The auditorium’s stale mustiness – an acrid compound of stage lights, sweat and resin – contended now with sweeter odours from cinnamon sticks and pomanders which decked the upper tiers. For a moment, it made Markham feel faint and dizzy.
Aroldingen and the blonde dancer finished their routine. The ballet mistress wandered across to the corps, frowning at the sound of a few death rattle coughs and dancers cursing the discovery that their feet had swollen overnight so none of their pointe shoes fitted. Ivan Plucis appeared from the wings, moving stiffly as though his joints and ligaments were frozen from head to toe. ‘It’s like I’m in a body cast trying to punch my way out,’ he grumbled to the blonde who smiled in commiseration…
Markham felt rather than consciously registered all of this. As though time had been mysteriously suspended and everything was happening in slow motion.
‘Inspector! Inspector!’
The trance was broken.
Marguerite Aroldingen approached the police team with a look of concern.
‘What is it, Mr Markham? What’s wrong?’
All trace of artifice and coquetry had dropped away.
‘Let’s move into the foyer, Ms Aroldingen, nice and casual… I don’t want to start a panic.’
Biting her lip, the ballet mistress complied, but once out of sight of the dancers she wheeled round on him. ‘What’s the matter? Tell me, please!’
Markham told her.
‘Oh God,’ she breathed. ‘And he’s got Alex?’
‘Yes, we think so.’
‘This is my fault,’ she said, hands clutching her throat. ‘I should have seen something wasn’t right with Eddie … should’ve guessed…’
‘No, Ms Aroldingen.’ The DI’s voice carried absolute conviction. ‘I’m at fault for having failed to understand what was happening right beneath my nose.’
Tortured phrases from Bissell’s letters flashed before his eyes as though projected onto a giant screen.
Queers are tarts and mistresses, not wives.
How can you, who have disenchanted me from being a beast now, lift your magic and leave a husk?
Perhaps we should never meet again. I can give you nothing but decay… I am the crisp frost of winter – the bleakness, the latent period. But you still blaze with promise. I am sad futility, the melancholy, sad autumn, the fallen leaf. But you still hold the fragrance of a life fulfilled.
In a moment of lightening clarity, Markham recalled Isobel Kent’s scathing remarks to the Courier. Then there were the eunuchs. The men who never got over him. Pathetic creatures of thwarted dreams. All hoping to be “Mrs Baranov” while he played them like a fiddle.
Eddie Bissell – “Steady Eddie”, the man who could always be counted on – had sickened of his role in Baranov’s life, resentment curdling to a deadly hate.
“To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding; And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness to be diseased.”
And Markham had missed it. Had allowed Bissell to remain a shadowy figure on the periphery of the investigation, distracted by the swirling intrigues and bitchiness of the ballet world. A world populated by so many flamboyantly exotic characters.
In his mind’s eye, as though it had been buried in his subconscious until that moment, he saw a picture from that gallery outside the administrator’s office. A dancer cloaked in black velvet, white pancake make-up on his face, black circles under his eyes. A shadow of Death, a timeless presence rising behind a coffin. The young Eddie Bissell.
Suddenly, there was a bloodcurdling shriek, then another and another till it seemed as though the whole theatre rang with the sound.
All the colour drained from Markham’s face.
They rushed back into the auditorium where the dancers stood rooted to the spot like so many waxworks.
The DI laid a hand on Marguerite Aroldingen’s arm. ‘Where’s it coming from?’ he asked. ‘Which part of the building?’
‘I think … the dressing rooms,’ she whispered through stiff lips.
‘Show us.’
The ballet mistress led them to a door at the back of the stalls and turned left.
There was a little antiquated elevator next to a poorly carpeted flight of stairs. Through the grille, the shaft gaped emptily.
Ignoring the elevator, they took the stairs.
On the landing a sobbing dancer sat on the floor in a crumpled heap, practice skirt spilling round her so that she looked like a crushed butterfly.
She had stopped screaming, but her tiny frame shook with convulsive shudders, eyes fixed in horror on the elevator cage.
Markham wrenched back the rusty collapsible gate.
Roger Miller’s body swung at a drunken angle from folding scissor metalwork which had buckled under the weight. A makeshift rope garrotte dug so deeply into his neck as to threaten the lolling corpse with decapitation. The lecturer’s eyes, slowly glazing over, still bore their dying look of surprise. A stream of froth dribbled from swollen lips, while the bloated, engorged features eradicated all vestiges of former grace.
It was a dreadful sight.
Markham’s heart contracted with pity. Roger Miller had finally been admitted to his coveted holy of holies – the theatre’s secret spaces – only to meet a brutish end at the hands of an unimaginably callous predator.
From the look of him, Miller was not long dead.
‘Time is of the essence, now.’ The DI forced himself to speak calmly. He turned to his colleagues while the ballet mistress crouched next to the girl on the floor, vainly endeavouring to comfort her. ‘Doyle, I want you to take care of things here.’ He took one last look at the ghastly sight in the elevator. ‘Call this in and secure the area. In the meantime, I need to get into this tunnel or whatever it is in the basement.’ Markham tapped Marguerite Aroldingen gently on the shoulder. ‘I need you to fetch a couple of stagehands and tell them to bring a crowbar or tools … anything that we can use to gain access. Bissell’s got the keys and there’s no time to look for a master set.’
‘Got it.’
‘Don’t let the dancers or anyone downstairs realize what’s going on. The fewer people down there the better. My DC will take care of this young lady,’ he smiled reassuringly at the young girl whose sobs had subsided into sniffles.
‘I’ll tell Ivan and Daria to give the corps a class onstage. With opening night so close, that’s all they can think about.’
The ballet mistress turned towards the stairs which led back down to the auditorium then paused.
‘Can I come with you?’ Her tone was beseeching, her eyes urgent in their appeal.
‘Yes, but we need to act quickly. I’m afraid Bissell may be deteriorating rapidly.’
The ballet mistress was as good as her word. In no time at all the group found itself in the dusty mortuary-like labyrinth beneath the stage, passing dingy dressing rooms, trapdoors, hydraulic lifts, a dungeon-like canteen, minuscule physiotherapy room and the wardrobe mistress’s cubbyhole from which Markham noticed Marguerite Aroldingen avert her eyes.
It was so dank and chaotic in the bowels of the theatre, that it seemed impossible to imagine it as the fount of miraculous stage effects – of enchanted forests and magical kingdoms, shimmering lakes, mythical creatures, Christmas trees that grew before one’s very eyes, bewitched palaces and garden colonnades. And yet, in just a few days, a wide-eyed audience would be transported by means of this underground paraphernalia to another world.
At the very rear of the basement, behind all the baskets, rails and props – painted toys and wooden sleighs – was a rusty access gate covered with a metal wire mesh. As Markham had expected, it was locked.
He signalled to the two burly stagehands who got to work.
No-one spoke as, grunting and puffing, they applied crowbar and wrench in succession. After what seemed like an infinity, the gate stood open. At a gesture from the DI, the two men then turned and went back the way they had come.
Behind the gate was a stone passage lit b
y overhead fluorescent tubes activated by a switch just inside the entrance.
‘You can come with us, Ms Aroldingen,’ the DI said, ‘but please stay well back.’ At her look of anguish, he added compassionately, ‘I know he is your friend, but this is also a man who has killed five people and must now feel he has nothing to lose.’
‘I understand.’ The woman suddenly turned so pale that she looked like she might collapse. Kate Burton gave her arm a reassuring squeeze and some colour returned to her face.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll be all right now.’
The party moved single file along the winding corridor in a sombre cortege.
Then came to a dead end.
Against the bricked-up wall, two figures stood as though in a frieze, their faces half in shadow from projecting buttresses on either side.
Alexandra Fairlie was wearing a gauzy practice tutu and some sort of feathered headpiece which Markham recognized as part of the swan queen costume from Swan Lake. Bissell himself was enveloped in a long dark cloak. His sunken eyes, like unwholesome gourds, glittered with madness against the backdrop of the dimly lit stone passage. In a dreadful parody of ballet’s most romantic embrace, Bissell held the ballerina close to his chest. From the terrified expression on her face, Markham had no doubt that there was a knife or weapon concealed in the cloak’s heavy folds.
Very gently, almost tenderly, Markham said, ‘It’s over, Eddie. We understand. You loved George Baranov. That’s why you killed him.’
‘“There is nothing left remarkable beneath the visiting moon.”’
It was the barest whisper.
Then the exhausted, defeated eyes kindled with pure loathing as Bissell looked at the white-lipped figure in his arms, her face a mask of bleached bone.
‘At least I don’t have to watch him making love with his beautiful ballerinas any more – touching, lifting, manipulating, feeling the heft of them … while all the time I wish it could be me.’
Markham’s gaze dropped to Bissell’s hands. Not for him the ordinary biting of nails. He had ripped strips of skin from his cuticles; on each finger, striations of raw flesh radiated towards his knuckles like a spiky reptilian crest.
God, how could he have missed the signs that Bissell was descending into hell?
‘Let Alexandra go, Eddie. This is about you and George.’
‘She was so sure of George’s worship that she pushed further and further, testing to see how far he would bend. Once she was back for good, she even told him to get rid of me … said I was part of his “gayfreight” … his old queens.’
Bissell’s grip tightened, the ballerina wincing in his arms.
‘“You’re going to run the company someday,” that’s what he promised me. And I was ready to take up the mantle. Like Atlas, I would never have dropped it… But,’ his voice descended to a vicious hiss, ‘she wanted me out. And George gave in to her… Oh, I heard him. “Eddie’s a homosexual, always after boys. He will destroy everything. Only I care about women, and woman is ballet. It has to be someone else. I can’t entrust my legacy to him.”’
Features contorted in a snarl, Bissell continued with his long pent-up indictment against the murdered choreographer.
‘I tried to tell George she was bad for him. He just leaned back till he was bent like a bow in that way he had, tilting his chin so he could look down his nose at me. “God does this,” was all the answer he gave. God does this. As though she was some gift from heaven.’
A spasm passed across Bissell’s face.
‘For his production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, he wanted to have a drop curtain based on The Book of Revelation, where St John has a vision of the Woman of the Stars. “Now a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and in her hand a garland of stars.” Can you imagine? Playing church like that with her as his Madonna!’
Markham contemplated the tormented figure before him with infinite pity. George Baranov called himself a ballet master – a master of all the arts that went into the making of ballets. Eddie Bissell, danseur noble manqué turned glorified gofer, never felt he was the master of any art. Baranov was unassailable, with no chink in his armour. Bissell was a wounded giant, full of holes in his soul. Just being around the imperiously confident Baranov must have unbalanced him, and once thwarted passion was added to the mix … well, it was hardly surprising that his behaviour rippled into a Jackson Pollock….
Ranting on, ‘I was just a tennis ball bounced between the two of them, carrying messages from one to the other… God, the selfishness… He was like one of those Restoration characters, Mr Self-Absorbed.’
Bissell’s voice suddenly softened.
‘And yet, he could be so humble sometimes, so considerate and self-effacing… He used to clean up pianos in the theatre or studios before leaving… He would always clean up the pianos … take away the chewing gum, the cigarettes or the sweets, whatever. He treated pianos like someone would treat their pet at home.’
An anguished, high-pitched wail burst from him, as though wrung from the depths of his being. ‘Why couldn’t he treat me like that? Why couldn’t he show a little kindness?’
Careful, thought Markham, careful.
‘People often treat family badly, Eddie. You were his family. He trusted you to get on with it … he knew you always had his back.’
‘At least I saved George the horrors of old age.’ Bissell’s tone was suddenly almost lucid. ‘No lingering illnesses with awful tubes sticking out of every orifice… No care home with dusty plastic flowers and the smell of boiled cabbage.’ He crooned grotesquely. ‘“Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be.” That didn’t have any meaning for him. He lived only for the present. It was so bloody embarrassing when he wanted me to give dancers their P45s. “Old dancers … when they get old they should just go away and die. That is what they should do, die. Because they’re not pretty. No youth. We want youth.” He’d even avoid meeting beautiful dancers he’d known when they were starting out, because he couldn’t bear to have his memories spoiled by them turning up looking old and ugly.’ An emphatic shake of the head. ‘No dying of the light for George… I snuffed him out like a candle.’
Bissell smiled. Such an eerie, inhuman grin that the hairs on the back of Markham’s neck stood on end.
‘Mind you, even at the end he was tapping the fingers of both hands against each other. Still making steps … even after I’d choked the life out of him.’
Alexandra Fairlie gasped in horror.
Bissell’s voice picked up speed. Staccato bullets from an Uzi.
‘George always said it didn’t matter what ballets were programmed so long as you had a swan in the title. Well, I’ve got my swan princess and she’s going to re-join her prince in death, true to George’s version. And the spell will finally be broken.’
Grotesquely, he smirked. As if, thought Markham, he was a bad boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. A ‘You got me’ roll of the eyes. It chilled the blood.
But they weren’t near enough to him, the DI calculated desperately, watching for any sign of movement under the voluminous cloak. At his shoulder, he felt Noakes poised to lunge.
Alexandra Fairlie screamed.
Eddie Bissell stared transfixed at a shadow opening and shutting against the stone brick wall like some monstrous umbrella.
A spitting, clawing, scratching bundle plummeted from nowhere onto his face, with an unearthly ‘EEEE-YOU!’ shriek that seemed to reverberate from one end of the tunnel to the other.
The ballerina twisted in his arms and Bissell dropped to the ground, a huge gash livid across his throat, rambling incoherently.
Afterwards, Markham barely recollected the frantic struggle to save Bissell’s life. But once he was finally stabilized and the paramedics had stretchered him away, the police team adjourned from the Royal’s sinister little basement tunnel to the next-door Academy where Marguerite Aroldingen brought them mugs of hot te
a liberally laced with brandy.
‘Bissell kept talking about that … whatever it was … being Baranov’s “familiar”,’ Burton said shakily.
‘After George’s pug Nijinsky died, he went in for cats.’ The ballet mistress was blessedly normal and matter of fact. ‘He had quite a way with them … used to walk around with one draped round his neck when he was relaxing at home.’
‘Ugh,’ Burton exclaimed involuntarily.
The ballet mistress smiled. ‘You’d have to be a cat lover to understand… Well, various jokes did the rounds about one particular specimen – no pedigree, just an ugly alley cat he’d rescued – being George’s familiar.’
‘What’s one of them?’ The brandy was working its magic on Noakes.
‘A sorcerer’s attendant demon or spirit… You know, like a witch’s cat.’
‘So, that’s what was in the tunnel … Baranov’s cat?’
For the first time, Aroldingen’s composure faltered.
‘No… You see, his last pet died a while back. George was very cut up about it.’
‘What was that thing then?’ Doyle laughed nervously. ‘Some sort of Beast of Bodmin to keep the rat population under control?’
‘There’s never been a resident cat to the best of my knowledge.’ Again, Marguerite Aroldingen looked uneasy, casting furtive little glances over her shoulder as though conscious of a presence behind her.
Markham reckoned it was George Baranov.
‘The cat’s easily enough explained,’ the DI said with a confidence he did not feel. ‘This theatre’s a warren… A half-starved feral cat with its usual lair in some obscure corner might well have found its way down there … and then, frightened by all the noise, attacked its tormentor.’ Markham looked round the little circle of uneasy faces. ‘Eddie Bissell obviously went roaming round the place at night on a regular basis. Mr Baranov too for that matter.’
‘Jus’ like the Phantom of the Opera,’ put in Noakes.
‘Quite, Sergeant… At any rate, whatever animal was in that corridor before, it isn’t there now,’ he said. ‘Though obviously, the animal control team will check the whole building.’
Detective Markham Mysteries Box Set Page 100