Harwood nodded. “Of course. He has a room in Charles Street, a moment away. He would have taken up residence in the theater itself, if I had allowed it.”
Harriet looked up at Crowther’s thin, frowning face. “You wish me to remain here and speak to Isabella after the third act, sir?”
“If that is acceptable, madam.”
Harriet managed to resist the temptation to roll her eyes. “Naturally. I will send the girls home, and you must come and collect me when you are done turning over Bywater’s rooms.”
Harwood opened the door to the box and bowed Crowther out, then bowed Miss Trench and Miss Chase back in, each with an orange in their hand and sparkling with good humor. They found Harriet hunched over, too busy with her thoughts to speak to them and her fingers rapping on her skirts.
Jocasta was almost spitting with impatience when Molloy reached her. He swaggered up and grinned at her mirthlessly.
“Not got your familiars with you tonight, Mrs. Bligh?”
“Never mind that, Molloy. You got no mind to the hour? I’ve been waiting for you for longer than I like.”
He winked. “I’ve got a good mind for the time, never you worry. It’s just my little test like. If you ain’t willing to wait, you ain’t got a serious eye to the business, and if you ain’t got a serious eye, then I’m not about to risk sticking my head in a noose for you.”
“You could have found some other way, you dog.”
“Watch your mouth,” he said, though his voice was still mild enough, just rough with pipe smoke and old beer. “Now where are these doors you need to ghost through?”
Harriet could not have said at what moment the atmosphere in the auditorium began to change. The crowd had chattered or applauded its way through some piece or other from the pit and spat out sunflower-seed shells onto the sawdust on the pit floor for a period, till softly the whispering began to change its tone. Harriet looked up, seeing what was around her for the first time in some minutes. The occupants of the boxes looked irritable and a number of the ladies were hiding yawns behind their fans. The musicians were exchanging shrugs and shaking their heads. Those on the upper part of the gallery began to clap, slow and regular, a few at first, then more and more joined till the walls seemed to shake with the regular rhythm of it. One or two ladies began to follow the beat with their closed fans rapping on the velvet lips of their boxes. Harriet was confused; Rachel leaned over to her to explain.
“The third act should have begun some time ago.”
The pace of the handclap began to accelerate. Harriet found herself beginning to stand, a confused wonder and fear crawling up her spine. The thud of the clapping reached a frenzied climax and collapsed. Catcalls, whistles and shouted complaints began to echo around the walls in its place.
“Rachel, Miss Chase. .” Harriet said slowly. “I think you should go home at once. Send the carriage back for us when you are safe at Berkeley Square.”
It was Rachel’s turn to look confused. “But Harriet-”
Before she could say any more, there was a scream. A woman’s voice, full of rage and grief, poured into the air and scorched it silent. The voice came from somewhere in the wings. For a moment everything was still, then as if the touch of the sound had burned the skin of the audience, everyone began to shout at once. Other feminine cries of distress around the theater echoed the first. Harriet found herself unable to move. On the stage below them, arranged as for a temple with a sea glittering blue in the back, Mr. Harwood staggered out and approached the footlights. His arms raised for quiet.
The flames threw strange shadows up his face and over his arms, and made his shape huge and crowlike on the canvas seascape behind him.
“Ladies and gentlemen-please!” The noise level ebbed away and the audience leaned forward. Harriet found her hands were trembling. “Tonight’s performance of Julius Rex cannot, I am afraid, continue. . One of our performers is no longer able-”
The scream came again, vicious and angry. Harwood paused, his arms still raised, and looked off stage. He seemed terrified, like a man who finds himself fallen suddenly into hell. From the wings a figure in gray crawled forward.
“Morgan,” Harriet whispered through dry lips.
The figure screamed again and lifted her hands; her voice when she spoke was hardly human. “Who has murdered my songbird?” It asked raging and blind. “Who has killed my Issy?” Her hands were caught in the lights. They were red with blood.
Pandemonium. Harwood unfroze and dropped to his knees and put his arms around the stricken woman, trying to help her offstage again. The musicians all stood and craned their necks to look up. The entire theater was full of cries and weeping, every man and woman on their feet and hurrying to be somewhere but knowing not where or how to flee the horror of it. Harriet spun round to the white faces of her sister and friend.
“Lock the door behind me. Stay here until the theater has emptied-the crush could be deadly-then go. Do not wait for me.” Rachel had started to sob. Harriet hesitated, but met Miss Chase’s cool gray eyes.
Verity took Rachel’s hands firmly in her own, and said in a voice steadier than Harriet’s, “Go, Mrs. Westerman. I’ll look after Rachel.” And when Harriet still wavered, Verity stood up and opened the door of the box.
“For the love of God, Harriet, go!” Harriet ran out and, gathering her skirts, dashed down the corridor and toward the artists’ apartments as if the devil himself were at her heels.
8
Harriet pushed open the doors at the end of the corridor, and escaping the pandemonium of the auditorium, found herself in the chaos of the backstage. She fought her way past the Roman women of the chorus weeping and fainting and holding each up in small groups. The god she had watched descend from the clouds at the opening of the scene sat on a plaster boulder in his costume, his Olympian wreath bent out of shape and his heavy makeup running. He rocked from side to side. Manzerotti suddenly appeared beside her and took her arm. He still wore gold, though his magnificent plumes he held now in his hand.
“Mrs. Westerman. God be praised.” His black eyes had a glitter to them, and there was sweat on his upper lip. “Come with me.” He took her arm and dragged her through the crowds and across the stage. The auditorium was still breaking under waves of noise. He dragged her just behind the side panel stage right and released her.
Harwood was on his knees, his head in his hands. In front of him, like a mockery of the Pieta, Morgan knelt, Isabella’s body hauled up across her thighs and chest. There was blood everywhere, blackening the blue satin of her bodice and skirts. Only her face and neck were clean of it, though they were heavy with her stage makeup: the skin dead white, her open eyes heavily lined, her mouth wide with red paint. Her natural hair had escaped its pins and fell in black about her temples. Harriet noticed the diamonds in her ears.
Getting down on her knees, Harriet crept toward them, as if approaching a holy and dreadful thing.
“Morgan?”
The old woman’s head flicked up and stared at her. Harriet crept closer and put her hand around Isabella’s wrist. Still warm. “Morgan? It’s Harriet Westerman. What happened?”
Morgan shifted her grip on the girl’s body, holding it still closer to her with a keening whine, and continued to rock her. Her face was flushed and so flooded with tears her skin seemed honey-glazed. She touched Isabella’s cheek with a fingertip, then seeing that she had dirtied the skin with blood, tried to wipe the mark off with her sleeve, smearing Isabella’s rouge.
“Morgan? Can you tell me what happened?” Harriet found herself becoming oddly calm. The other clamor of the place dropped away. There was just her in the world and these two women, one dead, one grieving for the dead. She looked swiftly along the length of the body. Two wounds. One in her belly that had bled hard and fast. The other was a neat straight line above her heart. It had hardly bled at all.