Cursed in the Act Read Online Free Page B

from the bottom. The detective sergeant gripped the top of the covering and pulled it back. One of the dead man’s arms flopped out and hung down over the edge of the table. I looked at it, trying not to focus on the victim’s face. The hand seemed clean and fresh, almost as though belonging to someone alive.
    I was not expecting what I saw when I turned my gaze to the head, though to be honest I didn’t know what I expected. The man’s face had been smashed and crushed almost beyond recognition. There had obviously been a great deal of blood, but this, mercifully, had been hosed off for the most part. The chest had caved in, and it looked as though one arm was at an unnatural angle. I glanced quickly at the destroyed features, nodded, and looked away again. I felt a great desire to vomit.
    Upstairs in the office Sergeant Bellamy was kind enough to give me a cup of tea, which I clutched as I tried to absorb any and all heat from the liquid and from the steam it emitted. The sergeant wore his gray-flecked sideboards long and full in the old-fashioned muttonchops style, his thinning black hair brushed across the top of his head and plastered down with macassar oil. He had neither mustache nor beard. He was a tall man but had a slight stoop.
    â€œYou identify the body as this man Peter Richland?” he asked, a pen poised over the clipboard.
    I nodded. I had been able to make out that the face—crushed as it was—had recently been shaved of beard and mustache. This was something Richland had reluctantly done to play—given the opportunity—the part of Hamlet. It wasn’t much but it was just about the only identifying factor available.
    â€œHow did you know he belonged to the Lyceum?” I asked.
    â€œNot too difficult to a trained eye, sir,” said the sergeant, in a superior tone. “We found that he had traces of that theatre makeup stuff on his face and he was only a short distance from the theatre.”
    â€œOf course.” I nodded my head. “Of course.”
    * * *
    T he funeral took place on Saturday, with a mixture of rain and snow falling. It made the somber affair even more so. There were few mourners. There was normally a matinee performance on a Saturday, but despite what the Guv’nor had said to us, in his address onstage, it had been canceled after all, at Miss Terry’s insistence, so as not to tax the Guv’nor after his poisoning. This then allowed Lyceum staff to attend the funeral, though it seemed that most of the people had found that they had duties of one sort or another that precluded them from being there. There were a few faces I recognized, however. Bill Thomas had abandoned his seat at the stage door. Miss Margery Connelly, the wardrobe mistress, accompanied by Miss Edwina Price, the prompt, were both there. A few of the actors, though none of the leads, stood about as though rehearsing a crowd scene.
    St. Paul’s Church—the Parish Church of Covent Garden—is known as the Actors’ Church and has a long association with London’s theatre community. The funeral was taking place in the churchyard. The rector was an ancient, thin rail of a man who looked to be in danger of sailing off into the stormy skies above, should the wind blow too strongly. He conducted the service in a high, reedy voice, on more than one occasion stopping to cough in such hollow, rasping fashion that many looked to see a second body join the one in the coffin. But he made it through the service and then, wrapping his cloak tightly about him, hurried off to the comparative warmth of the church, leaving the grave digger to finalize the event.
    I noticed a small, plump woman whose hat and veil did not hide her red face and graying hair. She had been standing close beside the rector throughout the service. I made a small bet with myself that she was Richland’s mother. I believe he had no wife to grieve for him. I approached and