The rival queens, p.11
The Rival Queens, page 11
As the child ran off, the Countess took a step forward and grabbed the door handle. The woman let fly, pulling her away from the door. They wrestled for a moment, but the woman was large and strong and the Countess grew frightened. What if this woman and the husband had conspired together to get Mrs Lucas out of the way? And here she was at their mercy, all alone, and no one, not even Alpiew, knew she was here. She let go the handle.
‘Madam, I am afraid I must have words with Mr Lucas regarding the playhouse. It is proposed to play a benefit in his wife’s memory to provide funds for her poor child. But first I need his permission…’
The woman looked her up and down.
‘You’re not from the theatre,’ snarled the woman. ‘If you were really from the theatre you wouldn’t be here. Who are you?’
‘I am Lady Anastasia, Countess Ashby de la…’
‘Mmm,’ the woman was growing more surly by the second. ‘And I’m the Queen of Sicily. What do you want here?’
‘I need to speak to Mr Lucas.’ The Countess hoped that if she said it firmly enough the woman might give in.
‘You’re from some rag, aren’t you? Some smutty journal.’ From the back of the house came the sound of a dog yelping. Momentarily the woman turned her head.
The Countess lunged forward and thrust open the door that hid Mr Lucas. But what met her eyes was not at all what she had expected.
The floor of the room was covered in canvas, and there was no furniture at all. Blinds were pulled down across the windows, giving the room an eerie white light. In the centre of the room, sitting cross-legged on the floor, was Mr Lucas. Apart from a thick loincloth like a baby’s napkin he was naked. He was flicking at his pale skin with long fingernails.
‘Too hot. Too hot.’ He rose. ‘I must apologise. Flies, flies, flies. It always happens when it gets too hot, you understand.’ He winced. ‘Not my fault. God chose me, that’s all.’
The Countess glanced back at the woman, who shrugged, as though to say—you wanted to see him!
‘Flies! Flies! Shut the door!’ exclaimed the man. ‘If I let them out, the sky will go black. It’s a well-known fact.’
The woman closed the door and stood just inside, beside the Countess.
‘It’s the sweat, you see. It makes flies come out of me. The sweat turns all to flies.’ Mr Lucas looked up at the low grey ceiling. ‘I so wish it wouldn’t get hot. If it didn’t I wouldn’t sweat and there would be no flies. It’s all my fault. Too many flies.’
The Countess could see that the man was void and discomposed of his senses.
‘So you’ve found what you wanted to see.’ The woman whispered into the Countess’s ear. ‘Like to ask your questions now?’
‘Is it the result of losing his wife?’
‘Oh no.’ The woman let out a grim little laugh. ‘He’s been like this for years.’
The Countess suddenly wondered if she had the wrong house.
‘This was the home of Anne Lucas, the celebrated player?’
‘Oh, bonny Anne, I’m your man.’ The man rose and slowly started a strange dance. ‘Bonny Anne, quick as you can.’ He looked to the Countess and gave a winsome smile. ‘She died, you know, Anne Lucas. Not long ago. She was famed throughout the Town, I am told, but she ate too many strawberries. Strawberries in April! Whoever heard of such a thing?’ He started his rustic jig again. ‘That’ll teach her. Poor Anne, catch her if you can, hit her with your fan, Anne, Anne, Anne!’ He started swatting wildly at the air. The woman moved forward and with well-practised dexterity sat him down again.
‘I’m sorry.’ The Countess touched the woman gently on the arm. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘So you’re certainly not from the playhouse then?’ The woman marched them both out of the room and along towards the garden. ‘They all know about it there. She lived out here to keep it quiet from the public.’
‘They all know at the theatre?’ The Countess was mystified. As far as she was concerned, the picture that had been drawn of Anne Lucas was that she lived in cosy domestic harmony. ‘You are telling me the players know that Mr Lucas has lost his senses?’
They walked out into the garden, where Jack was throwing sticks, playing with a large dog. The woman pointed the Countess to a bench.
‘Some of them.’ The woman nodded as she sat. ‘There’s that smug Cibber fellow. He took advantage of the situation a year or two back. Thought Anne needed a bit of “affection”, he called it.’
‘And that termagant, Rebecca Montagu. She knew, all right. Came out here a couple of times. Always left Anne in tears, every time. I didn’t take to her at all.’
‘Anyone else?’
‘The manager knew too. He had to, being her employer.’
The Countess tried to remember everything she had witnessed. Not one of the playhouse people had painted a picture of anything but domestic bliss.
‘Don’t look so surprised. Mrs Lucas was a wise little thing. Had her head on her shoulders…’ The woman put her hand to her mouth and gasped. ‘Forgive the expression. But she was coping. In her way. She earned enough money to keep them all, and pay for me.’
‘You are his nurse?’
‘The child’s nurse only. Mrs Lucas insisted on nursing the poor deluded man herself.’
They both looked toward the shuttered window behind which the lunatic was gently crooning his song about flies. ‘He’s quiet now. But he can get violent. Accidentally so when he is stampeding after the flies.’
‘You don’t think he could have…’
‘Killed his wife?’ The woman gave a wry shrug. ‘He could have, if the deed had been done here. But he never leaves this house, that room. And when she wasn’t here to keep an eye on him, I was. And that dreadful night he was definitely here with me and Jack. His madness that night was at boiling point. It was as though he knew before we did, poor soul. He wept and wept.’
‘What will happen to him now?’
‘He is to be removed to Bethlehem Hospital.’
‘And the child?’
‘Unless some funds turn up, the parish will take him.’
‘And you? Mrs…?’
‘Mrs Leigh.’
‘Where will you live?’
‘I have relatives in Newgate Market. And I will be looking for employment thereabouts.’
‘And when she sees
That to my arm her ruin she must owe,
Her thankful head will straight be bended low,
Her heart shall leap half way to meet the blow.’
The Empress Roxana swept from the stage. In the scenery wings she transformed back into Rebecca and at once cuffed Alpiew across the ear. ‘I am trying to give a performance here, woman.’ She snatched her skirt from Alpiew’s grip. ‘With you traipsing around behind me like a petrified looby, I suspect they took me for a Bedlamite, or worse.’ She took a step, then turned. ‘And you will remember from what I told you of the play that I do not become distracted until the next scene.’
She stomped off towards the tiring room. As she reached the door she gave a little gasp, and Alpiew raced after her to see what was wrong.
A shabbily dressed man stood before them. ‘Oh, Mrs Montagu! I am lost for words.’
‘I am not,’ said Alpiew, striding in and gripping the man by the elbow. ‘This is the ladies’ tiring room. You should not be in here.’
‘Let me be. ’Tis Mrs Montagu I came to see.’ The man shook Alpiew off. He held his hat in his hands, and looked up coyly. ‘I wondered if you would consent to be my wife.’
Alpiew looked at Rebecca. Her face revealed no recognition, rather a gruesome horror.
Holding firmly to the architrave of the door, Rebecca spoke quietly and firmly: ‘I do not know you, sir.’
‘Yes you do, Becky.’ He smiled and shuffled on the spot. ‘It’s me. You know me. I always sit on the front bench in the pit. Every play you are in. You often shoot me a smile.’
Alpiew gasped. This fellow was a queer cove and no mistaking. He thought that because he recognised Rebecca, Rebecca should recognise him. Alpiew changed her tactic.
‘Jeremy, isn’t it?’ Any name would do, if it would prompt him.
‘No.’ The man shook his head angrily. ‘Nickum.’
‘Of course. Now, Nickum, you won’t want to miss the end of the play. Mrs Montagu goes back on for the big scene in the last act. You should be out in the pit, sir, or you will miss her. She will be winking especially for you.’
‘Really?’ He smiled. ‘It’s not a trick?’
‘Why would I trick you?’ Alpiew laughed. ‘You are Mrs Montagu’s very special friend in the audience.’
Nickum gave Rebecca penetrating look. Rebecca returned it with a little bob of the head.
‘Come along, Nickum,’ said Alpiew. ‘You know she must prepare for her next scene. Her cue is almost upon us. I’ll escort you to the door and you can make your own way round. I will be looking out for you.’
After he had gone Alpiew tried to calm Rebecca. ‘You yourself told me all sorts of people came backstage, invited or no.’
‘See, my face is falling off! This is dreadful cheap addition.’ Rebecca stood before the glass, dabbing at her make-up with a damp sponge. She took a brush and re-applied white to her forehead, then drew the eyebrows on again. ‘I have seen him before. I recognised him instantly.’
‘From the pit?’
‘No, not here.’ Rebecca applied a brush dipped into the red pot of addition to her lips. ‘But he was there outside York Buildings, on the night. When I was quarrelling with Anne, I remember seeing him, face squeezed against the glass of the window into the foyer…’
Alpiew thought back. She too felt she had seen him. He was the man who had jostled Cibber when they were waiting to go in.
The two women stood in the tiring room silently searching their memories for moments of that terrible night. The silence was resounding.
‘You have missed your cue, Mrs Montagu.’ A scenery man dashed into the tiring room. ‘Mr Cibber is giving a piece of his well-rehearsed extemporanea.’
Pulling at her hair and dress to resemble a woman who had lost her senses, Rebecca Montagu snatched up her skirts and dashed for the stage.
‘The dagger?’ She turned in a frenzy. ‘Where is the dagger?’
Alpiew grabbed it from the properties bench and ran after her.
‘Alpiew, you were diabolical!’ The Countess shook her head. ‘I have seen bad players in my time, but you! I’d as soon see a monkey holding Rebecca Montagu’s skirts as you.’
The Countess made it back to Drury Lane Playhouse for the final moments of the last act. She saw Alpiew’s last scene. To her astonishment she observed that Alpiew seemed to spend much of the time glancing down at her own cleavage. The Countess marvelled at her. Here she had an opportunity to shine on stage in the famous King’s Company and all she did was admire her own figure!
They had both walked Rebecca and Sarah home to German Street, then made their excuses. The Countess told Rebecca she had to pop in and visit the Duchesse du Pigalle, her best friend, who lived a few streets away and who was suffering from a quinsy.
In fact she had no intention of visiting Pigalle, and couldn’t even if she wanted to as the Duchesse was in France for a month overseeing her vineyards. Instead, leaving Rebecca in Godfrey’s care, the Countess needed to talk to Alpiew alone. The two women now sat on a bench in St James’s Square. Dusk was falling, and boys came to light the newly contrived street lights that hung around the grand square.
‘What do we do about finding Anne Lucas’s murderer?’ asked Alpiew, anxious to change the subject from her own performance that afternoon.
‘While you were cavorting about on stage, I took the opportunity to visit Mr Lucas.’
Alpiew’s eyes opened wide. ‘And…?’
‘He is stark mad. And in my opinion would have been incapable of perpetrating an act of murder upon his wife. But seeing him made me understand that in the players we have a bunch of lying, dissimulating toads who are incapable of telling the truth. They conspired to spin us a web of deceit regarding the domestic bliss of Mr and Mrs Lucas.’
‘So we have not really narrowed down our search.’
‘Far from it, Alpiew dear. As they say at Newmarket on race day: the field is open. Have you paper and pencil?’
Alpiew pulled these implements from her pocket.
‘Let us sketch out the order of events that fateful night.’
‘First Anne Lucas arrives late.’
‘“O molti problemi in casa…” Well, we understand what she meant by that now. The lunatic husband.’
‘Then Rebecca and Anne Lucas quarrelled, with Lampone between. Rebecca threatened to leave, but as Anne made her way to the stage, Rebecca took a seat in the audience.’
‘Why?’ The Countess clapped her hands together. ‘Why did she stay to watch? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘The performance starts and is brought to an abrupt and deliberate end by Rebecca.’
‘An interval is called, and from now our paths diverge: I sit by the river for a while. Then the contemptible Tityre-tus sweep by and remove my wig and the gingerbread man comes to my assistance. I peek into the auditorium just in time to see Rebecca Montagu’s bloody entrance. You?’
‘I returned to the auditorium,’ said Alpiew. ‘Seeing that, like you, many of the spectators had vacated their seats, I moved forward to get a better view. After a short pause, Lampone came back on to the stage, and talked in detail about the theory of the Passions.’
‘Where did Anne go?’
‘She was seen getting into a coach…’
‘Seen by whom?’
‘The Italian.’
‘So in fact we cannot know if it was the truth,’ said the Countess. ‘If he had killed Mrs Lucas he could fudge it by saying that. Where was Cibber all the while?’
‘Everywhere. Onstage, offstage, mingling with the audience…’
‘So if Mrs Lucas was killed between us being dismissed from the auditorium and Rebecca’s re-entrance with the bloody hands, it could have been…’
‘Any of them!’ Alpiew picked them off on her fingers: ‘Lampone, Cibber, Rebecca…’
‘The gingerbread man, the Tityre-tus…’
‘The mad phanatique, Nickum. In fact, any member of the audience.’ Alpiew let out a long sigh. ‘Or the coachman, and it come to that.’
‘How about all three of them, together? Rebecca, Lampone and Cibber.’
‘But they seem to hate one another.’
‘And Rebecca of all of them seemed to hate Anne the most.’ The Countess shuddered. ‘And where is she now? In my house in German Street. Probably plotting how she can murder us all in our beds. At least Godfrey has the right idea. He simply won’t acknowledge her presence, hoping to freeze her out.’
‘Perhaps we should do the same.’
‘And risk her throwing me into Newgate?’
‘Or worse,’ Alpiew shook her head, ‘her wrath. She likes to strike when she is roused.’
‘I have another story about that bunch of unruly renegadoes the Tityre-tus. A couple of those ungodly boys passed me today, riding horses that they had obviously stolen. I was told by the kind farrier who gave me a ride back into town that one of them rode the horse he had stolen smack into a tree just past the Tottenham Court turnpike. Killed the horse on impact, and the boy himself was carted off to St Bartholomew’s Hospital.’
‘I hate the Tityre-tus!’ exclaimed Alpiew. ‘Lord Rakewell is lucky enough to have a solid alibi. Being prisoner in the Tower I think gets him off the hook.’
‘They managed to throw my wig right up to the window sill of…’ The Countess put her hand to her mouth and let out a little shriek. ‘Pepys! The man will take me for an ill-mannerly brute. I never returned for my plate of tripes.’
‘Who is this Pepys, whose name you keep exclaiming?’
‘Oh, Samuel Pepys. He’s someone I knew from years ago. He lives beside the Music Room at York Buildings. He’s an old navy man. A quill-pusher, not even an actual sailor.’
‘Maybe he saw something that night?’
‘He’s practically blind.’ The Countess cocked her head. ‘But he did talk of hearing a noise.’
‘Shall we go and talk to him?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Nine of the clock on a fair cold evening.’ A night-watchman had come into the Square. He ambled round looking up at the well-lit windows. ‘And all is well.’
‘Nine o’clock!’ The Countess jumped up. ‘We’d better get home.’
As they pushed through the German Street front door, the first thing that hit them was the smell.
‘I’m afeared, Alpiew,’ said the Countess, creeping forward towards the kitchen. ‘What can have happened?’
‘I cannot imagine, milady.’ Alpiew slid in front of her. ‘It smells like the inside of an expensive ordinary.’
‘I know. It is the most delicious aroma,’ said the Countess. ‘But we both know that Godfrey cannot cook.’
Alpiew edged the kitchen door open. Both women gasped at the picture of domestic harmony before them. Godfrey, washed and brushed, sat upright at the table, which had been cleared of papers and was nicely laid. Sarah was up at the window re-hanging the previously yellowish curtains, which were now an astonishing shade of white, and Rebecca was crouched over a set of pots that swung over the fire.
The steam that wafted from those pots was more aromatic than those exuding from Locket’s diner.
‘I have had Sarah go out and buy half a dozen different bottles from Widow Pickering’s as I was not sure of your taste,’ said Rebecca, indicating a row of bottles on the sideboard. ‘There’s Barbados Water, Black curaçao, Hungary water, Persicot, some Rhenish, and for afterwards some spirit of Clary.’
The Countess and Alpiew were rooted to the spot. Their heads turned and they stared at the row of alcoholic beverages.
‘As for dinner: to start,’ said Rebecca, removing her apron, ‘ I have prepared Kink.’
‘Kink?’ said Godfrey with a hopeful sparkle in his eye, as Sarah bent down to pick up another curtain, thereby exposing inches of cleavage at his eye level. He let out a contented grunt.
