Murder Most Theatrical: Swann and Parker Stratford Mystery – Chapter 18: The Actors Gather
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Murder Most Theatrical: Swann and Parker Stratford Mystery – Chapter 18: The Actors Gather
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Murder Most Theatrical: A Swann and Parker Stratford Mystery – Chapter 17, Love, Death and Cream Cakes
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Murder Most Theatrical: A Swann and Parker Stratford Mystery – Chapter 17, Love, Death and Cream Cakes
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Murder Most Theatrical: Chapter 16 – Shipwrecked
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Murder Most Theatrical: Chapter 16 – Shipwrecked
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Murder Most Theatrical: Chapter 15 – The Charge of the Light Brigade
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Murder Most Theatrical: Chapter 15 – The Charge of the Light Brigade
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Murder Most Theatrical: Chapter 14 – The Turf Fraud Scandal
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Murder Most Theatrical: Chapter 14 – The Turf Fraud Scandal
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Murder Most Theatrical: Chapter 13 – Inspector Swann and Sergeant Parker
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Murder Most Theatrical: Chapter 13 – Inspector Swann and Sergeant Parker
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Murder Most Theatrical: A Swann & Parker Stratford Mystery – Chapter 12
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Murder Most Theatrical: A Swann & Parker Stratford Mystery – Chapter 12
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Murder Most Theatrical: A Swann and Parker Stratford Mystery – Chapter 11
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Murder Most Theatrical: A Swann and Parker Stratford Mystery – Chapter 11
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Murder Most Theatrical: Chapter 10 – Breakfast With The Donaldsons
As an invigorated Augustus Littleton made love to the delectable Jess for the second, or was it the third time (making the breakfasters below in the dining room of the Shakespeare Hotel wonder if Stratford was experiencing a minor earthquake), and George Bartlett was sipping his mug of strong sweet tea in his police cell in Herefordshire, the forty-eight year old Henry Donaldson - second only to Littleton in England's theatrical affections - was sitting wrapped in a vivid green silk dressing gown having breakfast with his charming wife, Dorothea, who was becoming rather irritable at the way her husband had reacted to the letter received that very morning. “But does it really matter that much, my dear?” asked the thirty-eight year old Dorothea as she took another sip of her sweet dark coffee. “Matter? But of course it bloody matters, woman!” “ Please do not call me 'woman', I am your wife, Henry, and it is wholly unacceptable for the servants to hear you speak to me in such a fashion.” Henry blows his wife a kiss through his bushy, marmaladed beard. “ I apologise, my little sparrow, but it is unheard of for an artiste of my standing...” “ Artistes of our standing, my dear. I have been engaged too, remember.” “ Of course, my delightful, oh so talented, goose. Artistes of our standing, having to make their own way to the station? Unheard of,bloody unheard of!” “ Yes, my dear. But surely Cyril can drive us to the station in the carriage, can he not?” “ Well, yes, Cyril can, Cyril will bloody well have to, but it ain't the point.” “ I really don't see what we can do about it, my dear?” “ Make a bloody fuss is what we'll do, my charming, beautiful, little peacock.” “ But we leave in three days, don't see what we can do.” “ Not here, my dove, but when we get there. Wherever there is?” “ Stratford-upon-Avon, my dear.” “ Ain't never heard of it.” “ Of course you have. It's where Mr Shakespeare was born.” “ Who, my little swan?” “ Henry, you are incorrigible.” “ No, my little skylark, English through and through.” The Donaldson's home was a newly built stone mansion (with the fashionable towers and turrets of the period) that looked out across the vast sand dunes of Royal Birkdale to the wild Irish Sea beyond, where the Fleetwood fishing fleet passed twice a day in their red-sailed brilliance. It was the kind of home that Henry Donaldson had always dreamed of owning. The trouble was it was only a dream, with Henry renting the property for £150 a year from an absentee landlord who seemed to spend most of his time in the West Indies making a fortune from sugar. Henry didn't have any real problems about renting such a home - apart from finding the money every month - but his darling wife would have been mortified had she realised that she and her famous husband did not own the house, as he said they did. Henry's only hope now was that the season at Stratford (and this would mark a return to the stage for the actor whose Richard III had been the toast of Australia), and the other, more lucrative, plans that Littleton had hinted at in a separate letter, might improve his fortunes to such an extent that he could actually buy the house so that Dorothea might not find out that yet another huge chunk of her money had been squandered on a hare-brain scheme to build a bridge from North Wales to Dublin, which,to Henry, had seemed rather a good idea at the time. Ah, well, ever forward, ever forward, as they say in Birmingham. Henry Donaldson - son of a back yard brewer who'd invested wisely in the early development of Blackpool - started his career running the long Crystal Bar at 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', a ramshackle place of popular entertainment on the northern cliffs of Blackpool. Soon he was organising small music hall shows that often included dramatic excerpts from the world of literature and drama, which quickly gave Henry 'a born actor' (according to a young woman he'd once taken advantage of on the beach one night), the chance to take a more dramatically active part in the performances. After a few weeks, and with the help of a local printer who owed him money, he was promoting himself as 'Blackpool's Greatest Thespian', which, if you'd been there was no hollow boast, although his somewhat eccentric performances of Mr Micawber and the Prince of Denmark often got mixed up if he'd had too many drinks beforehand, but which, nonetheless, became the enthusiastic talk of the Blackpool drinking and theatre going classes, which, in those days were one and the same thing. “ Read the letter again would you, Henry?” “ Certainly, my white breasted, darting little house martin.” “ Henry, please! The servants.” Henry once more unfolded the letter, wiped off several dollops of marmalade with the sleeve of his dressing-gown, and, standing in the manner of King Lear addressing his rebellious daughters, read: My Dear Henry & Dorothea, As you will be aware I shall be producing a new, and wholly original, dramatic work at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, which will become the hit of 1882, and far beyond. Naturally, my dears, the production will be as naught without you both. Rehearsals will start in five days time, which I realise is rather short notice - although I understand you are both enjoying something of a well earned rest at the moment - but would ask, if you are able to accept what I can assure you will be parts that will live in the memory of the theatre going public for generations, to please contact me by return so that I can make reservations for the best suite at the Shakespeare Hotel. Details of the play, which at this stage I prefer to keep a secret, will be revealed to you during a welcoming dinner. Remuneration, if I may be bold enough to write of such trifling details, will be £400 per month for yourself, Henry, and £300 a month for you, Dorothea. I shall consider your acceptance of the parts as acceptance of the fee. It is hoped the play will tour extensively after Stratford, perhaps even including North America. I believe it will be a rewarding experience for us all. Yours most sincerely, Littleton “ We must accept, Henry. We have been away from our public for far too long.” “ Yes, my dear. Damned good money too. But he should have arranged transport to the bloody station.” “ Oh, Henry, don't start again. And the money is not important, you know that. It is the prestige, my dear.” “ You are quite right, my goose. I shall tell Cyril to send a telegram forthwith. After which perhaps you might indulge your adoring husband?” “ Only if you promise to be very good and behave yourself when we reach Stratford?” “ Good behaviour is my middle name, is it not, my downy owl?” “ Yes, my dear. Who am I to be today, Goneral, or Cordelia?” “ You choose, you choose.” To Be Continued...
Murder Most Theatrical: Chapter 9 – An Actors Life For Me
For George Asquith Bartlett actoring was as much a trade as bricklaying and carpentry (and he'd done a bit of both of those in his time too) and something that had to be learned and perfected, and George had learned and perfected his acting to a degree seldom seen in England's green and pleasant land, especially by the native English, who, George reckoned, couldn't act to save the life of a flea, although he wouldn't tell Augustus Littleton that, at least not yet, especially as they'd shared so many dangerous times together. You see, George wasn't English, not wholly and not by origin, but Italian. The Barletonni family had come to England in the 16th century, at the request of Mr William Shakespeare himself, to give colour and flavour to a production of /Romeo & Juliet/ the Bard was staging for the old Queen. The Barletonni family didn't bother to go back to Milan afterwards, but instead toured England putting on adaptations of Italian and Spanish classics that always involved a great deal of fire-eating, juggling, singing - lots of singing - acrobatics and sword fighting - it's what the English seemed to enjoy, especially the women, and especially the married women. George was born in his grandfather's caravan in 1815, but his mother (a sweet English country girl who soon found herself in the family way courtesy of the handsome Adolfo Barletonni) died in childbirth screaming her lungs out in the owly darkness of the English countryside. After the girl's death, George's father, consumed with grief, slit his throat and bled to death in a quiet forest glad where the foxes and the birds ate him and what was left of his body disappeared into the boggy black earth. Little George never knew what had become of his father, although dreadful stories of his murder by the father of the girl circulated for decades. After that the troupe split up and George, with his Welsh grandmother (it was she who had given George his love of the great poetry within her huge family Bible) and his half Italian, half English, grandfather, Titus Ezekiel, who now called themselves Bartlett, travelled around with whatever fair, circus, or theatre company, would have them. But old Titus had acting in his blood and taught the young George everything he knew and made sure the boy read, and learned by heart, all of Shakespeare's plays and poetry. The old man also taught the young George how to fight with a sword and dagger, and shoot straight with a flintlock. After George's grandparents died of typhoid fever in 1835 the twenty-year old George headed, in his caravan, for London and slowly made a name for himself at Drury Lane playing anything from Hamlet, via an Italian Count, to a Cockney pie seller, and if Hamlet, or the Italian Count, or the Cockney pie seller, had to dance, fight, eat fire, sing and juggle, or do all five things at the same time, George Bartlett was your man. If he was also required to do a bit of highway robbery, or add colour to a con job, then George was also your man. And George was soon the talk of London town and a frequent visitor to the beds of the wives of the nobility, or the less noble wives of his less then noble fellow actors. And George always bedded married women with children. He never stopped to work out why of course, but just knew, somewhere deep inside, that he could only copulate with a woman who had given birth. It felt like a search of some kind, but George never questioned it. And he never questioned the amount he was drinking either, what would have been the point? He needed it to get through a performance, or a caper, and bed the married mothers. But then, one morning, on waking, he found his once beautiful lover of the night before stone cold dead beside him, with the rope that had throttled the breath from her naked body still tightly knotted about her neck, with her bulging blood-shot eyes and bloated tongue still pleading for George's help from the blackness of her hideous face. “Dear God,” cried George in anguish. And as he hurriedly dressed George tried to remember what had happened, but his mind was a blank. Had he killed her? “Dear God,” he cried again. He had to get out of her house, out of London. And he did, heading slowly west in the caravan pretending to be an illiterate knife-sharpening gypsy. After spending some time in Wales and Lancashire he eventually hooked-up with Littleton's company in Liverpool. Only years later, having returned from America and his adventures with Littleton, did George read an old newspaper report to the effect that the dead woman's husband had confessed to her murder as revenge for her numerous affairs and that he had thought of killing the man asleep beside her but had thought better of it. He too had been hanged. When George had read the report something snapped in his head and a dreadful pressure was released that soon turned into a prolonged and terrible illness that would surely have killed him had constable Hughes not found the caravan and horse and carried the hallucinating and shivering George Bartlett back to his little cottage, where the policeman's wife calmly and gently restored George to some kind of health. And with the return of his health came the return of a certain recklessness of old and the need of drink and of married women who were mothers, especially Constable Hughes' plump little wife who'd given the policeman four healthy children and was kindness itself and refused George's drunken advances one hot afternoon as she tended the vegetable garden. It might have ended rather differently too had Mrs Hughes not taken a spade to George's naked backside and genitals and chased him into the river at the bottom of the garden where his ardour was cooled considerably. Constable and Mrs Hughes bore no grudge, in fact Mrs Hughes was rather taken by the idea that old lecherous George, as he had become known, had taken such a fancy to her, which was something she taunted Constable Hughes with quite often, which, on another hot summers afternoon, when the policeman was not on duty, resulted in him taking his wife right there in the middle of a row of broad beans, in broad daylight. The resultant daughter grew up to be one of the most beautiful girls the village had ever seen, although many said she looked nothing like Constable Hughes. And as George parked his caravan by the river in Stratford, and un-harnessed the horse, he recalled how lucky he was to be alive and still have his grandfather's old caravan (which had been safely locked away in the barn of a friendly farmer when George had sailed for America with Littleton) and get yet another chance to act upon the legitimate stage, instead of touring with second rate fairground acts. He'd show the world, he'd show Donaldson, a man he hadn't seen in years, what he could do. He'd show him, the old bastard. George then fed and brushed the horse, boiled a kettle for some tea, lit a pipe, and, sitting on the back step of his green and red caravan, looked in awe at the huge red brick theatre on the other side of the river and wondered if the last line in Littleton's telegram meant what he thought it meant and what sort of caper Augustus had in mind this time. To Be Continued...
