by R. N. Morris
‘If the authorities allow you to go ahead.’ Waechter recognized the voice of Kirkwood, Porrick’s accountant. Kirkwood had come along to handle the financial side of the negotiations for Porrick. For his own part, he had brought Hartmann. It had been Hartmann’s idea to have Eloise and Berenger there too. He knew how to impress a potential investor. The one other member of the party was Diaz, Waechter’s trusted cameraman. In many ways, Diaz was Waechter’s eyes, as well as his technical brain. Wherever he went, Waechter was always mulling over potential scenes and locations for future motion pictures. He liked to have Diaz there to advise.
‘They’ll allow it,’ asserted Porrick. ‘And we’ll fill the place. Several times over. And even Mr Kirkwood will be happy.’
‘I like it.’ Waechter opened his eye and nodded decisively to his producer. ‘We can make picture here.’
He gestured for Porrick to lead them inside. The kinema owner produced a large bunch of keys to unlock the several locks and padlocks securing the high ornate double doors.
The doors opened with a creak of protest on to a chill interior darkness. The kinema was evidently not open yet. But surely, Waechter thought, the matinee should have been underway by now? Their footsteps echoed cavernously as they progressed inside. The pungent whiff of charred air assailed his nostrils, mingled with the fresher smells of construction: sawn timbers, cement and plaster. There was the smell of something else too. Something organic. Not quite the smell of rotting. But possibly the smell of death. Certainly the smell of wet fur and piss. As if an animal had crawled in there to die. He expected to hear its whimpering. No doubt the workmen had put down poison for vermin. He imagined a doomed rodent twitching out its last in some dark forgotten corner of the building.
A thin silvering of feeble light seeped in from somewhere high up to leaven the gloom. It tinged the black figures moving through the treacly darkness.
‘Can we have the lights on, Kirkwood?’ demanded Porrick.
‘Ah, well, no, Mr Porrick … actually we cannot. Not until we settle the outstanding account with the electrical company.’
‘But that’s absurd! Why hasn’t it been paid? Pay it immediately!’
‘We don’t—’
But Porrick cut his accountant off. ‘I don’t want to hear any of your excuses. I know I authorized the payment. I consider it very remiss on your part not to have made it.’
Waechter heard his producer’s voice in the darkness. ‘Is it that the kinema is not in use at the moment, Porrick?’
‘We have only just finished the refurbishments.’
‘Haven’t finished them, actually,’ put in Kirkwood. ‘In fact, we didn’t get any further than restoring the entrance before we ran out of funds.’
Hartmann was not impressed. ‘This does not bode well, Porrick. How can you expect to hold a festival here?’
‘There are only one or two small jobs outstanding. I feel that if we are to go into partnership, Porrick’s Palaces and Visionary Productions, perhaps the funds could be found from your side of the business?’
‘But this is absurd! You have wasted our time. We came here to talk to you about your investing in Visionary Productions, in order to secure an exclusive distribution deal. You cannot expect us to put money into your failing business. Come, Waechter, we have seen enough here.’
‘Vait!’ Waechter knew how to command, even with a single word. ‘It is better for my film that it is not … perfect. We can dress it, ja? I have an idea. I vill turn your kinema into a vision of Hell. Ja? You like?’
‘I … I’m not … That sounds rather …’
‘A young Fräulein …’
‘Eloise?’ wondered Porrick.
‘Off courssse!’ Waechter bowed steeply towards the silhouette of his leading lady. ‘Your character, she loves the kinema. It is a drug to her. She comes every night. Spends all of her money. She must prostitute herself to pay for her habit.’
Eloise pretended to be scandalized. ‘But what will my grandmother say when she sees it!’
‘Der golden entrance to your kinema, Herr Porrick, is a shining bright entrance to Hell. Inside, it is a dark palace. We have torches, burning torches, on the walls, ja? Mephistopheles is in the box office. Beautiful demon girls light the way for her to her seat. She sits and watches film. Der screen is filled with flames. Der flames come out of the screen and burn down the kinema. Everyone dies … Und goes to Hell. The manager of the kinema is der Teufel. Ja? The deffil. Berenger will play him.’
The darkness swirled exuberantly as Berenger doffed his bowler hat and executed a swooping bow in a gesture of gratitude.
Porrick was less appreciative. ‘I … hmmm … I think we need to work on the scenario somewhat. Can it not be a little more cheerful? I’m not sure I like the idea of a fire in one of my Palaces.’
‘It vill not be real fire. We create illusion, ja? Diaz, it can be done?’
The Chilean’s response was obscure. Perhaps he nodded. Perhaps he shrugged. It seemed he sighed.
‘There is problem?’
‘No, Señor Waechter. Whatever you ask, I do. You know that.’
Waechter nodded tersely. That was all he needed to know. All he cared about. Any hint of pain or grief that he might have detected in the little man’s hesitancy was no concern of his.
‘But … uhm …’ Porrick spoke in a whisper out of the corner of his mouth. ‘You do know that there was a fire here, in which a man died? That’s why we have been refurbishing the place.’
‘I cannot help that.’
‘I do not believe that the English motion picture viewing public will pay good money to see such a depressing subject enacted. Hartmann, what do you think?’
‘Waechter is Waechter. His vision is his genius. If you want to make films with Waechter, you must surrender to his vision.’
‘Look here, what if she is inspired by the films she sees to become a motion picture actress? She falls in love with her leading man … uhm … and is a great success. And they … they …’
‘They all live happily ever after?’ said Kirkwood sarcastically.
‘Yes!’
‘This is not a Waechter film,’ pronounced Waechter. ‘In a Waechter film she becomes prostitute and goes to Hell.’
‘I don’t see why it has to be like that.’
‘If you do not wish to make Waechter film, you do not go into eine Partnerschaft mit Waechter!’
‘Amen to that!’ said Kirkwood.
‘You vont Waechter films to save you from ruin?’
Porrick’s voice receded as he turned away from Waechter and led the way further inside. ‘You haven’t seen the auditorium.’
There was a metallic clatter. In his haste, and anger, Porrick had walked into something: a metal pail or a tin box, by the sound of it. He gave a pained yelp of surprise as he sprawled headlong to the ground. ‘What the devil!’
Waechter closed his eye and sniffed. He prided himself on his keen senses of taste and smell. The organic odour he had identified earlier had suddenly intensified, as if it had been released by Porrick’s accident.
‘Are you all right, Porrick, old chap?’ It was Hartmann, fussing over the fallen businessman.
‘I tripped over something. Kirkwood, are you sure we can’t muster a light in here? I wouldn’t want anyone else to come a cropper. Mademoiselle Eloise, for example.’
‘There may be some candles in the box office. I shall investigate.’ The scrape of phosphor against sandpaper gave a brief moment of match light as Kirkwood located the box office and headed off towards it. The match went out before he reached his destination. But before too long a second was struck, and in its brief flare, the candles were found.
Kirkwood came back holding two lighted candles, one of which he gave to Diaz, the other he waved vaguely towards Porrick, who was sitting on the floor groping blindly around him. ‘I’ve lost the keys. They were in my hand and I dropped them.’
He gave a sudden cry of disgust. His hand had found
something unpleasant, it seemed. ‘Bring that candle down here, will you, Kirkwood.’
The accountant moved swiftly to obey. The candle flame flickered and left a swathe of light in its trail, demonstrating the principle of the persistence of vision upon which they all depended for their livelihoods.
And now they could all see what Porrick’s hand had found. A tin box lay on its side, its lid splayed open, the contents tipped out. Waechter felt his mouth twitch up in a tight curl of satisfaction. The animal hadn’t been dead long. Its little legs stuck out stiffly as if it had been frozen in mid bound. Its loathsome snout was stuck open as if it had choked on one last detestable yelp.
‘Scudder!’ cried Porrick.
They came back out blinking into the sorry light. All except for Waechter who kept his eye closed, savouring the darkness in which his imagination flourished. He had enough of a sense of direction to carry him on to the pavement without having to look where he was going. He knew that Porrick was clutching the black tin box. He knew that the dog was inside it. In his mind’s eye, he could see both the outside of the box and its grim contents.
He was aware of a car pulling up at speed in front of them. He opened his eye to see the rear door fly open and the troublesome detective bound out.
‘Konrad Waechter. You will come with us, please. We have some questions we wish to put to you.’
The car they had brought for him was as black as a hearse. He felt that if he accepted the detective’s invitation he would be taken to some dark place from which he would never return. He imagined an oubliette in the basement of Scotland Yard.
Before he got into the car, he tried to catch Berenger’s eye. But his leading man avoided meeting his own singular gaze, so studiously that he must have believed it cursed.
FORTY-THREE
Quinn had Inchball and Macadam escort Waechter to the Special Crimes Department, rather than an interview room. The projector and rheostat were still set up there. It was the most convenient place to show him Totentanz.
‘Vy are you showing me this? I make this film. You think I haff not seen it before?’
‘I would like you to watch the final scene carefully. You are familiar with the final scene?’
‘Off coursse! I tell you, I make this film.’
Quinn walked over to the patch of glowing movement on the wall. At a prearranged moment, Macadam stopped the mechanism, so that a single frozen image was projected on the wall. Quinn pointed to the woman whom he had last seen being led away from Cecil Court as he held her eye in a handkerchief. ‘You see this woman?’
‘Ja.’
‘She is the woman who was attacked last Friday.’
Waechter waited a beat before replying: ‘She vos not attacked.’
‘Her eye was not gouged out of its socket?’
‘Nein.’
‘I held it in my hand.’
‘Zat is vot you beleeff. But it is not vot happened.’
‘Who is she?’
‘She is eine … actress. Her name is Lyudmila Lyudmova.’
‘A Russian?’
‘Off coursse.’
‘I don’t understand. I looked into the empty socket where her eye had been. I saw … I saw the black emptiness there.’
Waechter shrugged. ‘She lost her eye when she vos a child. In Totentanz she has glass eye. You can see. Her eyes do not alvays look … um … too-gehtter.’
‘Well, blow me, she’s boss-eyed!’ exclaimed Inchball.
‘Ja. Is so. There vos no attack. It vos … ein Streich, ein trick, ein gag, ja?’
Suddenly a detail from the night, which had troubled Quinn in his dreams, made sense. ‘Her eye was the wrong colour.’
Waechter let out a rueful laugh. ‘Is true?’
‘Yes. The eye I retrieved was brown. But her eye, the eye on her face, was blue, I believe.’
‘He would not think about that! We are too used to working in black and vite!’
‘He? Are you saying that you are not responsible for this grotesque prank?’
‘No. I knew nothing of it until the night. And then I keep silent because I knew that it had been done for the best of motives. A harmless prank. Maybe it would help to promote our film. But most, I be-leeff, it vos intended to make me lahh-ff.’
‘Make you laugh?’ Inchball’s eyes bulged in disgust.
‘I be-leeff so.’
Quinn turned away from the projected image and faced Waechter. He found his attention focused on the inky pool of blackness that was the Austrian’s eye patch. ‘Why would it make you laugh? Wouldn’t it be more likely to cause you pain?’
Waechter’s hand flew up to his eye patch. ‘Because of this?’ Waechter lifted the patch. Quinn felt his heart hammer. Once again he was going to stare into the potent darkness of an empty eye socket. But even in the chiaroscuro of the semi-darkened room, he could make out that what he expected to see was not there. There was not an absence of an eye, but an eye. The softly spreading beam of the projector revealed Waechter to be the possessor of a full complement of gleaming eyes. ‘I do not lose my eye in a duel. I do not even lose my vision.’
‘But when I asked you about your eye before, you told me that a splinter from a gunshot robbed you of it?’
Waechter shrugged. ‘To me, it vos not any of your business.’
‘So why do you wear the patch?’
‘Symbolisch. I vear this to show how I am damaged.’
‘It is a deception.’
‘No. It is a confession.’
‘So. Who? Who is he? The man who thought you would find this funny.’
‘I do not know for sure. For that reason, I would rather not say. To make accusations mit no foundations, it is not gut.’
‘Berenger? I noticed the way you looked at him when we came to arrest you.’
‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ said Macadam. ‘May I start the film running again? I am nervous about holding it on one frame for too long in case it combusts.’
‘By all means, Macadam. Run it to the other point we discussed.’
The action moved forward a few frames and juddered to a halt once more. Quinn pointed out the actor playing the director of the lunatic asylum. ‘This is the man who escorted her away. Is he the one responsible?’
‘Zat is Heinrich. Heinrich Klint. He is not responsible.’
Quinn nodded to Macadam to continue running the film. ‘You must have known when you sent this film over that we would see them and recognize them.’
‘It had gone on long enough. It started as an innocent prank.’
‘Wasting police time! They are all three of them culpable. This woman, Lyudmila … Klint. Conspirators in an offence.’
‘Vy offence? They perform ein kleines Theaterstück. A little play. That is all. They do not know that the police will come along. That you are at the premiere.’
‘I was invited.’
‘They do not know. I be-leeff they wanted to hoax your journalists. Ja?’
‘And what about Dolores Novak? Is that a little play?’
‘Berenger is nothing to do mit Dolores, ja? You understand that? He is a fool but no killer.’
‘Nevertheless, we will have to bring him in and talk to him. Where will we find him?’
‘You may find him at his hotel. He stays at the Savoy. Off coursse.’
‘It is a far cry from the room in which Dolores Novak was found.’
‘Berenger is ein Stern. A star – ja? Dolores vos …’ Waechter spat out a German word that sounded remarkably similar to whore.
‘I don’t know what that means,’ said Quinn. ‘But it is no reason for her to be killed.’
‘Berenger had nothing to do with it. I svare on my life that he is innocent.’
Macadam ran the film to the end, to the moment when the inmates and staff of the asylum removed their human masks and revealed the skulls beneath. The moment of Berenger’s final surrender to madness and damnation.
‘No man is entirely innocent,’ said Quin
n as the end of the film flapped around the spinning spool and the wall was lit up with a rectangle of blank light. ‘Even if he did not kill Dolores Novak, there’s a chance he put the idea in the killer’s head. He showed the way. Her murder seems to have been modelled on his contemptible hoax, after all.’
Waechter returned the patch to its place over his perfectly sound right eye. His face possessed a stern, defiant dignity. He gave the impression of being a man convinced of the correctness of everything he did. Either he had lived a truly blameless life, or he was utterly devoid of a conscience.
FORTY-FOUR
The grainy twilight thickened overhead as Macadam turned the Model T off the Strand. An incandescent glow pooled out from the front of the great hotel, distracting Quinn momentarily from the purpose of their visit. They were not there to bathe in the glamour and glitz of the establishment. They were there for the darkness. The honk of a car horn brought him rudely back to earth. The car was coming directly at them, apparently on the wrong side of the road. But it was Macadam who swerved to avoid a head-on collision. ‘I almost forgot, sir. This is the one street in the country where you drive on the right. God knows why.’
A flicker of darkness as they drove under the arch that spanned the short stub of a road, beneath the statue of an armed knight that surmounted it.
A liveried doorman held the door for them.
Somewhere a piano was playing, the pianist favouring the higher, more refined keys. Beneath a high ceiling dripping with chandeliers, the wealthy guests moved with what seemed like purpose but was actually entitlement. It was clear from the angle at which they held their heads that they had no intention of opening doors. And it was doubtful if they would be able to see the people who opened them on their behalf.
Quinn showed his warrant card at the reception. ‘You have a guest here. Berenger is the name. Room number and key, if you please. Your bellboy may accompany me to save time.’
In the event, it was decided that the manager would go.
They rode the elevator to the second floor. It was frustrating to have to wait for the shuttering of the gate, for the lift to respond to the operator’s touch, for the freighted shudder into motion and the gathering momentum as the cage ascended. And to wait for it all to unwind in reverse as they reached the floor.