Doll shook her head. ‘Nah. That’s just theatre-speak. They all go to excess like that.’
Malinferno was not so certain.
‘We should not rule him out nevertheless. Who else is there with a motive?’
Doll grimaced, thinking of the exchange between Morton and the chief stagehand.
‘The obvious suspect has to be Jed Lawless.’
She told Malinferno of the incident in the wings when Morton threatened to kill Lawless, grabbing the club-footed stagehand by the scruff of his neck.
‘It was when Jed accused him of being a player of backgammon in a rather loud voice. Morton threatened him with violence, and Will had to separate them. They cooled down, but I heard more than I was supposed to when Jed stalked off. He made a threat, spoken in a whisper.’
‘What was it?’
‘“Kill me, Molly? Not before I have killed you first.”’
This time, she didn’t have to explain to Joe that ‘molly’ was a derogatory name for a man who liked to dress as a woman. The euphemism ‘playing backgammon’ had been sufficient education for him.
‘But doesn’t the same apply to Lawless as to Will Mossop? Could that not just have been all wind and bluster?’
‘Not the way he said it.’
Malinferno gathered up his garrick greatcoat, and tossed her cloak at Doll.
‘Come on.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘To the theatre, of course. I need to see the scene of the crime.’
Doll groaned, and was about to complain that the last place she wanted to go right now was the Royal Coburg. In fact, she wanted to say that she was heartily sick of the place, but Joe was already halfway down the staircase.
She called after him. ‘Go to the end of the lane, and find a Tilbury. I’m not walking there this late at night.’
The little Tilbury cab came to a halt outside the imposing front of the theatre. A mist had risen from the river, and it drifted down the Waterloo Road, turning the façade of the Royal Coburg into something from a Mary Shelley novel. Malinferno paid the cabby, and watched as the Tilbury disappeared back over the river. Despite his heavy coat, he shivered as the cab was swallowed in the swirling fog. Doll grabbed his arm.
‘Come on. It’s bleeding cold out here. Job will have a nip of something in his cubbyhole.’
‘Job?’
Doll dragged him down a dark side street that ran between Waterloo Road and Webber Street.
‘Job is the stage-door man. He always has some gin tucked away somewhere.’ She grinned. ‘I call it his little comforter.’
Malinferno groaned at the pun, but allowed himself to be led to a dingy door set deep in the recesses of the grimy brick wall at the rear of the theatre. Doll pushed it open, and it creaked theatrically.
‘Job? It’s only me, Doll Pocket. Are you there?’
There was no reply, and the little office with its window on the corridor that led backstage was empty. Doll frowned.
‘That’s odd. He should be here. He practically lives in that office.’
Malinferno glanced nervously over his shoulder. There was something eerie about an empty theatre, devoid of actors and the noise and bustle of performance.
‘Shouldn’t we just go?’
Doll laughed. ‘Nah. You wanted to see where Morton snuffed it, and see it you will. It’s only along here.’
She led the way confidently down the darkened corridor, and Malinferno followed, groping along the wall uncertainly. At the end of the corridor, which he presumed led onto the stage, there was a glimmer of light. The yellowish glow of candles. As they got closer, Doll suddenly stopped. Malinferno came up behind her.
‘What is it, Doll?’ he whispered into her ear.
‘There’s someone on the stage, and he has candles lit.’ She looked around the wings. ‘Where the hell is Job when you want him?’
Malinferno peered over Doll’s shoulder.
‘Could that be him lying in the middle of the stage?’
Doll turned her gaze where Joe had indicated, and gasped. The body of an elderly, unshaven man lay face up right where the sack had plummeted down onto Morton Stanley. She turned to Joe, and was about to speak, when he held a finger up to her lips. He pointed towards the wings on the other side of the stage. Jed Lawless limped out of the darkness, his club foot clomping on the boards. He bent over the body of the stage-door man, and peered at his face. Doll gasped involuntarily.
‘Poor Job, what’s Jed gone and done to him?’
‘It’s easy to find out,’ Malinferno responded decisively. ‘He can’t run far with his gammy leg.’
He rushed out of the wings towards the murderer. His approach surprised Jed, who fell back from the body. But just before Malinferno could grab him, the body reared up.
‘What the hell…?’
Malinferno was stunned, and stared at Job, who appeared to have come back from the dead. It was Jed who broke the deadlock.
‘What you doing here? And who are you, anyway?’
Doll emerged from the wings to settle the impasse.
‘Jed, this is Mr Malinferno. He has been to see the rehearsals, don’t you recall?’
Jed waved a dismissive hand. ‘Ahhh. I don’t have time to look out beyond the proscenium arch. I’m too busy backstage.’
Malinferno couldn’t help himself, and threw out an accusation: ‘Setting up traps to kill innocent actors?’
Lawless gaped at Malinferno, and then he barked out a derisive laugh. ‘You don’t think I did for him, do you?’
Doll added her voice to Malinferno’s. ‘You did say you would kill him before he killed you.’
The diminutive stage-hand frowned. ‘Did I? When?’
‘When you cast that slur on his masculinity, Jed.’
‘Oh, that. You mean when I called him a backgammon player and a molly.’ Lawless was unperturbed. ‘That was just talk. But if you think his murder has to do with his private proclivities, you should look at that Bankes fellow. Him what put up all that money, and got Stanley the part.’
It was Malinferno’s turn to frown.
‘William Bankes, the MP? What has he to do with Morton Stanley?’
‘I don’t know if he is a Member of Parliament or not. What I do know is that him and the molly-man was close friends.’ He winked. ‘Very close friends, if you take my meaning.’
Malinferno suddenly recalled the frosty atmosphere at an earlier rehearsal between Bankes and Stanley. The actor had deliberately snubbed Bankes. Was that the start of a row that had led to murder?
Lawless turned his back and proffered a hand to Job, who was still on the floor. The old man was having difficulty getting back to his feet, though apparently not having been murdered at all. When Doll asked what they were up to, Jed explained that he wanted to find out what had been done with the counterweight and the fatal rope. Job had been lying where Stanley had been in order to see up into the flies. The old boy turned to Lawless, and pointed upwards as if to God.
‘You were right, Jed, the pulleys have been moved.’
Jed snapped his fingers. ‘I knew it. And the counterweight reversed.’
Malinferno was puzzled. ‘Reversed?’
Lawless snorted at Malinferno’s ignorance of matters theatrical. ‘The sack should have been in the wings, and the other end hooked onto the actor, who would have been onstage. That’s how the flying rig works. We manipulate the weight in the wings and make the actor rise or descend onstage. The weight should never have been above the stage, so someone deliberately put it there, if you ask me.’
Job pointed at the chalked cross drawn on the stage.
‘Right above where Stanley was due to hit his mark.’
Doll stared at the scuffed mark, and felt a chill run down her spine. She clutched at Joe’s arm.
‘Come on, Joe. We won’t get any further standing here.’
‘But-’ Malinferno wanted to share his suspicions of William Bankes, but Doll was determined to go.
‘Come on!’
She dragged the puzzled Malinferno off the stage, leaving Jed Lawless to sort out his tangled web of ropes and pulleys. As they retraced their steps along the dark corridor leading to the stage door, Malinferno asked her what the hurry was, bursting with his new idea.