The rehearsal had started without Jed, and the boy with the glasses was just about coping on his own. But the next scene was ‘The Fall of Man’, and required the Garden of Eden backcloth and the hip bath. The boy scurried on stage and pushed the heavy bath roughly into position. Doll, in her thin muslin gown, stepped into it, and Morton Stanley kneeled behind it. There was a pause while everyone waited for the Garden of Eden to descend. It didn’t, and Mossop called out to the boy to set the correct backcloth. His head popped out from the wrong side of the stage, his face red, and his glasses askew. Then he rushed across stage into the opposite wing-space where all the ropes were cleated up. There was a short pause. Then a squeal of pain rang out from the wings, quickly followed by a strange whirring sound, fast and high-pitched. Doll was half-aware of something large descending from above, and she instinctively closed her eyes and flinched, throwing her arms over her head. There followed a huge thump, and the stage under the bath shook as though from an earthquake. A snake-like form draped itself suddenly over Doll’s upraised arms, and she screamed, struggling to cast it off as it wrapped itself around her. When her scream stopped, a deathly silence hung over the theatre for a long moment.
She opened her eyes to see a cloud of dust rising around her. She coughed, choking on it, and fought the snake that had entangled her. It turned out it was merely a rope, and she pushed it off her, grasping the side of the bath. Beside the bath was the humped form of a filled sack, the sort of sack used as a counterweight to a human body in the flying device. This time, though, an actor was not at the other end of the rope. It now lay on the floor, where Doll had cast it. A body, however, did lie underneath the heavy, sand-filled sack that had plummeted from the heavens. It was the body of Morton Stanley and, judging by the blood that was seeping from under the sack and being absorbed by some of the sand that burst from it, the actor was dead.
Doll heard a whimpering noise coming from the wings. She clambered out of the bath, and ran across the stage. Everyone else seemed stunned into immobility by the catastrophe. In the darkness, she could just make out a small shape – someone kneeling in front of the morass of ropes leading down to the cleats on the wall. It was the bespectacled boy – Doll was ashamed she didn’t even know his name – and he twisted round, holding out his hands to her. She could see that the skin on his palms was red and torn.
‘The rope just ran through my hands, lady,’ he blubbered. ‘It should not have been that heavy. It was only the back-cloth.’ He looked up at her with reddened eyes. ‘What happened?’
Doll grimaced, thinking the poor boy had made a mistake. He had been hurried into doing a job he knew nothing about, and had dropped the counterweight.
‘It was the wrong rope, lad.’
This was Will Mossop’s voice coming from the stage. It shook with anger and emotion. The boy looked up at Doll, ashen-faced.
‘It wasn’t, lady. Look. The cleats are all marked.’ He pointed at the clear, hand-painted black letters on the cleat that no longer had a rope attached. The deadly rope. Doll read the letters: ‘US3.’
‘Upstage backcloth number three,’ the boy explained.
Mossop by now was in the wings too. He strode over to the cleats, and yanked on the rope secured round the next cleat to US3. Following the angle of the rope as it soared into the flies, both Mossop and Doll could see the Garden of Eden backcloth shuddering in response to his tug on its rope. Mossop pointed at the cleat the backcloth was on.
‘FL1. Fly one. The ropes have got crossed over. This is Jed Lawless’s fault.’
Doll peered back onto the stage, where a small knot of actors stood around the heavy sack.
‘Is Morton…?’
Mossop nodded.
‘Dead for sure. I shall have to call for the magistrate, but it is surely nothing more than a tragic accident.’
Doll was about to offer a different opinion, but saw the far-off look in Will’s eyes. She knew he was already thinking of the implications for the play. She took his arm and drew him to one side, casting a glance at the whimpering boy.
‘Will, look after the boy.’
Mossop shook his head, as though trying to clear his thoughts.
‘What? Oh, Tom, you mean? Yes, I will get a doctor to put some salve on his hands. He will be fine.’ He looked at his disconsolate band of actors onstage, then at Doll.
‘You had all better wait for the magistrate, and when he is finished, you can all go home. I will send a message round telling what I propose to do when I know myself.’
Doll could see her chance at stardom slipping away. But for now there were other matters to deal with, and she didn’t propose to be held up by some interfering magistrate. She threw a cloak over her diaphanous shift, slipped out the stage door of the theatre, and called a cab.
‘Morton Stanley has been murdered?’
Malinferno had reacted in shock at Doll’s pronouncement. Bromhead’s dire prediction was still uppermost in his mind, and now it seemed the warning had not been for nothing. He was pacing the landing that separated their two rooms, trying to convince himself that it wasn’t so. He called out to Doll, who was changing into something more decent in the bedroom.
‘Couldn’t it have been an accident? If the kid released the wrong rope, then it was just unlucky that Stanley was underneath the sack of sand.’
Doll stepped out of the bedroom, and would have spoken, but she noticed that their landlady, Mrs Stanhope, was hovering at the bottom of the staircase all agog, so she steered Joe back into their living room. She closed the door, and leaned against it. Her bosom, now clad in more demure white cotton, heaved.
‘It was no accident. The boy knew what he was doing, and chose what should have been the correct rope.’
Malinferno frowned, still unconvinced.
‘He wore spectacles, didn’t he? That may have caused his confusion.’
‘No. He chose the correct cleat. But the ropes had been switched, and I think it was done deliberately.’
‘Who would have cause to murder Morton Stanley?’
Doll barked out a laugh. ‘Nearly everyone who had been in the theatre the previous day. Percy Tristram and Morton have been at each other’s throats for years, apparently. Percy used to get the leads, but now he’s older and fatter, Morton has replaced him. He gets Morton’s goat by calling him Stan. It seems that when he started out on the boards, Morton Stanley was plain Stan Morton. When his star began to wax, he suddenly emerged as Morton Stanley. Percy doesn’t let him forget the old days.’
Malinferno held up a cautionary finger at this point. ‘Yes, but if they have been old enemies, why kill him now, and so openly, too?’
Doll sighed. ‘The very same thought had occurred to me. And I can’t give you an explanation. But it had to be someone theatrical, who knew about all the ropes and pulleys.’
‘Will Mossop must know.’
‘What makes you think Will murdered Morton?’
Malinferno recalled the rehearsal he had attended when Stanley’s ineptitude had driven Mossop to distraction.
‘He actually said to me something about wanting to get rid of him if he could. I can recall his very words. He said, “In fact I would murder him, if only I had a replacement.”’