The Dark Palace--Murder and mystery in London, 1914

by R. N. Morris

  The girl – a brunette in her twenties – was pretty enough, but of course she suffered in comparison to Eloise. There was something affecting about her face, a kind of frailty, but he realized that it was just as likely to make you despise her as love her. It seemed put on. A delicate, gossamer mask covering a hard-faced egotism. He couldn’t quite believe in her, and certainly didn’t trust her.

  As for the man, if Quinn had been forced to make a snap judgement of his character based on this first impression, he would have said lazy and selfish. He might even have gone further than that. There was a ruthless quality to his undoubted good looks, something cruel as well as calculating. It was clear that he approved of his own handsomeness, and valued it considerably, but only for what it brought him, for the doors – and purses – it opened.

  If he was not a gigolo, then he was a pimp. And that was not to exclude many other unsavoury things that he might also be.

  Of course, Quinn accepted that he might well be doing them both a great injustice. And really they were nothing to him, and he should not have let himself become distracted by them. Except … except that he detected that they were somehow interested in Lord Dunwich. He had noticed subtle glances pass between them, indicative of some dark purpose regarding his lordship. He did not think it boded well for Lord Dunwich that they had him in their sights.

  But really, he was not here to babysit the man from the Admiralty. ‘Get on with it, you two. If Hartmann is here, I want to know.’

  Quinn watched Macadam and Inchball milling through the crowd. Despite the differences in their characters, evident in their distinctive gaits, it had to be said that Quinn had never seen two men who were more obviously policemen. If the crowd had not been so intent on the brilliant creatures who were cavorting in front of Porrick’s Palace, his sergeants would not have escaped its wary attention.

  Quinn turned back to the group of film people. Eloise, of course, drew his gaze. But he found that the man with the eye patch, Waechter, also interested him. The mere knowledge that he had taken a life once suggested that he could do so again. Whether one called it manslaughter or murder, it was the ultimate crime. A man capable of that could reasonably be considered capable of anything.

  Waechter directed a few urgent – possibly angry – words towards a man holding a Yorkshire terrier. Quinn was momentarily distracted by the dog, so he did not immediately recognize Porrick. But the fellow’s overcoat gave him away. A third man was drawn into the discussion, a dark-complexioned individual, of excessively short stature, and with the look of an indigenous South American. He nodded eagerly as if to reassure the others of something. The dog joined in with a few bad-tempered yaps of his own for good measure.

  The exchange had no impact on the actors, who maintained their good-natured rapport with each other and the audience. At least this was the case with Eloise and the stout comedian with the mournful expression. The other couple he had picked out, the ones who had taken an interest in Lord Dunwich, followed the discussion with greedy eyes, as if they suspected that there was profit to be made from whatever might fall out from it.

  But the altercation petered out. The reassurances of the South American played a part. So too did the intervention of a large, imperious-looking woman with a spreading bosom who spoke sharply and decisively to the man with the dog.

  Quinn looked back to where Lord Dunwich was, and was surprised to see him in conversation with another man he recognized, Harry Lennox, the Irish proprietor of the Clarion. He supposed it shouldn’t really surprise him that Lennox was here. If he himself had been considered enough of a celebrity to be invited, then the publisher of one of the most widely read newspapers in the country would surely have merited an invitation. But he found it troubling all the same. It was not so long ago that he had been investigating the case in which Lennox had been indirectly involved. He had no wish to be seen by Lennox, or more specifically by his daughter Jane, whom he now noticed was there with her father. She was dressed in an eye-catching gown that seemed to be made entirely of black sequins and black-dyed ostrich feathers attached directly to her skin. Presumably she was in mourning. But she could not mourn discreetly, of course. Being who she was, the spoilt and savage child of a millionaire, she had to mourn fashionably.

  The group of film people began to wave and make their way back inside Porrick’s Palace. But just as they were doing so, an ugly scene broke out.

  A man with his back to Quinn began shouting and gesturing angrily.

  Waechter, who was herding his company away, turned for a moment to look at the shouting man. He frowned as he tried to take in what the man was saying. Presumably there was some difficulty with the language. Quinn couldn’t be sure, but he thought he made out the word ‘Parasites!’ followed by something which could have been: ‘Without me, you’re nothing!’

  Waechter dismissed the heckler with an impatient shake of his head and a dark look towards Porrick. The latter took this as a cue to step forward and confront the shouting man. There was something about his manner, a weary brusqueness, that suggested to Quinn that this was not their first encounter.

  The crowd had greeted the outburst with nervous hilarity, neutralizing any danger through ridicule. Quinn, however, was gripped by the same ominous sensation that had come over him earlier, the sense that this incident too had something to do with him personally; that dark events were moving towards some kind of climax.

  Waechter hurried his actors inside, to be followed in by Porrick and his wife, together with Lord Dunwich, and Harry and Jane Lennox, who presumably were in some way connected with the party of film people. A wider entourage followed behind them.

  At the removal of the film people, the man stopped shouting and turned disconsolately away, pushing against the tide of the crowd, who were now forming a queue to be admitted.

  As soon as he turned, and Quinn got a clear view of his face, the premonitory feelings that Quinn had experienced earlier were fulfilled. It was the man he had seen in the Tube train compartment.

  Quinn observed that the man was wearing the same leather gloves as before. Had he subconsciously noted the gloves already? That would explain the curious dream-like sense of inevitability he had experienced when he saw the man’s face.

  Quinn felt a strange conflict of emotions. He wanted to detain and challenge the man. But some fierce and almost threatening glint he had caught in the other’s eye deterred him. It seemed that he held in his gaze a secret, inexplicably pertinent to Quinn, and which it would not profit Quinn at all to discover.

  The man knew that he had been seen. He held Quinn’s gaze for long enough to suggest that this did not unduly concern him, that he almost welcomed it. At last he turned and pushed his way through the square. Any thought Quinn might have had of following him was forgotten by the excited return of Macadam and Inchball.

  ‘’E’s here, guv! We seen ’im, ain’t we, Mac!’

  For a moment, Quinn thought Inchball was referring to the same man. He frowned in confusion.

  ‘’Artmann, guv! ’E was with them film people. Went in with them. Looks like ’e knows Waechter! You was righ’, guv!’

  Quinn nodded calmly. ‘Very well. Inchball, you watch the front. Macadam, go round to the back. There must be a rear exit. I want a man in place to tail him whichever way he comes out. And whatever you do, don’t let him know that he’s being followed. I shall go inside to watch the film. If Hartmann does have some connection with Waechter, as it now seems likely, then it would be as well for us to familiarize ourselves with what kind of a man Herr Waechter is. This film of his would be a good place to start.’

  He looked up at the trees in the centre of the square. The lights in the branches seemed brighter now. But that was merely a function of the darkness thickening around them.

  SIXTEEN

  As the lights went out inside the auditorium, bubbles of excitement seemed to float in the darkness. Voices rose to an urgent clamour. It was as if each member of the audience was r
ushing to get out the single most important thing they would ever say, which had for some reason occurred to them at this inappropriate moment. Then, everyone ran out of words at the same time. Silence hung momentarily above them. Quinn thought he heard a short hiss, like liquid being squirted from a number of atomizers. The air was suddenly pleasantly scented. He felt himself relax. He sensed an easing in the expectant tension all around him.

  The band began to play. Because this was a gala occasion, the management of the theatre had evidently supplemented the usual pianist with some string players and a percussionist. The violins came in with a highly charged romantic overture. The darkness seemed to throb and quiver, as if a spasm of emotion had passed through it. Then all at once it burst into shimmering life.

  A pair of enormous eyelids opened slowly. Two equally enormous eyes stared out at him. At him, at him alone. That was certainly what Quinn felt. Every other man in the auditorium must have felt the same.

  For these were the eyes of a woman. And their gaze was one of desire. What man would not wish to think himself the subject of that gaze?

  He knew immediately that they were the eyes of the woman he had seen outside the theatre. Eloise. They held the same magnetic power. But something had changed about them, and not just their scale. In the flesh, her eyes had been warm and engaging. They had possessed a human empathy that reached out to whomever they settled upon. Their gaze was inclusive and generous.

  Enlarged and isolated from the rest of her features, the eyes became self-possessed and steely. Yes, they desired the unseen object they gazed upon. But this desire was something fierce, dangerous, frightening. It was a desire in which there would be no room for compromise. The gaze of those gigantic eyes demanded everything. And promised nothing in return. It was a gaze that threatened to possess its object, like a demonic force. A gaze that would take you over and make you forget yourself. It would transform you into something you had never imagined you could be. It would never let you go.

  The small, sympathetic, very human personality that had charmed the crowd outside the theatre was nowhere to be seen.

  The eyes blinked. The viewpoint receded slightly, to show the whole of the face. And now some of that humanity came back into the eyes. The fierceness of the gaze was given a context, and seemed more comprehensible. What defined the gaze, he understood now, was despair. There was a frailty in her expression that the eyes alone had not communicated, a potent combination of vulnerability and defiance.

  A hand came sharply into shot, slapping her across the left cheek. The percussionist threw out a perfectly timed snare-shot.

  The audience gasped.

  The camera closed in again on her eyes. They flared with indignation and then softened into something more recriminatory, regretful even. The music corresponded to these modulations.

  At no time was there fear in those eyes.

  Then, at last, the camera angle shifted to show the man who was both the recipient of her gaze and her assailant.

  Quinn recognized the mournful-faced actor who had been with Eloise outside. But he too had been transformed by the alchemical processes of kinematography. In front of the theatre, he had appeared to be simply a more intense example of humanity, but the same in type as those around him. Somewhat livelier in the fluidity of his expressions, but possessing a self-deprecating jokiness that was comparable to Eloise’s blatant generosity of spirit. His face was fascinating, compelling even. But he did not appear to be a different category of being all together.

  Paradoxically, devoid of colour and reduced in its dimensions, his image became something far more than the man it represented. Dressed in a white dress uniform, he became the embodiment of every dark and difficult male emotion. (The music from the band rather overstated this, striking up a heavy, melodramatic motif.)

  One sensed every aspect of his potential – for love, for violence, for rage, for self-annihilation and forgiveness. And one understood immediately the meaning of that slap, which was not the same as to condone it.

  No, Quinn could never forgive that slap. Whatever befell the character in the unfolding drama – and Quinn was certain there would be many and terrible consequences – he had brought it all upon himself with that single act of violence.

  But Quinn knew the blow was borne out of impotence. He knew that the cavalry officer was in thrall to her. That the only way to free himself from her was to destroy her.

  He himself had felt everything that was expressed in that brooding presence.

  And so the film began with a rift between the lovers. In the scenes that followed, set in a city Quinn took to be Vienna, the soldier threw himself into what was clearly meant to be a life of debauchery, indicated by the presence of dancing girls, seedy gambling parties and drunken brawls. It didn’t surprise Quinn to see the brunette he had noticed outside among the troupe of semi-naked dancers. The man he had associated with her cropped up too, as a card sharp. He was given a scene in which he upturned a table and threw a punch, only to be horse-whipped by the officer.

  Meanwhile, Eloise – or rather, the character she was playing – took to the stage and pursued a career in the dramatic arts. And it seemed she was a great success. Garlands were hurled at her feet. She was shown in her dressing room after a performance as Cleopatra, surrounded by the gifts and cards of admirers.

  Quinn’s expectation was that her former lover would come to see her in this part, and a resolution effected. But this possibility was not fulfilled. She was visited and wooed by an aristocratic-looking man, who turned out to be the Count of Somewhere or Other. Quinn wondered if it was significant that the man wore a monocle, which he removed to gaze upon Eloise? He did not remember seeing this actor outside. Presumably the cast was mostly foreign, and not all of them had been able to travel for the London premiere.

  The storyline reverted to Eloise’s former lover, whose descent into ruin and disgrace had evidently progressed. A title screen informed the audience that he had lost his fortune and been forced to resign his commission from the army. When the camera caught up with him, he was living the life of a penniless drunkard in a cheap boarding house. There was a scene in which his rapacious landlord – a crudely depicted Jew – came after him for the rent. An argument at the top of a steep flight of stairs resulted in the impoverished drunk pushing the Jew downstairs. The percussionist had fun matching his drum beats to the actor’s tumble. The strings came in piercing and high, a wash of melodrama. The Jew was dead.

  The disgraced cavalry officer fled the boarding house in panic, having first helped himself to the coins in the dead man’s pockets, and the bank notes from his safe.

  As he trudged the banks of a river, which Quinn presumed to be the Danube, a gigantic pair of eyes appeared in the night sky, looking down on him. They were the accusing eyes of his erstwhile lover. Quinn could not help thinking of the way he had been similarly haunted by Miss Dillard’s eyes, after the unfortunate incident outside Miss Ibbott’s room.

  To escape this relentless recrimination, he took refuge in a beer cellar and bawdy house. But the eyes pursued him, and were cleverly superimposed over the eyes of every woman he encountered. Even the prostitute who led him up to a squalid bedroom. She lay back on the bed and looked up at him with Eloise’s eyes – in fact, she had become Eloise. There was only one thing he could do. Quinn understood instinctively. In fact, he felt his own hands tightening as the murderer’s caress turned into a stranglehold. The woman writhed and died in his hands, and in another clever camera effect, Eloise melted back into the coarse-faced, dull-eyed prostitute.

  The band whipped themselves into a frenzy as the killer made his escape.

  And then the shocking revelation: the camera returned to a close up of the prostitute’s face; both her eyes had been removed.

  There were screams from the audience. Even Quinn felt his heart quicken in shock. The cello and double bass hacked a jagged, tuneless seam of notes out of the black abyss.

  The music then became ab
ruptly celebratory. Something about it suggested the tolling of church bells.

  It seemed to be snowing. And then the snow was revealed as confetti.

  Eloise was coming out of a church, newly married to the Count of Somewhere or Other. Her eyes were hidden behind a bridal veil.

  A shadowy figure attached itself to the edge of the crowd of well-wishers. Quinn immediately recognized the former cavalry officer, though his appearance had undergone another transformation. He was heavily bearded and wearing dark-lensed spectacles, as well as a homburg and cape. But Quinn’s training enabled him to look beyond the surface details. He could tell by the physique and gait that it was the same man. Besides, the band gave the game away by playing the killer’s theme.

  The couple climbed into an open carriage. The camera picked out the sinister onlooker among those celebrating their departure. The bride’s former lover had moved into broad daylight now, so it was possible to see that he was dressed in well-tailored clothes that gave the impression of affluence; certainly he no longer cut the disreputable figure of a drunkard. The money he had stolen from the Jew had evidently enabled him to set himself up. Ironically, the full beard gave him a distinctly Jewish appearance and he looked strikingly similar to the man he had murdered. For the first time Quinn wondered if the landlord and the cavalry officer had both somehow been played by the same actor. He supposed it must have been possible.

  The carriage pulled away with a lurch. The camera watched it into the distance. The sense of peril was suspended momentarily as a brief, cheery scherzo played. But the sequence closed with a reprise of the killer’s face. The scherzo fell apart into a low, inarticulate rumbling of dread.

  The film caught up with the newly-weds in a train compartment. The groom was reading a newspaper. An inter-title flashed the headline to the audience: POLICE IN DARK OVER GRUESOME MURDERS. VICTIMS’ EYES REMOVED.

  Sensing his bride’s interest in the morbid article, he hurriedly folded the paper away and began to make love to her, with kisses on her hands, wrists and neck. Her eyelids fluttered in delight. The audience was once again treated to a close-up of her magnetic eyes.