“Oy, here’s a whole bob,” cried Winnie, holding up the coin as if it were Captain Kidd’s treasure box.
Joan, Winnie, and Connie were the charwomen who cleaned the Metropolitan Royal after each night’s final performance. The three old women were always on the lookout for any loose coins that might have fallen from the audience members’ pockets. The stalls yielded the biggest bounty; the gallery, up in the clouds where the poor bastards sat, the smallest. Management told them to turn in any money they found, but they never did. The crones were paid a pittance and felt their findings were a kind of tip from God.
Jewelry was another matter, of course. If any of the women found a diamond earring or gold chain, they turned it in. If you tried to sell such goods at a pawnshop, they said, the coppers would be down on you faster than shit through a goose.
The best thing about the job was that the women had the place to themselves. As the MacMillan circuit’s flagship theatre, the Metropolitan Royal was extra posh, with a beautiful barrel-vaulted plaster ceiling, velvet seats, and all sorts of sculptures. All the lights burned fully, including the grand chandelier, so the charwomen could better see the dirt. For a few hours, the grand theatre was their private palace. They swept under the seats, ran the Bissell carpet cleaner across the carpets, and dusted everything in sight.
And all the while, they had a right good chin-wag. The immense size of the auditorium meant they had to shout a bit, but it was very pleasurable gossip: stories of the performers; who was shagging who; all the events of the day, like that fuss about the war between Russia and Japan; and what Queen Alexandra was wearing. She set the fashion in London, even for women who couldn’t afford a handkerchief, let alone a feather boa.
“Bloody hell, my bleedin’ knees are killing me,” moaned Winnie.
“Did ya rub that oil of cat tongue on ’em, like I told you?” demanded Connie.
Winnie shook her head, working her broom under a seat in row G.
“So you know my Tommy—can talk the hind legs off a donkey. Well, Fred gets up from the table and raps him on the ’ead with a wooden spoon and tells him to shut his gob! Says he can’t stand the sound of his voice no more. And then Tommy throws ’is spotted dick I made him all special like on top of Fred’s ’ead,” Joan lamented.
“Well, that takes the biscuit,” Winnie said, sighing.
“That’s terrible, Joanie! You slogged your guts out making that spotted dick.” Connie sounded outraged. “Bloody men!”
“I was at the Queen’s last week to see Helen McCoy,” said Winnie, finishing up row G and moving on to F.
“Oh, she’s loverly,” Connie said. She was using the Bissell on the stairs, which the girls loved. The new invention made carpet cleaning a thousand times easier.
“And she’s an earl’s daughter,” Winnie said approvingly. “Up on the stage and all. She don’t think she’s so high-and-mighty, not like most of those toffee-nosed blokes.”
“Aye, I wager many a fellow wants to slip her a length,” Joan said and chuckled.
“She’s a smart one with her career. Won’t find herself in the pudding club like most stage tarts.” Connie’s pride was such that Helen might have been her own daughter.
“Did you see them cute little Africans?” Winnie shouted, rustling around under a seat. “They’re bloody amazing, straight out of the jungle.”
“My little Eddie’s seen ’em four times,” said Joan.
The three women worked quickly and efficiently, moving forward toward the orchestra pit. Connie was at row A now, the very first row of the stalls. Above were the boxes, the most prestigious seats in the house. The ones in the Metro were even fancier than most: bow-fronted boxes with intricate plaster detailing, framed by colossal columns that carried a semicircular arch. Within it, two pedestals held freestanding, full-scale sculptures. A painted landscape in a lunette hung between them. The seats were real chairs rather than fixed seating.
Connie’s eyes drifted up to the box at the right of the stage and froze.
There, in one of the chairs toward the rear of the box, a man in evening dress stared out onto the empty stage.
“Take a look at that, will ya,” Connie hissed, gesturing wildly at the box.
“Hush your yowling. It’s none of our affair. If some rich old fool wants to hang about, let ’im.”
“We’ll be for it if we bother him,” Joan said and went back to her cleaning.
They continued their work, gabbing away, and moved up to do the second level. Winnie always did the boxes stage left. She pulled the curtain of the first box aside and saw that the toff was still sitting there.
“Excuse me, guv. I just have to clean around ya, and then I’ll be outta yer way, sir,” she said with forced cheer.
The man did not move.
Winnie sighed and gamely swept under his chair—and noticed something red and sticky on the end of her broomstick. A chill raced down Winnie’s spine. Her scream brought the others running as fast as their decrepit legs could carry them.
“Crikey, that’s Mr. Glenn,” Joan yelled. “One of the owners!”
Up close, they could see that Glenn was slumped in the chair, his dark-gray eyes wide and staring. The enormous puddle of blood beneath him seeped slowly across the ground. While the two other charwomen cringed at the rear of the box, Joan circled the man and peered at the back of his neck. Blood dribbled from a tiny hole at the base of his skull.
“’e’s snuffed it!” screamed Winnie.
The force of her scream seemed to nudge the body; it keeled over onto the floor, prompting more screams, till the theatre rang with terror.