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

by R. N. Morris

  Sensing the urgency of the situation, the manager hurried along the corridor to the door numbered 232. He stood back and allowed Inchball to pound his knuckles against the wood. ‘Oi, you in there. Open up. Police.’

  The door next to Berenger’s opened. Eloise Dumont peered out. When she saw Quinn an expression of disappointment settled over her features.

  ‘Ah, Miss Dumont, good evening. Do you remember me? I am Detective Inspector Quinn.’

  ‘How could I forget? You were rude to me. Not many men are rude to Eloise.’

  ‘I really don’t have time for that now. Your … colleague – Mr Berenger – do you know if he is in his room?’

  ‘I believe so. We came back from Islington together.’

  Quinn nodded to the manager, who used his service key to unlock the door. The bedroom was in semi-darkness, the only light coming in from the street through the open windows, ruffling the lace curtains as it passed through them. There were signs of recent occupancy. A suit of clothes strewn across the floor. Shoes in flight from one another. The bed clothes in disarray.

  A door leading off was ajar.

  Quinn called out. ‘Berenger?’

  An echoing intermittent drip answered. But there was no sound of anyone stirring. A wet bathroom smell came through the gap.

  He turned to Eloise, who had followed them into the room. ‘Please, miss, I think it best if you go back to your own room now.’

  ‘Be gentle with him. Whatever you think he has done. He is not a bad man. I know that. You only have to look into his eyes to know that.’

  Quinn nodded acknowledgement of her admonition. That seemed to satisfy her. She slipped from the room, blown out on the same breeze that stirred the curtains. The darkness seemed to contract and harden at her passage.

  The men allowed themselves one final look into each other’s eyes before they burst into the bathroom.

  Berenger was in the bath. He turned his doleful eyes towards them, registering no surprise at their intrusion. In fact, he seemed to welcome them with a small bow of the head. It was almost as if he were expecting them.

  ‘Paul Berenger? We have to ask you some questions concerning your role in an incident that occurred in Cecil Court on the evening of April the seventeenth. Konrad Waechter has made a formal statement naming you as the perpetrator of a deliberate hoax designed to publicize a film in which you appeared. Do you have anything to say about that?’

  There was a stir in the water. Berenger stood to his full height in the tub, his profuse black body hair plastered against his pallid white skin: he presented an image that was both imposing and disconsolate.

  The water cascaded noisily off the end of his hanging penis. But Berenger was not in the least abashed. He faced them without embarrassment, and without any attempt at concealment. He was the image of a man with nothing to hide.

  Quinn concentrated his attention on a crack in the marble fronting of the bath. ‘Our main concern is to confirm that no actual attack took place and that the woman involved – one Lyudmila Lyudmova, I believe – is unharmed. We are naturally desirous to talk to her and the other individual implicated. I understand that this may have started as a harmless prank that got out of hand …’

  Still Berenger did not speak. Quinn looked up to meet his eyes, which were full of regretful appeal. He held his hands out imploringly.

  ‘Ah, yes. I understand. You wish to put on a robe, perhaps, or some clothes. We will wait for you in the bedroom. This need not take long. I imagine that the worst that will happen is a caution. With the appropriate contrition, and a generous contribution to the Police Benevolent Society, even that may prove unnecessary.’

  Quinn noticed Inchball’s frown, presumably at Quinn’s uncharacteristic promise of leniency. It suddenly occurred to him that he had not established whether Berenger spoke English. ‘You do understand what I am saying?’

  Berenger nodded.

  ‘Very well. We will be in the bedroom.’

  The first inkling Quinn had that something was wrong was when he heard the door to the bathroom locked from the other side. It seemed a redundant act, like closing the proverbial stable door after the horse has bolted. They had already intruded on his nudity, after all. And he had shown himself to be a man untroubled by physical modesty.

  Quinn tried the handle, which was indeed now locked. He knocked on the door and pressed his ear against it. He could hear movement inside, a splash of water, as if Berenger had got back into the bath.

  He allowed ten minutes or more to pass before turning to the manager. ‘Can you open this?’

  The manager shrugged. ‘I am sure Herr Berenger will come out when he is ready.’

  Quinn nodded to Inchball, who threw his shoulder against the door, but to no avail.

  ‘Stand back!’ commanded Quinn, drawing his revolver.

  ‘No, no! Please!’ cried the manager. ‘There is no need for vandalism. I can get a key from downstairs.’

  ‘A key ain’t no use,’ Inchball pointed out. ‘’E’s already got his key in the other side, ain’t he?’

  ‘We are wasting time here!’ cried Quinn. But it was the thought of Eloise next door that restrained him from firing. He could well imagine how the sound of gunfire might alarm her.

  ‘With respect, sir,’ said Macadam, ‘he can’t go anywhere. I did not see any window in the bathroom.’

  ‘That’s right,’ confirmed the manager. ‘There is no window.’

  ‘He’s mocking us.’

  ‘I suggest we remain patient, sir,’ said Macadam. ‘He must come out eventually.’

  But when ten more slow minutes had passed and Berenger had still not emerged, Quinn found his patience had run out. The gun was already in his hand. It was too bad if he frightened her. He had a job to do.

  He discharged three deafening shots around the lock. Predictably enough, a scream came from the room next door.

  Quinn paused only to inhale the satisfying odour of the blasted wood.

  As he had suspected, Berenger was back in the bath. His head was slumped forward, as if gazing down in perplexity at the suddenly darkened water. A cut-throat razor lay open and bloodied on the side of the bath nearest them.

  Macadam rushed forward and lifted one arm out of the water to feel for a pulse. But the darkness gathered at his wrist.

  The sergeant’s deep-felt groan confirmed the worst. He shook his head. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Look at that, guv,’ said Inchball, pointing at the mirror. ‘Some kind of suicide note, by the looks of it.’

  The words were smeared in the condensation on the glass.

  ‘Do you speak German?’ Quinn demanded of the manager.

  The man appeared to be in shock. He stood with his mouth open, gaping at the dead man in the bath.

  Quinn took out his notebook and hurriedly copied down the incomprehensible message before it disappeared: Wenn ein Mann seine Kunst verrät, verrät er seine Seele.

  As he turned away from the mirror, he noticed Eloise standing in the doorway. She must have been drawn by the gunshot.

  ‘What have you done?’ Her eyes were fixed on Berenger.

  ‘Please, you should not see this.’ Quinn tried to usher her out. Her diminutive frame was surprisingly resistant to his pressure. ‘We had no idea. We found him like this. We had just spoken to him. We were waiting to ask him some more questions. There was no indication …’

  ‘What did you say to him?’

  ‘Let us talk about this outside.’

  ‘He is dead?’

  ‘I am afraid so.’

  ‘You never have anything nice to say to me.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I cannot believe he has done this. There was no need for this.’

  ‘Why did you want to talk to him?’

  ‘Please …’

  Eloise suddenly caught sight of the words on the mirror. She read them aloud fluently.

  ‘Do you know what it means?’ asked Quinn.

  ‘When a man betrays his ar
t, he betrays his soul.’

  Quinn put his arm around Eloise’s shoulder and gently, finally, turned her away from the spectacle of her dead friend. ‘Come. Is there anyone …? You should not be alone.’

  ‘You will not stay with me?’

  ‘I?’ It seemed an extraordinary, almost incomprehensible suggestion. ‘Surely, there is someone better than me?’ Quinn turned to the manager. ‘Do you have the number for Mr Hartmann of Visionary Productions?’

  The manager seemed to pull himself together, at least enough to nod in answer to Quinn’s demand.

  ‘Call Hartmann. Tell him that there has been an accident and Mademoiselle Eloise needs him. If I were you I wouldn’t go into too much detail over the telephone. I will remain here to break the news to him about Mr Berenger.’ Quinn looked at the words on the mirror and thought about their meaning. ‘You might tell him to bring Konrad Waechter with him. I believe the two gentlemen will be together.’ Quinn had released Waechter into Hartmann’s care earlier. Now there were new questions to put to him. ‘In the meantime, is there someone – a lady – who can sit with her until her friends arrive?’

  The manager swallowed as if he was in danger of vomiting. But he managed to say, ‘I will see to it.’ With that he rushed out of the bathroom.

  Quinn continued to steer Eloise away from the grim scene. And she continued to resist, looking over her shoulder at Berenger. She was plagued by the old question: ‘Why? Why would he do this?’

  ‘We may never know.’

  ‘It must have been you … what you said to him.’

  ‘I made clear that it was not a serious matter.’ Quinn caught Inchball’s recriminatory eye again. ‘If anything, I made rather too light of the affair. It was to do with what happened in Cecil Court the other night. The business with the woman and … well, you remember the dog. Waechter claims that it was all a publicity stunt – and that Berenger was behind it all.’

  ‘Paul?’

  ‘That is what Waechter claims.’

  Eloise shook her head slowly.

  ‘Perhaps these words are a confession? By perpetrating the hoax, Berenger considered himself to have betrayed his art?’ Quinn’s tone was absent. He was voicing his thoughts aloud rather than addressing Eloise.

  Her head-shaking denial became more emphatic. ‘I do not believe Paul had anything to do with it.’

  ‘Then who?’

  ‘Waechter! Who else? He is the one who betrayed his art! Yes! Do you not see? He denied his responsibility for the act. It is as simple as that. And Paul … betrayed! The worst betrayal. Paul would not say anything against his friend. Would not contradict him. And so, this … Paul, dear Paul … he held Waechter in such esteem, such love … he could not recover from this betrayal.’

  ‘But why would Waechter try to blame Berenger?’

  ‘Because he is a coward. Even this trivial thing he does not want to be blamed for – after all the charges he faces in Austria. He does not want any more of the trouble. Not here. And, also, because he knew that Paul never would contradict him. He was relying on Paul’s loyalty. He knew … he knew what Paul would do.’

  ‘You cannot believe he foresaw this and still accused his friend?’

  ‘You do not know Konrad Waechter.’

  Quinn nodded. It was true. He did not know Konrad Waechter. But he felt that he was getting to know him a little better.

  FORTY-FIVE

  Quinn was pacing the corridor outside Eloise’s room when Hartmann and Waechter arrived.

  ‘Gentlemen.’

  ‘What’s going on, Inspector?’ It was Hartmann who made the demand. He seemed both anxious and bullish.

  ‘I’m afraid I have some very bad news for you. Paul Berenger took his own life earlier this evening.’

  Quinn watched Waechter closely. Was the director surprised? It was difficult to say. Certainly a kind of energy seemed to enter his expression, an energy that could have been taken for surprise.

  Perhaps Waechter had not known that Berenger would go this far. At the same time, Quinn sensed that Waechter drew strength from what he had just been told. As if the outcome had exceeded his expectations.

  Yes, now that he thought about it, that energy in his face could just as easily be interpreted as exultation.

  Hartmann at least had the decency to be shocked. He held a splayed hand over his face and muttered something dark and anguished in German. Then he asked Quinn: ‘But why?’

  ‘He left a note, of sorts. A message written in the condensation on his mirror. It has gone now. But I wrote it down.’ Quinn showed them the words.

  Hartmann shook his head in bemusement.

  Quinn thought he detected a twitch play across Waechter’s lips.

  ‘Herr Waechter? Is something amusing you?’ Quinn realized that he wanted to hurt Waechter. He wanted to make him feel responsible for Berenger’s death. He wanted him to suffer pangs of guilt over it. As he had over Miss Dillard’s.

  Waechter’s expression became duly solemn. He glared threateningly at Quinn. ‘Off coursse not.’

  ‘How did he do it?’ wondered Hartmann.

  ‘He opened a wrist in the bath and bled out. We were waiting to talk to him about the allegation Herr Waechter made against him.’

  ‘Allegation? What is this, Waechter?’

  Waechter waved a hand dismissively. It was nothing, he suggested. A trifle.

  Quinn needed to keep the pressure up on Waechter. ‘Mademoiselle Eloise was able to translate the note for me. A man who betrays his art betrays his soul. Is that correct?’

  Both men nodded confirmation.

  ‘What do you think he meant by it? Herr Waechter?’

  Waechter shrugged, as if he couldn’t possibly imagine. ‘Berenger vanted to be a great artist of the stage. He did not view the kinema as true art. It has to do with that perhaps?’ He hardly sounded convinced by his own theory.

  Hartmann was suddenly distraught on behalf of his female star – a delayed reaction, but one which hit him hard. ‘But Eloise? My dear Eloise was there?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. I couldn’t prevent her. Perhaps you should both go and see her now. There is nothing to be gained from viewing the body. The living are more in need of your attention than the dead.’

  And now Quinn felt his own lips twitch. He was playing his own game, out-manipulating the arch-manipulator. He knocked on Eloise’s door.

  Somehow Quinn managed to engineer it that Waechter went in first. It was not so difficult to arrange. The director appeared to be in a hurry to see her. Indeed, his eagerness was practically unseemly. Quinn’s intervention, which came to him unprompted, was to push in front of Hartmann and close the door behind him, excluding the producer.

  He wanted to see Eloise’s reaction to Waechter alone.

  She greeted him with a howl. It was a ferocious explosion of inarticulate recrimination.

  Quinn’s eye was on Waechter. Again he had the sense of an energy entering the man. He seemed to be absorbing the force of Eloise’s uninhibited emotion. But instead of being chastened by it, he was himself enlivened. Enlarged. It seemed that this was what he lived for, for moments like this, moments of raw, violent, powerful emotion, viscerally expressed.

  He basked in her outburst. He held his head at a provocative angle, inviting her slap. And when it came, he smiled appreciatively.

  It occurred to Quinn that if the Austrian really was responsible for the incident in Cecil Court, everything he had done had been designed to lead to a moment such as this. He recognized in Waechter the same motivation as he had observed in certain homicidal maniacs, who commit their crimes in order to create and experience the emotional reverberations.

  Perhaps Waechter’s original crime was trivial. A theatrical deception. Arguably a victimless crime, unless one counted those who had been hoodwinked: Quinn himself, and the public who had fallen for the illusion through the accounts in the papers. But it had led to the death of one man. And had caused the suffering that streaked and
tenderized Eloise’s face.

  Her pain brought to mind thoughts of Miss Dillard again. The feel of her taut convulsions as he had carried her over his shoulder had entered his muscles. It was more than a memory. It was part of him now.

  He decided that there were a number of offences under which he could charge Waechter, including perverting the course of justice, conspiracy to effect a public nuisance and effecting a public nuisance. He could probably think of more. Someone had broken into a morgue and stolen a body part. He mustn’t forget that.

  He wondered if his own remorse – tears held back in an unacknowledged throb in his throat, a stinging hypersensitivity in his eyes – was influencing his decision to make Waechter pay for what he had done.

  In the meantime, Hartmann was hammering at the door for admittance. The banging, together with Eloise’s continued railing, was making it hard for Quinn to concentrate.

  FORTY-SIX

  With the Courts of Justice at one end and the dome of St Paul’s overshadowing the other, Fleet Street seemed to exist as a thoroughfare between two opposing systems of morality. However, critics of the industry that dominated the street might argue that it served rather as a moral bypass, a place where the moral compass simply failed to function. It was perhaps appropriate that the presses were most often rolling at night, when both the church and the judiciary tactfully withdrew from sight.

  The offices of the Daily Clarion occupied three floors of a grand five-storey building closer to the legal end of the street. An advertising agency and a magazine publishing company, both also owned by Harry Lennox, had the other floors.

  The mighty printing presses themselves were on the ground floor, throwing their iron weight behind the flimsy ephemeral stories that their human collaborators spun upstairs. They were, in fact, visible from the street, as Lennox had had the idea to open up the front of the building and fit vast sheets of plate glass, which extended the full height of the first storey. He also kept the printing presses floodlit through the night. It was a stroke of marketing genius on his part, symbolizing the Clarion’s role as a Beacon of Truth that could never be extinguished. Lennox was inordinately proud of those plate-glass windows and insisted on their being cleaned twice a day. Every time he entered the building, he checked the glass to ensure that they matched the standards of cleanliness that he required. Not a speck or smear could be allowed to get in the way of this vision of industry and integrity.