He pulled the double doors fully open. Through the suffocating smoke wreathing hideously ahead of them it was just possible to distinguish something small and white coming towards them in jerking movements. Beaconsfield’s rump. He was struggling heroically to drag something held firmly between his jaws. Cribb ran to assist him. Man and dog gripped the valise together and brought it to the steps outside.
‘Well done, Beaconsfield! A trifle singed about the ears, and in need of a good bath, but none the worse for your escapade.’ Cribb opened the valise, brought out something and handed it to the grateful bulldog. ‘Aniseed. A powerful attraction to any of the canine species, even a lethargic old beast like this one. Now what’s this also in the bag? A monkey, Mr Plunkett. In other words, your five hundred.’
Plunkett shook his head in bewilderment. ‘But I thought the man and woman who kidnapped Ellen had taken it.’
Cribb patted Beaconsfield’s back. ‘And but for the efforts of my slightly scorched assistant here, I’d have found it difficult to prove they hadn’t.’
‘But why did they go to so much trouble if they didn’t take the money, for God’s sake?’
Cribb opened his hands like a conjurer at the end of a trick. ‘Because they never existed. Your daughter, Miss Blake, invented ’em, didn’t you, Miss? Nobody kidnapped her. She’s been as free as you or I this twenty-four hours. Wrote that letter in some comfortable lodging-house, I dare say.’
Ellen Blake plunged her face into her hands.
‘That’s an infamous suggestion!’ said Plunkett to Cribb. ‘Why should Ellen do a thing like that to me?’
‘That’s a question only the lady can answer, sir, but I fancy it has something to do with Albert.’
‘Me, Sergeant?’
‘You see what she’s achieved, gentlemen: the Paragon in flames and likely to be gutted unless the Brigade gets here soon, Tuesday’s performance cancelled and Albert’s honour saved. If I weren’t about to arrest her she’d be making plans to marry you, I reckon, Albert.’
‘Arrest Ellen? On what charge, for Heaven’s sake?’
‘Take your choice, sir. Obtaining money by false pretences. Arson. Or murder. The murder of Miss Lola Pinkus by administering poison. I’ve got a police van waiting at the end of the road, Miss, and I’ll be obliged if you’ll accompany me to the nearest police station.’
Plunkett placed an arm protectively in front of his daughter. ‘This is madness, Sergeant. I’ll have you cashiered. I’ve got friends at Scotland Yard, you know. You can’t make accusations like this without—’
For the first time, Ellen spoke, in a voice of studied calm. ‘Father, at least do me the kindness of letting me face what is to come with dignity. Can’t you see that your intrigues brought me to this? I want no more of them. Stay here and watch your music hall burn, and pray that the flames will purify your soul. Albert, my dearest, my poor innocent, if you ever come to understand my actions, believe that there was nothing you could have done to alter them. You will visit me if they allow it, won’t you? I can hear the fire-engine, Sergeant. I am ready to go with you.’
‘I HAVE BEEN PERUSING your report, Sergeant,’ said Inspector Jowett at the Yard the following Monday. ‘Miss Blake has made a full confession, you say?’
‘That’s correct, sir. Appendix One.’
‘Ah yes. What makes a young woman as vicious as that, do you think?’
‘A strong streak of Puritanism,’ said Cribb. ‘And infatuation for a young man. A powerful combination, sir.’
‘Puritanism—in a music hall singer?’
‘Her songs were strictly respectable, sir. She disapproved most strongly of the ditties they sang at the midnight shows. And she took a pretty poor view of her father’s method of recruiting performers.’
‘The accidents?’
‘Yes. When an accident was planned for the hall where Albert was appearing she became most upset. Didn’t want the young man she admired to come to grief, you see, so she sent an anonymous message to us.’
‘Thinking that the police would prevent the accident?’
‘Possibly, sir. We’d be on the stage as soon as it happened, at any rate, and so we were. That’s when we first met the young woman. Later, when we’d tracked Albert to Philbeach House and found the connexion with the Paragon she did a queer thing, sir.’
‘What was that?’
‘She knew we were police officers when she sold us tickets for the show—the regular show, not the midnight one. But she didn’t warn her father who we were. And she actually offered to take us behind the scenes, and left us there to go off to her turn at the Grampian. That was almost like throwing a clue in our faces, sir. Naturally we looked about a bit and discovered Bellotti’s barrels, the second positive link with Philbeach House. We’d seen Beaconsfield’s basket arrive when we bought the tickets, if you remember. That was when I first began to be suspicious about Miss Blake. It was plain from her conversation that night that she disapproved strongly of her father.’
‘But you didn’t realise then, presumably, that she would come back from the Grampian to the midnight music hall to poison Miss Pinkus.’
‘No, sir,’ said Cribb. ‘But she could do it in plenty of time. She could pass unnoticed in the Paragon, as long as she kept out of her father’s way. She took the acid kept for fumigating the hall and tipped enough into the glass to kill Lola.’
‘Whatever for, though? Where was the motive, Sergeant?’
‘Lola meant nothing to Ellen Blake, it’s true, except as a possible rival for Albert’s affections, remembering that Lola was inclined to be flirtatious, sir. I think by this time Miss Blake was desperate to save Albert’s reputation. It was likely to be her last chance to do something that would close the hall. A sudden death—whether it was diagnosed as an accident or suicide or even murder—seemed the best plan. She had the deadly poison available, and this suggested the method to her. There was only one act in which she could use it and that was the magician’s. So Lola had to be the victim. Cold logic. There’s the single-minded way of the murderess, sir. The despatching of one vulgar little showgirl was nothing compared with the sullying of Albert’s reputation. Ellen Blake was a fanatic, you see. She had to deter Plunkett from going on with his show, and violence was the likeliest way of stopping him. What she hadn’t reckoned with was the er—over-riding reason why next Tuesday’s performance had to go on.’
‘We won’t go into that again,’ said Jowett, shifting in his chair. ‘I recall that I sent you to Philbeach House to investigate the death. What did you discover there?’
‘Enough to eliminate several other suspects, sir. Albert’s mother I knew couldn’t have administered the poison, because she was already up in her balloon when the conjurer’s table was brought to the wings. Albert and Mrs Body were keeping each other company at Philbeach House that evening, so I doubted whether either of ’em could escape the other to get over to Victoria. The Major was playing in the orchestra, where I kept an eye on him. That left me with Plunkett and Miss Blake, and I couldn’t see Plunkett killing the girl in his own hall, even if he had a motive. It would have put everything at risk.’
‘So you reasoned that Miss Blake was your murderess.’
‘No doubt about it, sir. I needed evidence, though, and I couldn’t get that without visiting the Paragon again to question her. That would have been contrary to orders, sir. I’m no fool.’
‘I know that, Sergeant.’
‘I reckoned that as soon as Miss Blake thought the pack was on the scent, she’d make a break for freedom. Ten to one she’d run to Albert first, and I’d be waiting there at Philbeach House to meet her.’
‘That was why you sent the Major to question Plunkett— merely to strike panic into his daughter so that she’d run into your trap.’