The maid of lindal hall, p.27
The Maid of Lindal Hall, page 27
Then finally, the performance drew to a close.
Symonds bowed to his audience, drawing off an imaginary hat, just has he had done the first time Molly had met him.
‘We players have strutted and fretted our hour upon the stage, ladies and gentlemen, but we cannot leave until we give you just two scenes from perhaps the greatest and most tragical love story ever written – Romeo and Juliet.’
Symonds played the first scene alone, Romeo as a fretful adolescent, addressing his absent friend Benvolio. With a sharp intake of breath, Molly heard the words, ‘Alas that love, whose view is muffled still, should without eyes see pathways to his will.’ Despite herself, she looked at Mark, for there it was again, that reference to blindness. His face was turned to hers, his lips slightly open. She saw him mouth something. It looked like her name, but she couldn’t be sure and she did not know if he even knew she was looking at him.
A flurry of soft-soled activity took place as the scene came to an end. Daniel and Herbert were manoeuvring an old stepladder into place at stage left. Up this Cedric Boxall climbed, hitching up his skirts with one hand, revealing a very male pair of shoes and socks. Daniel hurriedly propped a piece of stage set against the stepladder, painted to resemble an old stone wall with a balustrade atop. Settled at the top of this, Mr Boxall looked like an exotic bird perched on a nest. But as Mr Symonds began his lines, the illusion was complete. He was no longer a middle-aged actor but an ardent boy, and his Juliet a tremulous maiden prepared to defy anything and anyone for the man she loved. Molly saw the usually lugubrious Mr Slaney dab his eyes with a dazzlingly white handkerchief. Mrs Schwartz was doing the same. Molly could make out the gleam of tears on Joan’s face. She heard Mark sigh and realised she was crying herself. Juliet looked down at her lover and said with almost unbearable gentleness:
*
‘My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.’
*
She felt Mark’s hand cover her own, his fingers curling around hers. ‘Molly?’ she heard him whisper urgently against fervent applause. The two actors were taking their final bow.
‘I’m here, Mark,’ she said, looking up at him.
Right at that moment Anty stretched, took a deep breath, and howled.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Kensington Gore
Mrs Schwartz said her goodbyes at the station on the day after the performance.
‘Double-entry bookkeeping,’ she said to Molly. ‘It calls to me just as the footlights call these two gentlemen.’
‘“Go, girl, seek happy nights to happy days”,’ quoted Symonds.
‘I’ll remind you I’m no girl,’ said Mrs Schwartz, ‘and that I’m travelling London Midland Scottish. You’ll see me again at the end of the week in any case.’
‘“Journeys end in lovers meeting”,’ said Symonds.
‘Incorrigible man! I’m far too busy for any of that.’ She turned to Molly. ‘The play was the thing, wasn’t it?’ she said. With that, she made a last adjustment to the tilt of her panama in her reflection in the window of the carriage and hopped on board.
*
Two days after Mr Symonds’s triumph in the abbey infirmary chapel, he, Mr Boxall, Mark and Joan were assembled in the library of the Hall to drink a solemn toast to the memory of Anthony Gascarth. Confronted with his dead landlord’s books, however, Symonds was uncharacteristically subdued.
‘I knew your husband to be a perceptive man, Mrs Gascarth. I valued his opinion on my productions – those plays I directed in particular. I had not realised quite how cultivated a man he was until now, looking at his shelves. He was always anxious about how his books should be cared for; he said as much. I remember his relief when he told me about you – that he had found a treasure. A treasure greater than he realised at first. I know you will love and esteem him always, but I pray you do not immolate yourself alive in his memory in some emotional version of suttee.’
‘There is my baby.’
‘There is, but I was thinking of you, not only of him.’ He patted her hand. ‘Boxall and I should make our farewells, but in the hope that you and Mrs Caulfield will come to visit us again soon in the Smoke. Mrs Bonelli depends on it. The best box in our theatre will, of course, be set aside for our visitors, if you can bear to pass an evening in the company of the poor players. Ah – that reminds me. There will soon be a vacancy for a waiter at that fine establishment at which Mrs Schwartz put up. We have lured Herbert Lowther away and he will join us as a stagehand as soon as he has worked his notice. I rather wanted him for my dresser, only the man I have has given no cause for complaint . . .’ Symonds’s voice lowered confidentially. ‘And Mr Boxall was violently averse to the idea. One cannot imagine why. Did you say our coats were upstairs? Needs must and Bradshaw is inflexible.’
‘I’ll get them.’
‘No, no, Boxall and I will retrieve them. I rather think Mr Fagan would like a word.’
He did, though it was simply about tuning the Broadwood. He and Joan were staying on to supper, with the plan that he and Molly might play duets afterwards. But it was just after the two actors had gone upstairs that a thundering knock was heard; Mrs Jepson went to answer.
Symonds and Boxall missing their train was the least consequence of what happened next.
‘Get out of it, you!’ yelled Mrs Jepson. ‘In’t you done enough harm?’
Molly paled. ‘Must be that reporter back,’ she said to Joan. ‘You’d think—’
What Molly thought was drowned in Mrs Jepson’s enraged shriek and the shouts that followed.
‘Molly Ashworth! Come out Molly Ashworth, or whatever you call yourself!’
Norman Ashworth pushed past Mrs Jepson. He fixed pale, watery eyes on Molly where she stood in the doorway of the library, clutching Joan’s arm. He swayed, taking an uncertain step forward. It was immediately apparent to Molly that their visitor was much the worse for drink. She heard the swish of Mark’s stick behind her, finding his way towards the noise, and wished he would stay back. How can he defend himself against a drunk?
‘Come and greet your long-lost brother, then! Half-brother, I should say. My sainted mother never went round murdering folk!’ Fumes of alcohol came off him in nauseating gusts. He peered at Joan, then again at Molly.
‘You, in’t it? That other one is too plain to be any kin of mine.’
Before Molly could answer this, an enraged Mrs Jepson had run up behind Norman Ashworth and whacked him across the shoulders with a warming pan. He spun round.
‘You’ll be sorry for that, you old hag!’
‘Already am!’ yelled Mrs Jepson. ‘I was going for your head, I was.’
Ashworth gave the cook a great shove, sending her sprawling as the warming pan clattered on the flagstones. He turned back to Molly and Joan. ‘Aw right? It’s money I want, and I know you’re not short of it. Call it blood money if you like, but it’s mine. Up in the bedrooms is where folk usually have it. Oh – who’s this?’
‘Let me pass,’ said Mark, behind Molly’s shoulder.
‘Best you can do?’ jeered Ashworth. ‘A moudiwarp? Fine job he’ll do picking me out of an identity parade. Anyway, I’m a busy man, so keep well out of my way all of you if you know what’s good for you.’ That was when Ashworth produced his knife. Molly and Joan shrank back as the intruder went for the stairs.
‘Where’s Mr Symonds?’ whispered Molly.
*
What happened next took Sergeant Burch some time to disentangle. There was what Mrs Jepson had to say, though her evidence could not be got at straightaway owing to the mild concussion she had suffered from striking her head on the floor. Molly told the policeman how she had pleaded with Mark to stay back, warning him that the intruder had a knife. But he was determined to follow Ashworth.
‘I’ll strike it out of his hand with my stick,’ he’d said, groping his way to the banister rail.
What everyone was in agreement with was the origin and effect of the bloodcurdling laughter that met Ashworth when he reached the first floor.
‘What the bloody hell was that?’ The drunk man spun round as Mark began his steady ascent, his stick swishing flick – flack on the ancient oak treads. The laughter was repeated, followed by what appeared to be a distressed female voice, albeit somewhat alto in pitch.
‘You have wounded me, sir!’
The maniacal laughter was louder this time. From below Molly saw Ashworth’s eyes bulge like a frightened horse’s. He was transfixed by something she couldn’t see – something at his feet. His lips quivering in terror, he backed his way further up the staircase.
Molly found her voice. ‘Don’t go up there, Mr Ashworth! Don’t!’
‘Fiends, all of you!’ shrieked Ashworth, his voice high with fear.
‘Turn around, Mr Ashworth!’
‘And be stabbed in the back by bloody Lon Chaney?’
Mark was to say afterwards that if he hadn’t had hold of the banister rail as it doglegged on the landing then he would surely have slipped in the dark liquid that oozed across the boards. Years of negotiating his way around in darkness had taught him caution. He slithered, losing his stick, but held tight to the ancient oak under his left hand. He paused, for the first time regretting his obstinacy in trying to take on a man he couldn’t see but whose laboured breathing he could hear a couple of feet above where he stood. He knew the stick was somewhere close by, yet it hadn’t clattered when it fell from his hand. It had made an odd, viscous, sucking sound. Mark wondered what on earth that liquid was he was standing in.
*
As Mark told Sergeant Burch afterwards, sitting at the great table, the only thing he could think to do was to continue.
‘You get a sense for the size of a man, you know, from his voice, even if you can’t see him. I’d taken him for a bit of a runt, if I’m honest, though a drunk runt can be another matter altogether. I knew about the knife, right enough, but I reckoned there wasn’t much Ashworth could do to me that I hadn’t faced in the trenches.’
‘He’d been inside for grievous bodily harm,’ the policeman said. ‘Missed the other fellow’s lung by an inch. So you kept going, you said. What were the others doing, so far as you could tell?’
‘From her voice I’d say Mrs Gascarth was still at the foot of the stairs, yelling at Ashworth to not go any further. I couldn’t hear Mrs Caulfield by then. I think she must have gone to help Mrs Jepson. I heard later he’d knocked the poor lady over. Or perhaps she’d gone to the baby. He was in his pram in the entrance hall – he somehow managed to sleep through everything, until the doctor turned up. I heard Mr Symonds come out onto the landing. He said something like “Oh dearie me! Do duck your nut, sir,” or words to that effect. But Ashworth swore at him, told him to keep back. That laugh Mr Symonds made, that had rattled him – it rattled all of us. And then I heard that awful crack – and the tumble after. Ashworth came to rest by my feet, but there was no sound out of him after that. If he’d rolled any further, he’d have tipped me downstairs.’
‘Thank you, Mr Fagan. I’ll give you a lift back to Hardwick Street when I’ve finished here – it was Hardwick Street you said, wasn’t it?’ said Burch, flicking back through his notebook.
‘That’s right, sir.’
‘I expect it’s a coincidence, but I wasn’t long in the force when I was called to a disturbance there, involving a man called Fagan. One of our regular customers, you might say. Chap turned out to be a sheikh and got two years for it.’
‘A sheikh?’
‘Our way of speaking in the station. A bigamist.’
‘Fagan is a common enough name,’ said Mark, stiffly. ‘There’s nobody I know of with a story like that in Hardwick Street now.’
‘I should think not,’ said Burch. ‘Word was that he went back on the boat after he was let out. So he’s either dead by now or he’s the Royal Ulster Constabulary’s problem. But as I say, a coincidence.’
*
‘I realise this is distressing for you, Mrs Gascarth – for it to happen in your own home, and all,’ said the sergeant. ‘But tell me again, did anyone at any time lay a finger on Mr Ashworth?’
‘Only Mrs Jepson with the warming pan. All that red stuff on his clothes was just the pretend blood they use for the melodramas. I really don’t know why Mr Symonds had got it with him. I mean, there wasn’t any blood needed for the performance in the abbey.’
‘Hmm. The pathologist will establish soon enough that it’s not real blood. So you said Ashworth kept going up even though you were telling him to come down?’
‘It was a strange thing to do, wasn’t it? Put in a staircase that runs up into a ceiling?’
‘It’s a rum house you’ve got anyway, Mrs Gascarth, but that’s the rummest thing about it. I’ll not put it in my notes, but to my mind it’s as if the house wanted to defend you.’
‘Or revenge my poor husband,’ said Molly slowly. ‘But I wish it hadn’t happened. I know it doesn’t make sense, but when I could see what was coming it’s as if everything was in slow motion.’
‘Go on.’
‘I mean, I could see what was going to happen but I couldn’t get the words out. Then there was that terrible crack. Just to think of it puts my teeth on edge. Mr Ashworth never cried out, or groaned, or anything like that. He just tumbled. He sounded exactly like when the coalman called to Roose Road, and emptied his sack down the chute. He rolled onto Mr Fagan’s feet. If he hadn’t still been holding onto the banister, I think he’d have gone crashing down the stairs. Ashworth just lay there, looking like a heap of old clothes, completely still. It was horribly quiet then, after all that shouting and carrying-on. Mr Boxall knelt beside him in the middle of all that redness and put his fingers to the side of his neck. I came up the stairs then, holding onto Joan. I saw a trickle of blood had come from Mr Ashworth’s ear, but it had stopped flowing by then. I think that must have been blood – not the theatrical stuff, I mean – for what else could it be, given where it was?’
‘Where was Mrs Jepson all this time?’
‘Downstairs still. Joan had put her in a chair and given her some water, only Mrs J had asked her for brandy instead, so she’d been to get it. So Joan didn’t see all that happened. But I saw Mr Boxall close the poor man’s eyes. Then he asked me where a doctor was to be found. He was as white as a sheet – Mr Boxall, I mean – but he insisted on going down to the hotel to get help, and to call the police.’
Sergeant Burch screwed the top back on his fountain pen and, taking a rectangle of blotting paper from the back of his notebook, carefully pressed it on his fresh handwriting.
‘There’ll be an inquest, Mrs Gascarth. Has to be. But they’ll find for misadventure, or I’ll eat my stripes. You can’t be found guilty of laughing a man to death and you can’t blame the house. No, you won’t be made to take the staircase out, if that’s what you’re thinking. The man was warned often enough not to keep going.’
‘But if he was trying to get away from Mark? Mr Fagan, I mean.’
‘A blind man with only that thin stick of his? Ashworth had a knife, remember, and he was up above Mr Fagan. It looks to me that all Mr Fagan was wanting to do was to protect yourself. Perhaps if them actor chaps had come out of that room and overpowered Ashworth instead of cooking up the “Masque of the Red Death” things mighta gone differently, only neither of ’em look as if overpowering is much in their line. But I do have to warn you, Mrs Gascarth: Ashworth can’t bother you anymore but the rags’ll have a field day. They’ve the right to send reporters to the inquest – can’t stop them doing that and wouldn’t want to. But if you think you’ve had trouble with them trying to rake up whatever tattle they could over your poor mother, it’ll be nothing on what’ll happen now. You might want to think about where you could go with the little fellow. Shut this place up for a month or so.’
Burch paused. From the staircase came murmured voices and the slow and deliberate steps of men descending with a heavy burden.
‘What’s through that door, Mrs Gascarth?’ asked the sergeant.
‘The kitchen.’
‘Let’s go in there a minute then, shall we?’
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
14 Leigh Street
Bloomsbury, W.C.1
Dear Mrs Gascarth
Cedric and I were most distressed at being forced to leave you and Mr Fagan in the clutches of those burly officers of the law, without even the opportunity to say goodbye. I stood my ground as long as I could. Your correspondent is the very man who faced down the hostility of the pit at the Grand Theatre, Walsall, in July 1910 (though I shudder at the recollection even now, I spoke my lines to the end; I recall that the following act, a troupe of smallish persons known as the Horvath Midgets, met with a far kinder reception). I digress – what I mean is that though we were urged to ‘get along now’ once we had given our evidence, we refused to budge until we were reassured that you were not to be arrested.
I swear on my life, dear lady, that our intention had been only to frighten Mr Ashworth off the premises. I had not expected Lindal Hall to exert itself in quite that manner. I’m sorry to say that it was not the first time that my propensity to show off has caused unforeseen consequences.
