten something." This time the barman's stubby fingers with their bitten finger nails proffered the folded paper. So it hadn't been a dream. She had been there and ....
"Thank you."
Holding it in his right hand he allowed himself to be shepherded out of the pub and into the taxi, the barman assuring the cabbie that "'Es not pissed. Sober as a bleedin' judge 'e is. Just bin in a bit of an accident."
The paper was of a thick, almost parchment quality, a long oblong folded into four. It was dark inside the cab but the street lights gave enough intermittent light to reveal that it was a birth certificate and when the cab stopped at some lights he was able to make out its contents.
Could read the name of the child and of its parents.
And then he knew. Knew without any doubt that the parents named were the man and the woman whose portraits were in the locket. Knew without any doubt because the woman was his grandmother.
And simultaneously, as if this knowledge was the key to unlock his visual memories, he knew too whom the man resembled. Same bone structure, same everything. He was the masculine counterpart of Beatrice d'Auray.
Sitting back as weariness again claimed him, the faces floated in his mind's eye. The faces of Lucy and of Beatrice, of the man, Beatrice's male alter ego, and the woman, his grandmother. Added to them came his remembrance of this last, as an old frail lady who had enchanted his distant childhood.
The faces in his imagination. Coming close, parting, merging, distancing. Old faces, youthful faces, faces clear in the memory, faces blurred by time. And joining them another face. The face of another old lady. And he saw then that she belonged there with them. Bone structures do not wither with age. Time's betrayal is of the flesh.
The old lady in The Quiet Woman was also a double. A double of Beatrice d'Auray as she would have been in old age.
This tale is complete in Six Chapters which will be posted at approximately weekly intervals
This, the fifth chapter, is entitled
~ Blood Will Out ~
Readers should be aware that this is primarily a Ghost Story.
The TV/TG element is crucial to the plot but occupies a comparatively minor part of the text.
Those wishing to absorb a little of the ambience prior to reading should visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW4ThXetHkI&NR=1 and hear Helen Shapiro sing the last verse and refrain of the song that runs like a thread throughout the tale.
The boy I love is up in the gallery,
The boy I love is looking down at me,
There he is, can't you see, a-waving of his handkerchief,
As merry as a robin that sings on a tree.
The boy that I love, they call him a cobbler,
But he's not a cobbler, allow me to state.
For Johnny is a tradesman and he works in the Boro'
Where they sole and heel them, whilst you wait.
Refrain
If I were a Duchess and had a lot of money,
I'd give it to the boy that's going to marry me.
But I haven't got a penny, so we'll live on love and kisses,
And be just as happy as the birds on the tree.
Refrain
'The Boy I Love' was composed by George Ware in 1885 and made popular by Marie Lloyd.
An interesting historical side note is that it was also apparently sung by Belle Elmore, the wife of Dr. Crippen.
Chapter Five ~ Blood Will Out ~
For eighteen hours he slept. Eighteen blessed hours. And if there were dreams to plague those hours he had no memory of them when he woke in the early afternoon stretched out across the bed where he had collapsed, fully clothed, the night before.
That he was thirsty was his first awareness .... his mouth thick and sticky with sleep. As he stretched pain from his wrist and knee jolted him back into full awareness of what had happened. Pain less acute now, more an aching stiffness in the joints, but enough to still his movements, enough for him to sink back on the pillows with a near silent exhalation of breath.
And lying there it all flooded back. The faces in the mirror. His own face which was not his own, and the terrifying other looking over his shoulder.
For long minutes he lay there, reliving those moments, that eternity. Reliving against all his efforts to banish the memory.
It was with a certain desperation that he finally wrenched himself back to the present with a determined effort to swing himself off the bed. Seeking the pain as a form of distraction to kill the past and its memories. Hobbling to the bathroom as if fleeing his devils. Shaving whilst the hot bath ran. Shaving painfully, carefully avoiding the grazed, raw patches. Seeing in the misting mirror a face still bearing traces of the make up he had so carefully applied. Seeing through eyes still outlined and shadowed and with lashes unnaturally dark and thick.
He lay in the bath until the water had cooled around him. Soaking for the heat to leech the stiffness away. Tried not to think. Tried in vain. Tried to concentrate on the everyday practicalities.
Work. Today was ....? Friday. Today must be Friday. Too late for work now even if he were fit. And he wasn't. So stiff could hardly move. He must ring the office and let them know. Explain. Perhaps after the weekend. Perhaps he could go .... ?
"No!" The voice screamed inside him. Screamed so loud that the noise escaped in a sobbing gasp. Not back again. Not back there.
He wrenched himself out of the bath, welcoming the hurt that drove thought away, that quieted, the memory. Towelled himself fiercely, inviting the distraction of the pain in injured knee and wrist.
He would explain. Would tell his office that he was hurt. Would be out of action for a week or two. Ask them to send someone else in the meantime. After all the job was nearly finished and ....
Christ! He had left all his notes, all his measurements behind .... along with Scrivener's folder. And his own surveyor's instruments in his case. It would be difficult .... impossible to explain .... "I saw this ghost .... A woman's face in a mirror ...."
He could imagine their reaction. His colleagues' "You should be so lucky...", "Pissed again ....", and "A phantom screw is better than none at all ...." And if they should ever find out he was wearing make up and .... Jesus!! He would never live it down. And as for the directors! Even if they overlooked his abandoning of notes and equipment .... for what ever reason .... rumours would percolate up to them. He would be finished. He could kiss goodbye to any promotion .... even if he escaped sacking .... and wherever he went the story would follow him.
He dressed, made coffee. Rang the company to say he had had an accident, had fallen, nothing serious, just needed rest over the weekend. Would be all right Monday.
Monday was an age away. Something would turn up. He would think of something before Monday. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof ....
The evil thereof, the evil thereof. The evil.
The rest of Friday and the weekend passed in a turmoil of thoughts that twisted and turned trying to resolve the both problem of what to tell his employers and, increasingly, what was the significance of what he had seen and what the locket told.
Increasingly too, self questionings and doubts arose. In the safe familiarity of his own home what he had experienced, or thought he had experienced, in Beatrice d'Auray's dressing room seemed more and more improbable. He did not believe in ghosts. Surely it must have been an hallucination? He didn't do drugs but perhaps there were remnants of something in the old bricked up room. Maybe the candles? Could you release LSD that way? He knew sod all about it and .... Or perhaps he was just ill. Maybe the languor, the otherworldliness, that he had experienced later in the Quiet Woman was symptomatic of it. The strange conversation with the old woman when he must have been in a dreamlike state .... but which must have been real because she had given him .... given him the birth certificate. So she must have known who he was. So he must have told her, because otherwise she .... could not have known.
There were questions. Too many questions. And he was involved through his family. Through his grandmother. Something the old lady had said in 'The Quiet Woman' - 'Warned you to leave the Old Alhambra and its dead alone. You especially.' And even at their first meeting, the repeated 'Not you' s.'
His own father he had hardly known. He had died when he was about six. All he held onto was the remembrance of love and warmth. Of a quiet man, hazy now in his memory, but someone who had provided a bedrock of affection. Someone who even after his death had seemed to be still with them, still with his mother and him throughout the remaining years of his boyhood. She too had died when he was only fifteen, but he still treasured those precious formative years. It had been a blissfully happy childhood.
And grandmama had been there too in those distant days. His father's mother. She who had spoilt him outrageously or so his mother had always laughingly claimed. His grandmama who had always said that when he grew up he would have the girls falling over themselves to claim him. "With those eyes sweetheart they will lay themselves at your feet." And she used to wink at his mother and shake her head and say "Just like his father's. What girl could resist them?" And his mother had laughed in return and said "It takes more than just eyes Alice." And then they had both laughed although he had not known why.
And once, when his mother hadn't been there, his grandmama had added, "Just like my James's." And then had been silent for a long time, seemingly lost to the present, fallen into a reverie of other times, her own youth perhaps, until he had grown restless and tugged at her hand until he had her attention again, wanting her to return to him. And as she had chided him gently for his impatience, he had sensed a deep sadness in her that was beyond his understanding.
And her James, his grandfather, must be the man whose photograph was opposite her's in the locket. No. Not must be, for there could be other explanations. But probably. Perhaps more than probably because whoever it was so greatly resembled the old lady in 'The Quiet Woman' who had given him the birth certificate. The old lady with the faded violet eyes. Faded but not dulled by age. Which could burn still brightly in spite of her years. And when they did they could be his own .... The same distinctive violet, albeit now in her more reminiscent of a water colour.
Eyes the colour of fresh violets. Like his father's, like his grandfather's. The grandfather he had never known. James Edward Dearden. The grandfather whose name he bore.
Perhaps the answer lay in the other cuttings left behind in that room. Perhaps now he knew what he knew, or what he half guessed, the album of photographs would provide him with answers.
Perhaps, perhaps. But 'Do not meddle' she had said. And to meddle he would have to go back there. Back there into the Old Alhambra and into Beatrice d'Auray's dressing room. Back to where all his notes and equipment had been abandoned in his flight from the terror that lurked there.
Back to the Old Alhambra and its dead. Back to the murdered Beatrice and the vengeful spirit that was Lucy. Vengeful? Yes there had been hatred there, real all-consuming hatred. But why? What had become of her? And where did his parents come in to it all? What lay between Beatrice and his grandfather? Were they brother and sister? Identical twins or ....? And the old lady?
'Do not meddle,' she had said. 'Not you.'
And yet the questions nagged at him all through the weekend. Various permutations going through his mind. Possible answers, explanations, weighed and whirled round in his imaginings. At one stage he tried to write it all down. Put it into some sort of logical order. Found a degree of escape in seeing it rationalised on paper with alternative suggestions laid out clearly and methodically.
And as the weekend progressed so the terror faded slightly as on both conscious and unconscious levels his mind searched to rationalise the events that had so traumatised him.
But fear, whether rational or not, still welled up inside him whenever his thoughts strayed, as they constantly did, to a remembrance of that room, and the faces in the mirror. Fear that had a physical presence and left a burning, bitter, taste at the back of his throat.
In the end the choice was stark and knife edged. On Monday morning his firm rang. An unexpected but high priority project had been scheduled for him for Tuesday and it was made abundantly clear to him that he had to wrap up the Old Alhambra job on the Monday. No leeway. No argument.
And it was the fear that clinched it. All his instincts screamed 'No'. Loss of job, of career even, were as nothing compared with having to return to that decaying theatre and what it contained. But something deep down told him that if he did not go, if he let fear of that nature triumph, then everything would be changed. That if he bowed to that fear of the unknown, it would scar him so deeply that throughout his life, even when the fear itself had finally faded, the scar of bowing to it would always remain deep within him.
And so he went back to the Old Alhambra.
A sunny bright day as he walked down Havelock Road past the yet-to-open 'Quiet Woman'. Warm for early November. Left down the little ginnel, into the cold shadow of the theatre's side. Mr. Scrivener's keys not needed, the side door still slightly ajar from his precipitous departure on the Thursday evening.
The building silent apart from his footsteps echoing in its high ceilinged emptiness. Light streaming through skylights in the outer corridors and diffusing into the vastness of the auditorium. He saw the lantern torch standing abandoned on one corner of the stage with his work case standing alongside it. Just as he had left it before he had ventured down the corridor to test the lock of Beatrice's d'Auray's dressing room.
The man hesitated. Every fibre of his being anxious just to complete the work he had come to do, the work that was his priority, and leave. Just a morning's work. Treat it as routine.
And yet deep down the knowledge that it was not quite so simple. What had driven him back was not the work but the need to prove to himself that he could return. and return not just to the theatre but to where his demons lurked. Best get it over with. Now. In the brightness of the morning rather than the encroaching dusk of a wintry evening. Otherwise he would not be able to work. Not be able even to carry out the mechanical tasks that awaited him. Not with that unresolved.
Armed this time with the heavy torch, he once again he picked his way down the rubble strewn corridor that led to the dressing rooms; that led to Beatrice d'Auray's room at its furthermost end.
Its door slightly open but no chink of light showing from it his time. Inside silent darkness so that he had to stand there for a couple of minutes to allow his eyes to accustom to it before he could tentatively enter, half feeling his way.
The mirror a glow of silver barely reflecting onto the oblong of the dressing table beneath it. He paused again in the centre of the room and slowly, as his eyes adjusted further, shadows formed. Dark forms that he recognised as the dim shapes of the folder of cuttings and of the album.
He clicked on the torch and swept its beam round the room. The chair lying on its side where it had tumbled as he had spasmed upright and turned towards the face .... the thing .... he had seen reflected in the mirror. Otherwise the room at peace and showing no signs of the horror that had filled it before. Only the strangely comforting old fashioned scents of lavender and camphor on the air.
A rather ordinary, tawdry, little room showing age and neglect. Perhaps it all had been an hallucination, an over fevered reaction to tiredness and .... maybe he had been ill .... maybe the golden bombardier had been off .... maybe ....
No. It had happened. The door to the wardrobe within a wardrobe was open, the dresses of silk and satin, bedecked with lace and feather, hanging motionless therein.
No. It had happened. The candles on the dressing table had burnt down to within an inch of their ends, those flanking the mirror mere stubs with wax sculpted where it had run over the side holders. None of them completely burnt out but all extinguished leaving just an inch or so to burn.
The man picked up the chair and straightened it in front of the dressing table. Stood there leaning on spread fingers looking down at the album and folders. The sensible course would be to collect them and go. Read them at leisure. Leave this now seemingly unremarkable room that would forever haunt his imaginings; leave it to its past and whatever had emerged into the present from its secret places.
Leave it.
He pulled back the chair and sat down. Placed the torch on its base into lantern mode. The battery was running low, the light yellowing. He should have recharged it over the weekend but it would do. He wasn't going to need it for much longer.
He reached for the album, carefully stationed it in front of him and opened it. Idly turned its pages until he found a full page photograph of Beatrice d'Auray, the smudged and grainy reproduction of which had appeared in the press cutting that he had examined first in the Old Alhambra and so many times since. This original had been hand coloured, expensively so as it was in surprisingly pristine condition, and must have been taken with a large format camera for it was needle sharp. His eyes sought first the locket nestling below the lace in the swell of her breasts. Crystal clear the smooth oval of it lay. Identical to ....
He took the locket from his pocket and held it against the photograph. Identical. But identical was not necessarily the same and there must be many lockets that looked just like that. Still in the circumstances ....
He clicked it open and again gazed at the two faces therein. At his grandfather and the woman, his grandmother. His grandfather whom he so resembled; his grandfather whose looks were his inheritance. Whose eyes ....
.... Whose eyes, those curiously violet eyes were also shared with .....
Whoever had hand tinted the eyes had really been a little over the top even allowing for an understandable desire to please a client by emphasising a best feature. No eyes could be quite like those in the murdered woman's photograph. Not quite so outrageously violet ....
The man propped the album, open at the photograph, upright against the mirror's base, and gazed over it into the mirror. Violet eyes gazed back. Eyes really quite wasted on a mere man. Or so everyone said.
If it were Lucy Sheldon who had murdered Beatrice, perhaps her reappearance to him made some fragmentary beginnings of sense, if he were indeed of the same blood. Although it was very tenuous. What was he? A great-nephew? And what could have driven Lucy to murder and why should the malice last through the generations?
Unless Beatrice had had a child? Scrivener had said that there was a rumour that she was pregnant when murdered, but before then perhaps .... If his father were her first child and .... and the man who he had thought to be his grandfather, the man in the locket, and his grandmother had just looked after him .... even before the murder .... so that it would not interfere with her stage career?
And then afterwards had perhaps raised him as their own ....?
But it still left questions, too many questions, unanswered. Perhaps in the other press cuttings there was something?
And so the man read them. Carefully, looking for what was not said as much as for what was. Trying to read them through the eyes of a contemporary, of a fellow professional of those times. and the more he read, the more he became familiar with the subject, the more he became attuned to the gossip, the more he was convinced that there was something. A regular contributor to the "Gossip from the Green Room" writing as 'Ariel' seemed to be always sniping at Beatrice. Nothing said outright but her reviews always disparaging and hardly a month passed without there being some throw-away sneering mention of her. Hints that she was living on borrowed time, that her better days were behind her, that she had always been overrated, that her performance depended on others.
Whatever the truth of the insinuations, they had spread like a slow infection to other columnists in other stage magazines. There were suggestions that she was becoming unreliable, and what could you expect with her record of burning the candle at both ends? Nothing definite, nothing specific, was alleged, just the slow drip, drip, of innuendo.
And there was something else too. Something unsavoury. Not even hinted at but there nonetheless. That she was a cheat. That her act was founded on a lie.
The man read and re-read. Trying to see behind the faded print to the facts behind the damaging evasions.
And as he read, lost in that long ago, war time, theatrical world, gradually there came to him an inkling of what was being suggested, As he entered more and more into the behind-the-scenes gossip, there came to him, through more a process of osmosis than by any conscious deduction, an understanding of the calumny that was being aired. Or rather two. The first that Beatrice d'Auray, and her act, were suffering from an over indulgence in alcohol, and the second that ....
But surely that could not be true .... not if Scrivener's version of events was correct ....
Not if she was pregnant! And it left in ashes his theory about his own father being ....
And yet ....
He turned back to the photograph in the album. Held the open locket up against it.
The lantern's battery was fading fast. The yellow glimmer barely sufficient now to discern the faces in the locket let alone determine their detail. But the idea excited him. Perhaps that was were the truth really lay ....
In which case ....
He needed more light .... he needed ....
In his work case there was a box of matches, legacy of a celebratory cigar, and these served to light the candle stubs. Two on the dressing table and the six flanking the mirror. To give him light enough to see. He needed just a moment to see if .... if it were feasible, conceivable, that ....
Just a minute and then he could leave the room for ever. Put it all behind him, all that had occurred here. All cleansed with the knowledge of the locket's secret solved. Then he could truly leave the Old Alhambra to its dead. Then he could in time forget, freed of the burden of his morbid curiosity.
The candles flared and guttered, casting a light that was more of a living thing than that given out by the lantern. The movement of its varying intensity on the photograph imparted to it the semblance of life also. It seemed to be looking back at him. Violet eyes looking into violet eyes but not a one way transmission any longer. The woman in the photograph studying him as he studied her.
And it seemed that she who so resembled the man in the locket also resembled him. That if he turned his head just so .... and if he perhaps were made up as she was, blemishes hidden, cheekbones emphasised, the jaw line minimised, eyes and eyelids accentuated ....
Just so ....
His hands moved over his face in long practised motions. They dipped into jars, squeezed tubes, unscrewed bottles, manipulated lip sticks and mascara brushes. The finger tips rubbed in, and smudged, and blended colours, and smoothed down. Tweezers plucked elegance into eyebrows as eyes under identical eyebrows smiled back their approval.
And what had at first seemed a mere tentative exploring of possibilities, then a burgeoning curiosity as to how much of a resemblance existed between the two faces, the one in the photograph, the one in the mirror, both two dimensional representations, became something more ....
.... It became a celebration of the discovering of a sameness. A sameness that spanned the generations. A sameness that spanned, that transformed, gender.
The man no longer knew what had triggered it. It was by no conscious will of his that it had started and now he was lost in it. He possessed no knowledge of these arts, his hands knew not these skills, and yet it was his hands, that moved at ease like butterflies across his face, transforming it to match the face in the photograph that watched and waited. And in watching seemed to smile a welcome.
Where the earrings came from he had no idea. It did not occur to him to wonder, to question. It just seemed natural that they where there, just where his hand fell naturally when it reached for them, when it picked them up and with a familiar turn of the head and accompanying twist of the fingers, secured them in place.
He smiled. Patted his earlobes gently in a familiar gesture, to assure that the earrings were hanging down evenly close to his neck.
God! His hair was a sight! He really should keep it cut better if the wig were to fit without stray hairs of his getting in the way. There were several to chose from in the wardrobe, including the one that he had worn when the photograph was taken. Real human hair and it had cost a fortune even though it was second hand .... well almost new really. Lucky to get it but he had been a good customer of theirs for sometime and when it was offered he was flush with the proceeds from that run at the Palladium and ....
Ease it on .... front to back and then tuck in all the stray hair .... So!
He ran his hands through it at the sides, carrying it back over his ears. Brushed it lightly, teasing its fullness out. Smiled at his image in the mirror, in the photograph.
Such a pretty dress that. Quite his favourite. That had been bought with the cash from the Palladium booking too. He should wear it more often .... after all it wasn't a museum piece. It was made to be worn and ....
The man got up and crossed again to the wardrobe where with a sure hand he moved hangers to and fro until the dress had been located and space created for its withdrawal. It was indeed gorgeous and worth every penny that it had cost. Made a girl feel special it did. Only for special occasions though. Like today ....
Only a girl needed special undies for a special dress .... not that undies had to be period of course .... except the petticoats and they were such fun .... really feminine.... all that silk and lace swirling about one's legs. Otherwise .... well the poor dears didn't even have bra's .... and well how did they manage? Although .... well in his case it wasn't so crucial .... still wearing a bra did give one that extra feminine thrill.
There they all were, in the drawers of the wardrobe. A feast of lace and silk and satin. He knew where everything was and what exactly he would find.
Carefully he made a matching selection of panties, bra, and garter belt in matching peach from the top drawer were they nested layered in tissue paper. Waiting for him. Biding their time knowing that he would return to claim them.
Carefully he dressed, sliding into the precious intimate garments, feeling them caress his limbs, his body welcoming their touch, feeling its beauty enhanced, feeling itself prepared for the dream of a dress. The special dress that he, that Beatrice had worn for her photograph. A dress of which that no hand tinted photograph could give more than a faint illusory impression. A creation in lemon silk with a white facing. Fine hand embroidery in gold thread at its edges, the skirts sweeping the floor, the Nottingham lace at the throat reaching high to the neck, so that the dress encompassed him. Swallowed and possessed him.
One thing only missing.
The locket.
Gently he lowered over his head, Swept his hair back and over allowing its chain access too his neck. Centred it on his breasts,
The locket. Back where it belonged. All made complete again. Whole.
Seated himself again. Smiled into the mirror. Saw his hand reach out and lift the lid of the music box. The box she had given him. As a token. Heard again the tinkling chime of the melody:
The years seem to roll away. Back beyond to happier times, before this dreadful war started. To that long summer when he had first met and courted Katherine. The Spring, so full of promise then, when their son was born. Katherine had known of course, had known from the outset. How could it be otherwise? And had accepted it because she loved him for what he was without reservation.
Of course she had demurred at first when he had started to build a stage career round it, refining the amateur act that he had resurrected from his school days. But what harm could there be in it? And it had brought in some much needed cash for the young family when work was not all that easy to find. And then when the imperfections inherent in his voice began to be too obvious with the strain imposed on it, he had tried to be clever and had embarked on a double bluff career as a 'male impersonator'.
And it had worked. Especially when he had teamed up with Lucy so that he could concentrate more on the patter leaving the straight contralto singing more and more to her. Relying on her more and more. God she had the voice of angel did Lucy. Perhaps it really was her that had made the difference. Whatever the reason things had certainly taken off.
The room seemed darker now. The candles wavering, flickering, as they burnt out. Bloody War! Power cuts and no bloody candles to be had. Not for love nor money. It had been different that summer of 1939 at the Palladium. Before the lights went out all over Europe. Before he had packed Katherine and James off to stay with her parents in the countryside to escape the bombing.
He shivered. Two of the mirror's candles flared in dying and the darkness crept closer.
He had felt lost when they had gone. Living alone in digs in wartime was a desperately lonely existence. More and more he had lived as a woman. The one thing he was good at and at least it saved him from accusations of cowardice. "Why aren't you in uniform mate?" Fine bloody soldier he'd have made. When called up for his medical the M.O had taken one look at him and said that he'd let him know when things had got really serious and they'd run out of four by two's for the three-o-threes.
The music box slowed and stopped. Idly he wound it up again.
Her song really. Before he had taken a fancy to it and claimed it as his own. Still felt guilty about that. Felt guilty about her too, but she had been so pretty and warm and alive. And Katherine so far away and transport so difficult in wartime. Even if he could have got away from the theatre with twice nightly shows seven days a week. Not to mention bleedin' matinées.
He peered into the mirror. Half light suited him, he thought wryly. Hid the wrinkles; hid the ravages of the drink that he had turned to in his loneliness. Turned to to assuage the guilt he felt about his infidelities. About his treatment of Lucy. About what he had promised her. About the lies he had told to her and to Katherine.
Too late now.
The darkness was falling. Falling inside the little shabby room. Only the tall, free standing, side candles now waging a losing battle against the dying of the light. The mirror itself dark now and in it his reflection fading, dying with the light itself.
Then the smell of lavender in the air. And although the room behind him was lost in the mirror's darkness he knew that he was not alone. Was not surprised. Had always expected, known, that she would come.
Just as she had done all those years before.
Cold now. Then it had been different. In the warmth of their love. But now bitter cold. Breath frosting as he turned in his chair. Turned to see the swirl of darker darkness thicken in the murk of the room. The column form and twist into a figure, into a girl. A girl he had once held in his arms. Had once loved.
A girl who had once loved him. Loved him perhaps too well.
As beautiful as he remembered her to be. As beautiful as the image he had held deep within himself for all those years. Only no warm love now in her eyes but hatred as of ice.
And in her hand a knife. The knife he also remembered. Had cause to remember. Had cause to curse.
Half rising from the chair, turning, he watched as in slow motion as her hand descended towards him, the knife a long glitter in the candlelight. Saw in her eyes a fulfilment. A laying to rest of her pain.
And then pain, his pain, seized him. A searing, stifling, pain that welled up in an agony that stilled all movement. He felt himself falling back towards the dressing table as the darkness closed in, became complete.
And in that fleeting moment, James Edward Dearden, the young James Edward Dearden, knew with brilliant clarity, the answers to all his unanswered questions. To all the questions that had brought him to this place.
That same fleeting moment in which they all became quite irrelevant.
This tale is complete in Six Chapters posted at approximately weekly intervals
This, the sixth and last chapter, is entitled
~ As Through a Glass Darkly ~
Readers should be aware that this is primarily a Ghost Story.
The TV/TG element is crucial to the plot but occupies a comparatively minor part of the text.
Those wishing to absorb a little of the ambience prior to reading should visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW4ThXetHkI&NR=1 and hear Helen Shapiro sing the last verse and refrain of the song that runs like a thread throughout the tale.
The boy I love is up in the gallery,
The boy I love is looking down at me,
There he is, can't you see, a-waving of his handkerchief,
As merry as a robin that sings on a tree.
The boy that I love, they call him a cobbler,
But he's not a cobbler, allow me to state.
For Johnny is a tradesman and he works in the Boro'
Where they sole and heel them, whilst you wait.
Refrain
If I were a Duchess and had a lot of money,
I'd give it to the boy that's going to marry me.
But I haven't got a penny, so we'll live on love and kisses,
And be just as happy as the birds on the tree.
Refrain
'The Boy I Love' was composed by George Ware in 1885 and made popular by Marie Lloyd.
An interesting historical side note is that it was also apparently sung by Belle Elmore, the wife of Dr. Crippen.
Chapter Six ~ As Through a Glass Darkly ~
"Got the DNA results back did you Sir?"
D.I. Harry Savage nodded. "It's as we thought. I wish I had never sent it. Never found the bloody thing."
His sergeant turned this information over in his mind. "Not that it matters I suppose Sir. I mean its hardly our concern is it?"
"It's a loose end," said his superior. "Don't like loose ends. Never have."
He took a tentative bite from his sandwich. It was surprisingly good. The beef rare and tender. Too rare for his sergeant who liked his beef ruined. Still the beer would find favour with him. That too was surprisingly good.
He took a sip, savouring it. A week since his first visit to The Quiet Woman. Then it had been in the evening. On the Wednesday when the body had been discovered by the man Scrivener. He had been worried about the non-return of his keys, complaining bitterly that Dearden had failed to drop them back into his office as promised. More concerned about the place being open to vandals than that it housed a dead body.
Christ! It would have to be a pretty dedicated vandal to find anything worth the trashing there.
And now he was back. At lunchtime. Loose ends.
At least it provided the clientá¨le with some interest. All four of them. Grouped around a table behind him, ostensibly playing dominoes but the click click of the pieces always silenced when he or his sergeant spoke, lest a word of their conversation be missed.
And the barman hovering, polishing and re-polishing the same glass. He'd wear the bloody towel out if he kept at it much longer. The sooner the better too as a new one, or even a clean one, would significantly lessen the risk of salmonella poisoning.
He could probably afford a new one with all the increased trade that the death had brought him. Just for a few days until all the journalists and sensation seeking locals had found something else to engage their morbid curiosity.
"All wrapped up then is it Sir?" The barman unable to contain his curiosity any longer.
"Just some loose ends."
"I'll expect yer'll be arresting someone soon then Sir?"
The D.I. smiled. "I'm forever arresting someone. It's my job. It's what I do best."
His sergeant grinned. "E's very good at it too, 'e is. Always arrestin' someone. 'Ardly a day goes by wivart .... "
The barman looked hurt. "I was only arskin' .... bein' sociable like."
"Have you anyone particular in mind?"
"No of course not. 'Ow could I? I mean there are rumours o' course. Well there always is abart that place. The Old Alhambra. Not that I believe them .... take them seriously o' course .... It's just that ...."
"Just that?"
"Well 'e was 'ere wasn't 'e. On that first day and in the evening, later when .... afterwards when 'e .... I'd have thought yer'd 'ave been wantin' to interview me .... me being a witness .... sort of."
There was the hint of defiant accusation in the barman's look.
"I could've told yer. Well it were obvious something was goin' on. Weren't quite kosher. I mean 'e were half dead when 'e came in that second time. If yer arsks me someone 'ad 'ad a go at 'im then ...."
The barman, apparently aggrieved at not having been denied the opportunity of an official interview, became carried away by the importance of the revelations he had to offer.
".... Mind you it ain't surprising. 'E must 'ave been one of those .... Yer know them ...." The barman gestured vaguely. "Yer could see plain as a pikestaff .... all over 'is face it were. Not that he hadn't tried to scrub it off .... but there were traces all over. All round 'is eyes and on 'is lashes. Mascara and muck like that. And on 'is lips and on what yer could see of 'is face that weren't rubbed raw."
The barman shrugged his shoulders, grimaced, gave the D.I. and his sergeant a we're-all-men-of-the-world look.
"I mean I've nothing against them myself. Live an' let live I always say .... an' who are we to judge .... still .... but .... well it ain't right is it? Nobody can tell me it's natural. And round 'ere it's just arskin' for it. I mean not everyone is so tolerant. And there's some rough types around what don't think nothing of expressing themselves with their fists or whatever else comes in 'andy .... "
The D.I. nodded his agreement with the barman's assessment of his neighbours' habits and inclinations.
"Was the pub empty?" He asked. "No trouble in here when he came in? No intolerant locals?"
"The first time it were empty. Apart from me o' course. And 'e weren't all tarted up then neither. All very smart and businesslike 'e were."
"And the second time? In the evening, when he was 'all tarted up' as you put it?"
"It were quiet. Early doors. Just the four boys behind you. The regulars."
The regulars stretched the definition of boys to breaking point. Three of them would never see sixty again. The fourth was at least a couple of decades older than they. D.I. Savage was reminded of Lonesome George, the Galapagos tortoise, carapaced in a stiff dark blue reefer jacket rather than a shell. He wore dark glasses and a white stick was wedged beside his chair. Sensing themselves observed, the four men plied their dominoes with renewed vigour. Lonesome George's arthritic fingers flickering over their surfaces, identifying them with an ease that betokened long practice.
"No one else?"
"No one else."
"Only ...." It was the sergeant's turn to drop a pebble in the pool. "Only we found some notes 'e'd left. Written that weekend. He must have been still half concussed. 'Is mind wandering wiv all sorts of odd imaginin's. But one thing 'e was clear on. One thing that 'e came back to time an' time again, was that there was an old woman here."
The dominoes were stilled. Deathly silence suddenly. No sound but a low wheezing whistle indicating that Lonesome George was still breathing.
"Talked to 'er 'e did. At some length apparently."
No one moved. A domino was frozen in time two inches above the table.
"Twice. Once on each visit."
From the thin slit that served Lonesome George as a mouth came a soft wavering sigh. The preliminary to words that formed half way through the same exhalation of breath. Words that creaked out into existence; that would perhaps not have been heard at all had not the room been so silent, so attentive. As if waiting for them.
"It was 'er. I told yer. She were 'ere. That night. I could smell 'er. Smell that perfume .... I ...."
A long deep breath and then head and neck seemed to withdraw back to the reefer jacket and the hands holding the dominoes dropped them gently onto the table.
"No one else that I remember." The barman belatedly corrected himself. "I mean people come and go 'ere all the time. I can't remember everyone. Stands to reason I can't. You can't expect me to remember everyone. People is always nippin' in and out and ...."
The refrain was taken up by one of the regulars. A thin weasel of a man in a greasy cap. "'S'right. People is always droppin' in. It's a pub ain't it? Yer can't expect to remember everyone."
The two silent regulars nodded their support for this observation, and, emboldened, the weasel embarked on further explanations.
"Any ways you can't believe a word old Pugh says. You only 'ave to look at 'im to see that. Merchant sailor 'e were. Boy seaman e' were, Least 'e were until 'is boat stopped a torpedo in the Med on the Malta run. Bloody great tanker. Went up like a Roman candle. All bloody sea alight with burnin' oil and such. They found five of them. It were a miracle like because no one weren't supposed to stop to pick survivors up. Bleedin' sittin' duck they'd 'ave bin. Only a lifeboat from another sinkin' picked 'em up an'...."
The barman, perhaps from experience of his customer's narratory expansiveness, cut in.
"'E were blind and near dead. And near crazed by the time they found them. Lives in 'is own world 'e does. 'Earin' things. Not what you lot would call a reliable witness."
The tortoise neck eased out from its refuge in the reefer jacket. The head swivelled towards D.I. Savage. A wheeze as a prelude to speech and then:
"I knows what I hears, what I smells. I ain't dead yet. And I smelled 'er perfume that night."
A rattling indrawal of breath, another wheeze and :
"And I told 'em. Just as I smelled it the night those kids died. The same perfume. She was 'ere."
The D.I smiled at the old man.
"Thanks," he said.
And to the barman, "It doesn't matter. I was just curious. Loose ends."
He gestured with his pint. "We'll have the refills. Off duty now. Just a few things to tidy up, a spot of admin, and then we'll leave you in peace."
The beer drawn, he turned to follow the sergeant who was carrying the two pints to a table, turned back again.
"One other thing," he said, "before I forget. Did you happen to see a locket. Did Dearden have a locket when he came here that evening?"
"Yes. I remember. It was on the table in front of him, when I went to tell 'im about the taxi. Then 'e put it in 'is pocket as 'e left."
"You are sure. He put it in his pocket as he left. He took it with him?"
"Ere!" Belligerence was in the barman's voice. "Yer not implying that it were nicked are you? Because if you are I can ...."
The D.I stopped the flow with an upheld hand. "Not for a minute. The last thing on my mind. It was just that his notes are full of it. He seems to have been obsessed with it ...."
He shrugged. Spoke more to himself than to satisfy the barman's curiosity. "And yet we can't find it. It seems to have vanished into thin air."
The barman was avid for sensation. "Is it a clue? Did the murderer take it? Did 'e ....?
"What murderer would that be?" The D.I was all gentle reasonableness.
"Why 'im that did in that fellow Dearden. Knifed 'im by all accounts .... So they say. 'Im that ...."
Savage shook his head in weary reproof. "You shouldn't listen to gossip. Dearden wasn't murdered. Wasn't stabbed, or even strangled, shot or drowned. He died of a massive coronary. Death by natural causes."
His sergeant was waiting for him. Slid his glass towards him. "You've ruined his day," he said.
They sipped their beers in companionable silence.
"It's odd though isn't it. Too many coincidences. I mean I never saw the dressing room were 'e died, bein' away on that course, but from what you said .... well it were a bit odd weren't it."
Savage nodded. "He'd fallen back onto the dressing table, into the mirror, smashing it and one of its supports. He'd been rifling through the wardrobe and was still clutching a long yellow dress, period costume, that he must have found there. There was greasepaint daubed on his face and a long wig perched askew on his head.
"Ties in with what the barman says. 'E must have liked that sort o' thing. Takes all sorts."
"That's one of the things that's odd. If he did like to venture down into the realms of femininity, and there's nothing in his flat to indicate any such tendency, then you'd think he'd have applied the make up better. In fact anyone would have done it better with the minimum of care. He'd just daubed it with no attempt to .... well make the best of it. As if the act of applying make-up was enough in itself. A statement."
The sergeant shrugged. "All a bit beyond me Sir. I was thinking more of the coincidence. Two Deardens. That and finding the knife. I suppose he was right about that .... about being his grandson?"
"From the notes he made it is pretty clear he'd worked out most of it. Probably had the suspicion, bordering on certainty, that Beatrice and his grandfather were one and the same person. If he'd had time to read all the press cuttings, and not just the ones that Beatrice had had selected as being particularly irritating, he'd have seen it was a fairly open secret."
"Rum lot, these theatricals," opined the sergeant philosophically. "Anything goes with them. Artistic bleedin' temperament."
"He, or she, must have had a hard time of it nonetheless. Attitudes were a lot different seventy years ago and living as a woman, as Beatrice did, couldn't have been easy. The theatre can be tolerant, but it can also be more than usually bitchy, as evidenced by some of those articles. And there would have been those who remembered him from way back, before he .... changed."
"'E must have been good at it too .... convincin' enough to escape detection in the street an' face accusations of cowardice. People weren't over tolerant then of men who weren't in uniform."
"In retrospect I suppose it was a tragedy waiting to happen. Effectively separated from his wife and child. Apparently drinking more than was good for him or his act. So much so that, judging by the reviews, he was on the skids whilst his understudy's career was on the up and up."
"The same understudy that 'e was 'avin' an 'igh old time with between the sheets, just to keep the misery at bay ...."
"Cynicism doesn't become you D.S. Quinn. He had kept her letters and she at least seemed to have been in love with him. And of course in the later ones she says she is carrying his child. As far as we can judge he seems to have been genuinely fond of her."
"As 'e also seems to have been of 'is wife and son, judgin' by 'er letters. Which 'e also kept."
Savage sighed. Took a deep swig of his drink.
"It must have been an unholy mess."
"And then 'is grandson comes along. 'As an 'eart attack. Falls onto a table. Breaks a bleedin' mirror ...."
".... and dislodges the knife which had got wedged there which in turn falls, not discretely under the table, as you'd expect any self respecting murder weapon to do, but ...."
".... onto the skirts of a bright yellow dress, just so we can't miss seeing it ...."
".... which opens up a seventy year old bleedin' can o' worms."
"Not that it really matters. Not now. The murderer is almost certainly dead by now." Savage shrugged. "Nothing to be gained. No wrongs to be righted. No one saved from durance vile. I don't know why we bother. It's just that ...."
".... You don't like loose ends," his sergeant finished for him.
D.I. Savage nodded, sipped his drink reflectively. "I can't help wondering if Dearden figured it out before he died. He was obviously obsessed by it."
It was the sergeant's turn to shrug. "Perhaps. 'E 'ad all the elements. Apart from the knife o' course. And it wasn't difficult when you thought about it. If it hadn't been for the war, an' it being the night of 15th October 1941, wiv masses of other bodies cluttering the place up, an' it happening in 'er dressing room, the police would 'ave sussed it at the time."
"Some things we can only guess at now though. She, Beatrice, had probably been drinking. Perhaps Lucy Sheldon had been too. Quite likely they had been drinking together. Probably quite an amicable end-of-performance-get-together to start with."
'An then it all went sour. Must 'ave done. Much to go sour about. Lucy resenting Beatrice as someone who was holding 'er back, taking the star billing whilst she, the one with the voice of an angel, was little more than the understudy. An understudy whose theme song had effectively been stolen. Beatrice, with 'er professional career heading nowhere but down, jealous of the lovely young girl who was starting to win rave reviews at her expense. With a true voice, whilst Beatrice could really only sing in 'er rá´le of male impersonator an' even then perhaps not as convincingly as before. She'd stolen a song that she probably couldn't do justice to. That too must have rankled."
D.I. Savage nodded. "And the jealousy might even have extended to the fact that Lucy was genetically female. Beatrice had achieved marvels in overcoming the odds to become the star she was, but the odds were increasingly being stacked against her. And perhaps when you want desperately to be something it is difficult to see others be it effortlessly. Particularly if they taunt you with it. "
"An' Beatrice was caught between wife and mistress. Unable to decide between 'em perhaps. Feelings of guilt can be corrosive, and can easily be transformed into feelings of resentment."
"'How happy could I be with either, were t'other dear charmer away'," smiled the D.I., "but of course Beatrice wasn't a philanderer. The poor sod was cursed with a conscience."
"An' doubtless to placate Lucy, 'e'd said 'e'd leave his wife for 'er. P'rhaps even meant it at times. An' if addition she were pregnant .... Well it adds an element of urgency to the situation."
"Oh I think she was pregnant all right. She said so and there is no suggestion that Beatrice disputed it."
"Even so, it's still guesswork."
"Not quite, more a weighing of probabilities. There was a rumour that Beatrice was pregnant. But we know that couldn't be. So was the rumour quite baseless or was there just an element of truth in it?"
"There can't just be an element of truth in being pregnant. Either one is or....."
".... Or someone else is. And where did the rumour originate? Beatrice herself was hardly likely to spread it. Nor was Lucy. It wouldn't make sense. And the only other authentic source would be ...?"
"....would be the post mortem an' the local copper. But that couldn't be true either unless ...."
"No it couldn't. Unless ...."
D.I. Savage leant back in his chair and smiled at his sergeant.
"The great thing about loose ends is that if you have enough of them you can spin a thread."
D.I Harry Savage leant back and sipped his drink in a self satisfied sort of way.
"I think the two of them, Beatrice d'Auray and Lucy Sheldon, had a flaming row fuelled by drink, and disappointment, and jealousy, and perhaps despair. A flaming row that led to murder. Quite unpremeditated. Unwanted certainly for they had been lovers and were, as far as we can ascertain, probably still in love."
"Nasty thing love. Even nastier when it's of the passionate variety"
D.I Savage ignored his sergeant's digression. Refused to be distracted down its byways.
"Something snapped. And in a moment of madness a knife was picked up and used to kill. And effectively two lives were ended."
"Three lives if you count that of the unborn child."
As the two detectives sat for a moment in silence, each contemplating the tragedy, weighing it against their own experiences, their own expectancies, there was the sound of raised voices from among the four regulars. Lonesome George was in the process of leaving amidst some dissension surrounding his claim to smell the old lady's perfume fuelled by his colleagues' scepticism. Snatches of the conversation drifted down to them.
"Yer not only blind, yer potty as well." .... "I tells yer, I can smell the perfume on 'er. My nose is as good as yer bleedin' eyes any day o' the week".... "I knows when I can see sumpthin' and I knows when I bleedin' can't" .... "Yer can't see further than yer own bleedin' nose ... an that's not worf seein' neither ...."
The exchange then drifted into the strictly personal before Lonesome George, displaying a vigour surprising in one of his advanced years and outward decrepitude, stumped passed them, his white stick tap-tapping before him, and slammed out of the door, but not before calling back, repeating, to the room in general, "I tells yer, I can smell the perfume on 'er."
In the silence that followed both men sipped there beer considering the truth that lay before them. Then D.S. Quinn resumed the examination.
"But we don't really know do we?"
"No. Not all the details, but I think we know enough to be reasonably certain of the main facts. Especially that we now have confirmation of the DNA of the blood found on the knife."
"Not a match for James Edward Dearden after all?"
"No. That was the one stroke of luck. Having his grandson's body there. Nice and handy."
"So?"
"So not a shadow of doubt. Beatrice d'Auray killed Lucy Sheldon. It was Lucy's blood on the knife. We traced her niece and got a clear match."
"So they got it wrong all those years ago?"
"Understandable. They didn't know Beatrice d'Auray's background. Took her at face value. They found a young woman's body, badly burnt, just outside the dressing room of a star that had vanished. Blood inside the room itself. A cursory post mortem found she had been killed by a single stab wound to the heart, although the knife was not found."
"It probably showed as how she were pregnant as well, 'ence the rumour."
"Yes. There's a note to suggest that, more a query really. But it is all very sketchy, ambiguous. It was the height of the Blitz remember. They had over a hundred other bodies to deal with that day in Havelock Road alone. Count them and bury them was the routine. Make room for and prepare for the next batch in the night to come. A minor miracle they noticed the stab wounds and took a closer look."
"An' Beatrice d'Auray just upped it an' ran? Vanished into thin air?"
Harry Savage shrugged. "It wouldn't have been difficult. You could buy a wartime identity card for fifty pence in any pub around here in those days. Get one for free from a choice of corpses most nights."
"Could 'ave joined up I s'ppose. Joined the army and seen the world. An' afterwards, if she survived .... well .... an assisted passage to Oz for £25 and no questions asked."
"You're wasted as a copper D.S. Quinn. With your imagination you should have been a writer and made your fortune."
"Wish you'd suggested it earlier Sir. It must be an easier way to make a livin' than 'untin' villains." He drained his glass. "Still whatever happened to him, it must 'ave been 'ard. A drunken moment and you kill the girl you love and her unborn child, and lose a wife and son. Leave them to grieve believing you dead."
"Mercifully I don't think it troubled him for long. Because I think he, or she rather, most probably died within a few hours of Lucy. I think Beatrice was killed in the air raid. One of the Luftwaffe's victims."
"Christ Sir, you accuse me of 'avin an 'eated imagination and then you leaps in with a dollop of second sight. You an' Lonesome should go into partnership."
"It's just a guess, but it may have some substance. One hundred and seventeen people died in that raid according to the records. Twenty three of the adults were never identified, because there wasn't enough of them left, or they were strangers, or those who could have identified them were also dead or .... Well of those twenty three only the sex is recorded. Fourteen were women and nine were men."
"So? What does that tell us?"
"Nothing. But those were the amended figures. Someone had had some crossing out to do. Quite spoilt what was otherwise an immaculate bit of penmanship. The original figures were fifteen women and eight men .... "
"And you think that .... "
"Yes. But who knows? It might just have been a recording error. But the pages were exceptionally neat and accurate apart from that. So I like to think .... Because it would have been an impossible burden to live with."
The sergeant smiled. "You're a tender hearted bastard deep down aren't you Sir," he said. "But don't worry, I won't tell anyone. And I do so 'ope as how you're right."
The tender hearted bastard pushed his empty glass away from him. "Time to go sergeant. No profit nor promotion in old cases. They don't count towards the station's targets."
"Still some loose ends about though Sir."
"There are always some loose ends about D.S. Quinn. It's in the little sods' nature. Which ones had you in mind?"
"Well Sir, the missing locket .... and the old woman that Dearden claimed to have met."
"Dearden could have lost the locket, given it away, or it might have slipped down the back of the the sofa in his flat. And as for the old woman we only have a mention of her in the roughly scribbled notes he made when he was apparently hallucinating after being badly beaten up. He was hardly in a rational state of mind let's face it. No one else saw her. Had ever seen her. "
"But what about her perfume and ....?"
"Quinn. If you mention deranged, decrepit, blind, Lonesome George in the same breath as reliable, testimony, or witness, I shall personally arrange for you to be transferred to traffic duty on the Isle of Sark."
"Sounds rather a cushy number Sir. But if you prefer I didn't ...."
"And they're all quite irrelevant any way. Nothing to do with anything. Will all be forgotten this time tomorrow. Not like ...."
The D.I stood for a moment by the table. Lost in a memory.
"Not like ...?" His sergeant prompted gently
"You didn't see it sergeant. And I wish to God I hadn't either. But Dearden's face .... his dead face .... when I saw it in Beatrice d'Auray's dressing room." He shook his head as if to dislodge the memory that haunted him.
And then abruptly. "When your time's up sergeant, if you're given the choice, don't opt for a heart attack."
"An' if I'm not offered a choice Sir?"
"Then bloody well make sure your relatives don't get to see your body. Not if you want them to remember you and be able to sleep again."
And with that the two policemen left The Quiet Woman to its three remaining, now silent, regulars and the barman who had returned to his obsessive glass cleaning duties.
And to the old lady sitting alone in the little alcove, seemingly unnoticed now that the blind seaman Pugh had departed. But anyone who had the eyes to see her might have noticed the sparkle of what could have been tears in the corners of her deep violet eyes. Might have caught the glint of the early afternoon sun as it glanced on the locket which nestled, half hidden, in the froth of lace cascading from her throat.
Author's Note
I read one of Ian Rankin's 'Inspector Rebus' books a short while ago that had been printed in New York for the American market. Apart from the shock of hearing Edinburgh low life using the construct 'gotten', I managed to follow most of it without undue difficulty.
However there was a preface explaining the police ranks in the U.K. As my preface is already long enough and nicely symmetrical to boot, I have relegated this information to this end note. It is too late to be of any practical use of course but at least I have paid lip service to the principle.
D.I. stands for Detective Inspector. and D.S. stands for Detective Sergeant. They are plain clothes policemen apart, allegedly, from their boots.
But you already knew that didn't you?