“The alley,” she answered, her eyes like saucers.
That would bring him across the stage, directly here.
“Can we go out the front?” Leo asked, thinking of the curtains blocking the view of the house floor. But Paula shook her head.
“The front entrance is locked from the inside. I don’t have the key.”
The pounding of feet came across the hollow-bottomed stage.
“Hurry!” Paula said, then rushed forward to the spiral stairs leading below the stage. Leo moved George in front of her and followed them, as they descended the curling steps to the low-ceilinged space beneath the stage.
It was dark and musty there, with only the barest light filtering through grates set into the apron of the stage above their heads. Outlines of props, wooden backdrops, and some ropes and pulleys were visible, though not much else. As Leo tried to keep pace with the darkened shapes of Paula and George moving through the cavernous space, she tripped on objects in her path.
“Where does this lead?” she asked, her heart hammering in her chest. The memory of another dark, cluttered place barreled forward in her consciousness: the attic of her old home on Red Lion Street.
“To another set of steps leading up to a rear door,” Paula replied.
Felix would know this, and he would double back and be there to meet them when they ascended from below the stage.
“Stop,” Leo said. “Let me by, and you two return the way we came. Go out the alley door and find a police constable.”
“No, miss!” George said, his voice pitched high with fright.
“I insist. Felix will go to the rear door of the theatre, thinking we’ll emerge there. I’ll make noise and let him believe we are doing just that. Paula, take George to safety.Go.”
Paula hesitated but must have seen the wisdom in separating, for she and George scooted past her. As Paula passed, she clutched Leo’s arm.
“The staircase is to your left up ahead, past the sleigh. Be careful,” she said, then she and George were quietly heading back the way they’d come.
Leo continued onward, her eyes peeled in the dim light for any sign of a sleigh. She pushed a wooden crate as she passed it, knocking it over and causing a ruckus, then did the same to a tall, wooden backdrop. Overhead, she heard the pounding of a pair of feet as someone crossed the stage. Felix had taken the bait.
The curved railing of a small sleigh came into view in the meager light, and then ahead, a muted gleam of iron—the set of cast iron spiral steps leading up to the rear door. Felix would be waiting there at the top. Leo paused at the base of the stairs. There was no chance Paula would have made it to the street yet to flag down a constable. Climbing the stairs would only guarantee Leo coming face-to-face with Felix Goodwin. She was trapped. The same way she had been trapped in the attic of her old home. Like then, she needed a place to hide. Leo hesitated on the bottom step, looking behind her for where she might conceal herself.
Then, light cascaded down the twisting iron steps as above, the rear door opened.
Chapter Twenty-One
Jasper sat on the edge of the bench seat inside the hired coach, every muscle in his body coiled. He’d been to the Blickson residence, where Paula’s husband had confirmed that Leo had already come and gone that morning.
“A very odd young woman. She was quite forthright with her questions,” he’d said, then shrugged. “However, as she is working with Scotland Yard, I suppose that is required.”
At this, Lewis and Warnock had flicked Jasper questioning glances. He’d ignored them and asked if Mr. Blickson knew where Leo had gone after she’d left his residence.
“She was searching for my wife, as you are,” he’d replied. Jasper had waited impatiently for him to continue. “But when I mentioned Mrs. Blickson’s cousin, Felix Goodwin, she took a larger interest in him.”
If Leo had taken an interest in Felix, there must have been good cause. And when the older gentleman had finally come around to telling them that Felix was the manager of a theatre, Jasper had understood exactly what Leo had deduced.
“The beards,” he said to Lewis.
The detective sergeant had cursed. “The masked men that night…you don’t suppose they were actors from this theatre?”
After another minute of struggling to wrangle the location of Felix’s theatre from Mr. Blickson, they had departed with all haste. Stanley and Oliver Hayes had been waiting on the pavement outside.
“Well? Is George here?” Stanley asked as he craned his head toward the front door to see.
“No,” Jasper reported, then, without pause, climbed back into the waiting coach. “Follow us,” he commanded them.
Now, several minutes later, as they came upon the Epoch Theatre, Jasper’s raw nerves jumped. If Leo had come here, entering the theatre by herself would have been asinine. She’d have recognized the danger of it, surely. She must have put together the possibility that Felix Goodwin was the leader of the masked men; she was far too perceptive not to have done.
