Page 51 of A Vocation of Violence
“Stay with her,” I instructed Mary, brushing past her as I moved toward the entrance. My heart hammered a familiar rhythm of foreboding against my ribs as I opened the door to reveal a young messenger boy, his cap held in dirty fingers.
“Miss Fiona Mahoney?” he queried, breathless, the urgency in his voice a mirror of my own racing thoughts.
“That’s me,” I confirmed, my gaze falling to the crumpled paper he extended toward me. Snatching it with a swift motion, I unfolded the note, and the elegant script delivered its grim summons.
A body at the Lyceum. Your expertise required immediately.
No signature adorned the message, but none was needed. I’d recognize Dr. Phillips’ tidy script anywhere. There was only one reason my presence would be requested in London’s theaterdistrict—someone was dead, and it fell upon me to wipe their offal from the stage, as it were.
“Thank you, I’ll be there directly,” I said, slipping the boy a coin, which disappeared into his pocket as quickly as he did down the street.
Turning back to the parlor, I caught the last remnants of Tegan’s mirth before the mask of my profession settled upon my features.
“Mary,” I called, my tone clipped with the gravity of my task. “I must away to the Lyceum. Please send for Hao Long to meet me there.”
“Of course, Miss Fiona,” she replied, her smile fading as she gathered her daughter close, sensing the shift in the atmosphere.
“Keep the doors locked,” I added, a final instruction born of knowing too well the darkness that waited for the last slivers of the day to abate.
Upon arrival,the Lyceum loomed, an edifice of entertainment now tainted by tragedy. Constables and onlookers alike lingered outside, their whispers weaving a tapestry of dread. Stepping past them with a nod, I slipped beneath the velvet rope that served as a barrier to the curious and the craven.
Inside, I found Dr. Phillips near the stage, his countenance grave as he presided over the macabre scene. Constables and detectives had cleared away from the inner scene and the body, making way for the coroner to take it, as usually happened by the time I was called. They’d be off investigating, giving hardly a thought to the mess death tended to leave behind.
The footlights cast an eerie glow upon the lifeless form of a young woman sprawled like a five-pointed star in a stark whitegown. Her beautiful face, now twisted in a grimace of death, bore the marks of violence. Her chestnut hair was a cascade of sorrow upon the wooden boards.
“Miss Mahoney,” Dr. Phillips greeted me, tipping his hat in somber respect. “A grim evening we find ourselves in.”
“Indeed, doctor,” I replied, my gaze never leaving the victim’s unblinking one. “What happened?”
“Her name was Lena Goldman. An actress of some renown, and a friend to Vivienne Bloomfield-Smythe, I’m told,” Dr. Phillips murmured, swiping off his bowler hat to scratch at his balding pate as he gave me a meaningful look. “Killed in a similar manner, if the dent in the back of her head bears out the suspicion it causes. She’s been here for some time, since before noon, I hazard.”
Though she’d not been stabbed or shot, there was still blood. It leaked from a nose that had been broken before she’d died. From a mouth missing teeth. Her death was not swift, as Vivienne’s had been. Nor was it staged dramatically.
Apart from her being draped across an actual stage.
“Makes one wonder if there is someone with a grudge against actresses in particular.” He turned to me with an imperious scowl. “A most Elizabethan sentiment, Miss Mahoney, wouldn’t you agree? Draconian, even.”
“Hmm,” I murmured as I studied the body, my thoughts churning over all the possibilities.
An irate voice echoed through the empty theater, shrill in its desperation. “Why is no one looking for her?” a woman cried from behind the velvet rope. “What if she was taken? What if she done it?”
Dr. Phillips and I watched as the last of the constables ushered her back into the lobby, though she struggled and cursed them the entire way.
“Looking for whom?” I queried. “What is she on about?”
“Evidently, Miss Goldman had taken on a new assistant of late—a girl now vanished into the ether, I’m afraid.” He sighed, adjusting his spectacles.
“Vanished?” The word hung between us, fraught with implications. An assistant fled was a story half told, secrets locked behind lips now absent. My pulse thrummed with the urgency of unraveling this latest knot in our sordid tapestry.
“None among the troupe can account for her whereabouts since the curtain’s fall,” Dr. Phillips continued.
I absorbed this new wrinkle, my mind already sifting through possibilities and connections. The actress angle was a strong one, but my instincts didn’t tend in that direction. Lena’s ties to Vivienne could not be overlooked, nor the enigma of her absent aide. Combined with the small detail of her surname: Goldman.
She had Jewish heritage.
“Will you send for me if you find anything that connects her to Vivienne’s death?” I implored, my voice low. “Any detail may prove crucial.”
“Of course,” he assured me, before turning to oversee Lena’s final exit from the stage she’d once graced.
