As Phin walked towards Harlequin Court, he could almost believe that those long-ago performers from Scaramel’s time walked with him, ephemeral and indistinct, like ghost reflections seen in the window of a late-night train.
It was extraordinarily easy to believe he was seeing flickering gas-lit shapes, glimpses of opera-cloaked and top-hatted gentlemen making a leisurely way back from the nearby theatres. Silken-clad ladies, stepping daintily over the cobblestones …
Except that those images were entirely wrong, because any fragments of Harlequin Court’s past would not be silk- or velvet-clad. This had been the haunt of the ordinary working people – men and women from the factories and the docks and the street markets. They would have dressed up in their cheap finery for their evening out, and they would have been cheerful and lively, singing snatches of the songs of the day as they came down the alleyway. But they would not have worn silk.
He crossed the court and went down the carpeted stairs. As he stepped out into the restaurant he saw that there were only a few people at the tables, and that Loretta Farrant was seated near the door, looking towards the stairs, as if she had been watching for him. She was wearing a black suit with a white silk shirt under it, and large silver and jet earrings.
‘It’s very nice to see you again,’ she said, coming over to him. ‘Let’s go straight down to the office.’ She led the way to a door near the staircase. ‘Twelve steps down,’ she said, indicating. ‘And they’re a bit steep, so be careful. I’ve left a light on, though, and there’s a handrail.’
The steps were not carpeted, and their footsteps rang out in the enclosed space. But Loretta – or her interior designer – had made a fair attempt at sprucing up the stair. The walls were smoothly whitewashed, and several framed prints of old street scenes were hung at intervals. They’ve tried to conceal what this really is, thought Phin, but it’s still unmistakably a cellar.
‘These are the boxes,’ said Loretta, and indicated two large battered cardboard boxes standing on the floor. ‘Take as long as you want sorting through them, and feel free to photocopy anything. The copier’s in the corner there.’
‘I suppose we can’t carry them upstairs?’ said Phin, not very hopefully.
‘Bit difficult. The restaurant’s still open.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘I’ve asked for a pot of tea to be brought down – or would you prefer coffee?’
‘Tea is fine,’ said Phin, turning to study the boxes. He could already see that the papers on the top were badly foxed, and probably unreadable, but documents beneath might be in better condition. Fragments of old newspapers, perhaps. Advertisements for cures for ailments … Reports of murders, of trials, of executions and disasters. Public proclamations, penny ghost stories, announcements of royal births and deaths and marriages. Playbills relating to Linklighters’ own artistes.
‘It’s a bit small down here, isn’t it?’ said Loretta. ‘I don’t work down here very often, of course, but it’s useful for storage.’
‘You said you had to seal off an old ditch.’
‘Yes, the Cock and Pye Ditch – at least that’s the name on the old maps. We had to satisfy the insurers and the bank, and we had to create that panel in the wall, in case it was ever necessary to get through to the sluice gate.’ She indicated a large panel inset into one wall. ‘It unlocks and lifts out. There used to be a culvert somewhere along the channel – I think it came out somewhere near St Martin’s Lane. And there’s a sluice gate on the other side of that panel.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, a massive great thing – it’s black with age, and there are iron spikes at the top and chains looping around it. And a monstrous wheel at one side that has to be winched round to lift the gate.’
Phin said, ‘Ancient gates are always a bit nightmarish. As if they might be portals into other worlds – and as if the other worlds might be very sinister indeed. You almost expect them to creak open very slowly, and a beckoning hand to come out.’
He was instantly annoyed with himself for saying this – Arabella’s influence! he thought – but Loretta said, eagerly, ‘Yes, exactly like that. I thought you’d know what I meant, Phineas.’
Phin, who loathed being called Phineas, which he always thought sounded like Trollope’s laid-back Irish politician in the Palliser novels, or an annoyingly impractical Victorian traveller, mumbled a vague reply, and knelt down to examine the contents of the boxes. He was slightly disconcerted when Loretta came to kneel next to him. The skirt of the black suit was a bit short and a bit tight for kneeling; it rode up over her knees. She was wearing one of the modern scents that Phin always thought smelled like sweetened mildew. He had a sudden memory of Arabella extravagantly spraying on the absurdly costly perfume that always made him think of ancient Persian rose gardens and warm amber.
But he said, ‘Were you able to check the lease of these premises yet? To see if there are any earlier names on it?’
‘I did look, but there aren’t any names as such. Only that Harlequin Court and a few nearby streets have been owned by a set-up called the Salisbury Estate or the Salisbury Trust since around 1940.’
‘Probably ultimately the whole place is owned by the Duke of Westminster,’ said Phin. ‘Most of Belgravia and Mayfair belongs to him. And if it isn’t him, it’s the Crown or the Church.’
He reached again for the contents of the nearer box, and Loretta reached out with him. It was probably accidental that as she leaned over, the white silk shirt parted at the neck, allowing a glimpse of a lace-edged bra. Phin was relieved to remember she had mentioned tea, which presumably somebody would soon bring, and which would create an interruption.
‘Most of this stuff is from the old music hall years,’ said Loretta. ‘We used some of the better-preserved playbills for decoration in the restaurant.’
‘I saw several of them. Are they all the originals?’
‘Most are, although we had to take copies of one or two because they were so fragile … Ah, that sounds like our tea.’
She got up to take the tray from the waitress, and set it down on the desk. Phin seized the opportunity to move the larger box to form a makeshift barrier between them.
‘Please don’t think you need to stay down here with me,’ he said, as she handed him a cup. ‘I expect you’ve got masses to do, and I’m more than happy to look through everything on my own. Sometimes it takes ages going back and forth, seeing if you can link up two unrelated discoveries, and recording tiny bits of information. It’d probably be a bit boring for you. I’ll let you know if I do find anything of interest, of course. Oh, and I promise not to venture anywhere near the sluice gate panel.’ He looked over his shoulder at it again.
‘Well, all right,’ said Loretta, clearly reluctant. ‘I’ll be in the restaurant if you want anything. I’ll leave the door at the top of these stairs open.’
Phin waited until he had heard her steps go all the way back up to the restaurant, then he began systematically to sort through the boxes’ contents.
There were a great many old programmes for performances that had been held in the supper rooms; these dated mainly from the late 1870s to the middle of the 1890s. Phin looked through them all, but most were so faded and tattered they were barely readable. He was hoping to find something about the macabre song that hung in a frame upstairs, but there did not seem to be anything.
He was, though, delighted to turn up several mentions of Scaramel. She appeared to have danced her way through those years in various guises and costumes – most of the descriptions of her routines sounded lively, several sounded suggestive, and a few had clearly been downright outrageous.
Phin thought that whatever else she might have been, and whoever’s bedsprings she might have bounced, she had certainly been part of the saucy naughtiness of the Victorian and Edwardian music halls. He particularly liked a report of how she had presided over several gaming tables at a card party one evening. The party was described as having been attended by, ‘A number of very estimable personages, best not named.’ At the end of the night, with the tables littered with cards and IOUs and empty wine and brandy bottles, Scaramel had apparently performed a lively routine with the remarkable title of, ‘If Only They Knew Where I Keep My Little Bit of Luck’.
Phin smiled at this. He hoped that Scaramel had amassed enough money to make life smooth and enjoyable, and he also hoped she had not been tangled up in a murder.
He made a number of notes, set aside the programmes that were clear enough to be copied, and ploughed on. But although Scaramel’s name and image continued to bounce through the tattered playbills and programmes, nowhere was there the smallest reference to Franz Liszt.
He was no longer aware of the time passing, or of his surroundings, although several times he heard sounds from the restaurant above – doors opening and closing, voices calling out, the rattle of crockery. He was working through the second, smaller box now; he had almost reached the bottom, and was reluctantly acknowledging that this whole thing was starting to look like a dead end. The trouble was that dead ends had to be checked, to make sure they were really dead ends.
There were a number of what looked like old news-sheets, and he lifted them out. Hadn’t it been Charles Dickens who had called such things the rags of last year’s handbills? He began to look through them. There were a few advertisements for a Christmas event which had been held in the square and which would have been handed out to passers-by. Phin put these to one side to make copies in case he and Toby could make use of them in their proposed book.
It was now almost four o’clock, and the restaurant seemed to have settled into silence. Probably this was an in-between time for them. But it was not completely silent down here. Phin could hear faint rustlings and creaks, which were certainly not coming from overhead. He glanced uneasily at the sluice-gate panel, then turned determinedly back to the boxes, blotting out the impression that the sounds beyond the wall panel were footsteps that echoed slightly. But there would be some perfectly ordinary explanation. All kinds of people might have to go down into the depths of London’s sewers and rivers and ditches, by way of all kinds of peculiar methods. Presumably there were departments whose task it was to ensure that nothing unwholesome could slop its way up to the streets from the depths. But this last thought was so much like the start of a garish horror film that Phin relaxed and grinned, and then thought he must remember to tell Arabella about it. She would promptly come up with several explanations for the sounds, none of which would be remotely possible, and most of which would involve aliens, spectral visitations, and/or megalomaniac scientists. Before Phin met Arabella it would never have occurred to him to think on such lines.
Remembering Arabella’s cheerful fantasizing made him feel better, and he returned to the remaining papers. He lifted out one on the top of the pile which was faded, but reasonably legible, and began reading.
Information is sought regarding the whereabouts of the young artist known as Links, who has not been seen at his lodgings for over a week. Links’s work has been exhibited in Thumbprints bookshop, and he is best known for his vivid sketches of the area immediately around Harlequin Court and of the performers and patrons of Linklighters Supper Club. The sketches have been much admired for their liveliness and originality.
Links. Could it be an abbreviation of Linklighters? Could one of those vivid sketches have found its way into a modern book?
Whoever had distributed this news-sheet had included a small head and shoulders sketch, and beneath it were the words, ‘A self-sketch of Links’. Phin studied it, interested to see the artist who might have created that eerie sketch – Liszten for the Killer …
The self-portrait was surprisingly clear, even allowing for the cumbersome nineteenth-century printing processes. Phin, his interest caught, tilted Loretta Farrant’s desk light so that it shone directly on the paper. Under the light it was possible to see the features in the sketch much more clearly. The face was thin, with high cheekbones and large dark eyes. There was a tumble of dark hair that would always flop forward, no matter how firmly it was combed back. It was a face that would stay in your mind, and its owner looked heartbreakingly young – no more than nineteen or twenty – and unbearably vulnerable.
The news-sheet did not give any more information about Links, but there was a brief appeal for information.
Persons having any useful information are asked to kindly communicate details to Mr Thaddeus at Thumbprints in Harlequin Court.
Phin put the paper down, but he went on looking at it. How likely was it that this long-ago artist had drawn that Liszten for the Killer sketch? How possible was it that the sketch was connected to the framed song-sheet upstairs? ‘Listen for the killer for he’s here, just out of sight …’
He remembered that Loretta had said he could use the photocopier, so he switched it on, and made two copies of the news-sheet, being careful not to damage the original. Then he made copies of the pages from the programmes which featured Scaramel.
He put the originals back in their box, and put the copies into his briefcase. Then he went back up to the restaurant, thankful to be leaving the underground room. Loretta Farrant was talking to two people in chefs’ outfits, and Phin was grateful that this allowed him to make a brief goodbye, and to say he would phone later.
Shadows were already forming in the corners of Harlequin Court when he went out. Had that long-ago artist seen these very shadows? Had it been the mysterious Links? If so, had Links seen that frightened figure by the old gas lamp in reality, or had it just been his imagination? Those wide-apart eyes might be capable of seeing anything – of looking beyond the commonplace to the dream worlds beyond.
Phin paused by the old streetlight, thinking about the people who would have come here and who would have come to Linklighters. Shopkeepers and clerks and housemaids and navvies and costermongers. The linklighters themselves would have been here, of course, young boys scurrying through the famous pea-souper fogs – the London Particulars that Dickens and other Victorian writers had described and used to chilling effect.
There would have been people from the seamier, darker side of the city, too: pickpockets and cutpurses, all eagerly on the watch for opportunities. Beggars, hopeful of being given a few coins here and there to buy their next meal or a night’s lodging, some of them soldiers maimed in the Crimea or the Transvaal. And those ladies who plied the oldest of trades, and who, whether they were kitten-faced teenagers or haggard-eyed harridans, would all have been prepared to stand up against a dank wall in a dark corner for a stranger … Was it Boswell who had recorded having sex with a sixpenny whore in one of the alcoves in Westminster Bridge?
What place had Links had in all of that? Where had he belonged? He must have belonged to somebody, because that somebody had arranged for those news-sheets to be distributed in an attempt to find him, and had taken the trouble to include that self-sketch.
And who had been the killer referred to in the song and the sketch?