The West End Horror (10 page)

He blinked as though a riding crop had been swung before his face. It was his only human response thus far. Without further comment he spun on his heel and entered the theatre.

“What a singular personage. I declare, Holmes, there doesn’t seem to be a sane individual connected with this profession.

“There was a time when decent hotels wouldn’t put them up,” he agreed, “and it used to be a commonplace to observe that an actor shot President Lincoln.” He pursed his lips, trying to recall something. “Did that man say ‘Sir Henry’? Surely not.”

I was about to reply to this with some speculation of my own when the clatter of horses’ hooves upon the cobblestones outside the theatre attracted our attention.

A brougham had driven up, and out of it there stepped the prettiest woman I can remember ever having seen. Her figure was trim and girlish, though I saw when she drew close, that she must be nearing fifty. Nevertheless, her hair was blonde beneath a rakishly tilted hat and her eyes a radiant blue. Her nose was diminutive but not without nobility and was set above an expressive, humourous mouth. When she smiled– which was often–I caught a glimpse of perfect white teeth that shone like ropes of pearls. It was not her features individually, however, that provoked admiration, but rather the
tout ensemble
created by the engaging intellect that yoked them together. An air of healthy common sense and warmth pervaded, in distinct contrast to the last person we had seen in this lobby. What a place of extremes!

The woman descending from the brougham blew a kiss to the coachman (of all things!) and danced into the foyer.

“Good morning!” she called cheerily, noticing us. “Tickets do not go on sale before noon, you know–though you are quite right to be here early; they’ve been going like hot cakes all week!”

“Have I the honour of addressing Miss Ellen Terry?” Holmes smiled.

The ravishing creature returned his smile and responded to his bow with a lithesome curtsey.

“You look familiar, too, if you don’t mind my saying so,” she replied. “Have you been an actor?”

“Not for many years–on the stage, that is. But once, long ago, I trod the boards with John Henry Brodribb.” Her eyes went wide with astonishment, and she burst into a peal of girlish laughter.

“No! You acted with the Crab before he
was
the Crab? You don’t look old enough to have done any such thing,” she challenged playfully.

“I assure you, I wasn’t. I was eight at the time and played a page during a performance of
Hamlet
at York. My parents discovered me from the audience and were thoroughly appalled.* [This placing of Holmes in the vicinity of York when he was eight years old seems to corroborate Baring-Gould’s biography, in which the detective’s childhood in Donninthorpe is described.]

“But this is wonderful! Does he know you are here to see him? He will be so amused! Oh, but I’m afraid he may be dreadfully busy just now. Revivals are so trying. We’re attempting to recall what we did with
Macbeth
when we got it right the first time.” *[Irving first produced
Macbeth
in 1888.]

“There was a dark-haired, bearded gentleman here a moment ago. I believe he has gone upon my errand.”

“Oh, you’ve met Mama.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You must forgive my penchant”–she pronounced it as though it were a French word–“for nicknames. Irving says I’m quite incorrigible.”

“Irving, I take it, is the Crab?”

“But of course!” she giggled mischievously. “Oh, but you mustn’t say I said so. He’s terribly sensitive about the way he walks.”

“And Mama?”

“That is Mr. Stoker, our business manager and general secretary. He is so very protective of us all that I call him Mama.

“Bram Stoker?”

“Why, yes. Do you know him, as well? I don’t know either of your names,” she realised suddenly, with another laugh, “and here I’ve been gossiping as though we were all old friends.”

“Forgive me. My name is Sherlock Holmes, and this is my friend, Dr. Watson.”

“Now
I know why you looked familiar!” She clapped her gloved hands together delightedly. “I’ve seen your likenesses in the
Strand
magazine, haven’t I?” She laughed at having placed us, then stopped short. “Are you here on business?”

“In a way, though my business is with Sir Arthur Sullivan, not with Sir Henry.”

“Oh, you mustn’t call him that yet, you know; it’s two months off. *[Henry Irving was knighted two months later by Queen Victoria, the first of his profession to be so honored.] Mama does it, of course–he’s so fond of titles– but it drives Irving quite wild. With Sullivan, is
it?”
She frowned, tapping her foot, then smiled with resolution. “Well, come with me, and I’ll see if we can’t beard the pair of ‘em.” She turned to enter the theatre when the door opened suddenly and Stoker reappeared. Miss Terry gave a little shriek of fright, then laughed again, placing a hand on her bosom.

“How you startled me, Bram!”

“I beg your pardon,” said he stiffly. From the suddenness with which he opened the door, I suspected him of having eavesdropped on a considerable portion of the conversation. “Sir Arthur will see you now,” he informed us coldly.

“I’ll take them, thank you, Bram.”

“They’re in the Club Room, Ellen.” He stood to one side, holding the door to let us pass, bowing low to the lady with what I thought exaggerated formality. We entered the theatre and started down the aisle in her wake.

“Dear Mama,” she commented.

The Lyceum, which I had not seen for some time, was a theatre lavish beyond belief and famed for the unstinting artistic effort and money that went into its productions. Confronting us on the stage as we walked towards
it
was a stunning rendition of what I took to be the blasted heath which opens
Macbeth.
Real trees were in evidence, as well as shrubbery and a three-dimensional rocky terrain. The effect was so startling that we stopped for a moment in wonder.

“Isn’t
it
remarkable?” Miss Terry remarked. “Sir Edward Bume-Jones does a great many of our productions. Sometimes I think the public comes here just to look at the sets.”

‘What is the Club Room?” I asked as we went through a side door and entered the complicated backstage portion of the theatre. All around us carpenters were hammering, sawing, and yelling instructions to one another, obliging us
to
shout over the din.

“Ah, that is Irving’s pride and joy. Samuel Arnold, *[The great-grandfather of Edgar Allan Poe] the composer, who built the first Lyceum–predecessor of this theatre–added
it
years ago for his Sublime Society of Beefsteaks. Sheridan was a member, you know! And Irving has restored
it.
There’s a kitchen, and he so loves to entertain and relax after a performance. Here we are.” She stopped before a door that gave out from the back of the building.

“It seems to me I have met Mr. Stoker before,” Holmes remarked offhandedly. “Doesn’t he live in Soho?” Ellen Terry spun around, her finger to her lips.

“Hush! Oh, please,
please,
you mustn’t mention anything of the kind in there. It was such a sore point when
it
happened the first time! I don’t know that Irving’s ever forgiven him for
it,
and that was years ago.”

“What do you mean? Is he–?”

“Hush, I
beg
you, Mr. Holmes!” She put her head to the door and listened intently, then with a little smirk, signed for us to do the same. Despite her advancing years, she had the disposition and energy of a very young girl. Following her instructions, we put our heads to the door.

“No, no, no, my dear chap!” came an odd-sounding deep voice, very nasal. “As music,
it
may be all very well, but it’s not right for our purpose at all. Listen! I
see
the daggers, and I want them
heard
by the audience.”

“But, Henry, what do daggers sound like?” a high-pitched voice protested in a slight whine.

‘What do they sound like? They sound like–” And then we heard the queerest succession of grunts and growls, alternately sounding like squeaks and a beehive.

“Oh, yes, yes! I see what you mean! That’s much better!” the high, piping voice exclaimed.
“Yes,
I think I can do that.”

“Good.”

Miss Terry, having amused herself sufficiently, knocked peremptorily on the door and opened
it
without waiting for a response.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, my dears,” she adopted a business-like, matter-of-fact tone, “but here are the two gentlemen who wished to see Sir Arthur.” What a little actress she was!

The spacious quarters into which we were shown indeed suggested an ideal retreat after a strenuous night’s work in the theatre. Dominating the place was a long oak table at which thirty guests might easily put in a pleasant hour or two over several cold birds and bottles.

At the far end of the table, beneath portraits of David Garrick and Edmund Kean, two figures sat cloistered together, looking like conspirators interrupted in the midst of an anarchist plot.

The taller of the two was a melancholy man in his late fifties, with cavernously hollow cheeks, long grey hair, piercing eyes of an indeterminate colour, and a studiously grave demeanour. He rose courteously and bowed as we entered. Over his shoulders was carelessly draped a massive maroon cloak, which lent to his distinguished appearance an appropriately theatrical touch.

Sir Arthur Sullivan rose, as well. He was not nearly so tall as Henry Irving, nor as dramatic in his costume. He wore his expensive clothes unaffectedly, as one who is used to fine things, and though a trifle stout, was possessed of dark, slightly Semitic good looks. His sad eyes were a lustrous brown and reminded me forcibly of a cow’s as they peered myopically through the pince-nez that rested familiarly on the bridge of his nose. Like Gilbert, he affected large sidewhiskers, and their effect, I judged, was to make him seem older than he really was. He held his right hand at an unnatural angle throughout our conversation, pressing
it
against his stomach. Altogether there was in his face and in his bearing that which did not suggest a healthy man.

“Gentlemen,” said Irving in his odd nasal voice, “we are sorry to have kept you waiting.”

“And we are equally sorry to interrupt your business.”

“I’ve been with the police most of the morning,” Sullivan informed us sadly as we shook hands. “I don’t know what I can say to you that I haven’t told them. May I ask at whose behest you come to see me?”

Suddenly he gasped and clutched spasmodically at his side, turning quite pale. Irving caught him tenderly as he stumbled, breaking the fall, and gently lowered him into a chair. He whispered his thanks to the actor, then turned, catching his breath, and repeated his question.

“We are here at the behest of justice,” Holmes informed him, ignoring, for the moment, his seizure. “More prosaically, we were asked to look into the matter by Mr. Bernard Shaw.”

The reaction of the two men to this piece of intelligence was startling. Sullivan knit his brows, perplexed, while Irving straightened up abruptly, his face clouding over, rendering his appearance more sombre than
it
was already.

“Shaw?” he cried, his courtly attitude slipping a little as he darted a glance at Ellen Terry. “Nellie, is this any of your doing?”

“Henry, dearest, I give you my word I know nothing about
it,”
Miss Terry replied, obviously taken aback. “I met these gentlemen only moments ago in the lobby.”

Irving started ominously down the length of the table. As he walked–or rather, shuffled–I was struck by his manner of thrusting his right shoulder forward, and I had to smile at Miss Terry’s pet name for him.

“I give you warning, Nellie–” he spoke at the door–”I give you fair warning. I will not have that degenerate in this theatre–”

“He’s not a degenerate, Henry. What are you talking about?” she spoke up with spirit. Irving went on as though he hadn’t heard.

“I will not have him in this theatre, and I will not produce his revolting plays, And if he publishes any more drivel about the way we do things here, I will thrash him personally.”

“Henry,” she protested, looking anxiously around him at us and smiling nervously, “this is not the time or the place–”

“Let him stay at the Court with Granville Barker, where he belongs,” Irving grumbled, calming somewhat. “Where they
all
belong. I don’t want him or his plays here. Is that understood?” *[This reference to the Court Theatre is mystifying as
it
anticipates events by many years. Perhaps Watson’s memory plays him false here. Then again,
it
may be this editor’s mistake as the water damage suffered by the manuscript is particularly severe at this point. Nonetheless,
it
does
look like “the Court with Granville Barker,” etcetera]

“Yes, Henry,” said she meekly. “Come along and let’s leave these gentlemen to their business.”

This recalled the actor to himself and he turned to us with another bow.

“I apologise for my outburst, gentlemen. I know I am sometimes carried away. The theatre in this country will go in one of two directions shortly, and I feel quite strongly about which it’s to be,”

He spoke simply and with such evident feeling that, strangers to his ideas, we lowered our heads, embarrassed and, I think, moved by the display of raw emotion,

“Come, Henry.” He allowed her to lead him from the room, a wearying Titan, I thought, following a Dresden shepherdess, herself no longer young.

Alone now with the composer, we turned and faced him.

‘Were you really sent ‘round by Bernard Shaw?” Sullivan began testily when the door was closed. “Why is he meddling in this? The man’s an infernal busybody, and aside from his knowledge of music, I find him utterly depraved.”

“He did not engage us specifically in the matter of Miss Rutland,” Holmes acknowledged, moving forward and pulling up one of the large chairs, “but rather in connection with the murder of Jonathan McCarthy.”