The West End Horror (8 page)

“That’s a woman!” Holmes cried. “Come on, Watson!” He dashed across the footlights and into the wings, his coattails flying as I followed. Backstage, we plunged into a labyrinthine mass of theatrical apparatus that obstructed our path to the wrought iron spiral steps which led to the dressing rooms below. Behind us we could hear the pounding feet of the chorus, hurrying in our wake.

At the foot of the steps a passage led off to our left, and Holmes flew down it. A series of doors on either side of the corridors, some of them ajar, led to the ladies’ dressing quarters. Holmes flung these open in rapid succession, stopping abruptly at the
fifth
door and blocking my view with his back.

“Keep them out, Watson,” said he quietly and closed the door behind him.

Within seconds a group of thirty or so members of the Savoy company surrounded me, all babbling questions. I was struck with the ironic observation that they sounded like themselves–that is to say, like a chorus of Savoyards, singing, “Now what is this and what is that and why does father leave his rest, at such a time of night as this, so very incompletely dressed?” Suddenly into their midst, parting them firmly left and right as though he were breasting the Red Sea, strode Gilbert. His muttonchop whiskers bristled, his blue eyes were very bright.

‘What is happening here?”

“Sherlock Holmes is endeavouring to find out,” I gestured behind me to the closed door. The large blue eyes blinked in the direction of the door, then refocussed themselves on me.

“Holmes? The detective?”

“That is correct. I am Dr. Watson. I sometimes assist Mr. Holmes. The woman who screamed, I take it, was Miss Rutland,” I went on. “She complained of not feeling well, and you sent her downstairs to rest.”

“I dimly remember doing something of the kind.” He passed a weary hand over his broad forehead. “It has been a tiring day.”

“Do you know Miss Rutland well, sir?”

He answered my question automatically, too preoccupied to object to my forwardness in quizzing him. “Know her? Not really. She is in the chorus, and I do not engage the chorus.” A trace of bitterness crept into his voice, undisguised.

“Sir Arthur engages the singers. Sir Arthur is not here at the moment, as you have quite possibly divined. Sir Arthur is either at cards with some of his titled friends or else at the Lyceum, where he is wasting his talents on incidental music for Irving’s new
Macbeth.
It would be too much to ask him for the overture to our piece before opening night, but I daresay he will deign to have it ready by then. Perhaps Sir Arthur will even find time to coach the singers once or twice before we open, but I am not sure.” Now he turned and spoke to the company. “Here, everybody!” he cried, “go and have your supper. We shall continue at eight o’clock sharp with Act One from the sausage-roll number. Go on and eat, my dears; there’s nothing of consequence that need detain you here, and you must keep up your strength!”

They dispersed on cue, Gilbert patting a head occasionally or saying something encouraging in a low voice to another as they passed by, until we were alone. For all his military gruffness, a reciprocal bond of affection and trust between him and the players was evident.

“Now let me pass,” he ordered in a tone that brooked no objection. Before I could answer, we were interrupted by a clatter on the spiral stairs at the end of the corridor as Carte descended hurriedly with another man, whose black bag proclaimed him a member of the same profession as myself.

Carte, rushing towards us, cried, “Dr. Watson, this is Dr. Benjamin Eccles, the doctor who is on call at the Savoy.” I shook hands briefly with a man of medium height and pale complexion, with deep-set green eyes and a small, delicate-looking nose.

“I make the rounds of several theatres in the district when I am on call,” Eccles explained, looking past me at the closed door, “and I’d just stepped into the stalls to see how the rehearsal was getting on when Mr. Carte saw me and summoned me downstairs, as he seemed to think I might be needed.” He glanced from one to the other of us–uncertainly, confused, perhaps, by the presence of another physician.

Behind us the door opened and Holmes stood there in his shirt-sleeves. Clearly he had only been waiting for the members of the chorus to depart. I introduced Dr. Eccies, and Holmes favoured him with a curt inclination of his head.

“There has been a murder,” he announced in sombre tones, “and all must remain as it is until viewed by the authorities. Watson, you and Dr. Eccles may come in. Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Carte, I must ask that you remain beyond the threshold. It isn’t a pretty sight,” he added under his breath, standing aside to let me in.

The sight, indeed, had little to commend it. A young woman with dark russet hair, who could not have been more than twenty-five, lay on her side upon a small sofa, which constituted the sole article of furniture in the room, save for a dressing table and chair. Her nap had been rudely interrupted by a crimson gash across her pearl white throat, and her life’s blood, quite literally like a leaky tap, dripped on to the floor, where it had begun to collect in a small pool.

The sight was so horrible, the corruption of her existence so woefully and inappropriately complete, that it robbed us of articulation. Eccles coughed once and set about examining the wretched creature’s remains.

“Her throat has been severed quite cleanly,” he reported in a faint voice. “It is slightly hard above the cut. Can rigor have set in so quickly?” he asked himself. “It isn’t present in her fingers, and her blood is still–is still–”

“She complained of a sore throat,” I explained, suppressing an hysterical impulse to giggle at the thought. “Her glands are merely swollen.” As I said this, it occurred to me that my own throat felt raw–a ghastly enough identification.

“Ah, that must be it.” Eccies looked about the small room. “I don’t see a weapon.”

“It is not here,” Holmes replied. “Or if it is, my search has failed to reveal it.”

“But why,
why?
Why was she slain?” Carte shouted from the doorway, his small hands clawing clumsily at his collar and tearing it asunder. ‘Who would want to do such a thing?”

No-one was able to answer him. I looked at Gilbert. He had sunk on to a bench across from the entrance to the room and was staring glazily before him.

“I didn’t know her at all well,” he spoke woodenly, like one in a dream. “Yet she always seemed sweet enough and willing. A sweet young thing,” he repeated, his eyes beginning to blink rapidly.

“There is nothing further for us here, Watson,” Holmes declared, resuming his jacket and ulster.

Carte rushed forward and seized him by the lapels. “You can’t go!” he cried. “You mustn’t! You know what this is about! I insist that you tell me. What questions were you going to put to the girl?”

“My questions were for her ears alone,” the detective replied solemnly. Gently he removed the other’s quaking hands. “You may refer the police to Dr. Watson and myself for our depositions. They know where we are to be found. Come, Doctor.” He turned to me. “We have an appointment at Simpson’s which now assumes greater importance.”

We bowed and shook hands with Gilbert, who responded in a trance, leaving Carte and the shaken Dr. Eccles, who would write up the relevant particulars of his examination. Poor man, he was more used to sore throats than cut ones, I fancy.

As we walked down the corridor, I heard Carte suggest to Gilbert that the rest of the rehearsal be cancelled.

“We can’t,” Gilbert replied in a hoarse rejoinder, his voice cracking with emotion.

Simpson’s Café Divan was but a few yards farther along the Strand, and it was no great matter to get there from the theatre.*[It still isn’t. Simpson’s and the Savoy remain happily extant, though both have been since rebuilt.] Nevertheless, as we left the Savoy and stepped on to the pavement, the frigid wind hit me like a wave and I
stumbled
against the kiosk next to the ticket office.

“Are you all right, Watson?”

“I think so–only a bit dizzy.”

Holmes nodded sympathetically. “It was quite warm inside –and appalling. I confess to feeling slightly faint myself.” He took my arm, and we entered the restaurant.

At this hour Simpson’s was by no means full. We were recognised at once by Mr. Crathie and experienced no difficulty in obtaining a table. It wanted fifteen minutes of eight, granting us some moments for private reflection regarding the unexpected turn events had taken. I, for one, did not feel in the least like eating. I was aware, however, of an overpowering thirst and ordered a brandy and a carafe of water.

The brandy burned along my throat like fire, and I found I could not swallow enough water.

“If we persist in tramping about in this weather,” Holmes noted, “we are bound to catch our death.” He, too, drank a good deal of water and looked, I thought, paler than was his wont.

We sat for some moments, studying our menus without enthusiasm, each wrapped in his own thoughts. Around us the restaurant was filling with animated diners.

“The case begins to assume a familiar shape,” Holmes stated, setting aside the wine list.

“Which shape is that? I am utterly at a loss, I confess.”

“A triangle, if I am not mistaken. I shall be greatly astonished if it does not prove to be the old story of a jealous lover, discarded by his mistress in favour of another patron. Possibly a more powerful one,” he added darkly. He reached into his jacket and withdrew his pocketbook, carefully extracting again the slip of paper from Jonathan McCarthy’s engagement calendar.

“It must be a very peculiar triangle,” I countered, “if it includes so odd an angle as McCarthy. Are you asking me to believe that sweet-faced young woman took up with a man of his stamp? My mind rejects the whole idea.”

“I must ask your mind to remain open a little longer, Doctor, for she
did
take up with him. At least, the evidence points strongly in that direction.”

‘What evidence?” My head had begun to throb almost as badly as the old wound in my leg.

“Wilde’s, of course. If his information about George Grossmith’s recourse to drugs elicited the response it did from Carte, we may, I think, grant its accuracy–at least provisionally–in other areas, as well. What have you to offer in rebuttal

of such a charge? Her innocent appearance and the testimony of Gilbert, who by his own admission scarcely knew her. The latter information rebuts itself. As for the former,” he mused, staring dreamily at the paper before him, “what can a woman’s appearance signify? Women are devious creatures, even the best of them, and capable of vastly more than we men would like to suppose. That she was McCarthy’s mistress, I am prepared to credit on the basis of the evidence so far; what her motives were for so being, I am prepared to learn.”

“From whom?”

He shrugged. “I fancy that will depend to a degree on Arthur Sullivan. He hired her; it is to him I shall turn for a better portrait. Hullo!” He sat forward suddenly, pulled forth his magnifying glass, and held it over the torn scrap, scrutinising it beneath the lens.

“What is
it?”

“Last night’s entry, or I am much mistaken. Have a look.” He moved the paper over to where I could see and held the glass above it for my benefit. Enlarged beneath the lens I saw faint impressions, evidently formed by a pencil pressing down on another piece of paper.

“There is something there!” I exclaimed.

“I think so, too, though whether it will be of any use to us is problematical.” He looked about and hailed a nearby waiter, importuning him for a pencil. When the man had delivered it and gone, Holmes threw back a corner of the white tablecloth and positioned the paper carefully upon the wood. Holding the pencil at the mildest possible angle, he began to rub the lead lightly back and forth across the surface of the sheet. Slowly, like a spirit photograph, the indentations appeared in sharp relief:

Jack Point–here

“Who can that be?” we wondered simultaneously. “Here is our oracle in these matters,” Holmes observed, looking up. “Perhaps he can help us.”

Shaw stood at the entrance to the restaurant, still without a coat (it caused my teeth to chatter just to look at him). He held his nose in the air as though sniffing the place out, unwilling to put a foot forward until certain of his welcome. Holmes held up a hand and waved him over. He advanced rapidly and slid on to the banquette without ceremony as the detective replaced the tablecloth and deftly slid the paper back into his pocketbook.

“What have you learned?” the critic demanded without

preamble. “I’m famished,” he volunteered before either of us could answer and began a perusal of the menu.

‘We wish to consult you first,” Holmes said easily. “Do you know of anyone named Jack Point?”

Shaw looked up from the menu, knitting his brows. “Jack Point?” he repeated cautiously. “No, I can’t say that I do. Why?”

“Could it be someone in the theatre world? An actor perhaps?” Holmes persisted. The critic’s frown of puzzlement deepened.

“Or the name of another Gilbertian creation?” I struck in-

He brightened at once, snapping his fingers.

“Of course. Yeomen
of the Guard!
Another of their operas,” he explained. “A serious one, laid in the Middle Ages and having to do with the Tower of London.”

“And Point? Who is he?”

“A jester–rather a foolish and pathetic figure; he loses his lady love to a highborn lord, if my memory serves.”

Holmes smiled sadly. “Ah. Jack Point is our man, no doubt. You see, Watson? We are dealing with that geometrical construction I postulated some minutes ago.”

“What are you talking about?” Shaw demanded brusquely. “And why are you both so pale? It’s your diet, you know. With all that mutton, drink, and tobacco, you’re digging yourselves early graves, the pair of you. Look at me! I haven’t even a coat in this weather, and you don’t see me shaking like the dickens.”

“S
pare us your sovereign remeaies, I beg you.”