The man on the stool nodded, then with a gesture indicated that the shirtsleeved man should approach him more closely. He did, and the man in brown seemed to whisper something in his ear. Shirtsleeves straightened again and turned his attention back towards the boy with the paint palette.
‘Well, there it is, Boyle. You know what must be done.’ The man paused, then added, ‘And Mr Johannes wishes me to tell you, this lapse aside, he is pleased with your work.’
The boy flushed. ‘Of course, Mr Gooch. Thank you. And thank
you
, Mr Johannes.’
Mr Johannes gave no indication Harriet could see of acknowledging these thanks, but instead, as if jt becoming aware of observation, turned his head slowly towards the door and looked at her. Harriet blinked. The man’s face was very pale; his eyes seemed unnaturally large and were both a violent green and a little bulbous. His skin looked very fine; it had a thin glow about it that she noticed sometimes on the skin of her little son’s face. It was smooth as rosewood. She was reminded of the blank, but somewhat inhuman, faces of angels she had seen in mosaic on the walls of the churches in Constantinople. The other men, Mr Gooch and the boy painter, had also now seen them. It was Gooch who spoke, rather gruffly and with a frown.
‘May we be of assistance, sir, madam?’
Crowther smiled at him benignly and replied, ‘We are looking for the manager ‒ a Mr Harwood, I understand?’
‘He’ll be in his office at present,’ Gooch said with a snap, and turned back towards the canvases around him. ‘Now set to, Boyle, and I’ll call up the boys. Every other panel will need to be placed yet, and if that piece isn’t perfect by the time the doors open, I’ll cut you up and stuff the bits into sandbags myself.’
Johannes continued to look steadily at Harriet and Crowther, and lifted one hand to point upwards, indicating, Harriet supposed, where those offices might be. His limbs seemed unnaturally long and his fingers were as thin and as pale as his face. The pose made her think of those attending angels again, pointing the attention of the penitent to their Judge and Saviour above. Harriet nodded her thanks and, with Crowther, retreated into the corridor, not sure whether to feel comforted by the picture the strange figure presented, or uneasy.
In the space of the corridor, Crowther looked down at her, saying, ‘I think we are in the right place, Mrs Westerman.’
‘Why do you say that, Crowther?’
‘Did you not notice the ropes in that room? I would call them the twin of that wrapped round Fitzraven’s ankles.’
Jocasta was whistling between her teeth as she walked down St Martin’s Lane. There was a vigour in her step that would make any of the pedestrians negotiating the mud think twice about demanding she gave right of way. Jocasta Bligh would move off the pavement for a sedan chair – since no one who wanted to keep body and soul together would do otherwise – but for the rest she yielded no ground. Within three streets of her house in any direction of the compass, it would never be in question. The women nodded to her, the men lifted their hands to their foreheads, a little wary perhaps, for everyone was aware that she had all their secrets under her fingertips and knew their minds and business better than they, for the most part. Twenty years had proved she knew how to keep her knowledge to herself, however. Unless something moved her to drop a harsh word in the ear of some man who was too free with his fists, or a girl too free with her favours.
She came to a firm halt outside the chophouse on the corner of St Martin’s Lane and Turner’s Court, just where respectable roads crumbled into the hodge-podge hell of the rookeries. There were pockets of such places all over the city – houses with a dozen doors hat, out of them, areas of squalor and desperation where no lawman would go without a company of redcoats at his back. Jocasta looked in at the tobacco clouds, steam and clatter within the shop for a second, and whistled. A lad helping with the serving turned away from his customer and, catching her eye, jogged up to her side while the gentleman in yellow wig and stained coat was still halfway through ordering his beer and pie.
‘Afternoon, Mrs Bligh. Something for you from the kitchen? Does Boyo here fancy a scrap?’
Jocasta looked down at her dog. He widened his eyes, and she narrowed hers.
‘No. He’s getting me into trouble again. He’ll have to wait.’
Boyo got down on the floor and put his front paw over his nose.
‘What I need from you, Ripley, is a place. You know the Mitchells? Young ones. He’s a clerk, she sells perfumes somewhere. Married. Room with the mother. I need to know where they stay.’
The boy rubbed his nose for a second.
‘Yeah. I know the old woman. And he comes in here for his dinner three days a week. Clerks for the Admiralty, doesn’t he? They’ve got a place in Salisbury Street. He’s all right. His mother’s a sharp-faced old bitch though. Works their girl into the ground and lives like they’ve nothing to eat but sawdust, though if she’s got enough blunt to front a coffee-house, they can’t be hurting that much. Mind you, a month ago he was whining that the landlord’s putting up her rent and they might lose it. Guess that’s why they still send the girl out to the shop to sell Mr Broodigan’s perfumes.’ The boy looked a little startled at having said so much. ‘She ain’t a friend of yours, is she, Mrs Bligh?’
Jocasta winked and pulled her cards from the pocket of her skirt. ‘Pick a card, Ripley,’ she said, fanning them out.
The boy bit his lip, then with sudden decision, yanked one free from the middle of the pack and passed it to her. From the back of the room, a man, his apron held together by grease and bad memories, his belly so wide he could hardly waddle between his tables, shouted out.
‘Oi, Ripley! Why ain’t you serving, you whelp?’ Jocasta flicked up her eyes from the card Ripley had chosen. The fat man coughed. ‘Er, sorry, Mrs Bligh. Didn’t see you there for a second. You look after her, boy.’ Ripley didn’t even bother looking round.
‘Well? Anything for me, Mrs Bligh?’
Jocasta scratched her nose. On the floor, Boyo growled. ‘Watch yon weasel-faced fellow, middle table, blue coat with a mourning band. He’s going to try and pass you false coin for his dinner.’
Ripley turned slowly with his eyes narrowed and spotted the man. He gave a little hiss between his teeth, he then swung back to Jocasta, blinking.
‘You got all that from one card?’
‘No. He’s been going through his coin under the table all the time we been talking and trying it with his thumbnail to find the bad stuff. He’ll mix it in. Don’t break his arm though. He got took, now he’s trying to take. Card just says “watch your back”, though if any one of us stopped doing that, we wouldn’t be stupid for long.’
‘Thanks, Mrs Bligh.’
‘Much obliged to you too, youngling.’ And with a nod to the fat man, Jocasta turned to go. Boyo sat up, and having given the room his own commentary in the form of a short sharp bark, trotted out on her heel.
II.3
I
T TOOK SOME little time for Harriet and Crowther to make their way through the theatre and find the offices of Mr Harwood. The corridors were crowded with people, each making their own, very determined way in several directions. Harriet spotted a cluster of Roman maidens turning into their path. From a distance they looked as lovely as goddesses, but as they approached they coarsened. Their gold hairpieces turned to painted card, their soft white robes were in fact not entirely clean, nor securely fastened, their faces were vivid with paint. Harriet pondered as they passed the mystery of drama. At forty paces these ladies were beauteous examples of Ancient womanhood, at five they were monsters.
Sounds of a band at rehearsal drifted past the pair ‒ the throb of a cello and the scattered bright tones of a harpsichord. A fat little man barrelled towards them, almost hidden by the load of feathered skirts he carried in his arms. A boy turned a corner too fast, still shouting something over his shoulder, and collided with Crowther. The lad stumbled and let go an armful of manuscript paper with a slithering rustle; music still caught between lines on the stave pooled like water round their feet. He cursed and scrabbled them together again. Harriet bent to help him and he grinned at her boldly before dashing off again with the pages clamped to his chest. And everyone they passed seemed to find it necessary to speak, continually, and at unnecessary volume. Those who were not braying at their companions or to the air, sang. Scales and fragments of tunes fell about them in a constant clatter; a dawn chorus of competing human voices. Crowther had to draw on all his reserves not to cover his ears.
Then, when they managed to find the door to the main theatre lobby and went through it, the scene became unnaturally calm. Harriet, used to being in such establishments with a great crowd, was unnerved. It was as if all the confusion they had just stumbled through had been swallowed in a single gulp. She felt as if she had fallen from a carnival into a cathedral. The place was decorated with devotion. Along the corridors they had just walked, the walls and ceilings were plain and serviceable – all unpainted plaster and the sort of lampholders Harriet used in her kitchen or servants’ quarters, but here the doorways were slung with plaster garlands picked out in powder blue with little golden cherubs floundering happily among them; the lamps, great torches in clouded glass swirls, were held in the white hands of semi-clad goddesses who seemed to be pulling themselves free of the flat walls behind them. The carpet was crimson, thick, and flowed up the stairs towards the private boxes like a mounting wave. The ceiling showed the Muses of Dance, Song and Epic seated among the clouds, sharing the duty of holding a laurel wreath above the lobby: it circled the glass rotunda through which the weak daylight crawled. Yet, with the lamps unlit, and the hubbub of the building suddenly stilled, the atmosphere was eerie rather than splendid. Harriet thought of the shadows in Justice Pither’s outhouse, and shivered. Crowther’s voice seemed oddly loud when he spoke.
‘I believe this place must have shared a decorator with the former inhabitants of Berkeley Square. Ah, there.’ He pointed to a door that led off the landing above them. ‘I believe that to be the sort of situation a manager would choose for his office, do you not agree, Mrs Westerman?’
She nodded. ‘Indeed – just where he can put his head out of the door to see how the crowd is filling out.’ They ascended the stairs, and all was silent but for the swish of Harriet’s skirts on the carpeted steps.
Harriet had to admit that the words ‘theatrical manager’ had conjured a certain image in her mind. Mr Winter Harwood seemed fashioned to destroy it. Where she had expected a character of high colour who bore the signs of a life of fine food and plentiful wine, Mr Harwood was a trim man, long-limbed, but with enough breadth in his shoulders to carry his height, clean-skinned and with pale-blue eyes; where she had expected someone who dressed in the colourful and ornate style of the building he managed, Mr Harwood was simply dressed in a close-fitting dark-blue coat and fawn breeches; his waistcoat was free of fobs or chains, and his wig made none of the slightly hysterical claims to originality that seemed to be the current fashion. He dressed like Graves, in fact, and where she had suspected a manner slightly over-enthused, highly sensible, innately dramatic, Mr Harwood showed himself, on hearing their news, to be a master of understatement and emotional control.
‘Fitzraven is dead, you say? Thank you for the information.’
His desk, Harriet noticed, was too tidy. Mr Harwood’s writing equipment was laid out in front of him as if it had been placed there with the aid of a set square and ruler. To his right sat a neat pile of letters, unopened. To his left, several sheets smoothed out flat and others folded and ready, it seemed, for the penny post. Having spoken, he took another letter from the pile to his right and broke the seal on it. Then glanced up again at his visitors, as if surprised to find them still there.
‘Is there anything further?’
Crowther spoke. ‘The rope that bound his legs together came from this house. We intend to seek his murderer here. If you know anything that would expedite that search, it would be good of you to reveal it, and save us both some inconvenience.’
Mr Harwood sighed, and put down his letter very carefully.
‘I doubt I can be of much assistance. The rope came from here, did it? You are sure?’ Crowther simply nodded. ‘How unfortunate.’ There was a long pause. Harriet was, she knew, appallingly bad at letting such silences stretch. Her impulse was always to leap into the conversational fray, to charm and chatly ohose with whom she talked into confidence, but she had learned from Crowther the power of stillness.
Mr Harwood looked at them sharply and eventually continued: ‘I am glad murder is still so rare a thing, even in these fallen days, but we have enough experience of it to know that unless the perpetrator is found with the knife in his hand, or makes the mistake of mentioning his guilt in public, it is unlikely he will ever be found. Is that not the case?’ Again, neither Harriet nor Crowther replied. Mr Harwood frowned. ‘What use then to tell stories, and force people into slandering their neighbours and colleagues with suspicion? Are there not other amusements in Town sufficient for you?’
Harwood got to his feet and moved to look out of his window into the street outside, linking his hands together behind his back. Harriet could hear the scrape of iron wheels on stone, the shouts of the chair-carriers.