Full Dark House

by Christopher Fowler

  Bryant ran round to the foyer and checked on the FOH box office. He doubted that May would be able to track their man for long in the blackout. Elspeth was almost asleep when he knocked on the glass, startling her so badly that she nearly fell off her stool.

  ‘Did you see him come past here?’

  ‘No, no one’s been through.’ She straightened her cardigan, embarrassed. ‘I’m afraid I was having forty winks. The phones are down. Seamus told me they’ve found an unexploded bomb across the road and the Heavy Rescue people have severed a line getting to it.’

  ‘Who’s Seamus?’

  ‘Our milkman. He was dropping off some rhubarb from his allotment.’ She held up a paper bag full of purple stalks. ‘I said it would be nice to see a banana again but there are limits to his powers.’ She patted a stray lock of hair into place and smiled vaguely. By the entrance doors, a heavyset woman in a pinafore rose from her mop bucket and came over to the detective.

  ‘Did you just wake her up? Poor lady was trying to have a rest.’

  ‘She’s been here with you?’

  ‘All the time. You’re one of them detectives, ain’t you?’ she asked. ‘Several of the chorus girls are talking about a phantom roaming the theatre, have you heard? Apparently it’s got hands like claws and eyes that glow red in the dark. And Miss Betts said it followed her up Tottenham Court Road, wearing a mask.’

  ‘I need to use your phone,’ said Bryant.

  ‘I just told you, the lines are cut. And you don’t want to listen to her silly gossip,’ warned Elspeth, raising the tone of her voice by half a social caste. ‘Actresses get such first-night nerves, it always shows itself in silly stories.’

  ‘Where’s the nearest call box?’ asked Bryant.

  ‘That’ll be the other side of Cambridge Circus. Oh, it’s quite the norm, lurid imaginations working overtime. During the rehearsals for No, No, Nanette one of the saxophonists dropped dead, and rumours went around that he’d been cursed by Negroes because he played late-night sessions in a jazz club and owed them some money. People get such funny ideas.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Bryant uncertainly, heading for the door. He nodded to the cleaner. ‘If you hear any more talk about a Palace phantom, you’ll let me know, won’t you?’

  ‘He’ll be back,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Not that he worries me. I’ve got nothing to fear.’

  ‘Oh? Why not?’

  ‘He’s not real,’ the char explained, hitching up her bolstered bosom. ‘It’s just guilt. These young girls, they’re a bit loose, a bit wild, living for the moment, running around with boys and getting up to God knows what in the dark. Extroverts and introverts, it’s all in their collective unconscious, a manifestation of guilt, if you ask me.’

  ‘Well, your manifestation of guilt just killed someone with a cut-throat razor,’ he snapped.

  Bryant had not expected an earful of Jungian theory from the charlady. He stepped carefully over the wet marble and stood on the step outside, looking up at the sky. A pall of brown smoke hung over the buildings to the east, most likely dust from building clearance. The clouds were starting to break now, giving the bombers a clear path into the city. He wondered what terrors the night would bring this time.

  Poking the last of his tobacco into his pipe, Bryant headed off in the direction of the phone box, a theory shifting uneasily at the back of his brain. The globe, the compass, the flute, the wind, the mask of tragedy, the statue on the roof of the theatre, Stone’s mother, the flower in Darvell’s lapel, things he could not make sense of without sounding deranged.

  If he was wrong, it would not just be the finish of a promising career, it would end the credibility of the unit for good.

  36

  THE BROADER PICTURE

  ‘What on earth happened to you?’ asked Bryant. His partner was covered in streaks of mud, his jacket torn from shoulder to waist.

  ‘Came a bit of a cropper on an army motorbike,’ May explained, examining himself. ‘Our man moved like a bat out of Hell. I lost him in the back streets, didn’t Biddle tell you?’

  ‘He said you stole an army emergency vehicle and smashed it up. Don’t worry, I’ll square it with them later. Are you all right?’

  ‘Took the skin off my hands, no real damage. What are you doing?’

  Bryant was standing on an upended metal milk crate in the car park of Bow Street magistrates’ court, preparing to throw a muslin-wrapped leg of pork onto an iron sheet that was balanced on a pile of masonry rubble. ‘I’m testing out a theory,’ he explained, swinging the leg and letting it go. ‘Bloke fell out of the balcony. I suppose they told you. Slashed to bits with a straight razor. Not one of the cast, though.’ He climbed down from the crate and bent over the joint of meat, which had landed squarely on the metal sheet. ‘It’s all right, condemned black-market pork, quite inedible, but it’s about the same weight.’

  ‘As what?’ asked May, bemused.

  ‘As a pair of feet, obviously.’ Bryant threw him an old-fashioned look as he hoisted the leg for another swing.

  May had no time for such foolishness tonight. He was starting to wonder if his partner was all there. ‘Mr Davenport’s waiting for us in your office,’ he warned. ‘At least, I assume it’s him.’

  ‘Raw-boned, red-faced man, tufts of grey hair coming out of his ears, staring eyes, lots of broken veins in his nose, reeks of chewing tobacco?’

  ‘That’s the one. I hope he doesn’t see your plant.’

  ‘What plant?’ asked Bryant, his eyes widening in innocence.

  ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know. That one with the serrated leaves. Chinamen dry them out and smoke them. Reefers. Used by Limehouse dope fiends.’

  ‘Are you accusing me of being a dope fiend? Actually, it’s an old herbal remedy.’

  ‘Well, I’ve hidden it under your desk just in case.’

  ‘Thanks, old man.’ Bryant grinned. ‘You’re a sport.’

  Farley Davenport stared with distaste at the mouldering Tibetan skull surrounded by African juju charms that inhabited Bryant’s bookcase. ‘Perhaps one of you can explain what’s going on at the Palace Theatre? Someone just wrote off an army bike, another one is still missing.’

  ‘Mr May here was in pursuit of our murderer. We’re lucky he’s still with us. I’ve asked for an apprehension on the other number plate.’

  ‘Who was this bloke who died?’

  ‘He shouldn’t have been allowed inside the building,’ Bryant explained, in that way he had of not answering the right question. ‘I requested an access restriction, but the company’s director overruled me.’

  Davenport was finding it hard to make the detectives understand why he was so angry with them. He ran his hands through his thinning grey hair and made a frightening face. ‘I asked for all visitors to be signed in and out. That should have been enough.’

  ‘That’s exactly what we did,’ said Bryant, ‘but somebody still got hurt. We shouldn’t have been allowing any visitors in at all. There are people wandering about all over the place. It’s like Hyde Park on a bank holiday in there.’

  Davenport grunted with disapproval. ‘I had a phone call from some mad harpy named Parole, typical bloody showbusiness type, complaining to me about areas of the theatre staying shut. She couldn’t seem to tell the difference between a real-life murder and a staged drama.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. I told her we needed exclusive access to certain areas for forensic examination, but she refused point blank to close off the rest of the building. Apparently it’s beyond her control because there are two separate companies involved, hers and the management who own the theatre.’

  ‘This bloody war is giving everyone an excuse to defy the law.’ Davenport’s nose looked redder than ever. ‘I tell you, when it’s over all these women will go back to being bloody housewives and we’ll be able to get on with running the nation again.’

  ‘Miss Parole answers to a board that’s determined not to allow anything to hamper the production.’
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  ‘It’s going to be hampered a bloody sight more when Westminster shuts it down,’ snapped Davenport. ‘If this had happened in peacetime the building would have been cleared without question. Good Lord, three people dead, ghostly sightings and what have you, people frightening one another with stories about phantoms that walk through walls. It’s the Palace Theatre, not Borley Rectory. Do you want to tell me how it happened?’

  ‘I’d like to, sir, but we’re not sure ourselves. Mr Darvell, the boy who was attacked in the balcony, is the son of a member of the cast. He and a friend were watching the run-through. The friend left, Darvell was seen to stand up at the front and turn his back to the stage, he was cut and fell over the parapet. It’s a low rail, and the floor slopes steeply. The fall broke his nose, his jaw and his collarbone, he lost too much blood and died. The person he nearly landed on, Miles Stone’s mother, glimpsed his attacker from below, and what she saw matches the description of the man Miss Trammel gave last night. This is the man who got away on the stolen bike.’

  ‘What a bloody nightmare. It wasn’t Darvell’s friend?’

  ‘He was already in the pub when it happened.’

  ‘I suppose you know that the press has got the story now.’

  ‘We kept it back as long as we could,’ said May, ‘but the chestnut vendor was discovered by the News of the World. Luckily that particular rag only comes out once a week.’

  ‘You really are a dunderhead, Bryant,’ Davenport complained. ‘Half their stringers do double duty with the Daily Sketch. There’s bound to be something in tomorrow’s paper.’

  ‘I think you’re overestimating the Daily Sketch’s interest in theatre,’ Bryant protested. ‘Coverage of Orpheus is too intellectual for their readership.’

  ‘You think a murderer loose in an old music hall is too intellectual? “Hellfire Show Summons the Devil”, that sort of thing, a bit too brainy for the masses? You may be academically on the button but you’re not much good at understanding people, Bryant. I suggest you go down there,’ he slapped his hand against the window, ‘and see how the ordinary man in the street is passing his days. There’s a typing pool sitting out on the corner of the Aldwych in the pouring rain, working under a makeshift shelter of corrugated iron because the roof’s been blown clean off their office. You’re telling me they don’t want to have their minds diverted by a juicy murder?’

  Chastened, Bryant fell silent. It seemed to May that their superior might have a point.

  ‘The partially digested meat in Miss Capistrania’s stomach showed positive for hemlock,’ he pointed out. ‘There was an empty sandwich tin in one of the wings, and hers are the only prints on it. Nobody seems to know where she got her food. Quail is not the sort of item you often find outside of Simpson’s in the Strand these days. We’ve checked with all the butchers’ shops in the area. There’s a place in Brewer Street that sells quail, but they don’t recall serving her, and besides, they’re noted for carrying out stringent quality checks on their meat.’

  ‘Anything new on Senechal?’ asked Davenport.

  ‘The cable ends were examined under a microscope and came back with an open verdict on them.’

  ‘What do you mean? Either the wire was cut or it wasn’t.’

  ‘Dr Runcorn thinks there’s a possibility that it sheared under its own weight. He reckons the cable had been reused so many times that it was probably full of stress fractures. But if it was cut, the person who cut it had to be standing on the gantry at the time in order to judge the moment for the globe to hit Mr Senechal.’

  This news made Davenport far from happy. He liked the unit’s cases to be tied up neatly so that he could present them to his superiors as solved and closed, another job well done. He wanted someone to blame. He would have put everything down to sheer bad luck if it wasn’t for this latest attack. And, of course, there were the feet.

  ‘How the hell did they get onto a chestnut stand?’ he asked again. ‘Come on, Arthur, you must have an idea by now.’

  ‘I do, but you won’t like it much.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘I think they were thrown into the cart from the canopy of the theatre.’

  ‘What on earth makes you say that?’

  ‘The evening was dry, and the vendor had griddled his fire before the air-raid siren called him away. On the morning of the discovery, PC Crowhurst noted that the coal dust on the pavement was unmarked by any footprints. Mr May and I saw it for ourselves. There are several sets of small mullioned windows above the canopy. One on the second landing has a pane missing, and another has a broken hasp. They’re not big enough for a person to climb through, but you could stick an arm out of them. I think somebody dropped the feet out of the window, intending them to land on the canopy. Instead, they rolled off and fell onto the chestnut stall, which happened to be standing by the kerb below.’

  ‘You mean the Turk just left it there and scarpered?’

  ‘He was obeying the law, sir, getting himself to a place of shelter. Obviously, the blackout was still in effect when he returned, so it’s feasible he didn’t notice that anything had been disturbed.’

  ‘Have you checked the canopy beneath the window for blood spots?’

  ‘We didn’t find anything swabbable, but it has rained since then.’

  ‘I’d like to be able to tell Miss Capistrania’s father that his daughter’s death was a bizarre but unfortunate accident.’

  ‘I don’t see how you can do that.’

  ‘In case it’s escaped your attention, Mr Bryant, there are no motives. Capistrania hardly knew anyone in London. Senechal was universally admired. This last chap isn’t even directly connected to the production, for God’s sake.’

  Davenport lowered himself into Bryant’s chair and attempted to straighten his legs beneath the desk, but something was in the way. He peered under the desk. May gave his partner a grim look.

  ‘Worse still, if Capistrania’s death could have been mistaken for food poisoning, why would someone make it look like a murder by throwing away the bloody feet? And why attack a boy who’s got nothing to do with the theatre? There’s no sense in it, is there? I bloody give up with you lot.’ He reached beneath the desk and pulled up Bryant’s marijuana plant. ‘What on earth’s this?’

  ‘Ah,’ stalled Bryant, ‘so that’s where it is. Evidence. I’ll bag it.’

  ‘What evidence?’ asked Davenport suspiciously.

  ‘Ah, the Leicester Square Vampire. Dr Runcorn wanted some items removed from his house for examination.’

  Davenport was thrown off guard. ‘I didn’t know we’d caught him,’ he said.

  ‘We haven’t,’ countered May as he gently drew the plant away from Davenport. ‘He’s a suspect. A, um, Lithuanian botanist experimenting on rare plants with, er, horticultural grafting techniques. I’ll get rid of that for you.’

  ‘You’re telling me the Leicester Square Vampire is an experimenting Lithuanian botanist?’ Davenport rose and walked to the door, vaguely troubled. ‘Do you think I’m completely stupid? I’ve been fielding hourly calls from Albert Friedrich, Capistrania père, who, you’ll be pleased to know, is staying at the Austrian ambassador’s house this weekend, where he’ll be receiving no less a personage than George VI himself for tea. I’m seeing the Home Secretary on Saturday morning. I want your written conclusions about this investigation presented to me no later than six o’clock tomorrow night. And give me rational solutions, none of your psychological supernatural mumbo-jumbo.’ He slammed the door behind him.

  Bryant stuffed the plant into the top drawer of his desk. ‘I think that went quite well, don’t you?’

  ‘No, I don’t, frankly. Have you come to any conclusions?’

  ‘Well, there’s a madman on the loose, obviously. Someone who hated Capistrania enough to have her mutilated, who had Charles Senechal killed in full view of his peers, who slashed a young man to death just because he was close to a member of the cast. We’ll test the bike for prints when it turns
up but I don’t suppose we’ll get anything.’

  ‘He was wearing gloves.’

  ‘Then there’s the Greek aspect of all this. Which reminds me, we need to find out who gave Zachary Darvell the flower.’

  ‘What flower?’

  ‘The silk carnation. Stan Lowe says he’d never seen the boy wearing a buttonhole before. Not his usual style. Don’t those gypsy women in Piccadilly press them on you as you pass? I’m sure they’re not made of silk these days, though, unless someone’s cutting up parachutes. And then there’s the business with the flute.’

  ‘You’ve completely lost me,’ said May, exasperated.

  ‘Anton Varisich halted the orchestra when the accident occurred, but his first flute released a high-pitched note of alarm. Except of course he couldn’t have, because two of the woodwinds, of which the flautist was one, had failed to turn up that morning—so who played the note?’

  ‘Arthur, I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I’d like to tell you,’ said Bryant, ‘but I think I’d better make sure I’m right first. While I’m doing that, you might pause to wonder why Davenport’s so anxious to keep this out of the newspapers.’

  ‘I imagine he doesn’t want the unit made to look foolish.’