The Lady of Lyon House

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The Lady of Lyon House

Jennifer Wilde writing as Edwina Marlow

CHAPTER ONE

I
T HAD BEEN
raining during the day and there were flat black puddles in the streets. They gleamed darkly under the lamp light, sometimes reflecting the green and blue and yellow lights from the cafes that lined the street on either side. It was still early, and the cafes were not bursting with noise and activity as they would be later. Only an occasional carriage rumbled over the cobbles, splashing the puddles. The fog was not yet thick. It was a thin, vaporous white mist, swirling around the lamp posts where the gas lamps burned dimly.

I walked slowly, forcing myself to measure my steps and not break into a run. I was not in a hurry to get to the music hall. I had over an hour. It was not because I was late that I wanted to run. I had the same uneasy feeling that I had had for the last week. I felt someone was following me. Even when I stopped and turned around and could see no one, I felt eyes watching me. It caused me to shiver, and it made this walk from the boarding house to the music hall a thing of anxiety. I had always enjoyed sauntering through the streets before, but now I was almost afraid.

I could leave early with Mattie and Bill, but Mattie would think it strange and want an explanation. I could not explain this feeling of uneasiness. It was not something I wanted to talk about. They thought me a dreamer anyway—always lost in thought, always reading a book, always handling the puppets and making up stories for them to enact. If I told Mattie and Bill about this new sensation, they would laugh. Mattie would prescribe some dreadful home remedy to rid me of the vapors, and Bill would talk to me in his jovial manner and before long be off on one of his endless stories about his youth.

I loved both of them. They had looked after me ever since I was a little girl, treating me like their own, and I was as close to them as I would have been if they were truly my parents. My mother and father had been members of Bill's shabby little theatrical troupe, traveling all over England to play short engagements in third-rate theaters. My father died of consumption, and after her handsome husband was gone, my mother seemed to lose any will to live. She died three years later, leaving my sister Maureen and me without a single living relative. Bill and Mattie unofficially adopted us, carrying us along with them from town to town and bringing us up as best they could.

I had been five at the time, my sister Maureen almost fifteen. She disappeared five years later, running off with a middle-aged actor who had promised her a life of luxury. The actor soon vanished, leaving her to fend for herself. Maureen had too much pride to come back to Bill and Mattie. I had no idea what had become of her, although frequently there were letters from different parts of England and, recently, small sums of money enclosed in the envelope. I had not seen her for eight years, not since the day she eloped with her actor.

So I had no one but Mattie and Bill. They treated me like a daughter and showed a great deal of concern about my upbringing. In recent years there had been tutors for me, and once I had even attended a private school for a few months, but the financial situation had always been a precarious one and the school had cost too much money. Bill had disbanded the troupe and bought the music hall, running it himself with some small success. A little later he bought the boarding house. Mattie ran it with a firm hand, dividing her time between the house and the music hall. For the first time in years the Jamesons had a bit of security in their lives, although it required titanic labor to keep the two establishments above water.

I did not want to bother them with my problems. They had enough to worry about without me adding to it. I was not sure that there really was a problem. I was not sure that it was not all my imagination, and I walked on down the street, trying to rid myself of the feeling that plagued me.

It had started almost a week ago. I had been walking to the music hall at the regular hour, just after the sun had set and darkness began to cloak the city, and I heard footsteps behind me. I turned around, but there was no one there. I imagined I had seen a man in a checked cloak step quickly into a darkened doorway, but I was not sure of it. As I continued on my way, I heard no more footsteps behind me, but I had the feeling of being followed. I arrived at the music hall and forgot all about it until the next night, when the same thing happened again.

Three nights ago I had met an old woman selling violets. I stopped to purchase a bunch, and as I handed the woman a coin I glanced back at the sidewalk I had just passed over. There was a man standing beneath the lamp post at the corner, half a block away. I could not see him clearly because of the fog, but I noticed the checked cloak. As I stood there with the bunch of violets in my hand, he crossed the street and disappeared into the fog. It had upset me, and I had been on edge ever since.

When I left the music hall late at night, I was always with Bill and Mattie and usually some of the players who boarded with us. Nothing ever happened as I walked back with the noisy group. It was always when I was alone that I had this strange feeling. At first I had wondered if it could have been some stage door Romeo who had seen me on stage and was too bashful to speak to me openly. There had been many of them in recent years, and I had discouraged them all with cool disdain. I was eighteen years old and more than ready to fall in love, but I was not going to have anything to do with actors or with the fickle, debonair young men who hung around the theater. My ideas about romance had been formed from the countless novels I read, and there was nothing romantic to me in the men I had observed courting the other girls who worked at the music hall.

If the man who was following me—if, indeed there was one—was a stage door gallant, surely he would have spoken to me, I reasoned. He would not linger behind me, out of sight, following me down the street and never speaking. I tried to tell myself that it was all my imagination, that there really was no one there, but I still could not shake this feeling.

I walked on down the street, my crinoline underskirts rustling. I was almost two blocks from the music hall now, and the fog was growing thicker, the mists descending rapidly and shrouding everything in white vapor. My heels rapped sharply on the pavement, and the sound echoed behind me. The tapping noise repeated itself, loud, sharp taps coming just after I stepped. I knew it was an echo, I knew there was no one behind me. I paused. I heard the echo of my last step. Then there was a heavier sound, a scrape, immediately following. It was no echo. Someone was there. I was sure of it now.

I looked back the way I had come. The fog swirled gently, curling around the lamp post and stroking the sides of the buildings. The pavement gleamed wetly, casting back reflections of the lights that were almost hidden now by the fog. I saw a dark, shadowy form just in front of one of the cafes, but I could not be sure it was a man; the fog was too thick. I continued to walk, listening intently to my own light rapping footsteps. Now there was a heavier sound, keeping time with the sound of my own steps.

I felt a cold shiver, and I had to restrain the urge to run. If I arrived at the music hall out of breath and panting, I would be forced to answer questions, and I did not want that. I did not want a group of concerned faces hovering over me. What if there was someone behind me? Anyone had the right to walk down the street. There was probably some reasonable explanation for all this. Still, I wished I could see whoever it was. I wished even harder to see a bobby in his dark, slick rain cape and his buckled hat, swinging his stick as he covered his beat.

I walked quickly now, paying no heed to the noise I made. I did not know if I was still being followed or not. I was intent on getting to the music hall. I crossed the wet street and hurried down the block to the alley that led to the stage door of the music hall. I turned into the dark alley, wishing that they had turned on the lamp that hung over the door. I paused, leaning against the damp brick wall, trying to compose myself before I went inside.

I watched the entrance to the alley. The fog swirled in front of it. A carriage rumbled down the street. I saw it pass, jostling over the cobblestones. I listened intently. There were footsteps, growing louder and louder. A man sauntered past the alley. He wore a brown and yellow checked cape, the long heavy folds covering his body. There was a tall hat on his head, the brim pulled over his face. He walked past the alley casually. He did not pause. He did not glance into the darkened recess where I was standing. There was nothing at all out of the ordinary about his conduct. The sound of his footsteps died away, and I could hear nothing but the pounding of my heart.

I stood there in the alley for several moments, composing myself. I decided I would tell Mattie about the man. I would mention it casually and watch her reaction. I would not tell her about my feeling of uneasiness, but perhaps she would be uneasy herself when I told her about the man. She might suggest that I come to the music hall early, or she might send one of the waiters to come and escort me back each night. We were in a fairly respectable part of London and there was seldom any kind of trouble, just the usual drunks and late hour roisterers. Certainly it was not infested with thieves and muggers as were some parts of the city.

I opened the stage door and stepped inside, glad to be out of the fog and shadows. I welcomed all the marvelous odors of backstage as I closed the door behind me. I could smell the grease paint and chalk and shabby velvet and rust. I walked past the stacks of clumsily painted cardboard backdrops, ran my hand along the railing of the iron staircase that led up to the dressing rooms above the stage. The stage was dark, an ugly, dusty expanse that would take on an aspect of glamor when the footlights illuminated it. The shabby, yellow-gold curtains that hung around it, closing off the backstage areas, fell in ponderous folds that hugged the floor. The front curtain of worn red velvet shut off all the sounds of the great hall where waiters served food and beer to the groups of people who crowded the little tables.