Johnny Swanson - Eleanor Updale [74]
Chapter 35
THE THEATRE
Johnny was furious with himself for saying nothing while Olwen was being attacked by the nurse. He made a silent promise that he would try to sort out Olwen’s predicament as soon as he’d completed his own mission. Then he waited until there was no sound from the other side of the door, and crept out into the corridor to search for Mrs Langford.
He could hear the angry nurse again, shouting somewhere in the distance. There were other noises too. He knew that only luck had stopped him being discovered already. After seeing how the nurse had treated Olwen, he doubted whether anyone would give him a chance to explain why he was there. Every time he turned a corner, he dreaded walking into a potential captor. Each creak and footfall was amplified in the part of his mind where terror lived.
Then, all at once, he found himself in a corridor with a dead end. He could hear footsteps: brisk, feminine footsteps, closing in behind him. Someone was coming, and there was no way out. Panicking, he rehearsed his cover story: how he was there to find a Mrs J. W. Morgan – how he had brought her an important message that he had promised to deliver in private and in person. As the clicking of high-heeled shoes grew nearer, he flattened his body against the wall.
Except it wasn’t a wall. He was leaning on a pair of double doors that slowly began to give way under the pressure of his back. The footsteps were getting nearer, so he allowed himself to slip through into the dark unknown on the other side.
His eyes started adjusting. He could tell that this was a huge space, like the assembly hall at school. Then the doors opened again, swiftly and deliberately this time, and he squashed himself behind one of them as somebody came in. With the clunk of a heavy switch, there was a blast of light that blinded him for an instant. He blinked, then sneaked a look round the side of the door, trying to keep himself out of sight. With the lights on, the hall was transformed into a glorious theatre. Its blue walls and ivory ceiling were heavy with golden images of angels and harps. The flat curtain across the wide stage was decorated with a gigantic painting of a warrior queen in a chariot pulled through the clouds by two white horses. At first Johnny was stunned; then he remembered what Hutch had told him: a famous opera singer had built a theatre as part of this grand house before it became a sanatorium.
A woman was shuffling between rows and rows of chairs, setting down a sheet of paper on each seat. Johnny recognized her straight away. He had known that upswept hair, the long graceful neck and those elegant movements all his life. It was Marie Langford. He couldn’t believe his luck and ran towards her. ‘Mrs Langford!’ he cried. ‘I’ve found you.’
She looked at him with horror and disbelief. ‘Johnny?’ she gasped. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’
‘I had to find you, Mrs Langford. You must help me. Mrs Langford, it’s awful. They think my mother killed your husband. She’s in prison, Mrs Langford. She might die!’ He hugged her tightly, burying his face in the rough tweed of her suit.
She pulled his arms away and sat down on one of the chairs. ‘Be quiet, Johnny,’ she said, looking anxiously around to make sure that no one else was in earshot. ‘And don’t call me Mrs Langford. No one here calls me that. If you let them know who I really am, we could both be in a lot of trouble.’
‘So you are J. W. Morgan, then?’
‘What? How do you know that?’
Johnny took the crumpled envelope out of his pocket and handed it to her. ‘Change Your Appearance Permanently,’ he said. ‘You answered that advert. Mrs Langford, I know you want a disguise.’
Mrs Langford sat in silence, turning over the envelope while Johnny burbled on. ‘I knew it was you. And I’ve worked it all out. Someone is holding you prisoner here, aren’t they, Mrs Langford? That’s why you need the disguise, isn’t it? You want to escape.’
Mrs Langford