The Innocents

Book 2: Variety Palace Mysteries

by Bridget Walsh

Genres: General Fiction; Mystery; Historical Mysteries; Female Sleuths; Thrillers; Historical Thrillers

Synopsis

Return to the musical halls of Victorian London in this 2nd Variety Palace historical murder mystery “rich with theatrical detail and . . . brilliant characters” (SJ Bennett, author of Murder Most Royal)

“Triumphant . . . Vivid period detail, clever plotting, and thoughtful characterizations. This series merits a long run”  — Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

Still reeling from the gruesome murders of the previous year, Minnie Ward is appointed manager of the Variety Palace. Times are hard, with performers shunning the 'cursed' music hall, and Minnie's relationship with Detective Albert Easterbrook is more complicated than ever. Despite the success of their last case, Minnie is terrified of the feelings that have started to grow between them. She has decided it’s definitely better for all involved if they stay as far away from each other as possible…

But when another killer begins to terrorise the city's streets, Minnie and Albert are thrown together once more. The crimes seem connected to a notorious tragedy that left nearly 200 children dead—and with so many lives affected by the incident, practically everyone is a suspect. As the investigation unfolds, dark truths begin to come to light, and Minnie is forced to confront her own past.

The Innocents is the 2nd book in the Variety Palace Mystery series, which can be read independently but continue the story of irresistible crime-solving duo Minnie and Albert. Taking place against the thrilling backdrop of the Variety Palace Music Hall in gritty Victorian London, it's perfect for fans of historical crime fiction, such as books by Sarah Waters, Stacey Halls and Elizabeth Macneal.

Release date: March 3, 2026

Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo

Print pages: 288

Sample

TRAFALGAR THEATRE, LONDON
12 DECEMBER 1863

‘Cram them in,’ Taylor had said. ‘Every one of them kids is money in our pockets.’ But Freddy Graham was worried. There were so many, for a start-off. By his reckoning, at least a couple of thousand, squashed in together, sharing seats, little ones on older ones’ laps. And precious few adults to take care of them. The youngest weren’t much more than babes in arms, the oldest maybe ten or twelve. The worst age, in Freddy’s opinion. Too young to be responsible, but old enough to make serious trouble. There were a handful of the bigger lads now, up in the gallery, leaning over the rails and spitting on the kids down below. Little bastards.

He was only the stage manager. It weren’t his job to worry about front of house. He certainly wasn’t paid enough. And maybe he needn’t have bothered. The show was going well, after all, although most of it didn’t make much sense to him. It was the first time they’d staged a pantomime, and he wouldn’t be too concerned if it was the last. That scene where the King had fallen on the baby and squashed it, and then the Nurse had inserted a bellows in its arse and brought it back to life. Load of old nonsense in his opinion. The kids lapped it up, mind.
To give them their due, Williams and his crew all knew what they were about. They’d performed this show a hundred times, at least. And they were good. The children loved the ghost illusions, the talking waxworks. Although, to Freddy’s mind, the pantomime story seemed like a poor excuse to sling together a load of acts that didn’t really belong on one billing. Give him a nice melodrama any day. You knew where you were with a melodrama. Pantomime was just nonsense. Why have a conjurer at a baby’s christening? From his position in the wings, Freddy could see all the wires and ropes, the secret pockets, the suspicious-looking boxes that were just a little too large, or just a little too deep. But from a distance, down in the stalls, up in the galleries, it must have really looked like magic.

He hadn’t been too pleased when they’d released those pigeons, mind. He weren’t fond of birds at the best of times, and in an enclosed space they scared the hell out of him. And guess who’d be the one clearing up after them?

He looked at his watch. Nearly five o’clock. Only a few more minutes to go. He peeked out at the audience from the wings. They were growing restless. They’d been promised presents at the end of the show. Freddy had his reservations about that. The best part of two thousand kids in the theatre, half of them up in the galleries. There was no system, no way of making sure everyone got a present. But Taylor had shrugged. Said it weren’t his business. Well, whose business is it, Freddy had thought, if it ain’t front of house? Taylor had barked at him that Williams and his troupe had made a promise, and it was up to them to figure out how that happened.

‘And now, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,’ Williams said, his commanding voice reaching across the packed auditorium, ‘Sleeping Beauty has been restored to life. Evil has been vanquished. Good has been rewarded. We have come to the close of our magical entertainment.’
Excited cries erupted across the theatre. Poor little buggers. From the looks of most of them, there were precious few treats in their lives. And this would only be some bit of old tat: sweets, most likely. Maybe a whistle or a cheap doll that would fall apart before the child got home.

Williams smiled, throwing his arms wide in a munificent gesture. ‘I believe you know what time it is. It’s present time!’

Shrieks exploded from all around the auditorium. The older kids started stamping their feet. Christ, Freddy thought, they’ll start chucking up in a minute, they’re that excited. As if on cue, a little girl two rows from the stage leaned to one side and vomited in the aisle.

Freddy swore under his breath, turned away and nipped down the short flight of steps to the cupboard where he kept all his supplies. His hand reached instinctively for the bucket and mop, but found only empty air. Some bugger had been in there, taking his stuff, not putting it back. Swearing again, louder this time, he headed down the corridor and found the bucket nestled under a rail of costumes, the mop upended next to it. There were a few inches of dirty water in the bucket; enough to clear up the sick. Freddy was mentally rehearsing his complaint to Taylor when he heard a noise.

Something wasn’t right. A great disgruntled roar from somewhere out front.

Freddy made his way back into the auditorium. Williams was randomly scattering small items into the audience, the other performers lending a hand. Children leapt across each other, hurling themselves in front of the sweets, grasping for them. The bigger kids, the boys mainly, were getting most of the bounty, grabbing and pushing smaller kids out of the way.

Freddy frowned, glanced around him. Williams and his crew were only throwing stuff into the stalls. How were they gonna get anything up into the gods? Freddy looked upwards and realised what the noise was. The children crammed in the galleries had noticed they were missing out and were heading for the staircase leading down to the stalls.

Even from a distance, Freddy could see they had a feral look about them. This could mean trouble, particularly from those bigger lads who were leading the way. He dropped his bucket and mop, gestured frantically to the ushers nearest the stage, but they were paying no attention, too busy trying to control the mayhem down in the stalls. Freddy looked behind him. Where was Taylor when you needed him? Or anyone?

The kids in the stalls were shrieking with delight, flinging themselves in all directions to grab the bits of nonsense. Freddy caught Williams’s eye, made a gesture for him to stop, but the actor just shrugged and carried on.

Another sound started to emerge underneath the screams of delight. More shouting, but different this time. Urgent. Desperate. It was coming from the stairwell. And then he realised, with a sickening lurch, that the door into the stalls was still bolted. A long bolt at the bottom that slid into a hole in the floor. Once bolted, a gap of exactly twenty-two inches was left. They’d measured it carefully, room enough to ensure only one person could get through at a time. The usher could check their tickets before letting the next one in.

Twenty-two inches. And maybe a thousand children trying to force their way through.

Freddy stumbled forward, tripped over and staggered down the aisle, only just managing to right himself. Some older kids laughed and jeered. Any other time he’d have given them a clip round the ear, but he needed to get to that bolt.

He ran, his breath coming in gasps, his lungs burning. No one else even seemed to have noticed. Two ushers were lounging on seats at the rear of the stalls, chatting. He shouted at them, gestured towards the door, but they laughed, mockingly cupped a hand behind an ear to show they couldn’t hear him, or didn’t want to, and turned away. They never bloody took him seriously. He shouted again, but his voice was lost in the shrieks and squeals and screams. How had no one else noticed the screams?

By the time he got there, a child had become wedged in the doorway, then another, and another. One on top of the other until they reached almost to the top of the doorframe. He bent down to the bolt and grasped the handle. Tried to wriggle and wrench it free. It was always a bit sticky; usually he had the knack but his hands were sweating and he couldn’t shift it. He tried again, pulling desperately at the top of the bolt. It wouldn’t budge. And then it dawned on him. It had bent from the weight pressed against the door. There was no way of pulling it free. The weight of one child, even half a dozen children, couldn’t have bent the bolt. So how many were there behind the door?

Freddy reached up and tried to pull one of the children out from the top of the pile. But they were so tightly wedged in. He was afraid to drag at them, pull harder, for fear of breaking their little arms or legs. Were some of them already dead? He ’d lived long enough to know what death looked like, the blank eyes, the lips parted as if to speak. But they couldn’t be, surely? Fleetingly, pointlessly, he remembered the scene with the Nurse and the bellows. Freddy couldn’t see past the wall of bodies in front of him, couldn’t tell for sure what was happening to the other children in the stairwell. But he could hear them. Children crying for help. For their mothers. And, above his head, the sound of hundreds of little feet clattering down the stairs. They were still coming. Three flights of stairs there were. Seven feet wide. He couldn’t think why he was remembering all these numbers now. The stairs turned onto landings, so that all those who were thundering downstairs couldn’t see what lay ahead. Until it was too late to
turn back.

He felt a change in the auditorium behind him. Williams and the other performers had noticed something was amiss and had stopped dispensing gifts. Then Taylor appeared from somewhere, and the ushers were behind Freddy, clawing desperately at the children.

‘Take them from the top,’ Freddy shouted. ‘You’ve got more of a chance of getting them out. Pull them from the top.’

But no one was listening. There was just a frenzy of arms, hands, trying frantically to pull someone, anyone to freedom. Grasping for any child they could reach.

Freddy moved away from the crowd of helpers, grabbed Taylor and gestured towards the west staircase. They usually kept it locked. Easier to control the crowd, Taylor said, if they only came through one doorway. Easier to stop anyone slipping in who hadn’t paid. Freddy fumbled in his pocket for his keys, found the one he needed, and unlocked the door. He raced up the stairs, Taylor wheezing behind him, then across the walkway linking the two staircases. Children were still pouring out of the gallery, heading towards disaster. Christ, would they never stop coming! Freddy ran past them, pushing them out of the way. He blocked their entrance to the east staircase and pointed them back towards Taylor.

Then he carried on across the walkway to the other staircase and looked down.
Freddy wasn’t a churchgoing man. He’d given all of that up years ago when a pastor assured him he was heading straight for hell. So he wondered if maybe he was already dead, because what greeted him was surely worse than any vision of hell he’d heard about at Sunday school. A sea of arms, legs, heads. Fingers grasping the air but no longer moving. Tiny mouths held open, emitting one last silent scream. Lips parted for a final desperate intake of breath that came too late. He stood for a moment, overwhelmed, not knowing where to start. They were dead. All dead.

Then he heard his own name. ‘Mr Graham? Please, Mr Graham.’

The voice was familiar. He followed the sound and glimpsed a twist of red hair peeping out from a pile of bodies.

His neighbour’s child. Six years old. She’d broken her ankle a fortnight ago, jumping off a wall, and had been walking with a crutch ever since. How had she survived? And what was her name? For the life of him, he couldn’t remember it.

Freddy lunged towards her. ‘I’m here,’ he said. ‘I’m coming. Hold on.’

He stumbled forward, felt something soft beneath him. He looked down. An arm, the child no more than four or five. He couldn’t see if it was a boy or a girl. He moved forward more tentatively, trying to avoid stepping on anyone. Then realised the pointlessness, and ploughed on, telling himself not to dwell on what lay beneath his feet, but only what lay ahead of him. A living child calling his name. There were bodies piled high around her, and he lifted them, pushed them aside, not allowing himself to think about what he was doing. How each of these bodies was somebody’s daughter. Somebody’s son.

He reached her. She was tucked into a corner of the landing. Her crutch had somehow got wedged in front of her and acted as a barrier. It had given her just enough space to breathe. He reached behind the crutch and lifted her out, cradling her head in his hand, her hair soft and fine as thistledown, her little heart thumping in her chest.

Holding her tightly, murmuring words of comfort all the while, he staggered back along the walkway, down the west staircase and carried her outside. He sat her down carefully on the pavement. There were other children, standing or sitting, moving aimlessly or not at all. It was raining, but no one seemed to have noticed. They huddled together instinctively, staring blankly into the distance, or reaching blindly for a hand to hold. Toys lay discarded on the ground. An older girl who seemed to know his neighbour’s child pulled her close. Freddy still couldn’t remember the little girl’s name.

He turned back. He had to rescue whoever he could. And some of them – lots of them, surely – were still alive. If they were making noise, they were alive.