A Disappearance in Drury Lane (2 page)

The two ladies who lived in the house across the lane, leaders of the army for respectability, were just departing the bakeshop. The pair of them, Mrs. Carfax and her companion, Miss Winston, glanced askance at Marianne in her finery. They had never approved of Mrs. Beltan letting an actress live above her shop. As for me, Mrs. Carfax was still shy with me, though painfully courteous. She was terrified of all men—though I knew there had at one time been a
Mr.
Carfax.

“Good evening,” I said to them, tipping my hat. They curtseyed politely, tightly arm in arm, gave Marianne a frosty nod, and walked on.

“Cows,” Marianne said as we moved on to Russel Street. “As though it’s a virtue to be cold and hungry. Let us hold our heads high while we quietly starve to death. Ridiculous way to live.”

I did not bother to answer; it was an old argument. We turned left to Russel Street and walked a short distance to Drury Lane. The doors of the Theatre Royal at Drury Lane opened onto Russel Street, but Marianne led me down a narrow passage beside the building, dark now as the walls shut out the weak winter light, and around the theatre to its back.

A notice had been pinned on the dark gray brick next to an unmarked door, announcing that
Next Saturday after the New Year, Mr. Kean will perform the Tragedy of Othello, with a melodrama, The Innkeeper’s Daughter.
Coming later this spring would be
The Bride of Abydos
, a tragedy in three acts based on Lord Byron’s poem, promising
Choruses of Soldiers, Warriors of an Ancient Tribe, Slaves of the Seraglio, and splendid new scenery prepared for this play
, which would include, apparently, a pirate galley and gardens of the harem.

Drury Lane had the patent to produce what was known as “true” plays, meaning spoken drama, anything from Shakespeare to Sheridan. No opera or musicales, but plenty of dramatics, lavish stage sets, and effects. I’d once watched a play here in which a rainstorm had been created on the stage with real water. The rain had thoroughly drenched the actors as well as members of the audience in the first few rows. In another play, a lighter-than-air balloon had taken an actor aloft.

Marianne knocked on the door beside the notice. I was surprised she thought anyone would be inside the theatre in this week between Boxing Day and New Year’s, but she did not seem worried. She knocked again—three short raps—and waited.

After a few moments, the door was opened by a giant of a man. I’d never seen such a huge specimen. My footman turned valet, Bartholomew, and his brother were both large young men, but this man beat them on bulk and me on height. His coat and waistcoat stretched over beefy muscles, the sleeves tight on huge arms that ended in thick-fingered hands.

His face was not ugly, but a bit flat, his nose smaller than such a man should have. His eyes, set proportionally in his large face, were a pale hazel, discernible even in this dim light. His clothes were well made, sewn for him, at a guess—I could not imagine he’d have an easy time of it finding secondhand clothes to fit him. He gave me a look of grave suspicion but softened when he took in Marianne.

“Miss Simmons,” he said, sounding relieved. “We was expecting you.”

He opened the door wider, almost deferentially, to let Marianne inside. When he looked at me again, all his suspicions returned.

“Where is she, Mr. Coleman?” Marianne asked.

Coleman moved his bulk around Marianne and into the darkened hall. “Doing the mending. I’ll take you in, so she knows it’s you.”

Marianne saw nothing odd in his phrasing, but I was curious. She followed Coleman down a narrow hall, and I came behind, my walking stick quietly tapping the floor.

While the entity that was the Drury Lane theatre had stood on this spot for a very long time, the building we walked through was itself not very old. The previous manifestation of the theatre had burned down in 1809 then risen again in 1812. The new building was modern and fairly comfortable—that is, if you were fortunate enough to afford its luxurious boxes. Behind the stage, the actors had to make do with narrow corridors and small dressing rooms. But it was relatively warm back here, with stoves rather than the old hearths that had put out very little heat.

Coleman stopped in front of a door, knocked firmly, and pushed it open. We entered a large room filled with open wardrobes, trunks, shelves, and tables. All the furniture overflowed with pieces of clothing, but everything was folded neatly, stacked into manageable piles. Someone had made order of the chaos.

A woman sat on a low chair among the clothing, needle in her hands. She was middle-aged turning to elderly, a once-plump body thinning, hair going gray under a cap. She pushed the needle into a bodice she was mending in one smooth movement, fingers graceful as she pulled the thread through. She didn’t look at the fabric or even at us but somewhere in the middle distance.

“Mrs. Wolff,” Coleman said in a loud voice. “They’re here. Miss Simmons and her gent . . . er . . .”

“Captain Lacey,” I said, moving forward and holding out my hand.

Mrs. Wolff didn’t turn to us. I understood why when I saw the opaque film over her wide pupils. She wasn’t being rude. She was blind.

“Do you trust him, Miss Simmons?” Mrs. Wolff asked, still stitching. Her head cocked, as though she listened for the answer. Her voice was faintly laced with Cockney, but she spoke as one who’d practiced until she’d taken the back streets out of her speech.

“I do,” Marianne said. “Captain Lacey, may I introduce Mrs. Hannah Wolff?”

I gave a startled exclamation, and Mrs. Wolff chuckled. “They all do that. Yes, my dear, I am Hannah Wolff, the celebrated actress. If you’re old enough, you’ll have seen my Lady Macbeth. If you’re
truly
old enough, you’ll have seen my Juliet.”

“I saw you as Gertrude,” I said, almost reverently. Hannah Wolff had breathed life into the role, as she had every role, but that night as Gertrude she’d been magnificent. Her performance had all but obscured the other actors on the stage.
Hamlet
hadn’t been Hamlet’s play that night; it had been hers.

“You’re old enough then,” she said. “I didn’t want Marianne fetching some young officer back from the army with nothing to do. He wouldn’t care.”

“Captain Lacey is not young,” Marianne said. Very flattering—I was a little over forty. “But young enough. He’s lame, but he walks around quite easily. He’s also getting married in the next few days and so is a bit impatient.”

“My felicitations,” Mrs. Wolff said. “But if you’re getting married, you won’t be interested in our problem.”

I was growing a bit tired of people telling me what did and did not interest me. I found a chair that was free of clothing, drew it close to Mrs. Wolff, and sat down, planting my hands on my cane. “I am interested. Forgive me for sitting. The cold makes my leg ache.”

“Please, be comfortable, Captain,” Hannah said. “Well then, Marianne must have told you a little about it. Abigail Collins is a dear friend of mine. When I got run down by a dray and two heavy horses and lost my sight some years ago, I wasn’t good for walking around the stage no more. Abby made sure I kept my place in the company, coaching other ladies on their parts. If someone hands me the right pieces of clothing, I can sew them together or help the ladies into them. I am very good at fitting clothes now—the hands can see what the eyes don’t. I became Abigail’s dresser. She has a voice like a cathedral bell. She says a word on a stage, and she’s heard in the back row, with all the emotion dripping from it. The punters love her.”

“I’ve seen her perform,” I said. “I agree, she is astonishing. As you were.”

“Too kind, Captain. But this summer, Abigail up and went, and I ain’t heard a word from her since. She’s not written—Coleman or my sister read all my letters out to me. But they say she’s not sent anything for a long while.”

“Did she stop to say good-bye when she left?”

“She did,” Hannah said. “It were nothing unusual. She was off to the seaside—Brighton—where she goes every summer for her health, then on to Bath for more water. A great one for bathing, is Abby. She always comes back before the season starts, though, to have Christmas with me and my sister and husband and practice her parts for the coming plays. My sister used to act as well, though she gave it up for soft living, and never looked back.” Hannah stopped and sighed. “But this year, Abby never arrived.”

“Perhaps she lingered in Brighton or Bath to do a few plays,” I suggested. The great actors and actresses sometimes spent time with provincial companies, to help them pull an audience, or simply for the enjoyment of it.

“I’d have heard, wouldn’t I?” Hannah said. “She’d have written, or Coleman would have seen notices in the newspapers. Abby doesn’t write many letters, but she’s good about imparting news or telling us she’s delayed.”

Coleman broke in from his place by the door. “Tell him about the box.”

Hannah pushed the needle into the fabric and left it there, her fingers remaining on it. “The box puts a different complexion on it, you see. Terrible thing, it was.”

“A box?” I asked when she paused to shake her head. “Something in a box here at the theatre?”

“No, a parcel,” Marianne broke in. “Delivered to Abigail before she went.”

“From?”

“Well, that’s the thing,” Hannah said. “We don’t know. They tell me it came from a reputable London delivery firm.”

“Aye,” Coleman said in his gravelly voice. “Fuller and Hamilton’s. Package done up the same as any. The delivery man was nervous, said the gent what dropped it off was laughing and saying the delivery man should be very, very careful not to shake it.”

Hannah reached out her hand and patted the air, as though trying to comfort Coleman.

“Coleman saved us all, he did,” Hannah said. “He takes the parcel away from Abby and opens it himself. Inside is a wooden box, very pretty, he says, like from a shop. Coleman, he was in the war, and he sniffs it and says he smells gunpowder. He dropped the box into a tub of water and opened it slowly. What do you think, Captain? The sides were done up so that a spark when the box was opened would ignite packed gunpowder. Coleman said there’d been enough powder and bits inside to blow off poor Abigail’s face.”

“Good Lord,” I said, blinking. I looked at Coleman, who gave me a slow nod. “Thank God for Coleman’s quick thinking.”

“Aye,” Hannah said. “I was glad he was on hand. But Abby was shaken, I can tell you.”

“I do not blame her,” I said. Using gunpowder to fight in war was one thing; delivering a package of it to kill an innocent woman was something else altogether. “Did anyone go round to the delivery company and ask who sent the parcel?”

“I did, sir,” Coleman said. “No one there had seen the man before. They described him as medium height, about the same as any gent, a bit spindly. Dressed well enough, they said, and paid the fee.”

A good description, but it could fit many men in London. I turned back to Hannah.

“Do you know of any other threats or attempts to hurt Mrs. Collins?”

Hannah shook her head. “That was the main one. I know Abby got bad letters, but she never showed them to me or talked about them. I knew because of the way she acted, all brisk and bright, when you could tell she was scared senseless.”

Marianne said, “And that’s why I asked you to look into it, Lacey. Because it’s more than an actress taking some time for herself, isn’t it? We want to know if whoever was trying to kill her succeeded. Surely you can spare us ten minutes for that.”

Chapter Two

Hannah was correct—the incident did put a different complexion on the situation.

“Why did you not say so at once?” I asked her. “And why did you not mention this six months ago when it happened?”

Marianne shrugged in her maddening way. “I did not think you’d believe me. I only grew worried when Abby didn’t return and didn’t write, and Hannah asked me to help. You were busy running off to Norfolk, planning your wedding . . . I wanted you to hear the story from Hannah and Coleman before you judged. You have the habit of dismissing what comes out of my mouth.”

I started to disagree then fell silent. She was not wrong. I might have brushed off Marianne’s tale as exaggeration or embellished to gain my interest if I had not heard of the incident from Hannah.

Hannah could not tell us much more, however. The extent of what she knew was Abigail Collins had received letters that upset her and then the frightening package.

Everyone in this room believed Abigail to be in real danger. I’d not have been let into this private sanctum otherwise, I realized.

I wished I could reassure them, but I could not. Obviously Mrs. Collins had an enemy, perhaps more than one. No one decided to send a person a box of gunpowder if they did not mean to cause real harm. A rival actress, perhaps? From stories Marianne had told me, I knew actors could be cruel to one another as they competed for roles or places in a company.

Actresses also sometimes took lovers, and those lovers might be married. Perhaps an angry wife had sought revenge. Or perhaps someone from Mrs. Collins’ past was threatening her. I had not much to go on.

Hannah had drooped a bit after she delivered her last speech. Marianne rose and shot me a look, and I got to my feet. I made Hannah a bow, though I knew she couldn’t see me, and I complimented her again on the roles I’d seen her play.

She dismissed me as a base flatterer before she picked up her mending, but I could tell she was pleased. I did not exaggerate—Hannah Wolff had truly had the gift. The accident that had robbed her of her career was tragic indeed.

“Where do you think Mrs. Collins is, Coleman?” I asked as the man led us back through the hallways to the stage door.

“Don’t know. But I don’t like thinking she ain’t safe.” The large man sent me a worried look. “Miss Simmons says you can find anybody. She right, sir?”

Miss Simmons stood next to me looking innocent. I gave Coleman a nod. “I will certainly try. I do not like the story I’ve heard tonight.”

“Thank you, sir.” Coleman sounded relieved as he opened the door and let us out into the cold. “We’re all so very worried.”