Vital Secrets (21 page)

It had been at this juncture that the only serious question regarding Marc's scheme had been raised by Lieutenant Spooner from the wings. Could Mr. Edwards actually act and, if so, could he memorize and sufficiently rehearse his lines and cues well enough to deceive the playgoers of Toronto? To that, Marc had replied: “I'll know the answer at dinner-hour tomorrow.” And before he had left to oversee the removal of the body, Mrs. Thedford said she would put together the pages of script he would have to learn by rehearsal time at one o'clock the next afternoon. In the meantime, the actors, surprisingly animated, set about preparing something to entertain the sophisticates of the colony later in the evening.

“I'll be upstairs while the rehearsal is in progress, having a close look at Tessa's room and doing a thorough search of the other rooms. Though any evidence there will likely have been hidden or destroyed,” Marc admitted to Cobb.

“Well, they couldn't've taken it very far. Wilkie's kept them
cooped up there tighter'n a maiden's purse, an' he tracked Madame Thedford all the way to the dining-room when she went to meet Major Jenkin.”

“There are stoves in each room for burning whatever might need to be.”

“You could grovel through the ashes.”

“If grovelling will help Rick, I'll do it,” Marc said, and Cobb, to be polite, chuckled.

A
FTER ASSURING HIMSELF THAT THERE WAS
no microscopic trail of blood along the hall carpet—a trail that would have led him to the killer's room—Marc went to Tessa's door. The wax plug, replaced by Cobb after he had removed the body, had not been dislodged or tampered with. The room was as they had left it last night, minus Merriwether's remains.

The beige carpet had acted like a blotter, recording each spill of blood in blurred but indelible outline. The position of the body, on its back with legs splayed, was thus limned except for the head area. There a ghoulish brown ripple indicated where the skull had been smashed and bled thickly. The slash in the carpet where Rick's sword had stuck in the wood below was clearly visible, surrounded by a dark crimson parabola.

What interested Marc much more, however, were the smudges between the feet of the corpse and the settee about eight feet away near the window overlooking Colborne Street.
According to the corroborated testimony of Beasley, Rick was standing over the corpse, holding the sword in his hands. Presumably, his jacket, breeches, and boots had been sprayed with blood from the victim's still-pumping heart, and in order for it to have got all over Rick's hands and the haft of his sword, he would have had either to bend down and immerse himself in it or to rub it all over himself in some sort of ritual triumph. Neither act befitted the man he knew as Rick Hilliard.

But the smudges between corpse and settee, indicative of footprints, however indistinct, were very curious indeed. They had been made by a boot, though the size and nature could not be determined. Without question, however, they went in only one direction: from the settee to the corpse. Only toe-prints were unambiguously visible and he could find none of them pointing the other way, though there were, to be sure, enough random smudges here and there to make any firm conclusion problematic. Beasley and the police had regrettably contaminated the scene while the blood was still fresh. Still, if Rick had done the deed, he would have had to rise from the settee at Tessa's cry, knock the villain down, and skewer him—after which he would have been more or less bloodied, especially around the boots. Then, presumably, he had staggered to the settee, where there were blood-smears on the edge of the seat. The killer had sat down: two fully outlined boot-prints and a palm-print attested to that. Why? To savour his murderous act? Weather the aftershock? Suffer remorse? Whatever the
reason, this pause could have lasted mere seconds because when Beasley arrived—say, two minutes after Tessa's cry—Rick was already back over the body and was still there when Mrs. Thedford and Jeremiah appeared on the scene.

Looking now at these toe-prints, one must conclude that Rick had staggered backwards after being bloodied, then staggered forward again, leaving more prints in the same direction. Possible, Marc thought, but not probable. There just didn't seem to be enough prints to satisfy this interpretation. And as far as he could make out, the backward staggering depicted here did not resemble the way any man would actually have done it: the print-pattern was simply too regular. Moreover, Rick had told him that the first thing he remembered upon waking was noticing blood on his tunic. If that were true, and Marc believed it was, then Rick would have struck and stabbed Merriwether while unconscious and with no memory of either act. Besides which, Rick's jacket had seemed to Marc, when he had examined it closely last night, to be too free of splashes and splatter. The smeared patterns were inconsistent with spouting blood. What that portended he could not guess. All he knew was that, despite the contrary eyewitness testimony, there was reason to doubt that Rick Hilliard had committed murder.

Until he could come up with a more plausible alternative, however, he recognized that he had little chance of convincing the governor or the magistrates of Rick's innocence.

• • •

M
ARC NOW BEGAN TO SEARCH THE
other rooms. He opened each actor's trunk, finding no more false bottoms, went through the pockets, sleeves, and cuffs of every costume, and sifted through any ash left in a stove. Merriwether, Armstrong, and Beasley had obviously not lit fires yesterday evening, so that only a residual ash remained from fires earlier on the weekend. And nothing was to be found there beyond the ash itself. Mrs. Thedford, however, had put on a small fire in her parlour room, and as Marc rummaged about he did find several charred bits of what appeared to be linen paper or the cloth cover of a book. At the moment, though, he could find nothing sinister in the discovery. Mrs. Thedford would have many papers, playbills, script-pamphlets, cue cards, and the like as part of her business. What he was searching for specifically was the container for the laudanum that had been poured into Tessa's sherry decanter, even if it had been shattered into shards. Chances were it was somewhere on this floor. He even opened Mrs. Thedford's perfume bottles and sniffed, precipitating several sneezes but no clue. He picked up a candlestick and shoved a forefinger up the hollow stem of it. No vial there.

Discouraged, Marc went back out into the hall. He put himself in Merriwether's shoes for a moment: he waits till the others have gone down for supper or later perhaps when they've headed for their cramped dressing-rooms to put on makeup.
Then he slips across to Tessa's room, vial in hand, pours the contents into the decanter, and slips out again. He can't very well leave the vial there, and he would not be foolish enough to hide it in his own room lest something go awry with his plan. But where else? Maybe he had taken it down to the theatre with him; Marc would have to search the dressing-rooms at least.

It was then that he noticed the ornamental spittoon sitting near Armstrong's door. It was not used as a spittoon up here, but its brass filigree, when polished, would gleam handsomely. Gingerly, Marc pressed his right hand into the narrow opening and down into the wider body of the piece. He struck sand. Frank had probably filled it with sand to act as ballast. Wriggling two fingers, Marc managed to delve down far enough to strike something harder than sand. Seconds later he drew out a glass apothecary bottle, its stopper in place. He turned it upside down and there, on the bottom, in very tiny type, he read:
Michaels.
Ezra Michaels operated a chemist's shop near the corner of King and Toronto Streets. And while this empty unlabelled bottle didn't guarantee that the laudanum had come from Michaels, containers often being re-used, it strongly suggested that the narcotic had been purchased somewhere in the capital.

Marc sighed. If only he had found the vial in Merriwether's room. It could have been placed out here by anyone—including Rick. However, if it had been purchased at Michaels, there would likely be a record of the sale and perhaps even a physical description of the buyer. Old Michaels, he knew, boasted that
he never forgot a face. He would put Cobb onto this immediately. Remembering a pencil sketch of the actor, out of costume, on Merriwether's desk, Marc returned to retrieve it. He would have Cobb take it to Michaels and, if necessary, to every apothecary and quack homeopath in the city. He might not be able to prove Rick was innocent of murder, but he'd be damned if he'd let the young man go to the gallows as a rapist.

W
HEN
M
ARC CAME DOWN TO RELIEVE
Cobb and send him off to make the rounds of the chemists, the rehearsal for the impromptu evening ahead was in full swing. Marc took up a stool and sat unobtrusively in the wings to watch. He had little fear that any one of the five actors would suddenly decide to sprint to the double-doors at the front of the theatre, fling back the bar, and make a run for it down Colborne Street.

On the stage in front of him, illumined only by a single, half-lit chandelier, stood Dawson Armstrong in top hat and tails, surrounded by the three women in old-fashioned bonnets and Beasley, with a carter's cap on his head. They were in the midst of a dramatized reading of Cowper's “The Diverting History of John Gilpin.” Armstrong, as the hapless Gilpin, who cannot control the horse he's borrowed to ride with his wife and family to their seaside holiday spot, was miming to perfection the struggle and strain of the runaway, even while he narrated the tale. The chorus around him added the comic commentary of his wife and various bystanders. The whole
thing was highly professional and very funny. Certainly, in a town where runaway horses and wagons were not infrequent, this piece should go over well tonight. Marc himself was impressed by the intensity of concentration that these five managed after the trials of the past fifteen hours, but only Jeremiah had noticed his arrival, offering a brief smile of welcome. When “John Gilpin” came to its risible conclusion, Marc announced his presence by clapping out his approval.

Mrs. Thedford turned, caught his eye, and said with amusement, “I hope those watching this evening are so easily entertained.” Then, addressing the others, she said, “Dawson, I think you didn't come in quite soon enough at ‘The dinner waits, and we are tired.' Your response here should draw the biggest laugh of the piece, so we don't want to mistime it.”

They re-did the middle section of the poem, agreed among themselves that it was improved if not perfect, then Mrs. Thedford said, “Tessa and I will now do ‘Lenore.'” Jeremiah stepped smartly forward with several bits of costume for the next number. Tessa, pale but remarkably composed, shook out her blond curls, draped a gossamer wrap over her bare shoulders, and sank to the floor in a lifeless pose. Mrs. Thedford donned a black lace shawl that covered her head and shoulders. Staring sorrowfully at the still, beautiful form at her feet, she began to recite one of the most haunting laments Marc had ever heard. Who the poet was he had no idea, but the grief of the speaker for the dead Lenore was agonizingly real:

See! On yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore, Come! Let the burial rite be read—the funeral song be sung!—

An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young—

A dirge for her doubly dead in that she died so young. By you—by yours, the evil eye—by yours, the slanderous tongue That did to death the innocence that died, and died so young.

Then, partway through, the sobbing diminuendos of a violin joined the grieved speaker, and Marc tore his gaze from the heartwrenching scene of woman and girl to glance over and see Clarence Beasley with the instrument under his chin. Tears welled up in the woman's eyes as the poem neared its mournful conclusion:

The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes—The life still there, upon her hair—the death upon her eyes.

Marc felt the surge of his own emotion catch in his throat, and realized he had been thinking of Uncle Jabez and the sister lost to him forever. Just as Mrs. Thedford recited the final phrase, she sank to her knees with the grace of a swan settling over her
eggs while Tessa simultaneously rose through the gauze of her garment till she was almost sitting up. Freeze. Tableau. Music fades. Finis.

No one moved. For a full minute all thoughts drifted inward. The ghost of Jason Merriwether was palpable.

“Well, it's time to liven things up a little,” Armstrong said in a voice clear, strong, and uncontaminated by drink. He signed something towards Jeremiah, and the black man grinned and went over to the far wings. In the shadows there was a pile of what Marc had taken to be scenery-flats covered by a piece of sailcloth. Jeremiah whipped this cover away to reveal, not a stack of flats, but a gleaming pianoforte, which he began to push out onto the stage. Well, Marc thought, no wonder Ogden Frank had scratched himself bald worrying about the future of his investment. But who would play the instrument?

It was Dawson Armstrong who sat down before it on a stool and struck a thundering introductory chord. “Ready, ladies?”

The three women came down to the footlights. With Tessa between Mrs. Thedford and Thea Clarkson, they linked arms. Then, to Armstrong's zestful accompaniment, they entertained Marc, enthralled him really, for the next twenty minutes with a series of trios, duets, and naughty ditties from
The Beggar's Opera,
mixing male and female roles willy-nilly. Mrs. Thedford sang in the rich alto range, throaty and vibrant; Tessa's note was descant, tremulously sweet. Thea's voice was contralto, haunted and rippled with the shadow of longing and regret. The latter
concluded this set with a solo, an aria in Italian about the heroine's sorrow at the loss of her lover. That was all that Marc could decipher, but there was little need for lyrics here: Thea's voice, her posture, and the sonority of the song itself were sufficient. How she contrived to complete it in such circumstance Marc did not know, but he hoped that somehow the effort was cathartic. When she finished, the women curtseyed and the four men applauded.