Bryant & May_Hall of Mirrors

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘What do you want us to do then?’ asked May, ‘just sit around and wait for Monty to suffer another accident?’

  ‘Hm.’ Bryant rubbed his chin. ‘Cunctando restituit rem. It’s a thought. I still think that leaving Monty with the others is the only way to protect him, and the best chance we have of drawing somebody out.’

  ‘Arthur, if we don’t get something by tomorrow at noon we lose everything.’

  ‘You don’t need to remind me.’ Bryant threw his hands in the air. ‘The problem is, I don’t know what to do without my books.’

  ‘Try some real police work for a change,’ said May. ‘And fast.’

  Parchment staggered past the open door carrying a pile of bedspreads. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said. ‘There’s a back staircase but I tend to miss the steps in the dark.’

  ‘Parchment, is it true that the servants always used their own corridors and staircases?’ asked Bryant. ‘Celeste said something about the house having secret passages.’

  ‘Who’s Celeste?’ said May. ‘And secret passages? Really? That’s just in books, isn’t it?’

  ‘No secret passages, sir,’ Parchment confirmed, ‘but the servants’ corridor that runs from the kitchen to the floors above used to be bigger.’ Looking as if he might collapse, Parchment set down the bedspreads with a wheeze of relief. ‘It was so we could get the meals delivered hot without having to cross employers on the stairs. We stopped using all the parts when the house lost its staff.’

  ‘So that’s why the food arrives cold. What happened to its other branches?’

  ‘That I don’t know, sir. His lordship made a lot of repairs with plywood. He is not proficient in the craft of DIY.’

  Bryant digested this. It seemed likely that someone still knew how to access the closed sections of the staircase. ‘What time will people rise for breakfast tomorrow?’

  ‘It’s Sunday, sir,’ said Parchment. ‘A cold collation will be laid out early but the cooked trays aren’t ready until eight.’

  ‘Keep an eye open for anything unusual, would you?’

  ‘You mean the ghost of the fourth lord?’

  ‘Why, is he likely to put in an appearance?’

  ‘Only in the event of sudden death or misfortune,’ Parchment replied wearily.

  ‘Have you ever seen him?’

  ‘Yes sir, he wears his purple doublet and hose and a ruff, and he passes through the walls of the first-floor corridor. And he carries his head under his arm. He’s partial to a chocolate biscuit. I’ll be stationed in my night booth if you need me.’

  They’re all mad, Bryant decided. We’re not in a hall at all. We’re in a lunatic asylum.

  36

  * * *

  A HARD DAY’S NIGHT

  It had not, they decided, been a good night.

  After escorting everyone to their rooms and making sure that they were locked in until morning, the detectives had slept in shifts. Bryant woke at dawn feeling unrested and nursing a powerful headache. He scratched at his hair, licks of which were standing upright like a brown egret’s feathers, and looked out of the window.

  It had been raining hard all night and the forecourt was now partially submerged. A hedge had subsided into the water, and an inedible-looking sheep was standing forlornly beside its waterlogged roots. The ashram was silent, soaked and still, its tents sagging and colourless, surrounded by a brown moat. The pale grey morning mist had been pummelled down by the rain, but remained drifting at the height of a man around the far edges of the lawn. Beside the window, a bough sprang up as a crow flapped away. Lightning flared in the distance. The landscape now owed less to Constable than Hieronymus Bosch.

  Bryant completed his matutinal ablutions and contemplated his remaining outfits. What’s it to be? he wondered, Karl from ‘The Student Prince’ or Tony from ‘The Boy Friend’? He was assembling the least ostentatious items from both productions when there was a knock at the door.

  ‘Arthur, are you awake?’ May was more happily kitted out in his PCU livery of ribbed black roll-neck sweater and black trousers. Somehow he managed to make the uniform positively debonair. ‘It’s seven thirty. The forensics team is supposed to be here this morning, which presumably means before noon.’

  ‘Four and a half hours. Not long enough,’ said Bryant. ‘Let’s go.’

  A quick roll call shouted through the bedroom doors produced exhausted responses from the remaining guests. Downstairs they found the breakfast room cold and deserted. In the hall Alberman was arguing with Mrs Janverley, the housekeeper.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked May.

  ‘I can’t find Parchment,’ the housekeeper complained. ‘I checked with Mrs Bessel and nobody has seen him.’

  ‘That’s odd. Could he have gone out to fetch something?’

  ‘Only if I send him,’ said Alberman, ‘and I have not done so.’

  ‘We saw him putting away bedspreads last night. Perhaps he’s working in one of the upstairs rooms.’

  ‘No, sir, I’ve just been up there. Today his duties consist of a little light cleaning in the basement, washing towels and so on. He’s not very steady on his feet.’

  The detectives headed downstairs, passing along a flagstone corridor lined with what appeared to be Victorian glass offices, timbered in the lower half. This was where the staff traditionally took their meals. Seated, they could eat in private. Standing, they would be able to see if someone had come downstairs.

  ‘Back here,’ said May. ‘I passed it when we were trying to get the lights working.’

  They stopped before a heavy oak door and pushed it open. Inside, towels hung above a top-loading washing machine, but no one appeared to have been here since the previous day.

  ‘What about his room?’ asked Bryant. ‘It’s right under the eaves, isn’t it?’

  They climbed through the narrowing halls until they reached the smallest passageway of all. On one side the ceiling sloped to accommodate the angle of the roof. Each door had a worn brass slot above its handle, into which was inserted the name of the staff member.

  May stopped before the door of Parchment’s tiny room.

  ‘Mr Parchment?’ He rapped his knuckles on the panelling, then tried the handle. ‘It’s locked.’

  He dropped to his knees and peered under the half-inch gap. ‘I can’t see anything. Maybe he’s passed out.’

  May nearly fractured his shoulder trying to break the door open.

  ‘Let me do it,’ said Bryant. He turned around and kicked upwards, so that the door handle snapped off and the door swung inwards.

  ‘Where did you learn to do that?’ asked May.

  ‘Whitechapel,’ said Bryant.

  The room was immaculately tidy and completely empty.

  ‘What about his night booth on our floor?’

  Ernest Parchment was still seated on the narrow wooden bench that ran across his wooden booth. He was lying forward with his forehead down on the little built-in table.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Bryant warily. ‘Heart failure?’

  May tried to lift him. ‘There’s something sticking out of his head,’ he said. He raised the valet by pulling on his shoulders. Parchment’s head swung back. A knitting needle had been pushed so deeply through his right eye that only a few inches of it protruded. He had bled out over the bench. The immense striped scarf on which he had just finished working lay in his lap and was stained with blood, wet and pungent. Several balls of wool had unrolled around his feet like a spilt rainbow. Among them were various knitting needles in different sizes. May leaned the body back in its pew. He wanted to remove the offending needle and grant the valet some dignity, but knew he could not do so without compromising the evidence.

  ‘No pulse,’ he said. ‘His body’s still warm. Why kill an old man who plainly wasn’t doing anyone harm?’

  ‘This wasn’t planned,’ said Bryant, crouching low to study the valet’s fallen materials. ‘It was improvised. Can we at least put something over the poor fellow?
’

  They found a sheet and pinned it across the alcove. ‘This must only just have happened,’ said May. ‘I didn’t see anyone. Why is it we never see anyone?’

  They tried the telephone in the hall but the line was still dead. ‘It has to have been cut somewhere above ground,’ said May.

  If Alberman was shocked to hear about Parchment, he did his best not to show it. They followed the butler around the edge of the house and found that the power cables embedded at the far end of the patio had been cleanly severed. May crouched beside the bare copper ends. ‘Someone’s used wirecutters. I can’t fix this. We’ll need an engineer.’

  ‘I have a car with tyres that work,’ said Bryant. ‘I can go for help.’

  May looked at the yellow Mini with sunflowers and daisies crudely painted across its roof. ‘Where did you get that thing?’

  ‘From a lady friend. I rather like it.’

  May decided not to ask. He checked his Timex. ‘If you go now, you should just be able to make it before the army starts firing again. But you may not be able to get back.’

  ‘Four hours, John. There’s still time.’

  ‘No,’ said May firmly. ‘We had our chance and we blew it. We need outside help now.’

  Bryant crunched the gears and lurched off in a shower of gravel. May waited until the yellow Mini had disappeared behind the rain. As he turned, the butler passed across the hall.

  ‘Does Mr Parchment have anyone we should notify?’ asked May.

  ‘I think there’s a stepbrother in Kenya,’ said Alberman. ‘How did he die, sir?’

  ‘He was killed with a knitting needle.’

  ‘He knitted all the time. A lot of the older servants did. Could it have been an accident?’

  ‘Not like any I’ve ever seen,’ said May. ‘It was probably the first sharp instrument that came to hand. But why him? It doesn’t make sense. What could he have possibly known?’ He slowly turned on the spot, thinking about the layout of the house. ‘Get everyone into the reception room, including the staff. From now on nobody goes anywhere until the forensic team arrives.’

  What have we done? May thought as he followed Alberman. How did we allow such a simple assignment to turn into a disaster area? I should have forced Arthur to get help earlier. Even if we can still get Monty to testify in court, our careers are well and truly finished.

  ‘Mr May?’ Pamela Claxon found him in the hall. ‘Is it true that one of the servants has been killed?’

  ‘We don’t know what happened yet,’ said May.

  ‘I heard someone skewered him through the head, so it was hardly a typical knitting accident. What are we doing, hanging out here until he’s picked us all off one by one, like in Ten Little—’

  ‘No, we’re waiting for a team to take over and secure the premises. The matter will be out of our hands then. You’ll have to do whatever they tell you.’

  Pamela had trouble lighting a cigarette. ‘Inspector Trench would be able to solve the problem.’

  ‘Then why don’t you let him, Pamela?’ May snapped. ‘Bring him on, give him the evidence and get him to figure it out.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I can’t bring him back any more.’

  ‘Why not?’

  She held out her hands. Her fingers were shaking. She reached inside her blouse and pulled out a silver ankh on a chain. ‘He was wearing this around his neck.’

  ‘Who was?’

  ‘My hands – I started drinking again. I was dry for six years. My son – he fell off a roof. He was staying with some friends in the South of France. He told them he wished he could fly. They’d been experimenting with LSD. He never recovered. I haven’t written a word since then. It’s not true what they say; you can’t drink and be a writer. Your synapses don’t respond properly. You don’t make the connections any more.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘You wanted another secret to come out? Inspector Trench is not coming back.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said May.

  ‘Please, do something before anyone else gets killed,’ she said. ‘I have another confession to make. I know all about you and your partner. I did from the moment you arrived. I found you when I was researching an early Inspector Trench novel. You and Mr Bryant were investigating a death at the Palace Theatre. It was reported in the Police Gazette. You were written about as if you were heroes back then. You must be able to do something.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said May. ‘I can’t work alone and Arthur – he’s out of his depth here.’

  ‘Then find a way for your partner to solve this,’ said Claxon. ‘You must hand him the key, even if it means …’ She hesitated.

  ‘What?’ asked May.

  She looked at him evenly, her eyes wide. ‘Even if it means that the innocent are hurt.’

  37

  * * *

  SOMETHING IN THE AIR

  Arthur Bryant braked so sharply that he nearly hit his head on the windscreen. He studied the road ahead. The dip in the lane now mirrored the angry skies. Unfolding himself from the tiny Mini, he pulled down a broken branch and probed the expanse of water with it. There was no way across without flooding the engine. Even up here the rainfall had taken its toll on the road. High hedges rose on either side, with deeply ploughed fields beyond them. In the distance he heard the rapid rattle of gunfire recommence.

  He backed up the Mini and parked it in a wider section of the road, then continued on foot. The flooding became more severe as the highway descended. The water table had risen and the fields were not taking the runoff away. Bryant’s aunt had been flooded out when the Thames rose in Deptford, but it had never occurred to him that this kind of thing happened in the countryside.

  When he reached Crowshott, he had an eerie sense of déjà vu. The rain had reduced itself to a saturating mist. The uniformed nanny was still pushing her pram, seemingly unfazed by the weather. A farmhand leaned against a wall watching him. The shops were all closed. The air smelled of wet leaves and turned-up earth, fresh and ancient.

  He squelched to the phone box and checked his pockets for coins. ‘There’s been another death,’ he told Gladys, sensing reproach in her silence. ‘John and I can’t deal with this. We’ve always had London’s resources at hand, but there’s nothing here that can help us. We’ve carried out interviews and done visual searches, but we have no equipment and nowhere near enough expertise. Hang on, the pips are going.’ He inserted another shilling. ‘Two deaths, three murder attempts involving a servant, a millionaire, a nightclub singer and Monty. It’s so absurdly random.’

  ‘You don’t need any special equipment other than your own brains and instincts,’ said Gladys finally. ‘You’re making excuses.’

  ‘Pamela Claxon keeps telling me I should treat it like one of her mystery novels.’

  ‘Why don’t you? I assume the house has a library.’

  ‘Yes, a very good one.’

  ‘Does it have books about the family and the hall?’

  ‘Yes, a great many.’

  ‘Then go and do what you do best. Look through the books. You know how it always clears your mind. The unit isn’t meant to function like a branch of the CID, Mr Bryant. We’re supposed to make the connections that nobody else sees. John’s keeping everyone safe, yes?’

  ‘As best as he can. You know John; he takes everything so personally. As soon as we get clear of the house we’ll lock Monty in a cell at Bow Street overnight. It’s what I should have done at the start, then none of this—’

  ‘Go to the library, Mr Bryant,’ instructed Gladys.

  He was trudging back to the car when a soldier with a mud-caked face and half a rowan bush on his head burst through the hedge. ‘I say, are you up at the old hall?’ asked Lieutenant Coultas, out of breath. ‘The Frenchies are giving us a run for our money. We all thought they’d be like the Italians last year, standing around complaining about the coffee and volunteering to be taken prisoner.’

  ‘Why are you so near the house?’ Bryant asked.

  ‘Bit
of a cock-up on logistics, I’m afraid. We’re finishing at thirteen hundred hours, so you should be clear to leave then. Roads are a bit tricky, though. It usually takes a few hours for them to drain off. Should be passable by tomorrow at the latest.’

  ‘Can you tell your sergeant major that we have a police investigation taking place at the hall and would rather not be shot at?’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said the lieutenant, ‘but it’s awfully difficult finding anyone at the mo. The French are taking it all very personally. My superior officer got slapped in the face with a glove for being rude about Charles de Gaulle. Probably best to stay inside until after we’ve finished. Ta-ta!’ He bounded off into the opposite hedge.

  Tavistock Hall had a look of abandonment. Only smoke from the ashram’s cooking pots betrayed any sign of life. Bryant let himself into the main house and went to the breakfast room, where Mrs Janverley was clearing the last of the cups.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ he asked.

  ‘Your colleague is keeping them all together in Iris, sir,’ she explained, pointing with a pastry fork. ‘They’re all very unhappy about poor Mr Parchment. Why would anybody want to hurt him? He never harmed a fly, except in the trenches, and that was only because he was doing his bit. I’m supposed to be in there with the others but I couldn’t leave this mess.’

  Of the group, only Vanessa Harrow looked well rested. Her hair was tied back and her cheeks were in bloom. She wore a dark blue sweater with a lemon chiffon scarf and seemed in happier spirits. ‘I’m sorry to have alarmed everyone,’ she told May. ‘I only took the pills to make sure I’d get some sleep. I don’t understand what could have happened.’