Figment - Jace Cameron - Страница 28

"Nah." He raises his chin and greets a few ladies he hasn't seen before. "I puffed hookah smoke in his face. It hypnotized him long enough for me to pass."

"Just like that? You didn't show him anything?"

"Of course I did." He smiles broadly at he crowd. "My middle finger."

Chapter 3 4

"The theatre is on the eastern boundary of the Covent Garden area of London," the Pillar says, pretending to guide me through as we eye everyone around us, looking for a clue to the Muffin Man. "It runs between Aldwych and High Holborn," he continues. "Not to be confused to the many other so-called Theatre Royals in the world."

"I'd prefer you tell me what Lewis Carroll has to do with all of this," I say as we enter the auditorium.

The Pillar gently holds my hand as if I am a princess and ushers me to my seats. "No farting, I promise," he says to the seating crowd we pass in the row.

We finally are seated.

"Lewis Carroll used to work briefly with the theatre," the Pillar says, holding my hands between his. "They used a few plays he'd written long before he got mad; I mean, long before he wrote Alice in Wonderland."

I sit and listen, not telling him about my vision of Lewis.

"You have to understand that these Victorian times were harsh," the Pillar says. "We're talking about London's filthiest, cruelest, poorest, and hungriest times. You couldn't tell people's real ages. From their unnaturally skinnier and smaller sizes, you'd think they were dwarves." He asks me to hand him the hookah piece, and begins preparing his weapon. "Food was so scarce that poorer people went down in size and length. It's true. Look at me. I am not that tall. And I lived these times."

"Proceed, please." I try to pose like someone who's accustomed to being in theatres.

"Carroll wasn't in any way fond of London. He loved Oxford, with all its books, grand halls, and studios," the Pillar continues. "He had also been a priest for a brief time; the Oxford Choir in the church will never forget him. But then Lewis developed a great interest in photography, particularly kids, like Constance's photograph."

The light in the hall dims, preparing for the start of the play.

"As you might have heard, photographers will tell you a camera never lies," the Pillar says. "In Carroll's case it was exceptionally true. The poverty his camera caught was heartbreaking. If you'd ever paid attention to his photographs, mostly of young homeless girls, you would understand his obsession. Poverty, hunger, and unfair childhood screamed out of every photo."

"I could imagine Lewis like that."

"Before writing books and puzzles, Lewis directed small plays in Oxford to entertain the poor, skinny kids with tattered clothes. He did it because there was not enough money to buy them food. In all history, art has been food of the poor, Alice. Remember that." The Pillar seems lost for a moment. I wonder what memory he is staring into. "Carroll called his intentions 'saving the children.' He wanted to save a child's childhood. He wanted to save their memories from being stained by the filth of his era."

"I couldn't save them!" Lewis' words ring in my ears.

"Those plays he directed for them introduced Carroll to the art of nonsense," the Pillar explains. "Kids are nonsensical by nature. A lame joke would make them laugh, because they are at ease with who they are. Unlike grown-ups, who are weighed down by the years."

"I still don't understand his connection to the Drury Lane Theatre, where we're supposed to find the Muffin Man."

"That's the easy part," the Pillar says. "The plays needed funding for production. Carroll was smart and resourceful. He gave his plays for free to the Theatre Royal, which was struggling after being burned down a few years back and couldn't afford to pay for new plays. In return, the theatre provided Carroll with costumes for his plays."

"That was why he held the suitcase and smiled when the kids asked him," I murmur.

"Excuse me?"

"Nothing," I say. "So that's his connection to Drury Lane Theatre?"

"My assumption, with the Cheshire's clues, is that Lewis Carroll met the Muffin Man in Drury Lane," he says. "Only, Carroll never felt the need to mention the Muffin Man in any of his writings."

"Maybe Carroll wrote the nursery rhyme?"

"That's farfetched, and we have no evidence to back it up," he says. "All I know is that after all those connections and the fact that an Alice in Wonderland play took place here the day the murders started, I believe the Muffin Man wants us to be here. He will probably want us to witness something."

"Something like what?"

In this moment, the Pillar cranes his neck upward at the higher balconies in the theatre. An unusual look startles his face. "Something like this." He points up.

I look and squint against the faint light in the theatre. I see an important woman arriving in the balcony, accompanied by a number of guards.

"What brings Margaret Kent here?" I ask.

"The Duchess is in the house." The Pillar sighs. "This is getting curiouser and curiouser." He lowers his head, ready to watch the play. "I don't feel guilty using her credit card to pay for your dress now."

"What?" I crane my neck at him in surprise. "You did what?"

"We used it to book the theatre's tickets too." He shakes his shoulder. "She is a charitable woman." Then a huge smirk invades his face. "Which reminds me..."

Chapter 3 5

The Duchess' presence provokes the Pillar. Consequences are both absurd and hilarious.

"Take this." He passes me his hookah again, spits in his gloves, and says, "This is going to be fun."

The Pillar stands and faces the crowd. Sitting right in the middle of the audience, the crowd is watching us from every direction.

"Sit down!" someone says.

"Ladies and morons of the Theatre Royal." The Pillar's welcoming hands masquerade his insults. The smile on his face is overly sincere, like those self-help lecturers. "Tonight isn't a normal night. It's the kind of evening remembered in history books. You know history, which only winners write, and forge it the way they like?"

Someone chuckles among the crowd. A few still demand he sits. A couple swear at him, pretty vulgar words you're not supposed to say in a theatre. And to my surprise, the stage's curtains hang half open.

"Are you part of the show?" a kid asks.

The Pillar nods. "So, like I said, ladies and monkeys, all you silly Wonderland lovers." Another couple of spectators chuckle. "Tonight is the night. We're here in the presence of an extraordinary woman." He points upward at the balconies. The Duchess' guards keep calm, but reach for their guns. The light technician, thinking the show has turned elsewhere, directs the spotlight at the balcony. That's where everyone is looking now. "The one and only Margaret Ugly Kent!" The Pillar's theatrical act deserves an Oscar.

"Is that really her middle name?" I hiss.

He dismisses me with a wave of his hand and talks to the theatre's orchestra. "This wasn't really the bang I was looking for." He looks annoyed. "This is the most important woman in Parliament."