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Full Dark House(44)

By:Christopher Fowler


‘So, Miss Betts was in the wing looking for a carpenter with a cigarette. Miss Wynter was there with her retrieved tortoise. Miss Penn, Mrs Thwaite and Miss Parole were all in the process of heading to the basement, as were Harry, Mr Woolf and Mr Varisich. Up until the siren sounded, Mr Woolf had been watching the front entrance from the box office, and the stage door keeper—’

‘Stan Lowe. He has an assistant called Mouse. I s’pose he has a real name but I don’t know what it is—’

‘—was still in his booth at the base of the stairs, and neither of them saw anyone enter or leave. You were by the bay doors, which were locked. And there’s no other way in or out.’

‘I wouldn’t quite say that,’ said Mr Mack. ‘There is a pair of exits on to the roof, and they’re unlocked from the inside because of the current ARP regulations.’

‘You can get out of the building via the roof?’

‘Yes, but you can’t get in from them, and you can’t go very far once you’re out. Sometimes we have firewatchers stationed out there, but not today. They have to prop open the door with fire buckets when they go up because we’ve not enough keys.’

The Palace Theatre was one of the few London theatres standing in grand isolation. Its facia overlooked Cambridge Circus, but its sides were separated by Shaftesbury Avenue and Romilly Street. Only the rear section touched any other buildings, a short row of houses in the lower part of Greek Street, and the Palace roof stood considerably higher than those.

‘So no one entered or left during the rehearsal. See here, John.’ Bryant held the end of the wire aloft. ‘Even with my hopeless eyesight I can tell this was cut. A clean shear. There is no way that you could arrange it in advance.’

He carefully made his way down onto the stage to examine the wires that had been drilled into the globe. Corinne Betts, the comedienne playing Mercury, had been sedated by her doctor. Chorus girls were talking in shocked whispers in the wings.

‘Where would I find a copy of the design for the globe?’ asked Bryant.

‘The prop designs and stage plans are all in use,’ said Helena Parole, walking into the light thrown by one of the Fresnel spots. ‘They’re changed and updated all the time, so they’ll be scattered about in different offices. We mimeograph copies of everything and work from those.’

‘What do you do with the originals?’

‘They go up into the archive room. They’ll be clearly labelled.’ The lack of concern in her voice bothered May. ‘Do you want me to send someone for them?’

‘John, I wonder if you would oblige?’

‘Of course.’ May left the stage and went to the company office for the keys. He took the lift to the fifth floor, pulled open the trellis doors and stepped out into a dingy hall. The boarded-up end windows prevented light from entering, but the pairs of defunct gas mantles at either end of the hallway would have done little to dispel the creeping gloom, which was deepened by chestnut walls and threadbare brown carpets.

May flicked a brass switch at the head of the corridor, but nothing happened. According to Helena, there was barely a time when the electrics functioned correctly. The faint glow from the electroliers in the main stairway allowed him to make out the doors to his left, but none of them was labelled. He checked the first door but found that it had been fitted with a Yale. The key he had taken from the company office was a long-handled Victorian affair, scabbed with rust.

He located the theatre archive in a room at the darkest turn in the corridor. Within the cramped suite were dozens of overstuffed boxes and damp cardboard files cataloguing productions and stars. Dim light was provided by the bare bulb overhead. He glanced across the titles on the lids of the boxes and pulled out some of the Palace’s monochrome publicity photographs. Buster Keaton performing with his father, the pair of them bowing to the audience in matching outfits. The jagged profile of Edith Sitwell, posturing her way through some kind of spoken-word concert. A playbill for W. C. Fields starring in a production of David Copperfield. Another presenting him in his first appearance at the Palace as an ‘eccentric juggler’. The four Marx Brothers, gurning for the camera. Fred Astaire starring in The Gay Divorcée, his last show before heading to Hollywood.

The dust on the lower boxes betrayed an even earlier age. The infamous Sarah Bernhardt season of 1892; Oscar Wilde’s Salome was due to have been performed at the theatre, but had fallen foul of the Lord Chamberlain’s ruling about the depiction of religious figures. The legendary Nijinsky, seen onstage just after his split with Diaghilev. According to the notes, he had left the Palace after discovering that he was to appear at the top of a common variety bill. Cicely Courtneidge in a creaky musical comedy, her dinner-jacketed suitors arranged about her like Selfridge’s mannequins. The first royal command performance, in 1912. Anna Pavlova dancing to Debussy. Max Miller in his ludicrous floral suit, pointing cheekily into the audience—’You know what I mean, don’t you, missus?’ Forgotten performers, the laughter of ghosts.