Full Dark House

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, I like a bit of a dance to Glenn Miller. I’m always willing to learn.’

  ‘I know a numbers-and-fractions merchant when I meet one. You’re a science bod. I saw you listening to Oswald Finch when he was going on about body fluid ratios. Your ears pricked up.’

  ‘I just thought I should know a bit about all this.’ He bounced his fingers in time with the music.

  ‘I must say, it’s suspiciously appropriate.’ Bryant unknotted a few feet of his scarf and sat up. ‘Jacques Offenbach was a forerunner of Gilbert and Sullivan. He’s the reason they started writing together. He had huge successes with these romps in Paris, even though the critics were sniffy. Orpheus in the Underworld is over eighty years old. Back when it was first performed, everyone who could afford to visit the theatre had a decent working knowledge of the classics, so Offenbach could make fun of Greek legends and everyone would get the joke. Here, he’s taken the most famous part of the Orpheus myth and reworked it. Orpheus was the son of a muse who saved the Argonauts from the Sirens. He ventured into the Underworld to get back his beloved nymph, Eurydice, who had been bitten by a snake.’

  ‘Oh, I remember that bit. Pluto let him have Eurydice back on the condition that he didn’t look behind him at her until she reached daylight, but he did.’

  ‘Well done. Offenbach’s version breaks with traditional mythology. He cynically parodies the characters and makes the story a social satire. He turns Orpheus into a salacious violin teacher, makes Eurydice a tart and has her old man moaning about having to go off and save her.’

  ‘Who’s that, then?’ May pointed out a statuesque woman in vast grey crinolines. He had last seen her throwing a histrionic fit in Helena Parole’s office.

  ‘That’s the figure of Public Opinion. In Offenbach’s version of the myth Orpheus is pleased to see the back of his wife, and goes down to Hades only because Public Opinion threatens him with exposure about his own dalliances. Eurydice lusts after a shepherd called Aristaeus, who is really Pluto in disguise. She gets bitten, and is taken down to Hell, but finds it more boring than she expected. Meanwhile, on Mount Olympus, the gods are grumbling to Jupiter about their rights, he gets hot for Eurydice and they all go down to Hell.’

  ‘I think I get the idea,’ interrupted May. ‘Presumably it all ends in tears.’

  ‘No, it ends with the cancan. A real trouser rouser, sends you home with a song on your lips and a lump in your drawers. In those days, the stage used to be lit with floats, oil wicks that were floated on water to reduce the risk of fire. It was an effect designed to show up the dancers’ thighs, so you can imagine the excitement it caused with a lot of saucy high-kicking. The ladies of the Paris chorus rarely bothered to wear knickers, and performed all kinds of athletic motions to reveal themselves to the wealthy patrons in the front rows.

  ‘As well as stuffing his recitative with knowing jokes, like Morpheus being the only god awake when all the others are sleeping, Offenbach filled his entertainments with references to other nineteenth-century operas, so the trio of the last act of La Belle Hélène is lifted from the William Tell Overture, and in this opera there’s a direct pinch from Gluck’s version of Orpheus that got screams of laughter from the audience. The ending’s topsy-turvy too, because Eurydice doesn’t want to go back with boring old Orpheus, and he doesn’t want her, so Pluto’s condition of not looking back at her on the way out of Hades is really an escape clause for both of them. Eurydice ends up as a bacchante, one of Hell’s call girls, merrily high-kicking in the inferno.’

  ‘Sounds rather immoral.’

  ‘That was the whole point. What interests me,’ Bryant continued, warming to his subject, ‘is Offenbach’s capacity for deceit. Here was a man who used tricks and jokes, paradox, caricature and parody, who lied about when and where he was born, a man who was not French at all but probably a German rabbi, who conned his way into the Paris Conservatoire despite the fact that foreigners were banned from attending, who was a published composer at nineteen, a virtuoso on the cello and, bizarrely, the toy flute, who had five children and became a Roman Catholic, whose success was so great that le tout Paris had to be nightly turned away from his theatre. He was a conundrum, a shamelessly charming scoundrel. He had what our Jewish friends call “chutzpah”.’ Bryant folded his arms across the back of the seat in front of him, lost in admiration. ‘Offenbach’s been out of favour for the last few years. But he was capable of scandalizing in his time.’

  ‘People really take offence at this sort of stuff?’

  ‘Not any more. Classical Greek scholars find the whole thing particularly amusing.’

  ‘So we’re not dealing with a deranged Greek?’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t rule out anything at this point.’ Bryant turned his attention back to the stage. ‘But I wonder if someone wants to stop the production for another reason.’

  ‘You have one in mind?’

  ‘Actually, yes. Elspeth told me I should talk to the owner of the theatre company.’

  ‘I don’t see what the owner could have to do with this.’

  ‘Somebody’s spending an awful lot of cash, several thousands of pounds, to get the show to opening night.’

  ‘When the country needs money for manufacturing weapons? That’s almost treasonous.’

  ‘Not if you strengthen the spirit of the people. And sell the production to other countries, of course. These days plays are like motion pictures. A production can be simultaneously staged around the world.’

  ‘You can’t strike prints like you can a film.’

  ‘No, but you can licence other companies. No, No, Nanette is probably still going strong in Addis Ababa.’

  ‘I don’t see what someone would gain by stopping the show from opening.’

  ‘That’s where it gets murky. Rival businesses could be searching for a way to lower the value of their enemies’ stock. Or the backers themselves could sabotage their own production because it has to be insured to the hilt. If they found they’d misjudged the market, or sensed that the show was shaping up badly, they could halt it and claim the insurance. It depends on the equity structure, how the deal is underwritten.’

  ‘They’d have a tough time convincing the insurance company in this climate,’ said May. ‘War damage must be bankrupting them. Can we check out the backers?’

  ‘I’ve already briefed the pen-pusher Biddle on that.’

  ‘I take it you’re not intending to do any more work today, then.’

  ‘Look here, I had four hours’ sleep last night. There was a frost this morning, and my bedroom ceiling has a hole in it that’s open to the sky. I actually felt like kipping down in the tube, just for warmth.’

  ‘I don’t know how people can do that. The smell of unwashed bodies on the platform of Covent Garden this morning was terrible.’

  ‘John, people can get used to anything. Our job is to make sure they don’t get used to murder. I’m going up to place some telephone calls.’ Bryant hauled himself from his seat. ‘Enjoy the rehearsal.’

  ‘Wait,’ said May. ‘Tanya Capistrania’s role in the show. The method of death. A dancer loses her feet. And the performer assigned to play Jupiter—’

  ‘Is hit by a planet,’ said Bryant. ‘Yes, the idea had occurred to me that perhaps there’s some grander plan. It’s just so odd that it should happen on a stage.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, the illusory nature of the theatre, I suppose. The whole thing about the stage is that it’s a huge trick, a visual paradox. If you could see the set from overhead, you’d realize that the scenes you see from the stalls only exist as a series of angled flats, with actors slipping between them. The perspectives are far more false than you realize. Designs have an almost Japanese sense of construction, layer upon layer.’

  ‘I’m not sure what you’re getting at,’ said May.

  ‘I’m not sure I’m getting at anything,’ Bryant conceded. ‘I need to sleep on the problem. If indeed any of us are allowed to
get some sleep. We’ll have to see what the moonlight brings.’

  26

  REPAIRING THE PAST

  What did the moonlight bring? John May walked to the centre of Waterloo Bridge and stopped. Behind him, the suspended wheel of the London Eye stared out along the line of the Thames. May adjusted the nylon Nike backpack strapped between his broad shoulders. He liked modern clothes; they had freed an older generation from constricting suits and ties and tight-fitting toe-capped shoes. He wore trainers and jeans without embarrassment. He was too old to be concerned with the strictures of fashion.

  The river had the flat grey dullness of a plastic groundsheet. There were hardly any boats to be seen in either direction. If he closed his eyes he could see the wartime fire barges. The sound of traffic faded from his ears, and the city fell silent. Those Blitz mornings were so quiet and still that one could slip further back in time, to an age of cart-tracks and wooden slums. Now, the past and the silence were gone for ever. The city survived in fragments, as though it had been painted on glass and the glass had shattered.

  He was on his way to meet Janice Longbright. He had found a yellowed picture of her mother in the archive at the Palace Theatre. It had been taken by PC Atherton in 1940, clowning around in the cell at Bow Street, just before she had supposedly gone off to marry Harris. Their wedding had finally taken place at the end of the war, in disastrous circumstances—but that was another story. He wanted to be with Longbright, even if there was nothing to say. She was his only remaining connection to the past.

  He had to find out who was stalking them, and why Bryant’s dental records had been stolen. Could someone have wanted a souvenir of the dead detective? It was the first thing he asked her when they met.

  Longbright was sitting in the corner of a black-and-white-tiled fish restaurant in Covent Garden, tearing the claws from the sockets of a crab shell. She had a cigarette sticking from the corner of her mouth, and was squinting through the smoke at the eviscerated crustacean. ‘I’m sorry, John, I was starving and started without you,’ she apologized. ‘You’ve lost a bit of weight.’

  ‘They say bereavement does that to you.’

  ‘Well, don’t lose any more. You’re half an hour late.’

  ‘Am I? I didn’t mean to be.’ May slid onto the bench seat opposite and poured himself a glass of wine from her carafe.

  ‘I suppose you were standing in the middle of Waterloo Bridge, staring into the filthy water and thinking bad thoughts.’

  ‘You know me too well.’

  ‘You can’t bring him back that way.’ She wielded a vicious-looking pair of pliers, cracked open a claw and dug out its flesh.

  ‘I realize that. I was wondering if someone else is trying to bring him back.’

  ‘By nicking his dental records? I hardly think so. I called the dentist, by the way, but it’s a new bloke. Bryant’s regular man has gone on holiday, nobody seems to know where. They’re going to call me back. Did it cross your mind that the bomber might have been trying to get the both of you?’

  ‘I don’t think so. If he’d figured out how to get into the unit, and knew about Arthur’s habit of working on a Sunday night, he must also have known that I rarely stay late at the weekends.’

  ‘I’ve got people checking the station CCTVs, but there’s a lot of coming and going around that place because of the club next door, and they’re nearly all wearing hooded jackets. You can’t see a bloody thing.’

  May watched Longbright disembowel the crab. ‘My neighbour told me someone tried to break into my apartment. She said something about teeth. The man had huge fangs.’

  He studied the former detective sergeant. Her make-up looked thick in the pale morning light. She reminded him of her mother, not least because she styled herself on the forgotten film star Ava Gardner.

  Janice dropped the crab claw and stabbed her cigarette into a tin ashtray. ‘God, I miss him, don’t you? Stupid question. I’ve been trying to find out too, you know. One hundred and forty-two major cases between nineteen forty and two thousand and three, not counting the thousands of small unsolved dramas the pair of you waded through. It could have been anyone.’

  ‘But it wasn’t,’ said May. ‘I’m sure it’s connected with the Palace.’

  ‘You can’t know that. There’s no one left. Stone, Whittaker, Wynter, Noriac, Parole, that poor creature who committed the murders, even Mouse, the stage door boy, they’re all dead. I’ve checked all the records and made all the calls.’

  ‘Then we’ve overlooked someone,’ said May simply. ‘Just as Arthur did all those years ago. Here, this is for you.’ He took out the photograph and handed it to her.

  ‘My God.’ Janice touched the edges of the faded monochrome picture. ‘I could be her.’

  ‘You are.’ May touched her hand. It was hard to believe that Gladys Forthright’s daughter was in her fifties. Looking at her he felt the present shift into the past. He was forced to shut his eyes and wipe them clear. ‘Tell me, do you think we wasted our lives?’

  Janice looked shocked. ‘What do you mean? Of course not. All the people you helped, all the—’

  ‘I’m not talking about work, I know what we did. I mean us, Arthur and me. He loved Nathalie and lost her. He was infatuated with your mother, but she didn’t want him. He waited years for Gladys. I married the wrong woman, lost her and my baby girl. My son has a daughter who can’t even leave her house any more. What was it all for? Sometimes I think Arthur and I worked so hard because there was nothing else for us to do.’

  Longbright picked up the photograph and dropped it into her shoulder bag with an air of finality. ‘Well, there’s something for you to do now,’ she said, taking up the crab once more and splintering its legs into pieces. ‘If you want to save the future, you have to repair the past.’

  ‘And how am I supposed to do that?’

  ‘I may have found a way. Alma remembered another sheet of paper lying on Bryant’s dining-room table, beside the dental records. She thinks it was from a hospital. It also went missing. I’m assuming it was his list of patients released from the Wetherby. The nurse who compiled it for him says there were over fifty names on it. But he might have made a mark against one of them.’

  ‘I don’t see how we’ll find that out now.’

  ‘It took me years to get him to keep copies of everything.’

  ‘You think it was a copy?’

  ‘Yes. And I imagine he would have left the original at the office.’

  ‘Then it’s gone. The unit was obliterated.’

  ‘Your partner was an untidy man. He never put anything back in its rightful place.’

  ‘You don’t think it would still be in the photocopier?’

  ‘If it is, it’s between a sheet of glass and a layer of heavy heatproof plastic. I can’t think of anything that would preserve it better.’

  May dug for his mobile phone.

  ‘Relax,’ said Longbright, biting into the soft flesh of the claw. ‘I’ve already called Finch. We’re going through the remains after lunch. Bash in a crab first, I promise you’ll feel a lot better for it.’

  27

  THE MASK OF TRAGEDY

  ‘I’ve never seen anyone die before,’ said Corinne Betts distantly, twisting a curl of hair at her ear, ‘not actually go from living and talking to suddenly lying on the ground covered in blood, like a stage prop. You’d think you’d see something leave, a wisp of air.’ The little performer was being interviewed by John May. They were seated in the tiny white-tiled dressing room that Mercury had been sharing with Jupiter.

  ‘We have someone who can talk to you about the psychological aspects of witnessing death, if you’d like,’ May offered. ‘It’s something they’ve set up for people who’ve been bombed out. It hasn’t proven very popular so far, but it’s supposed to help.’

  Corinne dug out a bottle of Scotch and a pair of enamel mugs. ‘I’m not bothered. Call me cynical, but I suspect institutional comforting is designed to give nosy peopl
e something to do. My sister was killed during the first week of the Blitz. She was working in a maternity hospital near the Guildhall. We weren’t close; she didn’t approve of the way I live. Even so . . . I feel all right now, a little strange, like I did when I heard about Maisie. As though something has shifted. At least they found her body, and I know why she died. Everyone is much more upset than they’re letting on, you know. There’s talk of spies, all sorts of rubbish. There’s a theory that Tanya was just picked out at random and murdered. Was she?’

  ‘It’s certainly possible.’

  ‘And Charlie? That wasn’t an accident either?’

  May shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘Someone aimed at Mr Senechal and cut the wire attached to the globe.’

  ‘Blimey. You think it’s an inside job, someone trying to stop the production?’

  ‘I don’t see how anyone could have entered the theatre unseen.’

  ‘I suppose you’re waiting to be handed names. We’re all meant to turn informer and blame the people we don’t get along with.’

  ‘Do you want to nominate someone?’

  ‘Me? I’ve no axe to grind with anyone here, except perhaps Little Miss Perfect, and that’s only because she gets on my nerves for being so gifted.’

  ‘Who do you mean?’

  ‘Eve Noriac. You only have to look at her. Haven’t you met her yet? She’s young, she’s beautiful, she’s rich and she’s French so of course all the men adore her. She has the starring role and she deserves it. It’s just that it all seems to come so easily to her. She’s been rehearsing in splendid isolation with her own tutor, away from us commoners. She turned up late for this afternoon’s rehearsal, and hardly concentrated at all while the rest of us were floundering around. She’s touched by the muses. And I’ve heard she’s set her sights on Miles Stone, our Orpheus, so they’d rather be living out their roles in the play.’

  ‘What about Tanya Capistrania? Did she have talent?’

  ‘She worked hard, but was never more than proficient. The parts you take on have to sit comfortably with you, otherwise your awkwardness transmits itself to the house. The audience is always aware that it’s watching “acting”. Real stars make you believe in them because they believe in themselves. The audience is on their side from the moment they arrive on stage.’ Corinne leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘I’ll let you in on a secret. Acting is a confidence trick. You don’t attract good roles without exuding confidence, and you only have that if you already know you have talent. The two go hand in hand, and without one, the other spirals out of control.’ She knocked back her Scotch and grimaced. ‘Tanya wasn’t seeing just Geoffrey Whittaker. She was also having an affair with John Styx.’