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  “Are you indeed, Mr. Buckstone? What luck for you. I perceive a large debt of eighty-six pounds from these notes. Why was it necessary to visit Mr. Cake’s house in Doughty Street to secure these funds, when you could have easily arranged such gentlemanly matters here in the theatre?”

  Percy Buckstone drew back. His face paled noticeably. “I resent this intrusion, sir. And your insinuations.”

  “What insinuations, Mr. Buckstone? A man has been bludgeoned to death. His skull cracked open. Surely such matters override a mere inquiry into your financial dealings with the deceased.” Endersby’s voice had taken on an insistent quality, his final words punched out like shots from a pistol.

  “I shall not be bullied, Inspector. Not at all. I beg your leave.”

  The stage manager shuffled forward. He glanced at Endersby, then he replied. “I am afraid, Buckstone, our guest has a few more questions to ask.”

  “Were you a friend of Mr. Cake’s?” Endersby put out his hand to induce Buckstone to sit down. The actor lowered himself into the chair across from the inspector.

  “Friends? No. I knew him as an honest man. I knew he lent money. Actors like to spend, inspector. We like our pleasures.” Buckstone’s confident air had returned.

  “And so you took advantage of Mr. Cake’s generosity?”

  “I would hardly call it that. Not generous, sir. He was practical is all.”

  “How so?”

  “He knew my kind. My love of the horses. The gaming table. He lent out at a fair price, better than old Eleazar across in Fleet Street.”

  “A Jew lender?”

  “Popular amongst we actors and stagers, sir.”

  “And did you find Doughty Street a fine abode?”

  “I did, sir. But I saw none of it. I was let into the kitchen only. Mr. Cake was always obliging. He had his cash ready and his quill to sign, and that was the end of it. ‘Short and done with’, as he liked to say.”

  “Your beard is a fine one, if I may compliment you, Mr. Buckstone.”

  The actor was taken aback at the sudden shift in Inspector Endersby’s line of investigation. He smiled immediately, his actor’s vanity bringing a sudden blush to his cheeks.

  “Is it a kind of specialty of yours, sir?” the inspector went on.

  “How do you mean?” the actor puzzled.

  “Not unlike Mr. Young’s famous moustache? Or, indeed, the venerable Kean’s eyebrows. Which I understand were combed each night with wax so that they would shine in the stage light.”

  “I never thought of my beard in that way,” the actor mused, clearly delighted in Endersby’s knowledge of players. “But it is something I have worn for many a year. Since, at least, I came to London from Birmingham.”

  “And when was that, sir?”

  “Three years ago, Inspector.”

  Endersby paused to recall the woman in the blue dress who had given testimony at the coroner’s inquest. She had witnessed a man with a red beard. Then she claimed she had seen him again with the beard cut off. Surely, thought Endersby, this beard has raised some questions. Perhaps the woman saw two separate men if what Mr. Buckstone swore was true. Endersby resumed his questioning.

  “Did Mr. Cake ever threaten you, Mr. Buckstone?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Money is the root of much turmoil, as many of your roles in this theatre no doubt have shown. Did he ever press you for his return on his debts?”

  The actor shifted. He fiddled with his fencing glove. “Not in so many words, sir. But he did insist. He did like to keep track of his returns.”

  “Did he lend to others?”

  “Perhaps, though I never knew of any. He had me swear to secrecy. He said it was a benefit to us both. He made his interest, and I had my freedom to indulge, if you wish. Why let the world know, he argued.”

  “Which is why you went to Doughty Street. To keep things discreet.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Do you recognize this signature?” Endersby handed the two other promissory notes of a P. Summers into Mr. Buckstone’s hands.

  “Not familiar, sir. As I said, Mr. Cake was considerate. I have no idea of the others to whom he lent money.”

  “What did you have for your supper last evening?”

  The actor looked up abruptly. “Ah, beef, I believe.”

  “Here, in the theatre?”

  “At a house down the way.”

  “An eating house? Where they know you?”

  “They should, given what I pay them for their fare.”

  “And Friday last. What was supper on Friday?”

  “I cannot remember. I believe it…”

  “And where did you go on Friday, late, after the theatre?”

  “I acted until ten, then I went to supper. Yes, and I had prawns. Prawns it was.” Buckstone beamed.

  “You have rich tastes, sir. On seven pounds a week, you eat like a prince.”

  Percy Buckstone looked away. “My wife has some means, Inspector.”

  “Does she, indeed.”

  The actor now reddened to a degree which shocked Endersby. What was it about the wife? He decided to slow down, let things rest for the moment.

  “And then home to bed?” Endersby concluded.

  “I beg your pardon?” Buckstone focused his eyes again on the inspector.

  “On Friday, Mr. Buckstone. After your late supper, you went to bed?”

  Buckstone took a moment to recall. His eyes gazed briefly at the ceiling. “Yes, I believe so, sir. In fact, I dined at home, sir.”

  “I thank you for your patience and your honesty this morning, Mr. Buckstone.”

  The actor stood up and shook Endersby’s hand. “Good morning, sir,” he said politely and left the room.

  “Can you speak to his character?” Endersby then asked, addressing the stage manager who was leaning his elbow against the hearth.

  “Even-tempered, sir. Polite to all. Mr. Buckstone loves to gamble, and yet he is prompt in his work here, never coming in drunk, never late. He’s a pampered gentleman, sir. Admired by his fellow actors as reliable.”

  Endersby stared into the meagre hearth and rubbed his hands, his reason tacking into the waves of facts which swelled his thoughts. It was his method to talk to potential suspects with as much politeness as he could muster. He would proceed gently before launching an attack—if one were called for. He particularly liked to test the memory of those he interviewed; he would ask them about trivial matters, such as their dinner menus, for in them often lay revelations. He refused to indulge in the practice invented by the famed Mr. Mesmer, for Endersby thought it was ineffective. Some fellow members of the London force were now using this method of mind-control by guiding suspects into confession through hypnosis, attempting to capture then tame the wild animal which many in the Detective Police believed inhabited the “Criminal Mentality”.

  “With your permission, I would like to see Mr. Cake’s office,” Endersby said, moving away from the fire. “I may need to have keys, if there are any. I may also need to poke into papers.”

  “You have my permission, sir,” said the stage manager. “Anything else?”

  Cake’s office was unlocked, and as Endersby entered, the cool damp air of the space reminded him of the cold darkness of the parlour in Doughty Street. The stage manager lit a candle first before a hanging lamp over the room’s large table.

  “Before you leave, sir, I have one other delicate question for you,” said Endersby.

  The stage manager braced himself, holding up his chin.

  “Did Mr. Cake ever, in front of you, offend any one? Insult, or berate an unfortunate?”

  “He never lost his temper, if that’s what you mean, sir. He was mostly a quiet-speaking man. He had his ways of persuasion. His ways to make you do things, but mainly he did so by asking you firmly, sometimes demanding. But he was never a shouter, sir. He often took his meals with us all. Like he was one of us…a brother, almost.”

  “He l
iked women?”

  “Oh, yes, sir. But he never took advantage. Always a gentleman. As far I saw him, sir.” The stage manager made a polite smile and left Endersby alone in the room.

  Endersby’s eyes found an exclusive space—a high ceiling, walls with green paper and cabinets of varnished wood. His gaze wandered from the walls to a long table at its centre, up to a milky-glass lamp, down to a Turkish carpet, along the paintings—portraits of horses, landscapes—round to a desk beside a wide bed with a canopy and finally over to a wardrobe with a patterned curtain as a covering, which his right hand pulled aside to reveal rows of silk shirts and frock coats in black and green.

  A pleasing array, Endersby thought, the drawers of the wardrobe subsequently presenting cravats, old–fashioned button boxes and stocking slips. The interior cabinets bulged with rich linens, and below, in a deep single drawer, boots, pull-ons and polish. Endersby tapped at the sides of the wardrobe. He paced and measured its width and length. It seemed the construction guarded no secret cache, no place to hide a cash box or mounds of notes. “Just so,” whispered Endersby.

  He bounced the mattress hard with his right hand. He then lifted the counterpane and rolled up the mattress, to find only a set of bed slats and no other object.

  “Cake kept accounts in his head,” Endersby recalled out loud.

  The table and the desk provided no clues at all to the whereabouts of Mr. Cake’s cash ledgers or letters. “Perhaps the thief came here…but no, no.” His eyes examined the bed one more time. He noticed the door across from it, the door he had come through, had a brass latch. “To keep out intruders, perhaps? Or to keep in visitors?”

  Now the matter of P. Summers occupied his thoughts. Who was this man or this woman? And who would know her or him? It was necessary to question many, for Endersby always found one in a crowd who spoke up. One who inadvertently held onto a tidbit of information forgotten by others. This one would provide him with a new by-way toward the culprit.

  Without spending any more time searching, and with “P. Summers” now firmly in place in his mind, Endersby left and asked the stage manager to show him the way to the costume shop and storage, which was, he discovered, located below the stage itself on the theatre’s mezzanine floor. Endersby navigated the narrow stairwell. He ducked his head, holding fast to the banister leading under the stage to a large low room, a sunless underworld full of women in rolled sleeves drawing needle and thread. He watched the heads bent over the cloth, the irons taken from the small hearth and passed across the bangled sleeves of mock velvet. He waited as the grey-faced matron came toward him, her head encased in a black bonnet. The other women raised their heads. For the first time, Endersby noted that each of them was wearing a thin black armband of crepe. This mourning gesture touched him. His memory flashed a picture of the dog-headed walking stick smeared with Samuel Cake’s blood.

  “Inspector,” the matron announced. “Ladies.”

  The women laid down their handiwork and rose to their feet. Each curtsied. One in particular did not look directly at Endersby, keeping her eyes down. Her face was whiter than the other chalk-like faces. Was she the pale young mistress Caldwell had described at the inquest? The one who had expressed concern over Mr. Cake and his breakfast. “Thank you, ladies,” Endersby responded. The matron pulled out a chair. “I have only brief questions, today, and I thank you for your time.” Endersby’s politeness caused one of the seamstresses to giggle suddenly.

  “Mary!” snapped the matron.

  Endersby addressed the bold girl. “Mary, I shall ask your opinion first.”

  “My what?” snorted the girl.

  A hush fell over the table. “Mary, I understand Mr. Cake frequently ate his meals here with you all, here in the theatre.”

  “That don’t take my opinion, sir,” she retorted, her voice full of mischief. “That is but a simple fact.” The others broke into mild laughter.

  “Was Mr. Cake a fine-mannered gentleman?”

  “Ha,” Mary cried. “No,sir. He ate like a sergeant.” Loud slapping of hands.

  “Ladies!” shouted the matron. “I beg your pardon, Inspector, but this lollying must stop. Mr. Cake dined in his room most often,” the matron explained. “But from time-to-time, he took late suppers here in this place with us, the actors and our stage manager. He ate with us on Friday last, in fact. He was familiar to us all, sir.” The matron softened as she spoke these last few words.

  “He slept here too,” interrupted Mary. “Not right at this table, you see. In his bed.” Mary’s rolling of her eyes brought guffaws.

  The pale young mistress looked up just then. In a pained voice she said, “He was always a gentleman, sir. He was much more. His habits were proper. He was a good man.”

  The others all sighed, and their little moans carried a mocking tone.

  “Your name?”

  “Esther.”

  “She was his special one, Mr. Policeman,” taunted Mary.

  With a sudden leap, the matron made her way to Mary and knuckled her hard on the crown of her head. The girl recoiled. She folded her hands tightly. “I beg pardon, sir.”

  “Was it you, Esther, who served him his breakfast?”

  The pale young mistress admitted. “Yes, ’twas I.” Her tears fell now, and the girl next to her pressed Esther to her breast. “She mended his stockings, too,” explained the comforting girl. “Once, she mended his cloak, and she liked to brush his hats.”

  Mary wiggled. “She was in love with him, sir. Lovey-dovey.” The other girls all nodded.

  Esther patted her eyes. “He asked me,” she explained. “He asked me is all,” she insisted. The matron clapped her hands.

  “Is there anything further you wish to know, Inspector? I am afraid these girls will get out of hand soon enough, what with our long days ahead.”

  Endersby noticed a sadness enter the matron’s face. What loss, what pain had made her so severe, he wondered. “I am obliged, Matron. Did any of you see Mr. Cake on Friday last, before his dinner with you? Did you see him talking to anyone during that day?”

  The answer from each of the women was a silent shaking of the head.

  “Kindly look at this note, Matron. Do you recognize its signature?”

  “P. Summers. I once knew a Summers, a clothier. But no, sir. This hand is not familiar to me.”

  “And these young ladies?”

  The matron tapped the table. The girls were asked to sit down again. The matron held up the promissory note. “Ladies, the inspector has a question.” Mary leaned forward. Esther started to thread her needle.

  “I am looking for a P. Summers,” Endersby explained. “I wish to discover if any of you may know of such a person.”

  Mary furrowed her brow. “Do we, girls? Do we?”

  The seamstresses looked about, whispered, then shook their heads once again. Owen Endersby folded the note back into his pocket and thanked the ladies for their time. He was about to climb upstairs when the matron tugged at his sleeve.

  “Mr. Endersby. I predicted this would occur, Mr. Endersby.”

  “What did you predict?”

  “Mr. Cake’s death.”

  “And pray tell.”

  “Jealousy was the motive. Brutality the means.”

  “Is there, matron, a person or persons you can mention?”

  “Rosa Grisi, dancer and horse rider at Aston’s Palladium.”

  “A woman?”

  “One as fit and strong as a man. She loved Mr. Cake. I saw it often enough. Lovers for certain.

  Late at night, the two of them. I knew she finished her act at Aston’s by eleven o’clock. Out the stage door Mr. Cake would fly to her. An hour later, the love pigeons would be strolling by. He invited her to supper many a time, to his private quarters upstairs.”

  “Were there any other witnesses to this affair?”

  “My son–in-law, the stage door keeper. He knew of their business. He was very fond of Mr. Cake and thought ill of Miss Grisi. Fore
igners, you know, Inspector. Not trustworthy folk for the most part.”

  Endersby pondered the matron’s words, wondering if they were but petty gossip.

  “Miss Grisi had a temper, I suppose?”

  “Mr. Cake liked young women, Mr. Endersby. He often walked in with one or another. When Miss Grisi discovered this, she flew into a rage. I swear to you, sir, I saw many a fight from this very stairwell. She shouting at Cake in the wings. Always accusing him.”

  “Did she ever strike him or…”

  “No, she might have done him harm if she had. She is a fine horsewoman and acrobat, Mr. Endersby. Her fists are as hard as any workman’s. No, she liked to threaten Mr. Cake in other ways.”

  “In what other ways?”

  “She had two younger brothers. Belligerent young princes. Sailors once, who now work the swings and the canvas dioramas at Aston’s. She sent them over a number of times to bully Mr. Cake. My son-in-law had to call a Peeler once to have them barred from entering the theatre.”

  “Can you describe them?”

  “Black hair. Black frock coats. Black caps. A small moustache on the youngest.”

  “How long did this kind of trouble go on?”

  “Most of last autumn.”

  “What would Miss Grisi gain, do you imagine, from murder?”

  “Satisfaction, perhaps. She has a fire within her, Mr. Endersby. A fire in her spirit. Rumours are she once stabbed a man in her native Italy and had to flee to England to escape the gallows.”

  “And her brothers?”

  “Foreign brutes.”

  “Mere violent sport? No money involved here? Perhaps the brothers wanted to steal from Cake.”

  “It was passion, sir. Plain as sunshine. I think she was driven by revenge, just like the heroine in our drama now playing this season.”

  Endersby thanked the matron and realized when he was out of the theatre and half-way into the street that he’d forgotten to discuss the promissory note—and this new name—with the stage door keeper. “Stay alert, old gander,” he scolded himself. On his return to the stage door, he waited as an actor collected letters and chatted morosely about murder, then he handed the promissory note to the stage-door keeper, hoping he might be able to illumine the dark matter of this untraceable person.