Full Dark House

by Christopher Fowler

  As he lurched towards the giant prop he heard other shouts in the auditorium. Blood the colour of crushed blackberries pumped across the floorboards. A thick dark puddle was soaking into the backcloth. One end of the compasses had speared the baritone through his ribcage, just below his heart. Charles coughed loudly in the sudden silence, and sprayed the stage with blood. His left foot beat a reflexive tattoo on the floorboards before falling still.

  He was dead before Harry, or anyone else, could reach his side.

  20

  SOMETHING IN THE ARCHIVE

  ‘Two deaths in the same theatre,’ said Bryant, rubbing the chill from his hands as they descended the stalls staircase of the Palace. ‘I’d call that a bit more than coincidence.’

  ‘You sound sorry you didn’t see it,’ May remarked.

  ‘Well, I am. Of course I am. From a professional point of view it would have been instructive.’

  ‘Two talented people just had their lives cut short,’ said May hotly. ‘You might be able to put their relatives at peace as to how and why they died.’ He was growing tired and irritable. The air-raid siren had proven to be a false alarm, and had caused them to miss the real drama. Bryant’s heartlessness bothered him. ‘People are suffering all around us, and there’s nothing one can do except try to keep the lives of their survivors in some kind of order. One must heal wounds by providing answers to questions.’

  ‘Quite, old chap. Still, two extreme acts of violence in a public auditorium.’ Bryant lightly tapped his partner’s arm. ‘They feel like symbolic rites, don’t you think? Signs that the mad illogic of the war is entering places of sanctuary. After all, British theatre is a bastion of common sense, civilized, safe, middle class, old-fashioned. Theatrical performances are structured on the principles of cause and effect. The auditorium exists outside of time or place, and only comes alive with the rising of the curtain.’

  ‘I really don’t see your point,’ said May.

  ‘My point, dear fellow, is that these murderous acts went unwitnessed by any audience, in a place where people come expressly to revel in sensation. Come on, let’s see what we’ve got.’

  Charles Senechal’s body had been removed to an ambulance parked in Romilly Street. The stage had been cleared of all flats and cloths except the cotton duck and hessian frames that stood in the up-centre area against the gaudy crimson cyclorama of Hades. The great blue globe lay where it had fallen, sparkling beneath a profile spot and a pair of par lights.

  ‘What’s it made of?’ Bryant asked Mr Mack, the head carpenter, whose first name nobody seemed to know. Bryant walked round the globe, his fingers trailing lightly across its surface as if trying to divine some inner purpose from its topography.

  ‘Plaster, built around a central wood core. It weighs a bloody ton. Took three of us to get it up there. I hope it ain’t cracked.’

  May followed the arc of the planet back up to the raised iron platform on the right side of the flies, the area above the stage where much of the scenery and lighting equipment was suspended. ‘How was it held in place?’

  ‘Two steel cables attached at forty-five-degree angles, locked in by bolts. One of the wires must have broken at the top end. The rest of the cable is still attached.’

  ‘So the right-hand wire snapped, leaving the globe to swing down on the left wire like a wrecking ball. Ever seen an accident like this before?’

  ‘Never, and this is my forty-third production,’ Mr Mack replied. ‘Those cables can take a lot of weight. Go up there and take a look.’

  Bryant wasn’t thrilled by the idea of climbing along the gantry. He ascended the narrow steps leading to the first of the stage bridges like a man condemned. From where he stood he could see a large steel hook screwed into the wall. About two feet of wire hung limply down from it. ‘In order to be sure of catching someone, you’d have to keep them on their mark from when the wire was cut until the globe hit,’ he said absently.

  ‘What do you mean, their mark?’ asked May.

  ‘The prearranged spot you reach onstage, where you stand in any scene. All stages are divided into nine squares: up right, centre right, down left and so on. Sometimes there’s a front extension, an apron that makes a tenth area. Performances are spatially three-dimensional, and have to be learned accordingly, like chess moves.’ Taking a deep breath, Bryant reached over the catwalk railing and pulled up the wire, examining the end. ‘Tell me about the compasses, Mr Mack.’

  ‘They’re just pieces of pressed tin,’ the carpenter explained, ‘but each arm is four feet long, and we had to put a sharp point on the end of one because it didn’t look like a real set of compasses without a needle.’

  ‘Who told you to do that, the set designer?’

  ‘No, I answer to Geoffrey Whittaker, the stage manager. He takes care of my practical needs. Raymond leaves the materials up to me. He’s only concerned about the look of the stage once it’s lit, although he’ll tell you the difference between hardwood and composition board by the way light bounces off it.’

  ‘Raymond Carrington is the lighting chief,’ May pointed out.

  ‘The only access to the wire is from this gantry,’ said Bryant. ‘And you saw no one.’

  ‘No. This stage is narrow as working areas go, but it’s deep and we’re capable of producing a lot of mechanical effects. That’s why it gets the big song and dance shows; there are more scene changes in musicals, and more scenery has to be flown in. You can bring someone up from any part of the floor, lift whole sections of the stage, do revolves, put in a lot of filler flats and wing divisions, drop dozens of backdrops, scrims and props from above. The lighting is handled from a master board in one of the dress boxes, so there’s more room backstage for physical effects. Even I get confused up there sometimes, trying to figure out where each part of the scenery is.’

  ‘It’s not your job to fly them in and out?’

  ‘No, the stagehands do that, but I have to check and repair them all the time. Scenery gets damaged after virtually every performance.’

  ‘Had you repaired the globe recently?’

  ‘We’ve had no dress rehearsals yet, so there’s been no need to.’

  ‘You don’t think a stranger could have come in from the street after the siren sounded, climbed up the right-side gantry and waited for Mr Senechal to walk across the stage?’

  ‘I don’t see how,’ said Mr Mack, scratching the top of his head. ‘The only time the side bay doors are open is when we’re bringing scenery into the dock, and there’s always someone manning the stage door whenever the theatre’s being used. Besides, the gantries are in virtual darkness. There’s no way of easily climbing along them unless you know exactly where the footholds are.’

  ‘So, Miss Betts was in the wing looking for a carpenter with a cigarette. Miss Wynter was there with her retrieved tortoise. Miss Penn, Mrs Thwaite and Miss Parole were all in the process of heading to the basement, as were Harry, Mr Woolf and Mr Varisich. Up until the siren sounded, Mr Woolf had been watching the front entrance from the box office, and the stage door keeper—’

  ‘Stan Lowe. He has an assistant called Mouse. I s’pose he has a real name but I don’t know what it is—’

  ‘—was still in his booth at the base of the stairs, and neither of them saw anyone enter or leave. You were by the bay doors, which were locked. And there’s no other way in or out.’

  ‘I wouldn’t quite say that,’ said Mr Mack. ‘There is a pair of exits on to the roof, and they’re unlocked from the inside because of the current ARP regulations.’

  ‘You can get out of the building via the roof?’

  ‘Yes, but you can’t get in from them, and you can’t go very far once you’re out. Sometimes we have firewatchers stationed out there, but not today. They have to prop open the door with fire buckets when they go up because we’ve not enough keys.’

  The Palace Theatre was one of the few London theatres standing in grand isolation. Its facia overlooked Cambridge Circus, but its s
ides were separated by Shaftesbury Avenue and Romilly Street. Only the rear section touched any other buildings, a short row of houses in the lower part of Greek Street, and the Palace roof stood considerably higher than those.

  ‘So no one entered or left during the rehearsal. See here, John.’ Bryant held the end of the wire aloft. ‘Even with my hopeless eyesight I can tell this was cut. A clean shear. There is no way that you could arrange it in advance.’

  He carefully made his way down onto the stage to examine the wires that had been drilled into the globe. Corinne Betts, the comedienne playing Mercury, had been sedated by her doctor. Chorus girls were talking in shocked whispers in the wings.

  ‘Where would I find a copy of the design for the globe?’ asked Bryant.

  ‘The prop designs and stage plans are all in use,’ said Helena Parole, walking into the light thrown by one of the Fresnel spots. ‘They’re changed and updated all the time, so they’ll be scattered about in different offices. We mimeograph copies of everything and work from those.’

  ‘What do you do with the originals?’

  ‘They go up into the archive room. They’ll be clearly labelled.’ The lack of concern in her voice bothered May. ‘Do you want me to send someone for them?’

  ‘John, I wonder if you would oblige?’

  ‘Of course.’ May left the stage and went to the company office for the keys. He took the lift to the fifth floor, pulled open the trellis doors and stepped out into a dingy hall. The boarded-up end windows prevented light from entering, but the pairs of defunct gas mantles at either end of the hallway would have done little to dispel the creeping gloom, which was deepened by chestnut walls and threadbare brown carpets.

  May flicked a brass switch at the head of the corridor, but nothing happened. According to Helena, there was barely a time when the electrics functioned correctly. The faint glow from the electroliers in the main stairway allowed him to make out the doors to his left, but none of them was labelled. He checked the first door but found that it had been fitted with a Yale. The key he had taken from the company office was a long-handled Victorian affair, scabbed with rust.

  He located the theatre archive in a room at the darkest turn in the corridor. Within the cramped suite were dozens of overstuffed boxes and damp cardboard files cataloguing productions and stars. Dim light was provided by the bare bulb overhead. He glanced across the titles on the lids of the boxes and pulled out some of the Palace’s monochrome publicity photographs. Buster Keaton performing with his father, the pair of them bowing to the audience in matching outfits. The jagged profile of Edith Sitwell, posturing her way through some kind of spoken-word concert. A playbill for W. C. Fields starring in a production of David Copperfield. Another presenting him in his first appearance at the Palace as an ‘eccentric juggler’. The four Marx Brothers, gurning for the camera. Fred Astaire starring in The Gay Divorcée, his last show before heading to Hollywood.

  The dust on the lower boxes betrayed an even earlier age. The infamous Sarah Bernhardt season of 1892; Oscar Wilde’s Salome was due to have been performed at the theatre, but had fallen foul of the Lord Chamberlain’s ruling about the depiction of religious figures. The legendary Nijinsky, seen onstage just after his split with Diaghilev. According to the notes, he had left the Palace after discovering that he was to appear at the top of a common variety bill. Cicely Courtneidge in a creaky musical comedy, her dinner-jacketed suitors arranged about her like Selfridge’s mannequins. The first royal command performance, in 1912. Anna Pavlova dancing to Debussy. Max Miller in his ludicrous floral suit, pointing cheekily into the audience—’You know what I mean, don’t you, missus?’ Forgotten performers, the laughter of ghosts.

  An accordion folder labelled Orphée aux enfers lay on the nearby desk. May pulled it out and began sifting through the floor plans and set blueprints. He found the design for the second tableau, Mount Olympus crowned by clouds, its great azure sphere pinned in the heavens, and carefully folded it into his jacket pocket.

  The anguished cry that tore its way along the corridor made his scalp tingle. It was the call of a human in terrible pain. May jumped to his feet and ran outside, but there was nothing to be seen. He heard it again, softer and more in sorrow this time, but the acoustics were so dead that it was impossible to pinpoint the location of the sound. The other doors along the corridor were all sealed. Some looked as if they had not been opened for many years. Panic crawled over his skin, sending him back to the lift and the light.

  He had just pulled the trellis door shut when he heard the cry again, a miserable low bellow that reverberated in the lift shaft. May jammed his thumb on the descent button and the cage dropped down through the building, recalling him to life and safety. He was nineteen and impressionable. The city was blacked out every night, and the dark held hidden terrors. In years to come, his dreams would vividly recall his haunted week at the Palace.

  ‘You imagined it,’ said Bryant, poking about in the pockets of his battered gaberdine raincoat for a Swan Vesta. ‘Nothing to be ashamed of, old chap. We’re all a bit jumpy. This building hasn’t seen daylight since the start of the war.’ He lit his pipe while May unfolded the sheet of paper he had removed from the archive. ‘So this is the original design for the globe and compasses?’ Bryant asked Mr Mack as May smoothed the stage plan flat on a workbench.

  ‘It looks the same as the finished model,’ commented May distractedly. He was still thinking about the deep cry echoing in the corridors.

  ‘Does it? Would you say that the compasses occupy the same position as they do in the drawing, Mr Mack? Do you have a first name?’

  ‘Mr Gielgud always calls me Mr Mack because of his memory,’ explained the carpenter. ‘We used to talk about table tennis.’ He spat a mouthful of chewing tobacco into his handkerchief and examined the plan. ‘Blimey, you’re right. The point of the needle is higher on the full-scale version by about a foot.’

  ‘Who told you to raise it?’

  Mr Mack studied the drawing in discomfort. ‘It’s not like me to make a mistake. There should be a master diagram. This is one of the earlier sketches. Someone must have moved the globe.’

  ‘I don’t know how much more evidence you need to prove a case of premeditation,’ Bryant told his partner.

  ‘The carpenters reckon accidents happen all the time in the theatre,’ said May.

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed Mr Mack. ‘You’ve got a lot of people jumping about in a very small space, surrounded by moving mechanical objects, some of them weighing tons. Feet get crushed, arms broken, ankles shattered. Arthur Lucan fell through this very stage.’

  ‘But they don’t normally die, do they?’

  ‘That’s true, sir, they don’t.’

  ‘And the problem with these two deaths is that we lack any kind of a link between them,’ whispered Bryant.

  May consulted his notebook. He felt that someone should keep a record in case Davenport decided to question their tactics. ‘Well,’ he pointed out, ‘they were both represented by the same agent, weren’t they?’

  21

  FREEDOM FROM MEMORY

  He was searching for something in the files. John May sat in the archive room of the Palace Theatre and rested his aching, aged bones.

  He was perched on a canvas stool with a mildewed cardboard box on his lap. Many of the photographs, plans and notes beneath his fingers were stuck together with time. They bore marks of damp, tea, candle grease. He wished he knew what he was looking for. He knew only that Bryant had been here before him, just days before he died.

  In the years following the investigation, more photographs had been added to the files of the Palace: Jimmy Cagney, tap-dancing in a USO camp show; Betty Grable singing; Laurence Olivier grinning gap-toothed in Osborne’s The Entertainer; John Tiller’s Girls, high-kicking their way through the 1958 season; a thousand forgotten variety acts armed only with funny walks and silly catchphrases; the cast of Les Misérables, changing yet changeless across the years. And a
grey police file on the Palace Phantom, dated November 1940, left to be rediscovered over sixty years later.

  Here were the typed interviews they had conducted with the cast and production crew of Orpheus at the onset of that terrible season. The last pages of the file were missing. Only the interviews remained. But there had clearly been other pages here. The freshly torn staples at the top of the file attested to that. He looked through the interview list again. Corinne Betts, Miles Stone, Eve Noriac, Geoffrey Whittaker . . . he could barely put faces to the names. Elspeth Wynter, Arthur had fallen for her, but had it been out of love or pity? Who knew now, and what did it matter? He imagined the faces of Londoners, photographs pinned to an immense police board stretching hundreds of miles back into the past, across two thousand years of continued inhabitancy. So many dead, so many yet to come . . .

  The ring of his mobile phone startled him. He pulled the Nokia from his pocket and answered it.

  ‘John? It’s me, Alma. I hope I’m not disturbing you.’

  ‘Me? No, how are you?’

  ‘My legs are wicked, no change there, just getting old. Janice said you were back, and I was worried because someone’s been in Mr Bryant’s flat.’ She called him John; she always referred to Arthur as Mr Bryant.

  ‘How do you know someone’s been in there?’

  ‘There was some stuff left out and now it’s gone. I know because I did the dusting. I told you I didn’t like to throw anything away. I don’t want to let the rooms out no more.’

  ‘Was the door forced?’ asked May. ‘Did they break in?’

  ‘No, nothing’s damaged, the front lock’s in one piece. They must have got them skeleton keys.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s very likely, Alma. But it’s a standard lock, it isn’t too hard to open. I’ve done it before now. What did they take?’

  ‘Just some pieces of paper from the table.’

  ‘You don’t happen to remember what they were, do you?’