I woke early, and rose and dressed as soon as I heard movements in the adjoining bedroom. I was in a hurry to leave; I was afraid to find the domestic situation too tense for my liking, and I wished to begin my investigations at once. However, when I emerged from my room upon hearing Kathleen enter the kitchen, I found her in high spirits, humming as she made tea. She turned a radiant face to me, but said nothing. Indeed, she could hardly ask me how I had slept, or I her! I watched her for a few moments, admiring the sturdy, well-built yet very feminine body Nature had seen fit to bestow upon her, moving with vigour and purpose inside a close-fitting bodice. When Ernest entered the room, she caught his arm and drew him towards her briefly, in passing, then let it go; a mere butterfly caress. Her reconquest of her husband was clearly underway.

I waited till Kathleen had left the room to ask Ernest what I most desired to know, namely whether the Outdoor Shakespeare Company was still playing in Hampstead, or had moved to another location. He did not know, but fetched the morning paper from where it had been delivered on the doormat, and spread it out among the teacups. We bent our heads together over the announcements of theatre productions.

‘Why look,’ said Ernest, ‘they’re going to be playing in a real theatre. The Acropolis. It’s been closed for ages for renovations. I expect they got it temporarily – and inexpensively.’ He spoke quite normally, but his hand trembled as he refolded the paper.

‘I am going there at once,’ I told him. He nodded without comment.

In spite of the improved conjugal atmosphere, I sighed with relief as I emerged into the sunny street. London! I never set foot in it without feeling a surge of excitement caused by the busy immensity of its populous thoroughfares and byways. It was a joy to me to walk and walk, even as the streets became narrower, the houses seedier, the pavements dirtier and the people more unkempt. I had located the position of this unknown theatre in the East End of London, and it took me more than an hour to reach it, but it was an hour well spent. I arrived somewhat dusty, but feeling refreshed and renewed.

It was, nevertheless, with a feeling of timidity that I hesitated in front of the door of the dilapidated building located at the address corresponding to the Acropolis theatre. There was no sign over the door to indicate the nature of the building, although traces remained of a sign that had hung there and been removed. It was pressed closely between two peeling tenements, and the large wooden door was worn, scratched and discoloured by inclement weather and total lack of care. Two broad windows, one on either side of the door, bore cracked and broken panes, some of which had been summarily patched with canvas, and sheets of yellowed newspaper covered them on the inside so that it was impossible to obtain a glimpse of the interior.

I remained in the street for a few moments, contemplating this unwelcoming door. It did not seem to be equipped with any kind of bell, but finally the staring eyes of a little group of street children impelled me to move, and I stepped forward, laid my hand upon the knob, and pushed. The door creaked and yielded; it was not locked.

I entered a foyer running the whole width of the building. It was not especially large, yet its dimensions were fair enough to give an impression of spaciousness, especially in the dimness produced by the covered windows, which caused the walls to recede into vagueness. A stone floor which could have been quite impressive if swept and polished rang under my feet. The space was entirely empty except for a counter along the length of one of the side walls. Counter and floor were strewn with old programmes, newspapers and scraps of all kinds. I thought that it might have been a decent entrance to the theatre, and could again become one with a little effort; a thorough cleaning, new glass and curtains at the large front windows, and reasonable lighting would suffice. The idea of light caused me to glance upwards, and I found myself admiring an enormous chandelier covered with cobwebs and hanging somewhat askew.

There were two doors in the far wall, a double door in the centre and a little one off to the side. I advanced slowly towards the double door and tried it very delicately. It yielded; I opened it a crack, and found myself looking straight into the theatre itself.

Curved rows of fixed, wooden folding seats faced the stage, watching, like silent spectators, the scene unfolding thereupon. These hundreds of seats were occupied by two or three people only. On the stage, an actor and an actress were reading some lines, standing with their texts in their hands. A young man, following the shouted directions of one of the seated gentlemen, drew chalk lines and circles upon the floor. The back of the stage was half-collapsed, partly open into the backstage area beyond, where several other people could be seen occupied at different tasks. At least two men stood upon ladders, one hammering away with rather gentle taps, as though he were not on familiar ground, or did not wish to disturb the actors, another tearing away strips of peeling paper from what might have been an old backdrop. A row of electric lights, several of which were not functioning, lined the edge of the stage.

The actress on the stage, a tall, well-built girl, lifted her head, and I recognised Helena from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, although today, instead of Greek drapery, she wore only a simple walking skirt and a modest blouse waist with unfashionably small sleeve puffs no greater than my own. No doubt she, like me, belonged to a small sisterhood of those who willingly sacrifice fashionability in order to avoid wearing frighteningly gigantic leg-of-mutton sleeves which require special cloaks and refuse to pass through ordinary doors.

‘Let’s move to the confession scene,’ said the director sitting in front of the stage, and the young woman turned her head towards the area behind the stage, and bellowed unceremoniously,

‘Mrs Warren’s wanted now!’

Immediately, there came a middle-aged woman dressed in a skirt fitted closely around her generous hips, and a blouse whose fantastic decorations turned her shoulders into the widest part of her body – no mean feat, considering the rest of it. I slipped into a seat at the very back of the theatre to watch the continuation of the rehearsal.

The young man left, and joined one of the workmen at the back, standing at the bottom of the ladder and reaching tools up to him. I could make them out through the partially destroyed backdrop. The two women fetched a pair of wobbly chairs and sat on them, facing each other, holding their scripts in their hands. They read from these, but lifted their faces to look at each other whenever they could, having taken in a whole line or two in a single glance.

The young woman played a character by the name of Vivie Warren, a person who appeared to consider herself vastly superior to her mother. The older woman expressed this by acting querulously hurt as she spoke her lines. Vivie began by criticising her mother and her mother’s friends, but after a short time moved to what was obviously the uppermost question in her mind: the identity of her unknown father. At this point, the dialogue was interrupted and recommenced more than a dozen times, as the play’s director seemed to be seeking a way in which to allow Vivie’s mother to pronounce an admission so bold that I was doubtful that such a play could be performed on the London stage at all, and not only because of the scandal, but also because of the artistic effect. It seemed impossible that the entire audience should not immediately feel, as I did, that the whole play had been written uniquely with a view to pronouncing exactly these words and exposing those facts in a public place.

‘Listen, you’re describing your youth,’ said the director to Mrs Warren. ‘You need to take a kind of calm but slightly wailing tone, as though you’re going through these old memories which are drab and wearisome to you, but not acutely painful any more. The important thing is to speak without emphasis.’

I sat back, unnoticed, and went on listening.

Mrs Warren:    The clergyman got me a situation as a scullery maid; then I was a waitress, and then I went to the bar at Waterloo station; fourteen hours a day serving drinks and washing glasses for four shillings a week and my board. Well, one cold, wretched night, when I was so tired I could hardly keep myself awake, who should come up for a half of Scotch but my sister Lizzie, in a long fur cloak, elegant and comfortable, with a lot of sovereigns in her purse. When she saw I’d grown up good-looking, she said to me across the bar, ‘‘What are you doing there, you little fool? Wearing out your health and your appearance for other people’s profit!” Liz was saving money then to take a house for herself in Brussels, and she thought we two could save faster than one. So she lent me some money and gave me a start; and I saved steadily and first paid her back, and then went into business with her as a partner. Why shouldn’t I have done it? The house in Brussels was real high class: a much better place for a woman to be in than the whitelead factory where girls get themselves poisoned, or the scullery, or the bar, or at home. Would you have had me stay in them and become a worn out old drudge before I was forty?
     
     
Vivie:   No; but why did you choose that business? Saving money and good management will succeed in any business.
     
     
Mrs Warren:   Yes, saving money. But where can a woman get the money to save in any other business? Could you save out of four shillings a week and keep yourself dressed as well? Not you. Of course, if you’re a plain woman and can’t earn anything more; or if you have a turn for music, or the stage, or newspaper-writing: that’s different. But neither Liz nor I had any turn for such things at all: all we had was our appearance and our turn for pleasing men. Do you think we were such fools as to let other people trade in our good looks by employing us as shopgirls, or barmaids, or waitresses, when we could trade in them ourselves and get all the profits instead of starvation wages? Not likely.
     
     
Vivie:   You were certainly quite justified – from the business point of view.
     
     
Mrs Warren:   Yes; or any other point of view. What is any respectable girl brought up to do but to catch some rich man’s fancy and get the benefit of his money by marrying him? – as if a marriage ceremony could make any difference in the right or wrong of the thing! Oh, the hypocrisy of the world makes me sick! Liz and I had to work and save and calculate just like other people; elseways we should be as poor as any good-for-nothing drunken waster of a woman that thinks her luck will last forever. I despise such people: they’ve no character; and if there’s a thing I hate in a woman, it’s want of character.
     
     
Vivie:   Come now, mother: frankly! Isn’t it part of what you call character in a woman that she should greatly dislike such a way of making money?
     
     
Mrs Warren:    Why, of course. Everybody dislikes having to work and make money; but they have to do it all the same. I’m sure I’ve often pitied a poor girl, tired out and in low spirits, having to try to please some man that she doesn’t care two straws for – some half-drunken fool that thinks he’s making himself agreeable when he’s teasing and worrying and disgusting a woman so that hardly any money could pay her for putting up with it. But she has to bear with disagreeables and take the rough with the smooth, just like a nurse in a hospital or anyone else. It’s not work that any woman would do for pleasure, goodness knows; though to hear the pious people talk you would suppose it was a bed of roses.

‘This is rubbish, Alan,’ said the actress playing Vivie, jumping out of her chair and throwing her script to the floor. ‘We can’t play this stuff! It’s all very well to say ‘‘without emphasis”. But the emphasis is there, in the words. The whole thing is just wrong.’

‘It can’t be done without seeking effect,’ agreed the older woman. Rising, she walked to the edge of the stage and squinted down at the man called Alan, whom I now knew to be the Alan Manning that Ernest had mentioned. ‘It’s missing the human aspect, Alan. What Shaw is doing here is trying to prove a point. I’m not saying the point he’s trying to prove is wrong. But the authenticity of any dialogue is bound to be lost when you try to use it to prove something.’

‘I do see what you’re saying, of course,’ said the director, standing up and stretching. He was in his shirtsleeves, having thrown his jacket over the back of his seat. ‘It doesn’t dig deep enough, does it? I didn’t realise that when I read the script at home. It seemed to hit pretty hard. But now it’s starting to sound a bit like a social tract. Still, maybe we’re spoilt by Shakespeare. Don’t you think we could save it?’

‘It’s risky,’ said the older woman. ‘If the play were really good, we could overcome the public anger it’s bound to produce. But with a play as poor as this, it doesn’t stand a chance.’

‘I hate it!’ cried the younger actress vehemently, joining her colleague at the edge of the stage. ‘What does he think he knows? How does any man dare write about such things – as though he can possibly understand! How dare he – how dare he even pretend to imagine!’ She stamped her foot, and continued furiously. ‘He wrote these lines to be spoken by actresses. And what will the effect on the public be? It’s – it’s like a betrayal in the midst of our struggle. Our profession is only just beginning to be perceived as…honourable. No, that isn’t even true yet. No decent girl would be allowed to go on the stage, even today. But the subject is being raised, at least! There are some playwrights who are trying to tell the public that our profession is not to be confused with—’

‘The oldest profession in the world,’ broke in Mr Manning calmly. ‘All right, that’s enough, I understand your point. It was just a try, remember? Let’s take a break, and have a bit of a read of Act III after elevenses. If we all agree it won’t work, we’ll chuck it. I’ve got three others under consideration, remember?’

‘I’ll get a pot of tea,’ said the older actress, putting her arm around the younger girl’s shoulders. The one or two seated spectators rose, and scrambling directly up onto the stage, they crossed over to the back and disappeared. Only Mr Manning remained, shuffling together the pages of his own copy of the script, upon which he had been making notes. I went over towards him.

‘Excuse me,’ I said softly. He turned abruptly.

‘Who are you?’ he said.

‘A friend of Ivy Elliott,’ I said.

‘A friend of Ivy’s!’ he exclaimed. ‘But what are you doing here? Don’t you know that Ivy is dead?’

‘Yes, I know,’ I said. ‘I have simply come to talk to you about her, if you will let me. Or rather, to ask you to talk to me. I – I wanted to meet the people she worked with.’

He walked towards me and squinted directly into my eyes, unpleasantly.

‘You’re no friend of Ivy’s,’ he said. ‘What could she have had to do with someone like you? What are you – a journalist prying for information? I’ve nothing to tell about Ivy. I spoke to the police for two hours yesterday – that’s enough for me. She disappeared without warning, and we had no idea what had become of her till they came yesterday to tell us that she was dead.’

‘Alan!’ shouted a voice, and one of the young men who had been working in the backstage area came out onto the stage and looked down at us. ‘Tea! Who’s this?’ he added, moving forward to peer at me over the lights.

‘Some so-called friend of Ivy’s,’ said Mr Manning with a sneer of disbelief. The young actor jumped lithely off the stage to the floor and approached us.

‘What about Ivy?’ he asked quickly. ‘Anything new? You can say what you like, Alan, but it’s just unbearable, not knowing what happened to her. Do you know anything?’ he added, turning hopefully to me.

‘Not a lot, but more than you do, perhaps,’ I told him, thinking that sharing some information might be a small price to pay for learning more about this strange company.

‘Come along and join us for tea,’ he said. Then, noticing Mr Manning’s lowering brow, he added, ‘Oh, were you just chasing the lady off? Sorry! But you didn’t tell us a syllable about what the police said yesterday, and we’re still all in the dark. All we gathered was that Ivy is dead; not the how, not the where, not the why. Come on, don’t be so close.’

‘That’s all they told me. I didn’t hide anything from you,’ said Alan crossly.

‘Yes, but maybe this lady knows more.’

‘I do,’ I said quickly. ‘I come from Cambridge, and that is where she died.’

‘Come on then,’ he said, and I found myself awkwardly manoeuvring my way up onto the stage and through the rent in the backdrop, to where the actors were grouped around a large table on which had been placed a steaming teapot, several chipped cups without saucers, and a plain pound cake.

‘Folks, this lady has come unexpectedly to tell us something about Ivy,’ said the young man. There was a collective murmur of surprise, and everyone drew closer, even Mr Manning, although he still frowned.

‘I know that you are all aware that Ivy Elliott is dead,’ I said respectfully.

‘Well, we weren’t,’ said a young lady with bright eyes and dark hair, ‘only since the police came yesterday.’

‘That doesn’t matter, Jean. The point is: how did she die? What happened?’ asked a man who, now that he had descended from the ladder, I saw was extremely tall. I recognised the two of them as the actors who had played Hermia and Theseus.

‘She was murdered, and her body was found in the Cam,’ I said. ‘The exact circumstances of her death are not clear, but the post-mortem clearly shows that she was strangled shortly after midnight on the 21st of June, and her body placed in the river some three or four hours later, where it was found in the early morning by a passer-by.’

‘Oh, that’s horrible, too horrible. She was strangled? Who did it? Who could have done such a dreadful thing?’ cried the girl called Jean, turning pale.

‘Nobody knows at this point.’

‘What was Ivy doing in Cambridge?’ said the elderly lady who had been playing Mrs Warren. ‘Who took her there?’

‘She had a friend there, who invited her from time to time,’ I said. ‘She had just left his home when she was killed.’

The woman sat down suddenly and placed her forehead in her hand.

‘It makes me feel queer,’ she said. ‘Ivy, dead. I can’t get used to it. I can’t get it into my head.’

‘We all feel that way, Paula,’ said the tall man, laying his hand on her shoulder. ‘It won’t be the same here without her.’ But she was sobbing quietly.

‘To think she was killed on the twenty-first,’ she said. ‘Her one free day.’

‘Why was she free then?’ I asked.

‘We alternate plays,’ replied the tall actress. ‘Tuesdays and Sunday evenings we play something modern. We’ve been doing The Wild Duck. Ivy wasn’t in it. Oh God. We must have been playing while she was being murdered.’

‘Not playing,’ said the actor. ‘If she was murdered after midnight, we would have been finished.’

‘Finished, but not gone,’ said Paula. ‘We never get out of here before one o’clock on the days we change plays, with all the dismantling. We were all right here. Oh, to think that if only we’d given her the role of Hedwig like she wanted – she wouldn’t have died!’

‘Don’t say that,’ said Jean quickly. ‘It makes me feel as though you all think it’s my fault she was killed!’

Mr Manning turned towards the group and spoke rather sharply.

‘Nonsense, Paula,’ he snapped. ‘If somebody wanted to murder the girl, a time and a place to do it would have been found. It has nothing to do with The Wild Duck, nothing to do with us at all. Come,’ he added, beckoning me to follow him. ‘I think we had better talk in private.’ He was obviously not at all pleased at the emotional storm I had caused within his well-controlled company.

I followed him over to a set of doors leading to a row of smaller rooms, no doubt actor’s lodges or something of the kind. One of them had been set up as a working room for Mr Manning, with a desk, a chair and a large number of papers, plays, books and notes scattered about. He offered me the chair and sat down on the desk himself.

‘Just what, exactly, did you come here for?’ he said.

‘I came to learn more about Ivy,’ I told him. He hesitated, and I thought he was going to challenge me to tell him why, but he suddenly changed his mind. Instead he said,

‘We don’t know much about her. She worked here, but kept her personal life very private. What kind of thing do you want to know?’

‘First of all, have you her address? Do you know where she lived?’ I said. For answer, he wrote it out on a little scrap of paper and handed it to me in silence. I read it and thrust it into my dress.

‘Then, I would like to ask you how long you have known her, and when and how she came to join your company,’ I continued.

He cast his mind back.

‘Let’s see, she came in…in June? No, in May. Last May, just over a year ago. We had put in an advertisement, actually, for two young ladies and a man. There are not many of us in the company, you see. We’re twenty all together; seven or eight main actors and actresses, and then a bunch of irregulars we call on occasionally to fill in the minor roles. At the time, we were just beginning. I put the Company together a few years ago with two or three of the people you have just met; they brought in a few friends. We put down what money we could, and found a sponsor. Our first plays were out in the country, and we made a success of them. As soon as we were able to hire enough extras, we started putting on Shakespeare. Our idea was that the country folks should be able to have as much Shakespeare as they need, without going to London for the purpose. After a couple of seasons we did well enough to try for the London audiences, and it worked. We did comedies first. Then we decided to try Hamlet. That was my decision. I’ve been waiting all my life to direct Hamlet.’ By this time, Mr Manning appeared to have forgotten my original question. His eyes were shining with an intense gleam. His words came tumbling out. ‘It’s dangerous, Hamlet, you know. It can make you or break you. Everything has been tried; the greatest actors have played Hamlet. If you can’t find something new to say, there’s no point to it. I wanted two things. One was the nature aspect. I wanted to do the play outside. I knew we could accomplish things that had never been tried before, by choosing the right spot and taking advantage of its possibilities. There are scenes in Shakespeare – the rehearsal scene in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the forest scenes in As You Like It – which take place among trees. Nothing like making them take place among real trees. Then I wanted something else which has been abandoned, I find, in all recent performances. I wanted something like simplicity; something classical, which has been lost with all the experimental performances we’ve had lately. Have you seen Ellen Terry playing Ophelia? A madwoman – that short hair standing all on end, her eyes staring crazily. She went to a lunatic asylum, they say, to study the behaviour of the madwomen there. The public drinks it in. But that’s not what I want. Ophelia doesn’t mean raving lunacy, not to me. What’s left in the human being when reason goes? Something meaningful – meaningful, I’m telling you. There’s a truth within us that goes far beyond reason; strip reason away and that’s what you’ll find. The human individual. Ellen Terry’s performance hurt me. I wanted to give Ophelia her truth back; the intelligence, the feelings, the innocence and the poetry that gleam all the stronger through the ruins of reason. But we didn’t have a good Ophelia. Carrie is fantastic in certain roles, although she’s a little typecast, being so tall. But she wasn’t what I had in mind. I put in the advertisement and got dozens of answers. Jean came then, the girl you saw in there. She wasn’t Ophelia, but I hired her; I knew she’d play a hundred roles to perfection. When I saw Ivy Elliott, I felt hopeful for a moment. She had the right physical appearance. But her acting experience was limited. She’d played only a few small roles. I asked her how she got her start and she said she answered advertisements and went to auditions; she wanted to be an actress more than anything she’d ever wanted in her life. She’d had no experience at first, but they taught her and she learnt quickly. Acting is a profession, you know. You can’t just stand there and spout words and gesticulate! Every tone, every gesture, every movement is meticulously planned by the director. The actor has to understand and execute. It isn’t easy. But I took a chance on Ivy, because she had something captivating about her that I thought might make up for her lack of experience, and her – her manner. She had the face, the hair, the figure. And something more.’ He stopped, lost in his own mental images.

‘What was she like?’ I asked to give him a little prod.

‘She was remarkable, in her way,’ he replied. ‘Her manners were common, her speech was common, her behaviour with men was worse than common; it was familiar. Yet she wasn’t vulgar. By her accent, she wasn’t from London originally. No Cockney there. In fact, I’ve no idea where she came from and what her background was, and I think I’d rather not know. What she had was what I was talking about before; she had a certain inner truth that lay deeper than all the cheap squalor life had surrounded her with, and the surprising capacity to let it come out when she acted. The Ivy we knew used to just fall away as soon as she walked onto the stage. I had to teach her a lot about where to walk and why, but not about how. She had a very jaunty step usually; not modest, you know. Ladies used to cringe sometimes, just brushing past her in the street. But she knew instinctively never to use it on stage. She had a grasp of complete simplicity that made her much easier to direct than some others I could name. There were a lot of roles she wouldn’t have been able to play, certainly. We couldn’t have found a place for her in Mrs Warren’s Profession. The characters are too bold.’

‘Is that the play you were reading just now?’ I said. ‘I wondered what it was.’

‘Bernard Shaw,’ he replied. ‘You don’t know it? It was published some years ago, but it hasn’t been performed yet. Too shocking. The mother a brothel-keeper, the daughter a smoking Cambridge graduate working in the City. I thought we could make something exciting of it, but you probably heard what Paula said. It might not be so easy.’

‘It is difficult to write and speak publicly about such things,’ I murmured.

‘And privately,’ he added, looking at me. ‘But the stage can help. That is one of its purposes. Some people think of it as being an artificial venue, a place where life is imitated. But it can be the contrary. Thanks to the screen of artificiality, truths can be said that can’t be stated in intimacy. Ibsen grasped that fact, and that’s what made his fame. The public is captive, silent – slam it into them while they’re sitting in the dark. Let them ferment and complain afterwards.’

‘But plays can fail if they offend,’ I said.

‘Certainly. That’s why Mrs Warren’s Profession may not be a good idea for us now. Yet it’s an interesting play in its way. Say it out loud! Shakespeare’s safer, of course. He said everything as well. Nothing is missing, yet nobody gets offended. And Shakespeare is full of roles for Ivy’s type. I hired her as a permanent member on a hunch, and it played out well. I was pleased with her work, and the public was quite fond of her. Over and above her acting, she had an excellent memory and she was accurate and businesslike. I liked that in her. She was always on time, always knew her lines, never had moods.’

‘She must have been pleased to be hired as a permanent member,’ I said, ‘if she were hoping only for a part in one play.’

‘Oh, she was pleased as Punch,’ he said. ‘Jumped at it. But I had to tell her we couldn’t pay her much. She was upset for just a moment, but then she accepted. And she scraped by. She supplemented it somehow or other; I don’t want to know more.’

‘Dare I ask how much you were able to pay her?’ I said.

‘Two,’ he said abruptly. ‘Two shillings a week during plays, three when she had a big role, one and six when she understudied, nothing when she was off. I couldn’t give more. I would have if I could. We’re practically running at a loss as it is,’ he went on defensively. ‘The trailer and tent are expensive; the travel and horses are expensive; we all need salaries. I told her she wasn’t expected to buy her own costumes. We have a fairly large collection here that she was free to use. She occasionally took things home with her, but as long as she altered them to fit herself and didn’t spoil them, that was all right with me.’

‘Such a salary is really not enough for anyone to live on,’ I said thoughtfully, without adding that salary was the wrong word – slave-wages would have been closer to the mark.

‘I know that; yet she lived. I didn’t ask questions. I’m too busy just trying to survive. Getting this theatre is a stroke of luck; we’ve been offered it free for a month if we renovate. That costs us money as well, of course, but we’re doing as much as we can by ourselves. Losing Ivy is a blow, you know,’ he added. ‘A blow to the Company, and a personal one as well. I liked the girl. She wasn’t easy to come to know. She was pleasant, yet she kept herself to herself. But she was a good hard worker. She’d have enjoyed being here now.’

He shrugged, and then rose, clearly intending to put an end to our conversation. I would have liked to speak with the others, but he guided me firmly across the stage.

‘We must get back to work,’ he said, as he gave me his hand to deposit me over the edge and pointed firmly towards the exit. I made my way among the seats to the aisle, crossed the foyer and stepped out into the street, closing the door behind me. I should have liked to talk to the members of the company a little more, yet I had food for thought already. And something else.

I removed the scrap of paper bearing Ivy’s address from my pocket, smoothed it out and read it again, then walked until I spotted an empty cab idling near the kerb. Entering, I gave the man the address in Bayswater and settled back in my corner to think.

The house in front of which he deposited me surprised me. I had expected something quite different, although I was not sure exactly what. I knew, of course, that Ivy did not live on the money from the theatre alone. Mr Archer, for one, had given her three pounds by his own admission, and from the description of one of the witnesses, it sounded like it might have been an even greater sum in fact. So it was not that I expected to find that she lived in a miserable hovel. But neither did I expect to find a neat stone house, converted into small flats, with clean front steps, geraniums at the windows, a well-swept area with trimly painted railings, and a highly polished brass doorknob. The house was eminently respectable, and so completely different from the image that I had evolved in my mind that I even wondered briefly if she had given a false address, or if I had come to the wrong place.

I rang, and the door was opened by a plump lady wearing a housedress and an apron. Her waist was cinched rather tightly, and below and above it her body burst out like a pillow upon which no stays could have any truly significant effect. Her white hair was piled under a cap.

‘Are you looking for a room? I haven’t got any empty right now,’ she said, ‘but I’ve got a beautiful one’ll come free in a day or two, if you can wait.’

With a flash of intuition, I realised that she must already know that Ivy was dead – after all, the police had already been to the theatre, and they had almost certainly been here as well – and felt certain that the room to come free was Ivy’s. I wondered why it was not free already, and then thought that perhaps she needed time to clear away the dead girl’s things.

‘I am very interested in taking a room here. May I see it at once?’ I asked, seizing the opportunity.

‘Well,’ she said dubiously, ‘it’s not free yet. It’s very nice,’ she added, ‘one of the biggest ones. Just up those stairs. It looks out over the back and has got two large windows.’ She hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘Well, there’s no one there right now. Come with me. I’ll show it to you.’ Her eyes swept approvingly over my dress, my gloves, my parasol and my hat.

I followed her up the short flight of stairs, impatient, wondering. She took a key from a large ring hanging at her waist, and unlocking the door, she opened it and held it for me to enter.

The first thing I saw was that the room in front of me was shared by two occupants. A curtain of some dark stuff hung loosely from a stretched cord dividing the room in two; to each side of this curtain was placed a narrow bed of iron scrollwork painted white, a chair, a dresser with a mirror on it, and a washstand. The room was quite large enough to contain this furniture without appearing crowded. Each tenant had a trunk under the bed, as well as a number of articles of clothing arranged on shelves and in drawers, and hanging on a row of hooks on the wall. I looked carefully on both sides, and walked over to peer out of one of the windows, in order to gain a little time. The lady joined me without haste.

‘The view’s not so bad,’ she said. ‘There’s plenty of light.’

The view showed nothing but the backs of the houses across the street, into whose windows one could see a little too clearly. I looked around.

‘The ladies who live here are moving away?’ I said, feigning polite interest.

‘Ye-es,’ she said with a flash of hesitation. I began to feel sure that this room was shared by Ivy Elliott with another girl, and I conceived a tremendous desire to discover her name.

‘They – they’ll be gone in another day or two,’ she continued. ‘We’ll arrange the furniture for one person, of course. We can take one of the beds away. It’ll be a lovely room for one, won’t it?’ In order to increase my perception of its spaciousness, she pulled the dividing curtain all the way to the back of the room. I had already determined, by a few small details, which side of the room must have belonged to the dead girl, for only one of the washstand bowls was wet, and there was dust on the other mirror, something no girl will allow. I fixed my attention on that side of the room, and walked through it thoughtfully.

‘Yes,’ I said, longing desperately to open some of the drawers, ‘I should like to keep this bed. If we take away the bed and dresser from the other side, perhaps I could put in a small sofa?’

‘Certainly,’ she was beginning, when Providence suddenly intervened in my favour, and the doorbell downstairs rang.

‘I’ll be right up, ma’am,’ she said, hurrying ponderously, if such a thing is possible.

My movements were quicker than light. I first handled the clothes hanging from nails, seeking anything written: letters, documents, a diary in the pockets. There was nothing, though the dresses themselves flashed sequins, rhinestones and feathers. I then slid open the drawers one at a time and ran my hands through the contents. I was looking for anything written, yet could not help noticing, in the blink of an eye, that the top drawer held chemises, petticoats, corset-covers and corsets in two heaps; white cambric and cotton to the right, flower-patterned, and lace-trimmed and black silk to the left. The right-hand items looked new, the left-hand ones well-used. I stored this information in the back of my mind for later, closed the drawer, and opened the one below. It stuck – I gave it a little jerk – and it came out in my hand, bumping onto my lap as I sat on my knees in front of the dresser. I lifted it hastily to push it back in, and that is when I felt a little rustle of paper against my dress; a bundle of letters had been hidden underneath the drawer, slipped into a crosswise band of wood. I pulled them out and thrust them into my dress, then pushed the drawer back into place just as I heard the landlady come puffing up the stairs – not before having had time to perceive, at a glance, that my hunch was correct. The letters were addressed to Ivy Elliott.

When the landlady returned, she found me sitting calmly upon the bed, observing the room from different angles.

‘How long has the room been let to these young ladies?’ I asked as we descended the stairs.

‘They’ve had it for a year,’ she said, frowning.

‘And why are they leaving?’

Her frown deepened. ‘I can’t say exactly,’ she said. ‘They’ve given notice, so it will be very soon.’

‘What is the rent of the room?’ I finally asked. She looked me up and down, and said,

‘Five shillings a week.’

It seemed expensive, but I suspected that it might suddenly have been increased for my benefit. I wanted more than ever to know the name of the young woman who was sharing Ivy’s room. It seemed to me that no one, if not she, could tell me the details of Ivy’s private life. But I could not think of a good way to induce this lady, whose friendliness was fast evaporating, to tell it to me. I began to wonder if I should spend the following days hovering in the vicinity in the hopes of catching the mysterious tenant as she entered or left. But the landlady, feeling, no doubt, that I had spent sufficient time in a private dwelling not yet my own, was ushering me towards the door.

‘I’ll take the room!’ I said impulsively. ‘When can I have it? Do you think tomorrow would be too early?’

She looked pleased.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’ll see if I can arrange it.’

‘I don’t want to put the ladies – what are their names? to excessive inconvenience,’ I said.

‘I’ll speak to – them,’ she replied, and I detected the microscopic hesitation before the word ‘them’.

‘If they have paid through to the end of the week, or have not been able to find new lodgings yet, I hope they will allow me to offer some compensation,’ I said, still hoping to find some way to enter into contact with the remaining occupant of the room. ‘Perhaps I can discuss it with them tomorrow?’

‘I’ll take care of that,’ she said again, ‘I’ll see how I can arrange things.’

I felt that she was going to try at all costs to prevent a meeting, and I could understand why. She very likely thought that no one would want to rent the room of a dead girl, little imagining that this was my dearest wish. But I could hardly tell her so.

An idea struck me, and I quietly withdrew a banknote from my purse.

‘Then let me at least leave this, as some compensation for my haste,’ I said. ‘I should like to put it in an envelope, and leave it for the young ladies with a note explaining the circumstances.’

She yielded, and allowed me to enter the drawing room and avail myself of paper, ink, blotter and seal. Alas, she stood over me as I wrote, although I tried to shift my shoulders in such a way that she could not see the words. This was most annoying, since I would have liked to write something of the truth, and beg the young woman to contact me at once. Thus observed, I found that I could not write exactly what I wished. So after a moment’s thought, I composed the following.

‘I am very sorry for any inconvenience I may be causing you by my urgent need to take over the room you are vacating as soon as possible, preferably tomorrow. Please let me know at once whether or not you agree to this plan. I may be able to be of assistance to you, in finding a new lodging, or otherwise.’ I added my name and address, folded over the paper, and looked up at the landlady with as much authority as I could muster.

‘What names shall I put on the front?’

She hesitated, then said, ‘Address the note just to Miss Wolcombe. That will be enough.’ I wrote the name, pleased to have finally extracted it and wondering if by some ruse I could manage to obtain the Christian name as well. The landlady took the note from my hand, and accompanied me to the door with a great show of friendliness masking a state of apparent nerves. Strange? perhaps not, in view of the fact that she had very probably learnt of Ivy’s fate only that morning, and it must certainly have afforded her a severe shock. I was in a state of nerves myself, although I hid it, forcing myself to keep a staid pace until I had turned the nearest corner. Then I pulled Ivy’s letters from my pocket and turned them over feverishly.

Alas, they were most grievously disappointing. A milliner’s bill, two or three letters from a dressmaker with questions about a costume design, and several brief notes from Alan Manning containing information about rehearsal schedules comprised the whole of the little packet. And the one item that could have indicated something out of the ordinary refused to yield up its secret. An envelope postmarked Cambridge, the address inscribed in an educated hand by a pen of excellent quality, had somehow slipped inside another envelope. I pulled it out and opened it with a thump of excitement. But it was quite empty, and though I examined it hopefully from every angle, there was nothing to indicate who had addressed it.

Well, there was the handwriting. I supposed that it might be identifiable eventually. But I thought sadly that it would probably turn out to be no more than the handwriting of Mr Geoffrey Archer. And what could one conclude from that? Why, nothing at all, except that he occasionally wrote to her, as he himself had freely stated.

I wondered why there were no other envelopes or letters from him. Probably Ivy simply did not keep them. Perhaps she did not care for them, or feared the landlady’s prying eyes. I put the little bundle away with a sigh and took stock of what information I had gathered so far.

The theatre people seemed to know her only somewhat distantly, or professionally. It seemed difficult to imagine a motive for the killing, although professional jealousy can always be evoked. But that would mean a woman. Obviously Jean was the closest thing that Ivy might have had to a rival, although Mr Manning seemed to consider them as very different. However, there had clearly been at least some discussion as to who was to play one of the characters in The Wild Duck, so a rivalry was not out of the question. On the other hand, if Jean had been playing on that very night, then she could not have been murdering Ivy in Cambridge. I remembered how the woman called Paula had claimed that the whole company remained to dismantle the stage sets. She must have meant all of those who had roles in the production. I wondered how many there were, and determined to examine the dramatis personae as soon as I could find a copy. After all, anyone who had not been cast could still remain as a suspect.

Apart from the actors and Mr Manning, I now knew of four people personally acquainted with the dead girl: Mr Archer and Miss Wolcombe, whom I had not yet met, the landlady, and Ernest. In order to obtain information from the landlady, I would have to install myself in her room and work upon her for days, but this did not seem to me to be a priority, as she probably knew very little. Much the greatest chance of learning about the private life of the dead girl lay with Miss Wolcombe, who must have been a very close friend of hers if they had decided to set up house together. I very much wondered what kind of a woman Miss Wolcombe would turn out to be. Two young women living independently in rooms indicated a working-class background, and from what I had learnt of Ivy Elliott, she could be said to be situated on the margins of decent society. Yet what did that reveal? Those margins, as every other class, contain an immense variety of human beings.

Mr Archer was an unknown quantity, and I could only continue hoping that Mrs Burke-Jones would be able to find or create an opportunity for us to meet. There remained Ernest. Ernest could hardly be the murderer, since he had charged me with the solution of the crime. Of course, the occasional murderer has been known to make such a grandiose gesture as a bluff, but such an act would make absolutely no sense in Ernest’s case. He had only to keep silent about his acquaintance with the girl and it was quite unlikely that it would ever have been discovered.

Yet, after all, I reasoned, it was not entirely unimaginable. If the girl had been expecting Ernest’s child – I shuddered at the thought – then she might have told her friends, and she may even have threatened to make a scandal. Ernest knew Cambridge well, he came quite often. And in fact, he came regularly to our house, and was familiar with the area…and with the Cam in that part of Cambridge.

But no! Ernest’s behaviour made no sense, if he were the murderer. He talked of the girl constantly – surely he would have kept away from all references to the pretty actress in his conversations with us. Surely he would not have called upon my services – and as much as told me that he loved her.

Of course, people cannot always control their obsessions.

The image of Kathleen suddenly started into my mind. She could be said to have a motive, if anyone did. She was aware of her husband’s habits in the matter of love. She was a strong, well-built woman. But on the other hand, how could she have known where Ivy Elliott would be spending her evening off? It was easy to find Ivy when she played at the theatre, but it might not be so simple at other times. Still, she might have followed her. All the way to Cambridge? Yet why not? What better way to deflect suspicion than killing your enemy in a faraway town?

I thought over Kathleen’s behaviour. Had it been in any way incompatible with the idea of her being the murderer, as Ernest’s obviously was? No, it had not. She had woken me in the night to ask about him, but that did not prove that she was unaware of the girl’s death. What had she said when I told her? Ophelia…She had known at once to whom I was referring. A creeping horror began to overtake me at the thought that I had meant to spend a second night in her home, before returning to Ivy’s house the next morning in the hopes of catching Miss Wolcombe.

I shook myself impatiently. Kathleen couldn’t be the murderer – she was my friend! It was unfair to even think of her that way. It made me wonder if people would so easily assume that I could be a murderer. In fact, I soon began to ask myself the question. If I discovered that Arthur was in love with an actress, might I…? No, out of the question. I saw myself, rather, living like Mrs Burke-Jones in lonely dignity, bringing up my children, keeping a pleasant home, and holding up my head proudly day after day in front of an entire society aware of the whole sordid story. But Mrs Burke-Jones’s husband had left, gone to live in France with the governess of her children. I wondered what I would do if I discovered, or realised, that Arthur was pursuing an affair while continuing to live tranquilly (or nervously) at home. I found it impossible to imagine him behaving thus. I was presented with a vivid mental image of Arthur delicately peeling away the arms of a seductive lady in a black lace corset, with painted lips, and extracting himself from them with a tinge of distaste. I burst out laughing at myself.

Kathleen was not the murderer; she was my friend. But I am a professional, and as such, there was no better way to spend the evening than with her, attempting to detect evidence of any kind. I set my feet firmly in the direction of the Dixons’ flat.

I felt much cooler and more self-possessed by the time I reached the flat and rang the bell. I had entirely prepared what I meant to say to Katherine. My plans, however, were immediately foiled by the fact that it was Ernest who opened the door.

‘Are you staying on?’ he said, in a timbre of voice for which it was obvious that Kathleen was not at home, and that he meant to talk at once about the subject that most interested him. ‘Did you have a fruitful day? Did you find out anything important?’

‘A few things,’ I said, ‘But Ernest, I need to talk to people who knew Ivy Elliott. I’ve been to the theatre, but the problem is partly that the people there really didn’t seem to know much at all about her private life. And also, on the night of the murder, they were putting on a play. Ivy didn’t have a role, but everyone who did obviously has an alibi.’

‘Who was in it?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know yet,’ I replied.

‘Well, do you know which play it was?’

‘Ibsen’s Wild Duck. Do you happen to have a copy here?’

‘Of course. I’ve got all Ibsen; I’ve got complete works of all of the world’s great playwrights,’ he said. Going over to the bookshelf, he browsed for a moment and then pulled out a volume and opened it. We studied the list of characters together.

‘The young girl, the mother, and the housekeeper,’ I said, ‘that accounts for the three other women in the company. They are definitely excluded. But I am afraid the same holds for the men, because there are quite a number of male characters. They must all have been cast.’

‘I can find that out easily enough,’ he said, throwing down the book.

‘So we may assume, unless you discover something unexpected, that the members of the theatre company are not involved, as they were acting,’ I said. ‘Except for Mr Manning, perhaps? He does not act.’

‘But he must have been there,’ he said at once. ‘The director is there every night, every minute of the play.’

‘Well then, subject to your verification of the cast, that means that the theatre people are out of it. I will need to investigate the people she knew outside of her professional life.’

He winced at my words.

‘What is the matter?’ I said.

‘Vanessa,’ he said, planting both hands on the table and leaning on them heavily. He looked at me hard, turned his head away, and then looked back at me again, with something like aggressiveness. ‘There’s something I have been trying to make you understand,’ he said. ‘I have to tell you this, I have to spell it out, because you don’t seem to understand it, and you must.’ There was an uncomfortable silence.

‘What?’ I said stimulatingly.

‘Ivy was a prostitute, for God’s sake!’ he cried. ‘What do you think she lived on? The shillings and pence she got from that half-cocked director? Find me an actress in this country who doesn’t do it, unless they have the luck to be born in an acting family. How else do you think they live? Not on their salaries, I can tell you! An unknown actress doesn’t even earn as much as a – as a servant, or a barmaid. There isn’t enough work in it. A barmaid who works twelve or fourteen hours a day may make four or five shillings a week and barely survive – so what do you think a girl can earn if she works only six or seven hours, and not every day, at that? And anyway – what kind of woman do you think gets up on a stage and shows herself half-naked to a hall full of people? What I keep trying to tell you is that it’s no bloody use your saying you want to find the people who knew Ivy. She had a hundred – clients – whose names she didn’t even know!’

I remained silent for several moments. Was this, then, the true image of the Ivy I had been imagining so differently? Certainly, I had not perceived her as an angel of virtue. Her background was vague, and Mr Manning had described her manners as somewhat immodest. It had seemed clear enough that she was Mr Archer’s mistress, partly kept by him. He invited her to Cambridge, he bought her jewellery, their relations were transparent even to the shopgirl Estelle. But it was one thing to be the occasional mistress of an elderly man, and another to live as Ernest described. This was totally different, beyond my imagination. And it seemed incompatible with the little I knew of her life, her hard work as an actress, her modest, shared little room. Yet I remembered the drawer full of French corsets that no decent woman would wear…

‘Are you sure?’ I said timidly.

‘Of course,’ he snapped.

‘But how – how can you know such a thing?’

‘How do you think?’ he challenged me.

I remained silent, rejecting and then accepting the obvious explanation.

‘Now, don’t start judging me,’ he said, with a raucous edge to his voice that made me feel most disinclined to judge anything. ‘You probably can’t even imagine how it was. I saw her on stage – I admired her, yes, I admired her to obsession. I must have seen her perform fifteen, twenty times, often in the same play, again and again, before I got up the courage to go and speak to her backstage. I had a note delivered: would she meet me? I – I wasn’t thinking of anything particular, you understand? I wasn’t thinking at all. I just wanted to meet her, to be near her. She accepted at once. She was friendly, familiar. Too familiar, really. I wasn’t at all sure whether I really liked it, at first. I thought I didn’t. I thought I would have wanted something different. Yet I kept going back. Finally – I don’t even remember how it happened – but we agreed to meet outside. And we did. I took her to a little restaurant…’

‘And?’

‘Why am I telling you this?’ he said abruptly. ‘I wasn’t going to. I haven’t told a soul, not a single, solitary soul about this.’

‘You are telling me because I need your help to find her murderer,’ I said quietly. ‘I cannot work without knowing anything about her. I need answers to my questions.’

‘I probably can’t answer most of them,’ he said. ‘But you can try asking them. What do you need to know?’

‘Facts first,’ I said. ‘You saw her often?’

‘I – we – a number of times,’ he replied hesitantly. ‘But she stopped seeing me all of a sudden.’

‘Really? When was that?’

‘Two or three weeks ago. She suddenly asked me not to come backstage any more. I went to see her act several times, and I tried to speak to her, but she refused. Don’t ask me why, because I’ve no idea. She wouldn’t tell me.’

‘Did you guess? Did you have some theory?’

‘Well, it occurred to me that she had come into a source of money, somehow,’ he admitted uncomfortably. ‘I thought perhaps she had found a rich man to keep her, something of the kind. She did say something – something about beginning a completely new life. But she wouldn’t say what she meant.’

I thought of Mr Archer, then of the pretty bedroom shared with Miss Wolcombe, and the newly purchased modest white underwear. Beginning a completely new life. I wondered why she had chosen to wear precisely those fresh, new undergarments to visit Mr Archer, rather than the flowered or black silk. I remembered my sharp suspicion, in the train, that after leaving his house, she had simply returned there. I still had to take up that matter with Inspector Doherty. Yet somehow, the petticoats seemed to speak up in denial of this idea. They told me that she had left his house for good.

Not three weeks ago, Ernest was still seeing her. And then suddenly – nothing. It was strange.

‘I visited her lodgings today,’ I told him. ‘Did she – did she ever take you there?’

He hesitated.

‘She took me to a flat,’ he said. ‘I think it might not have been the place where she actually lived. It was rather large and luxurious, but we never went into the drawing room or the other rooms. We – she used to – we only used to go into one room. I think it must have been the servant’s bedroom. It was next to the kitchen.’

‘The servant’s bedroom?’ I said, surprised. ‘Did she work there also?’

‘No, I’m sure she didn’t. In fact, I don’t think the flat was occupied. It was furnished, but there was never anybody there and it was never disarranged. I don’t know why she had a key.’

‘Where is the flat?’ I asked quickly. ‘We need to find out what she was doing there and to whom it belongs.’

‘I don’t know exactly – somewhere in Mayfair. I’m sorry. I would tell you if I could. But – it wasn’t very often. It wasn’t that far from Piccadilly, I think – in a block of rather modern flats. We used to go there in a hansom, just the two of us…and…well, I was paying more attention to her than to the streets. Recently, I wanted to find the flat, but I couldn’t remember how to get there. I hardly even remember what the building looked like, though I suppose I would recognise the entrance hall if I could go in. The trouble is, when I went there with her, my head was spinning so I just wasn’t conscious of anything around me.’

‘What made you suddenly want to find it again?’

‘She – she wouldn’t see me any more at the theatre. I, well, I wanted to stand in front of the house, watching, to see if she was going there with – someone else. I wanted to catch her, to force her to tell me why she didn’t want me any more. I thought I was going mad. The days seemed as long as weeks, months.’ He stopped and closed his eyes.

‘How much did she tell you about herself, about her life, her friends or family?’ I asked him.

‘Very little,’ he said. ‘She was not in the habit of talking about herself at all. I didn’t know where she lived, nothing about her past. I believe she told me she had no family. I don’t remember anything about friends, either, although – wait a moment. No, she did mention a friend. What did she say? It was nothing – I liked her hat, and she told me she had borrowed it from a friend. It’s not much, I know, but one could build on it. Somewhere out there is a girl who knew Ivy well enough to lend her a hat. She mentioned this girl once or twice. It wasn’t one of the actresses, for I knew them all. I think her name might have been Jenny. But I can’t remember anything more about her.’

‘But what did you talk about, all the time you were together?’

‘Well – did we talk? Yes, I suppose we talked at dinner, when – well, Kathleen thought I was having dinner with my acting friends…well, I suppose I was. Oh, what nonsense. God, it’s awful, sordid.’ He passed his hand over his eyes, and continued abruptly. ‘Anyway, we only ever talked about the theatre. It’s my passion and it was hers. She told me how she had wanted to act ever since she was small, and I told her what I admired about her playing. We discussed interpretations of Shakespeare and other roles. She had an interesting grasp of characters. She told me that she knew immediately whether she would be able to play a role or not, and there were many that she couldn’t play. She said she had something inside that told her whether she could identify and be the character, or not. I learnt a great deal about acting from her, even though she considered herself a mere beginner. It was all fascinating for me. But I don’t see how it helps you.’

‘It does and it doesn’t,’ I said. ‘It does help give me a picture of the way she was. But I need more. More understanding, and more facts.’

‘I can’t think of any more facts. I’d give my right arm to know more, to know who killed her. You know that, don’t you? I’ve just given up my honour.’

‘Not at all,’ I observed crisply. ‘You haven’t given up your honour just by telling me about all this. Telling has nothing to do with it.’

‘Then why does it feel exactly as though it does?’ he said. ‘I’ve felt a hundred times more ashamed telling you this than I ever felt while doing it.’

‘Something is wrong there,’ I remarked, ‘but I have no time to figure out what it is. It’s a job for someone in the church, not for me. What I want you to do is to identify the flat where you met her. You said it was near Piccadilly. Take a map and go up and down every single street on both sides until you find it. Peer inside every door. I’m going to look for ‘‘Jenny”.’