"The actor who made the discovery fainted onstage. The performance was, of course, suspended, and all the Manchester Players' following engagements were summarily canceled by wire that same night. The next morning I first learned of the killings and traveled immediately to Nottingham, arriving late on the afternoon of the twenty-ninth. But it seems that before any of the chores regarding the disposition of their business could be conducted—return of received receipts, packing and shipping of costumes, scenery, and the like—the rest of this traveling company of players had gone missing, simply vanished, just as the first two had disappeared—hotel bill unpaid, bags and personal effects left in their rooms. The local constabulary were only too happy to attribute their sudden departure to the still lingering perception of actors as opportunistic gypsies fleeing from creditors, and perhaps from their culpable involvement in as unsavory a pair of murders as that quiet Midlands community would ever hope to see."
"How many in the troupe altogether?" asked Sparks.
"Eighteen."
Sparks shook his head slowly. "I fear we will not see them again."
Stoker looked at him for a long moment before responding, "I share your concern, Mr. Sparks."
"This murdered couple, they were a man and a woman?" asked Doyle.
"Man and wife. And the woman six months pregnant," said Stoker, his repugnance at the atrocity surfacing for the first time from under the polish of his delivery.
The couple he'd seen at the seance, thought Doyle, the young couple seated beside him, the working-class man and his pregnant wife. So that meant the medium and the dark-skinned man were the genuine article, not for hire, they'd been on the inside of the job. Which meant the man killed at the scene was the actor hired to play the part of George B. Rathborne.
"Excuse me, Mr. Stoker," said Doyle urgently. "Is there a stage effect, a way of realistically simulating the cutting of someone's throat, with a knife or razor?"
"Not difficult at all," said Stoker. "The blade would have a hollow edge, and on it a slit to an interior cavity filled with fluid, triggered by a button which the holder would push as he drew it across the skin."
"The fluid would be ..."
"Stage blood. A mix of dye and glycerin. Sometimes animal's blood."
Pig's blood on the floorboards of 13 Chesire Street.
She's alive. She's alive, I know it, thought Doyle.
"There were four actors involved; you've accounted for three, what happened to the fourth, the second woman?"
Stoker nodded. "I knew this poor company had not left Nottingham of their own volition, if in fact they ever got out alive. Thus confronted with the most confounding mystery I have ever in my life encountered and in light of the profound disinterest of the police, I understood to pursue what I would learn of their fate myself. I am a writer of fiction, you see, or so I aspire to be. My family obligations necessitate my work in theater management, but writing is the means whereby I derive my greatest personal satisfaction."
Doyle nodded, irritated at the intrusion of the man's self-interest but sympathetically aware of how his own good nature was often at odds with the impulse to mine the rough ore of his experience for gold.
"My first action was to obtain a roster of company names from the hotel in Nottingham, then track the schedule of the Manchester Players to the next few cities on their tour, on the chance they had made some plan to regroup down the road and one of them or more might surface there. That took me to Huddlesfield, then York on New Year's Eve, on to Scarborough, and finally here, to Whitby, two days ago. I checked with the theaters in each city, and the hotels they had reserved to lay over. I watched stations and piers for arrivals and departures, visited restaurants and pubs touring actors were known to frequent. I questioned tailors and cobblers; actors are in constant need of repairs to shoes and costumes while on the road. For all that, I had not had, in any of these cities, a single encouraging response. I was indeed on the verge of returning to London when yesterday afternoon I happened upon a laundress in Whitby who had the day before taken in a woman's black satin dress damaged with a peculiarly persistent red stain—"
Sparks stood bolt upright. Doyle looked at him; he was
wearing the most curious expression he had ever seen on the man's face. Doyle turned to see what could have wrought such an effect in him.
She was standing in the doorway. She was looking for Stoker, and her face wore the small concentrated satisfaction of having found him, when her eyes traveled to his companions. The impact of seeing, and a moment later recognizing, Doyle appeared to weaken her; splotches of color rushed to her cheeks, and she put out a hand to the wall for support. Doyle immediately rose to his feet and moved to her, but he had no sense, or later, memory, of movement. There was only her face, the pale, delicate oval that had so haunted his thoughts and dreams, the soft black curls that framed her forehead before cascading gently to her shoulders. The noble eyes and full rose-pink lips. The elegant, swanlike gracefulness of her white neck. Unmarked, unscarred.
As he reached her, Doyle held out his hands, and she unhesitatingly took both in greeting, stepping forward to him even as she seemed to retreat, full of surrender and fear and apology uncertain of its reception. Realizing the forgiving welcome of his look, she let her weight list gently back against the door; it was the slightest, but to Doyle the most stunning, yielding to the turbulence of her feelings. She looked at him and looked away repeatedly, unable to hold the fullness of his gaze for any length of time. Emotions played across her face with the clarity and speed of minnows in a shallow stream. She seemed temperamentally incapable of any intentional deception; her beauty provided only the most quicksilver transparency to her innermost looking glass. Feeling the warm, moist touch of her hands, Doyle realized with a jolt that they had never spoken a single word to one another. Tears came freely to his eyes. He searched through his mind, quite sure he hadn't the remotest idea of how to begin.
"Are you all right?" he finally asked.
She nodded, repeatedly, trying to find her voice. There were tears glistening in her eyes as well.
"I had no hope that you could have been alive," he said, letting go of her hands, trying to keep his emotions in check.
"I had none," she said finally, her voice a dusky contralto, "but that which you, sir, by your courage and kindness had given me."
"But you are alive," said Doyle. "Here. That's what matters."
She looked up at him and held his look and nodded again. Her eyes were large, bracketed by dark, shapely brows, slanted appealingly downward at the outer corners, their color a startling sea green.
"You don't know how often I've thought of your face," she said, reaching out a tentative hand to touch him, withdrawing before making contact.
"What is your name?"
"Eileen."
"We must straightaway remove ourselves from common view," Sparks's voice intruded sharply. He was suddenly standing beside Doyle. "We'll use Stoker's room. This way, please, Madam."
Sparks gestured to where Stoker was waiting by the stairs. Doyle was disturbed at the curtness with which he had addressed her and gave him a cold look, which Sparks refused to meet. Doyle followed Eileen across the room, where she accepted Stoker's offered arm before climbing the staircase. Sparks trailed them to the second floor. No one spoke until all had entered Stoker's slanted, low-ceilinged room, and the door was secured behind them.