When some poor actor's brief candle goes out in front of an audience, they usually laugh. They think it's an unexpected twist in the plot. Other members of the cast feel irritated, as they think their colleague is inserting some material of his own without warning - ad-libbing, we call it. The only time someone died on stage with me, I didn't even notice. I should have done, for it was I who killed him.

Once or twice Ellen Terry visited me there. Since the adventure of the Flame of Natal she had kept in touch with me. I had, after all, saved her from a frightful scrape over that gemstone. One morning I opened a bulky package from her to find a letter and a play script.

Friday July 8th 1887

My dear Anna,

As a friend of Mycroft Holmes, perhaps you know Sir Percival Blakeney? He's a member of Mr Holmes' club. Sir Percival has written a verse tragedy about Marie Antoinette, and for some months has pestered H. I. to produce it. The script is enclosed. Sir Percival is such a Duck! He was an Angel for us last year, and he always looks so disappointed whenever H. I. puts him off. He's a grandson of the famous Sir Percy Blakeney, the Scarlet Pimpernel, of whom you may have heard, although I can't see our Sir Percy undertaking errands of derring-do. You were far more dashing yourself at the Folies Bergere when you recovered that tiresome diamond after Mr Holmes' plan went wrong and we all had to skedaddle. But getting to the point. H. I. has finally given in to Sir Percival, and the play is to go on at the Lyceum next month. Fortunately, the social Season will have ended by then, which I think is the reason behind Henry's choice of date. It won't matter much if the play fails, for no-one will be in Town to see it. Will you take a part? Between ourselves, dear, although some of it is quite promising, the rest is the deadliest stuff, and H I intends to do a good deal of re-writing before putting it on. He does not intend to hold auditions, but he and I are writing to people we know to offer parts.

Some of the speeches read well, and there's a part which would just suit you - Charlotte Corday. It's not a huge part, but she stabs Marat in his bath, which should be quite fun.

I'm to play Marie Antoinette. She opens the play in prison, and there's a promising scene when she's led out to the scaffold saying all sorts of noble things. The Guv'nor read it and made it sound so grand! Of course, I won't play it like Henry, at least I hope not! He's cast himself as Robespierre, who I gather is something of a tragic hero, although a villain would suit Henry better.

Rehearsals begin on the 18th, with the first night on August 15th. It's only a one-week run; Henry says he has the reputation of the Lyceum to think of, and of course we'll be competing with "Ruddigore" at the Savoy. Do say you'll be in it. It should amuse us, if not the audience too!!

Affectionately yours,

Ellen

P. S. Congratulations on your Rosalind, which I hear was a huge success.

I had played Rosalind in Manchester and so missed the Jubilee celebrations in London. Irving never produced As You Like It because there was no part suitable for him, so I had taken a part that Ellen would have loved to play. Some people would have been catty about my luck, but one of the things I liked about Ellen was that she was always so generous in her praise of others.

Sir Percival's play was awful but I decided to take the part. I wanted to find out who the Scarlet Pimpernel was, or had been, so I asked Mycroft as we lay in bed at the club one morning.

"I've heard of him," he said. "He was a private agent, a little like Sherlock, except that he rescued French aristocrats during the Revolution. I suppose his exploits inspired his grandson to write his play."

"What sort of man is he - the grandson, I mean?"

"Like the rest of the members. Reclusive."

"Just the type for whom the club was founded, eh?"

"Precisely, my dear. In fact, he is a founder member. He lives round the corner in St James's Place, in one of those bachelor apartments they have there. He could have had an apartment here if he chose, and I'm surprised he didn't."

"Why?"

"Well, as he is the grandson of the Scarlet Pimpernel, people assume that he is like his ancestor. He was often asked to undertake daring ventures abroad, when all he wanted was a quiet retired life. That was why he was so keen to establish this club. You may have seen him in the newspaper room or the library. Plump, smooth-faced, tends to flutter. About my age, forty."

"Oh, I know him! Doesn't he paint or sketch, something like that?"

"He dabbles. Obviously dabbles in writing too."

"Isn't he a bit of an - er -?"

"Idiot? Yes. At least, if he isn't, he plays the part well. His grandfather, Sir Percy, did the same thing, pretending to be an empty-headed fop when all the time he possessed one of the keenest brains and coolest heads in the Regency. How's his play? Is that a copy on the bedside cabinet? What is it like?"

"Ellen Terry called it deadly stuff. There are no auditions for it, you know. I imagine hardly anyone is interested in it."

"They why is Irving doing it?"

"As a favour, probably in the hope that Sir Percival will help to finance another production after this. The good thing is that I'll be well paid."

"But you have money from your aunt in America."

"Yes, but it's also nice to work from time to time. My own part won't be too bad if Mr Irving rewrites it."

"Should I come to the first night?"

"You must!"

At the first rehearsal I met Archibald Quelch. He was about thirty and almost skeletal in appearance. As an actor, he modelled himself on the Guv'nor, even down to the sideways walk. With him was George Matthews, a young actor who showed great promise and with whom I'd worked before. Quelch was to play Marat, while George had been cast as Danton.

I also saw Sir Percival at the theatre. He failed to recognise me as a fellow member of the Diogenes, not surprisingly as I was wearing a dress and hiding my short-cropped hair with a wig.

"Unfortunately, we'll be working with Quelch," said Ellen quietly, outside her dressing room that day.

"What's wrong with him?"

"Drinks and gambles. I'm sure he leads young George Matthews astray."

"I don't know Quelch."

"He's from the North. I think he hails from Blackburn. He played the provinces until he finally came here. Normally Henry wouldn't look at him, but we were short of players and there hasn't been enough interest in this play to hold auditions, so for once we've had to take what we could get."

"That's not like the Lyceum! Why doesn't the Guv'nor call it off?"

"Because if we put on Marie Antoinette now, Sir Percival will help to finance the Scottish play next year. Henry's dying to play the Scotsman." "And you'll be the Scotch Lady?"

She seated herself on the banister.

"I hope so."

She then gracefully slid downstairs. It was a habit of hers which Irving never really got used to.

In the first few days of rehearsal Irving rearranged scenes. Marie Antoinette had a big scene with Robespierre, but it was in the wrong place. Irving knew that Ellen and he would work it up into something really memorable. It was the only scene that would save the play, for we had realised how dreadful it all was.

"We need the backing from Sir Percival for our next production, Anna," said Irving in his peculiar drawl. "Otherwise I wouldn't even consider this - this dread-ful thing. Your stab-bing scene now comes a little later and I've cut a su-per-flu-ous entry or two for you."

I didn't like Quelch from the moment we met for the first rehearsal of the bath scene. The stage hands brought on an empty bathtub.

"Mr Quelch!" called Mr Irving from the stalls. "For this scene would you remove your shirt, h'm?"

"Happen you'll get a surprise when we do this, Anna - mebbe first night, mebbe later," leered Quelch as the stage hands positioned the tub.

"What do you mean?"

He leered again, smelling of drink.

"Well, 'ow much do you think I'll be wearing in the bath, eh? Naturalism. That's what today's theatre needs. You wait. One night we'll go all natural, eh?"

"I don't think you should play it as comedy," I retorted.

I christened him King Leer, which Ellen thought very funny.

"I'm sure it will be a treat for you, Anna," she said, as Quelch unbuttoned his shirt. "Seriously, though, be careful of him."

Archibald Quelch was but a walking shadow, I realised, when he sat shirtless in the bathtub. His ribs stuck out and his greasy skin, flecked with spots, gave off a most disagreeable smell.

"You have a trick dagger, Anna," said Mr Irving. "Plunge it into him up to the hilt, h'm."

I caught his smile as he said it. He had obviously summed up Quelch.

Irving had not thought fit to improve my part, concentrating instead on his and Ellen's. I therefore had to utter the lines, "Now die, thou devil! Die and die again! What, not yet dead? Then this shall finish thee!"

All this went on as I stabbed him repeatedly.

It took a number of rehearsals and some anguish for Henry Irving before I could repeat those lines with a straight face. The dagger had a blade that disappeared into the handle and I plunged it into Archibald Quelch con gusto every time we rehearsed.

"Ow!" he said the first time. "Steady on, lass! Anyone would think you meant it."

"Naturalism, Mr Quelch," I replied, stabbing him again. "You'd better get used to the way I do this, just as I shall have to get used to the way you play your part."

The weeks passed quickly. The play was not difficult to learn, and by August 15th we had prepared it as well as it ever would be. Sir Percival had attended every rehearsal, scribbling frantic notes to Henry Irving, who ignored most of them. Mycroft had called him fluttery, which was an apt description. He was like a huge plump bird, flapping from one empty row to another in the auditorium, until H. I. became exasperated.

"Sir Percival, I can-not con-centrate on these won-der-ful speeches of yours if you per-sist in dis-tracting me."

Our author was fluttering so much because he was unhappy with Archibald Quelch. He felt that the actor was not playing the part properly.

"He doesn't seem to die realistically, Mr Irving!" I heard him whisper as I stabbed Quelch. "That young girl is playing her part so well, but Marat just sits there as if nothing was happening. Can't he make his dying speech more realistic?"

"No-one makes speeches when they've just been stabbed, Sir Percival," rejoined the Guv'nor. "As well as cutting down Marat, sir, we should cut down his speech, h'm?. But I take your point as well as Mr Quelch takes Anna's."

Irving pruned the dying speech to a few words and went through the scene a number of times. Quelch, who had heard Sir Percival's whisper, took exception.

"Blinking amateurs!" he grumbled as we climbed the stairs to the dressing rooms. "What do they know? It's a rotten play, anyroad, and I'm only doing it for the money. Blow his cheek! I'll die the way I want to. And you, young woman, I wish you wouldn't stab me so blooming hard. Like I say, anyone would think you meant it. And don't run away with the idea that you're that good. I've been in this game longer than you, and let me tell you, there's more to it than just having a pretty face."

"As you should know, Mr Quelch," said Ellen, who had come up behind me.

Quelch dared not retort to the famous Miss Terry, and slunk away to the dressing room that he shared with George Matthews. George himself was doing well, and I was pleased for his sake. He played Danton with great dash and verve, and did justice to his speeches, some of which were not badly written. The Guv'nor improved them when he saw how well George was doing.

Someone else was pleased that George was doing well. Miss Sarah Bell was a young actress of twenty-one. Like George, she showed great promise, but she was new to Irving, who had given her a small part as a chambermaid to try her out. Sarah and George could often be seen whispering together in the dimly-lighted passageways of the theatre.

Irving left the dress rehearsal until the morning of Monday 15th. Before it began I was sitting alone in the dressing room that I shared with Sarah and two other actresses. I was in full costume, running through my lines and idly toying with the trick dagger, when I overheard raised voices next door. It was Quelch and George Matthews.

"Well," said Quelch, "when are ye going to pay up, then?"

"I've told you. When the ghost walks." "And in the meantime I can whistle for it, eh?"

"You'll get your damned money!"

"Don't take that tone with me, Matthews. I won it off you fair and square. You'd better have that money ready on pay-day or I complain to the Guv'nor. He won't be happy having a gambler in his company who doesn't pay his debts, not in the Lyceum."

"At least I don't drink before going on."

"Aye, but you make up for it when we come off, don't you?"

"Damn you, Quelch! I never touched a drop before I met you. I never gambled, either. You'll be the ruin of me, blast you, unless I do something about it!"

The dressing room door slammed and footsteps died away in the corridor. I thought we must be the only three in the green rooms, for everyone else was on stage in a big scene. But I was wrong. A moment after the sound of George's footsteps ceased, Sarah came in. She said nothing, didn't even meet my eye, but sat down. After a moment I could see that she was crying silently, so I went to her.

"What is it, Sarah?"

"Nothing."

But I persisted until the story came out amid sobs.

"It's that Quelch, Anna. George owes him a lot of money from cards. I heard Quelch making threats and just now George pushed past me without a word. We were planning to get married, but he's taken to drink. It's because he owes too much money. Quelch has done all this to him!"

She collapsed into more sobs and I comforted her for a few minutes. Eventually she pulled herself together. We would shortly be needed on stage and she was too professional to put her own feelings first. Before we left the dressing room she had a last word.

"I know what I'd do to Mr Archibald Quelch if I got the chance. Pity your dagger isn't real, that's all I can say."

As Sarah and I left the dressing room we almost bumped into a young man I knew only slightly. Dr William Marshall had called once or twice to treat the victims of accidents backstage.

"Hullo," I said. "Someone injured?"

"No, I've called to settle my bill, but Mr Irving's busy. I'll wait back here until I can see him. My word! That dagger looks quite deadly."

"I don't usually carry it," I said. "I usually leave it in the dressing room till I need it."

I showed him the trick blade, and he playfully stabbed himself with it.

"Is this a dagger which I see before me?"

"Don't say that!" Sarah said in alarm.

"Why not? Oh, of course - the Scotch play. We don't quote from that in a theatre, do we?"

He laughed.

"It's terribly bad luck," I replied. "You'll have to pay a forfeit, won't he, Sarah?"

"Oh? What?" asked the doctor in mock concern.

"You do it, Sarah," I said.

"Go through the door," she said. "Turn round three times. Swear."

"In front of respectable young ladies?"

"Then say something naughty."

"Garters and stocking tops! How's that?"

It got Sarah over her tears.

"It will do," she laughed. "Now spit. Knock on the door. Come back. That's it."

"How amusing. You thespians and your superstitions. I should have remembered. I walked out with an actress once. The dagger's most realistic. What do you do with it?"

"Why not sit out front and find out?" I asked. "It will be more interesting than staying back here on your own."

"Good idea."

I showed him the way to the front of house. He was very handsome, and seemed a nice young man. He had certainly set one or two hearts fluttering backstage on the odd occasion when he had been called in.

Shortly afterwards I was on stage, performing the stabbing scene with great enthusiasm. I liked George Matthews, and if Quelch had led him astray and upset Sarah into the bargain then I could at least get a little vicarious pleasure from stabbing him with the trick dagger.

"Very good, Anna," whispered Ellen afterwards. "You really brought that scene to life. Mr Quelch got it right too. He spoke his dying words as if he meant them. You certainly went for him as if you meant it."

"Thanks, Anna," said Sarah. "I would love that part of yours." The glare she directed at Quelch was one of sheer hatred.

After the rehearsal Dr Marshall approached.

"Wonderfully realistic, that dagger," he said. "Look, Miss Weybridge, are you free now? Would you have lunch with me?"

"I'm sorry, Doctor. I have an appointment. Afterwards I'm due back here for the opening tonight. Are you coming?"

"Do you know," he said, "I may just do that. Are there any front row seats left?"

"Dozens, unfortunately. I'll see Mr Irving. He'll give you a couple of complimentaries."

"I only need one, I'm afraid. No-one to bring."

He gave me a wistful look as we parted, while Sarah gave me an arch smile.

"Oh dear," I thought. "I hope he hasn't taken a fancy to me."

Still, if he had, I would be "resting" for a while after our run. Once I was away from the theatre, I would be seen no more as myself. Mr W. H. Dalziel would return to the night life of the West End.

We were all in the Beefsteak Rooms enjoying a supper after the show. "Sir Percival's delighted," I said, for our playwright was capering and fluttering about the place in ecstasy.

"Good news for Henry, then," she replied. "Assistance for the Scottish play seems assured. That should satisfy even our Mr Shaw."

One thing that disappointed me was that Mycroft had not turned up. That night, when I returned as Dalziel to the Diogenes, I tackled him about it.

"My dear, I was suddenly called to the office. But I promise I shall be there on Wednesday at the latest. Now tell me all about it. How did it go?"

It went well the next night, but, even with the devoted following that Ellen commanded, there was a much smaller audience, and Irving had a long face over sales of tickets for the rest of the week.

"Even out of season I expected better," he said glumly. "Worse, Sir Percival has promised another play. However, he has also promised to produce the cash towards the Scottish play next year, so it's not all a tale of woe, h'm, Ellen?"

On Wednesday night Mycroft came. He had never seen me on stage in a play, only in cabaret, and he was looking forward to it.

Ellen opened the play as Marie Antoinette in prison. I stood in the wings and watched as the curtain rose. Ellen sat in an attitude of dejection, light from the barred window streaming onto her face at just the right angle to bring out her exquisite bone structure. A spattering of applause told us how thinly-spread the audience were.

"Alas!" she began. "That I, unhappy Queen of France, should in this noisome dungeon count the hours."

"It's the only way to present the character, Ellen," he said. "He is not drawn as powerfully as Sir Percival seems to think."

We plodded towards the scene where I was to stab Marat in his bath. Sir Percival, as an amateur, had made the mistake of sending Marie Antoinette to execution in Act III, filling in the next two acts with discussion. "The Guv'nor" had rewritten it to keep Ellen in as long as possible, sending her to the guillotine in Act V. He had moved the trial with its huge crowd scene to just before the second interval, and put the stabbing immediately before it.

The wings and everywhere backstage were crowded, because everyone was needed on stage after the death of Marat. The bathroom scene was set in a kind of curtained recess upstage, which could be closed off immediately afterwards. The scene then speedily changed to the courtroom. There Ellen and Irving would play for all they were worth so that the audience would have plenty to praise in the bars during the interval.

As my own big scene neared, I looked for my dagger in the dressing room. I had already been in two scenes and had placed the dagger ready on the dressing table for my third appearance. It was missing. Anxiously, I sped downstairs, copying Ellen's banister ride, to the props table backstage.

"My dagger!" I whispered to the props manager.

He hunted about for it.

"Sorry, Anna, I can't see it. No. Not here."

"Oh damn!"

I raced back upstairs. At the end of the passage someone was just vanishing round the corner, otherwise the place was deserted. Entering the dressing room again, I gave a little gasp of joy. My trick dagger was there, on the floor. How had I missed it?

I seized it and raced down to the wings, just in time.

"Where the deuce have you been?" muttered Irving. "Get on. We're ready."

Quelch was sitting in his bath wearing a leer and nothing else.

"Told yer," he whispered just before the curtain rose. "Oh naturelly, eh?"

I didn't deign to answer. He went through his bathing scene, almost clowning as Sarah, playing the chambermaid, tipped some water into a bucket concealed in the bath. She turned scarlet as she saw him, but fortunately she had her back to the audience.

Quelch scrubbed his back, and to Irving's disgust swung a bare leg over the side of the tub for the sake of raising a laugh. I entered and spoke my lines which began: "So, Citizen, I find you in your bath!" as if it wasn't obvious.

After some dialogue in which my character justified herself, I sprang to him and stabbed him. I really laid it on that time. He deserved no less for his silly practical joke of appearing naked, and I rammed the dagger home so hard that he really flinched and gasped with pain.

"Die and die again!" I cried. "What, not yet dead? Then this shall finish thee!" and for good measure I gave him a couple more than were strictly in the script, doubly redoubling them.

He did something he had not done until then. His dying speech was: "Foul jade! This blow has robbed me of my life; so die, Marat, for now thou canst not live."

He began the speech, but instead of completing it he gave a kind of grunt and collapsed into the bath, just as he was supposed to.

I had always thought him detestable, and now he looked like a skinny, pasty, crumpled-up doll. What a terrible actor, I thought, and gave him one more for luck. I then delivered my exit lines and left. The applause suggested a certain measure of sympathy for me on the part of the audience.

"What's the matter with him?" asked Ellen, as the scene rapidly changed. "Why did he fluff his dying speech?"

"God knows," I said, putting my dagger on the props table. "The Guv'nor will have his guts for garters, I hope. We're on!"

We were all in the trial scene, which ended the act, so it wasn't until we came off ten minutes later that the stage manager hurried to Henry Irving and said something that turned him white. Ten seconds later the stage manager was front of curtain appealing for a doctor, but the audience were already leaving for the bars. The appeal was repeated through the bars and lobbies during the interval, and after a long time the familiar face of Dr Marshall appeared backstage.

By now a little group had clustered round the bath. Quelch had not got out. He couldn't. Marat was really dead.