Trumpets Sound No More Page 5

Into the fourth act, Inspector Endersby discovered the pain in his foot had lessened somewhat. Now before him appeared a crowd of townsfolk and a row of sneering cardinals in blood red robes. Miss Priscilla Root struggled nobly toward the scowling churchmen. She rolled her eyes toward heaven. Praying, she clasped her delicate hands before her heart. Drums thundered; gasps exhaled from the audience’s two thousand faces; one of the cardinals pointed toward a boiling cauldron raised at the back of the stage. Slowly shutting her eyes, Miss Root opened her pilgrim’s cloak to reveal her delicate neck as the chorus hummed a slow dirge. This dark moment prompted the inspector to reflect on the sordid lives in the streets which lay just outside the theatre’s doors. How irrational and brutal all life is, he thought. Owen Endersby straightened his heavy back and entertained a sudden wonderment: did Old Drury herself remain but a mute observer of the tragic trials played upon its boards? Was there in its brick and mortar a capacity to harbour ghosts of sensations, to register the exaggerated cries of its powdered and wigged victims? If so, what use was such sympathy when the misery in the streets remained? No amount of paint and powder could fool one’s eyes not to see it.

  A braying trumpet cleared the inspector’s mind. Watching the audience around him, he approved of their dabbing handkerchiefs, which rose like white petals blooming in the amber glow of the gaslight.

  Harriet suddenly clutched him. Tears glistened on her cheeks. A hooded man led Miss Root toward the cauldron. She, in turn, suddenly faced the audience, and in a grand spasm of defeat let out a death scream from her powerful throat. The sound shot into the auditorium; the actress collapsed to the stage boards; mute faces stared at the prone body; then tumultuous applause arose like summer thunder. The pit and boxes jumped up in unison, clapping. The galleries followed close behind with such whistling the orchestra drums held their fanfare for two extra rounds while Miss Root lay still as a stone, the life beaten out of her by Cruel Fate.

  “Most enjoyable,” exclaimed Mrs. Endersby at the close of the play. Owen and Harriet stood waiting for a hansom cab under the portico, damp coal smoke greeting them in the late evening air.

  “Fine indeed, my love,” Owen Endersby agreed. “Let us to home.”

  * * *

  Back at Number 6 Cursitor Street, Harriet prepared a tea table before the fire in the parlour.

  “Not professional thieves,” she said, handing a steaming cup to her husband.

  “Unlikely. The thieving schools train their chappies well.”

  “What would possess a man not to lock his doors?”

  “A pertinent question, Harriet. Why indeed?”

  “Professional thieves would know what was in a house, know about the silver, have accomplices among the servants, would they not?”

  “From my experience, yes, most likely they would. I surmise that Mr. Cake did not hold anything of value in his house.”

  “Yet, you have evidence that he lent money? I imagine he kept it in a bank.”

  “Or in the theatre. But the man had no servants, no dishes. He did not reside at Doughty Street so much as visit it.”

  “How eccentric.”

  “My first concern is noise.”

  “How do you mean, Mr. Endersby?” Harriet took up her embroidery screen, yet Owen Endersby knew she was fully listening.

  “The intruders broke glass. Made much noise. It was as if they wanted to be noticed.”

  “What would possess them to do that?”

  “Ruffians. It is hard to figure. Did they want a fight to ensue? The police to come and have fisticuffs?”

  Harriet laughed. “I suppose younger men might find that amusing.”

  “Precisely,” agreed Owen Endersby. “The doors were without locks. One could clearly see that. The house was as bare as a moor.”

  “What a mystery,” Harriet sighed.

  “And the motive. What was the motive for all? Money? Revenge? Playful sport? Were the men playing a cruel jest on Mr. Cake?”

  “Do you think he knew who they were?”

  “Heaven only knows that, Harriet. But one man certainly hated Mr. Cake. The beating…”

  “Oh, please, Mr. Endersby. Please do not describe the cruelty.”

  Later in his study at the end of the hall, Owen Endersby sat down at a round table and peered at the pieces of a French puzzle he had unwrapped from the post the day before. The puzzle’s wood sections were polished, varnished shapes which implied a body of some kind of animal—most likely an elephant—and a group of men, if the elbows, knees, shoulders and heads indicated such. The puzzle was his favorite kind, cut and hand-bevelled in Paris, available only from the import dealer of toys and games in the Burlington Arcade. Endersby shuffled the pieces, the click and glide on the table’s surface affording him calm. He sorted body parts. He set aside the trunk and howdah of the elephant; a palm tree was the first full picture he was able to form, a lower corner. Here we can begin, monsieur, he thought to himself.

  For an hour he placed pieces together, then apart. He rose slowly and walked to the window, where there stood a longer table. On it were his mud samples, the glove, the ball of tobacco, all taken from Mr. Cake’s house on Doughty Street, each on its own section of rough paper. The promissory notes had been unfolded and flattened. Endersby examined the signatures—Buckstone, Summers—and decided he must first determine who these people were and why their notes had been left in the house along with the contract from Lord Harwood.

  “Curious,” he muttered aloud. “Much can be indicated by what was left behind. Were there other notes; was ready money taken—bills, coins? Evidently, the ruffians had no interest in the contract.”

  Endersby fingered one of the nails he had picked up from the broken shutters in the front parlour where Cake’s body had lain. He had taken it during the coroner’s visit and was surprised to find that it was an old nail, a seconder, usually bought from the vendors of used metal or the Jew pedlars near Covent Garden.

  “Taken into the house, perhaps, by the ruffians. Did they bring their own hammer as well? A planned ruckus, for certain.” Endersby replaced the nail by the ball of tobacco. He leaned forward and smelled the tobacco again. “Cheap, coarse cut. A man of small means. Surely not belonging to Cake himself, if his cloak and sash were signs of his spending.” Endersby passed his eyes over the whole collection. “And who would benefit from this sad death? A greedy relative? A wastrel brother?”

  And what of the lone man seen escaping from the back of Cake’s house? And the veiled woman with the two male companions? Were they the same three figures seen leaving by the front door?

  The loss of this young man’s life was so wasteful. Endersby paced before stopping at the dying hearth. Wanton brutality must not run unchecked. To effect retribution…indeed, this was the stone wall he must scale. Endersby knew now he was caught. He knew his passions for truth and justice would twist him, pang him worse than his gouty foot, force him to lie in an uneasy bed. Like a light in darkness, he thought: as a man, a husband, a Londoner, a policeman—all my energy will be bent on vindication.

  “Ah, Harriet,” he whispered.

  Owen Endersby carried the candle from the room and watched his shadow move toward the bedroom door. He peeked in. Harriet was asleep. “Good night,” he whispered to the sound of her breathing. Closing the door, he returned to his study, pulled out a long wool blanket from a trunk near the hearth and stretched out on the divan, plumping the pillow to support his head. Would sleep come tonight? His mind relished questioning and searching, even though his tired, bulky body, in particular his aching foot, finally forced him to give in, his dreams rushing toward him as his slow intake of breath began to rumble and fill the study with the steady blast of his snoring.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Sunday, December 20, 1840

  We continue our story on this, the Lord’s Day, a solemn time, the London air still cold and forever grey with chimney smoke. A figure stood gazing at a window into the morning light. A well-known London fixture, a
s the press called him, a noted swordsman and lead player at the great theatre of Old Drury. Mr. William Weston. His face was as pale as soured milk. He pushed open the window pane of his bedroom in his set of rooms on Cromer Street and, holding onto the sill of painted wood, stared at the frost on the trees which ran in a line along the pavement below him. The actor, known for his tenor voice, had taken his breakfast of cold ham and toast long before. His mood was as sanguine as it could be, considering he had spent the very earliest hours of the dark morning tending his sick sister, Sarah.

  Mr. Weston breathed in the sharp air. He would not attend church services this morning. His cheerless, devout aunt was always ready to drive him out of the house into a church pew. He would have none of it. Was there not enough misery in his life? He did not need scolding Christians to tell him he was an evildoer. It was December, shortly before Christmas, and even though he felt troubled, fearful and restless, Mr. Weston wished for the season of cheer to suffuse him with joy and warmth. Beneath this icy sky, he imagined citizens of London at their breakfast tables, their newspapers in hand, their secrets on Yuletide presents to be revealed in a few days. Mr. Weston did not indulge his imagination to picture the poor or the destitute. As an itinerant player, he had lived in poverty too long to ever consider its cruelties as one of his daily reflections. With this set of rooms in Cromer Street, and his string of fine performances in Rachel; or, the Hebrew Maid, one of his greatest ambitions had come about: he was a famous actor in the greatest city in the world.

  Weston stepped back from the window and closed it. He sat down next to his cheery fire. He rubbed his eyes and breathed in slowly. He wanted to weep from fatigue and from worry, but he forced himself to turn his thoughts elsewhere. On the table beside his chair rested a small portrait of his mother. She had died giving birth to his sister, Sarah, when William was three. Their father had then abandoned them to the care of William’s dour, mournful aunt. She had been kindly if cold towards him. She loved the girl, Sarah, more than him, as she could teach her sewing and reading. His aunt had been impatient, believing boys should be whipped to control their rambunctious urges. William Weston had been an active youth, playing hard at games, often losing his temper with his playmates, frequently finding himself being caned at school for disobedience and raucous behavior. His harried aunt had tried her best, as he grew older, to find him employment with the help of her brother, who had suggested, when William turned sixteen, that he should enter the army. The day Weston told his aunt he had joined a travelling theatre troupe, her shocked face had turned ashen before she had fainted. Yet, William Weston soon realized he loved his profession, and that an artistic life could offer him many rewards.

  Life also punishes with many cares, he thought. He looked again at his mother’s portrait. Sister Sarah had inherited the same delicate features. William sat up. Was that Sarah calling now? The poor sickly angel had wept most of the night. Her restraints had cut into her arms, and the bed she lay in had been soiled. But thus was the way of her terrible illness. Over the past year, ever since Sarah and Samuel Cake had broken off their relationship as friends—the aunt had never dared mention the word sweethearts—Sarah had been suffering from strange mental lapses. For a month or two she’d be happy, busy at her sewing, running out to the theatre to see her brother perform. Then, abruptly, her entire character would change. Overnight she would refuse to bathe, to take food. With the loss of appetite came fits, tantrums, followed by long days of staying in her bed curled up into a ball under the covers, her face wan and thinning.

  Weston believed it had been love between Sarah and Cake. Love built on false promises and Sarah’s hopeless dreaming.

  “William?”

  Weston leapt up, startled. His aunt stood in the doorway behind him. A female caricature of her nephew, she had a mannish figure, erect and tall as his, her bearing supported by her corsets and stays; her long chin and broad forehead were as pale as his, made all the more ghostly in contrast to her black floor-length dress. A bible sat smugly in her right hand. William apologized for scaring her. She took a moment then asked him if he would accompany her to church. He did not hesitate. He said no and sat down again. Before she could open her mouth to say another word, he fell into a sudden crying aloud: “Oh, Lord Jesus, horror upon horrors!”

  The dour aunt froze in the doorway, her eyes full of fear at her nephew’s outburst.

  When he stood up again, anger reddened his face. “I cannot abide this any longer,” he shouted. The room seemed shattered by the power of his full, sonorous voice as though a bolt of lightning had struck and run through the house. Weston rubbed his face, pulled at his hair. “I am sorry, Auntie,” he said.

  His dour, sallow aunt moved toward the fire, her dress whisping and hissing as it dragged over the Turkish carpet. She gazed into the flames, prompting Weston to ponder the notion of Hell.

  Then, in a suppressed tone, she addressed him. Her voice sounded low at first before it took on strength and steel. “I know you are tired, William. We both are. Sarah is more tired than either of us. I know that you have worked hard this week, playing and sword fighting. There is one thing, however, I must express to you which I feel is very hard to say.”

  William Weston came over to his aunt. He did not touch her. He faced her as he had so many times in his life, waiting for her to berate or beat him. He placed his hands on his hips and bent his head toward her to show he was paying her absolute attention.

  His aunt was about to speak. She reached down and lifted up William Weston’s hand. “What have you done?”

  “It is nothing, auntie. A wound from a sword-play last Friday evening. Common enough.”

  “Shall I bathe it for you?”

  “What did you want to say, auntie?” William asked, pulling his hand away.

  “Only this, nephew. You are working too hard. I can see it in your tired eyes. Leave the tending of Sarah to me. This is what we agreed to do, is it not?”

  “Yes, Auntie,” William said. His voice had a tinge of shame in it.

  “Yes, indeed, nephew. You have taken me in, you have provided for me in my old age. You know very well I am grateful for this kindness.”

  “It is only right to do so, Auntie.”

  “You are a man of too much passion, William. I know Sarah and I are burdens on you. Such is your life, however. You must let me play my part, too. I must be her nurse, for I am a woman and can better understand her turmoil. You cannot let your sadness—your passion to help her—cut away at your life. Save your emotions for the theatre where they belong. You give in to them too much at home. Yes, I see it in you. Angry like Macbeth, doubtful and fearful like Prince Hamlet. You are the man in this household. Sarah and I must depend on you to be strong and stalwart.”

  William’s aunt put out her arms to embrace her nephew. He took them and let her hold him for a brief moment, then he broke free. “If you wish,” he said, “I will relent and accompany you to morning service.”

  His aunt left the fire and walked to the door. She held up her bible. “Come if you wish, nephew. Come for your heart’s sake. I will await you in the front hall.”

  After she left the room, William stood still, gazing blankly around. He had given in. He had placated her. After he dressed, he went from his bedroom down the hall to Sarah’s room. Through the half-opened door he saw her, quietly asleep. In his pocket he had the necklace he knew he could sell to the broker to get money for medicine.

  He found his aunt waiting in the hall. Taking her arm, he led her down two flights of stairs to Cromer Street. In the fresh air he felt revived. He admitted to himself that it was his aunt who had given him his chances in life. It was she who had taught him to fight against despair. For the two of them together had learned to face the terrors of the world. And with what he had to face now in his life, he was thankful she remained with him.

  * * *

  Young Reggie Crabb dumped the ashes from his bucket into the bin at the rear of Old Drury and ran back in
to the long, darkened corridors of the great theatre. Early afternoon light did not pursue him beyond the slammed door. Cor and Lord Bless Me, but he had chores to do before his tea. He and Mrs. B. the costume mistress would take theirs by the hearth in the costume room, as would the cutters and the hearth sweeper who worked, ate and slept within the grand building. Old Drury surrounded young Reggie Crabb like a city. Tall stairwells like towers, avenues of hallways, the open space of the stage as great to him as the park leading to the palace of the Queen.

  Reggie Crabb was fourteen, sinewy and obedient. Mrs. B. called him her lamb. The gruff stage manager addressed him as Master Crabb or just Crabb. He ran for his living, and he liked his title of call-boy. At fourteen, he was proud to be a part of Old Drury. He was happy to be working for his shilling a week rather than being down in a coal mine. Reggie raced along the corridor to Miss Root’s dressing room. Sundays bored him with the quiet, the eery emptiness. No actors backstage, no scene shifters upstairs, downstairs, only Reggie and Mrs. B. He tapped and waited, though he knew Miss Priscilla Root would not be in her dressing rooms at this hour. Or at least he guessed she was not in, as Sundays were Miss Root’s time to ride in the park and take luncheons with her actor friends. He tapped again. To his surprise, the door knob turned. Crabb stood frozen with his hands at his sides. Then a sudden glow of light fell upon him.

  “Enter, and make smart.”

  A mannish woman stood before him, her haughty nose held up. Reggie recognized her as one of Miss Root’s constant companions. The woman held the door ajar and {gestured} to Crabb to step in. He bowed to her and to another woman dressed in similar clothes standing across the room by a tall dressing cabinet. Both of the women reminded him of ravens; they always wore men’s black breeches, frock coats and top hats. The raven by the cabinet crossed the room and came up to Crabb. The cigar in her right hand left behind a thin trail of smoke. She peered at him, cocked her head as if her eye was like a bird’s, paused then spoke in a snide voice: “Little Peter still in need of a fitting?”