Full Dark House

by Christopher Fowler

  Several minutes later, a boy arrived with a brown envelope under his arm. May gave him sixpence from the petty-cash tin and tore open the accompanying letter.

  ‘What appalling handwriting.’

  ‘Give it to me, I’m used to reading his scrawl,’ said Bryant, snatching away the letter.

  Dear Arthur,

  There was a lot of interest in this at the time, but the paper wouldn’t run my article because Andreas Renalda got wind of it and threatened The Thunderer with a lawsuit. The family was based in Calliste (’Most Beautiful’), also known as Santorini. I managed to locate his former home on the outskirts of Thira, but couldn’t gain admittance to the estate. Everyone on the island knows the family, but nobody was very happy talking about them. I tried mentioning them in one of the local bars and the locals all clammed up, it was like one of those scenes in a cowboy film where the stranger comes into town. However . . .

  ’Is there another page to this?’

  ‘Sorry.’ May handed the sheet to Bryant.

  . . . I wrote a profile and was even paid, but the damned thing never appeared in print. Andreas Renalda has made my life a living hell ever since, ringing up publishers and complaining about me. His old man employed half the island, and a lot of loyalties still survive. I suggest you read the article and form your own conclusions.

  For the next few minutes no sound was heard in the office, save for the familiar double clang of a distant tram.

  ‘You wanted a motive,’ Bryant said finally. ‘It looks like we’ve got one. Listen to this.’ He balanced his legs along the edge of the desk. ‘Peregrine called his piece “Orpheus Ascending”. Sirius, Renalda’s father, lost an eye at the battle of Modder River, and was employed as a mercenary under General “Backbreaker” Gatacre during the Boer War.’

  ‘That’s not what I’d call a motive,’ said May.

  ‘Don’t be so impatient. His wife, Diana, bore him two sons. Andreas came along in 1905, when his brother Minos was five. His legs were too brittle to support him, so Sirius had his workers build steel calipers that would enable him to walk. He had lost an eye before finding his own strength, so thought Andreas would also turn disability to his advantage. He gave Minos, his other son, an allowance, but reserved his empire for Andreas. He dismissed the missus to a wing of the house and took a series of mistresses. Diana stopped attending church and raised her son in pagan ways in order to afford him protection from enemies. Superstitious lot, eh? Andreas became the keyholder to a shipping fortune and Minos turned into an embittered drunk who couldn’t touch his brother for fear of reprisals.

  ‘Andreas married a young English girl called Elissa. He inherited the Renalda estate on his father’s death, and it will be given to Minos only if his entire family dies.’ Bryant swiped the papers with the back of his hand. ‘Now this is where it gets interesting. A week after the old man’s funeral, while Andreas was attending to business on the mainland, bad brother Minos told Elissa that he wanted to make amends for his behaviour. He took her out to a taverna, but only the brother came back. Nobody knows what happened. Elissa was seen with Minos on the jetty late that night. She supposedly slipped and fell into the water. It took a month for her body to wash up on the beach. Andreas took the case to the local magistrate, but no evidence of murder was found. The tycoon was convinced that his brother had killed his wife, but had no proof. Andreas moved to England, and Minos’s whereabouts are unknown. Well, we wanted a suspect.’

  ‘Andreas’s brother. You think he could be here?’

  ‘I suppose he could be using any name.’ Bryant called in Forthright. ‘We’re going to need a recent photograph of Minos Renalda,’ he explained. ‘We have to talk to Andreas again. Have you got any tea rations left? We’ve used ours up.’

  ‘Certainly.’ Forthright paused in the doorway. ‘Did you hear? The other army bike has turned up. No prints on it, though. I heard about Mr May’s little adventure.’

  ‘Where did they find it?’ asked Bryant.

  ‘Right outside the theatre, back with all the others.’

  ‘I can’t believe it. The audacity—he went right back. Gladys, what are you hovering about for?’

  ‘May I just say that it’s a pleasure to be working with you again?’

  ‘No, you may not. Get on with your work.’ Bryant smiled poisonously at his partner. ‘I knew those two would never last,’ he said.

  42

  MR MAY PRESENTS HIS THEORY

  The follow-up to Coventry’s night of terror was a bombing raid on London that proved almost as devastating as the attack of 15 October, when the city seemed to combust with over nine hundred fires. On that occasion all railway traffic had been halted, and the shattered Fleet sewer emptied its poisoned waters into the train tunnels at King’s Cross.

  On Saturday, those who survived the night arose to find great chunks of the city alight or simply gone. Hospitals, schools and stations had been hit, and doctors cut their way into unsafe buildings to administer morphine to the injured. Pumps and water towers were drained to fight the raging blazes spread by incendiary bombs. Because the city’s water was routinely turned off at the weekend, the fire hoses had run dry, so riverside cranes were used to drop trailer pumps into the Thames from offshore barges.

  Looters struck, risking their lives to pillage from the ruins of shops and houses while residents took cover, but most of the cases went unreported for fear of harming morale. A deep crater had been blown in the centre of Charing Cross Road, exposing the underground trains to daylight. In Farringdon, a fish shop was hit by a bomb that loosened a great girder, causing it to fall on a queue of housewives. Not even gangs of men could move the beam, and the women had to wait and die while a crane was sought.

  Brick dust settled across the roads and buildings as thickly as falling snow, a pale cloak of mourning. All sounds were deadened. People moved quietly through the ashes like determined ghosts.

  John May had spent the night under the stairs at his aunt’s house in Camden. The noise had been deafening and almost constant, the explosions preceded by the droning of aircraft, the thunder of anti-aircraft guns and the ghostly wail of the sirens, one of which was mounted on the roof of the primary school opposite. The early fog was so dense, and the blackout still so effective, that May could see no more than a few feet ahead as he walked into Covent Garden, listening to the fall of masonry, accompanied by the chinking tumble of London bricks. The rescue squads were pulling down cracked chimney stacks and walls.

  In Long Acre the atmosphere changed; the costermongers were still in fine voluble form, singing and bellowing jokes across their wicker stacks. Many offices asked their exhausted workers to handle extra shifts. With so many lines of communication cut, the daily push and pull of commerce slowed. But the size of London worked in favour of its population. No matter how much havoc had occurred in the night, it always seemed there was another way to get things done.

  Bryant had spent the night in the office and needed to clear his head with a walk beside the river. He felt close to the truth and wanted to talk to Andreas Renalda, but nobody knew his whereabouts. There was no answer from the telephone at the tycoon’s Highgate home, and his office was shut for the weekend.

  The premiere of Orpheus was still planned for tonight, come incendiary bombs, hellfire murders or the Lord Chamberlain himself. The day was grey and dull, the skies louring with the threat of rain. Everyone was praying for a deluge to dampen the fires, and for clouds to hide the city.

  An Orpheus lyric rattled around in Bryant’s brain. ‘The Metamorphoses Rondo’, in which Cupid sings, ‘What do these disguises prove? Only that you find yourself so ugly that whenever you want to be loved, you daren’t show yourself as you really are.’ If Andreas Renalda’s brother was here, he could have adopted the identity of anyone. Tonight the theatre would open for the grand premiere, and the invited public would be admitted. How much harder would it be to spot a rogue face in the crowd?

  Bryant studied the water, wat
ching the chromatic petrol ripples of a passing boat blossom on the surface in diseased ziggurats. Then there was the matter of the missing girl, lost in a city of missing people. If Jan Petrovic had been kidnapped, why had no one heard from her abductor? What was to be gained from removing someone so unimportant to the production? He thought back to Edna Wagstaff’s nervous chatter about the ghosts of the theatre, and how they walked through walls. How had someone been able to enter and leave the Palace unnoticed? When the building wasn’t locked up, the two entrances had staff posted at them. There were two pass doors between the backstage area and the front of house, and one of those was kept permanently locked. The doors to Petrovic’s flat were also locked from the inside. It was as if . . .

  Edna had spoken of desperation, but someone desperate to do what? The police at Bow Street and West End Central were far too busy to help the unit. Sergeant Nasty-Basket Carfax next door had laughed in his face when he had requested assistance. Suppose Minos Renalda had infiltrated the staff of the theatre? He would be forty now, which eliminated quite a few members of the orchestra, about half of the cast and all but one of the house staff. Forthright was checking the ages of the backstage crew.

  Bryant let his mind roam loose. In 1922, the Palace had premiered The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Gilbert and Sullivan longed to trump Offenbach, and set Thespis among the gods of ancient Greece, but Thespis was now lost. The painting in the Palace Theatre’s foyer was The Concert, a Greek revival subject. Offenbach’s hero helped Jason to find the Golden Fleece. The brown interiors of the Palace were rubbed gold by the hands of patrons. Mythic links but also Masonic links, the compass and the globe. Orpheus’s mother was Calliope. The Maenads tore Orpheus limb from limb for preaching male love, and his head floated down the River Hebrus still singing. Which Greek goddess carried a scythe? Wasn’t a scythe like a razor?

  His mind was reeling with impossible associations. But there was a more prosaic possibility. The show was already being accused of blasphemy, indecency, blatantly unwholesome sexuality. Could some guardian of moral standards really have become so incensed by its perceived perversions that they were prepared to kill? The idea didn’t sit well with him. The crimes felt passionless, almost accidental. It was as though anyone could have died in place of Capistrania and Senechal.

  ‘I thought I’d find you here,’ said May, laying a hand on his shoulder and passing him a silver flask. ‘This’ll warm you up.’

  ‘I’m trying to think, old bean. Am I to be allowed no privacy?’ Bryant grumbled, but unscrewed the cap and took a swig. ‘This business is giving me the pip. If I had to paint a picture of the person we’re looking for,’ he said, passing the flask back, ‘I’d reckon we were up against an older male, middle class, with some kind of grudge against the play itself.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Traditional theatre, by which I discount the music halls and picture palaces, is largely ignored by working-class youths. It’s not really a public place but a sealed arena. Unless you’re a paying customer or a member of the production, there’s no easy way in or out of the building. Our killer acts with the kind of confidence that comes with experience. He’s male because of the sense of distance from his victims. He’s unemotional. Statistically, women make passionate murderers. He has a grudge against the play because the players themselves are unimportant to him. There’s a plan, and we haven’t seen its culmination yet.’

  ‘Do you see any way of stopping it?’

  ‘The theatre opens its doors tonight. The time for deciphering clues is over.’

  ‘All we can do is be vigilant,’ May agreed. ‘Every attack points in a different direction.’

  ‘Do they, though? Couldn’t our killer be fulfilling a ritual? Orpheus faced the rigours of Hell before he was allowed to climb towards the light. I believe true evil is dispassionate, faceless, selfish. A game is being played out right before my eyes. Our perpetrator knows this and is unconcerned, or is so blinded by the need to take action that he’s prepared to take risks.’

  May had not seen his partner in this fugue state before. ‘I think you’re wasting your time with all this mythological stuff.’

  ‘Oh?’ Bryant turned to look at him. ‘Do you have a better idea?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say it’s better, but I do have a theory.’

  ‘Would you care to share it with me?’ Bryant jammed an absurdly large briar pipe in his mouth and waited for May to give him a light. He had misplaced his regular pipe. May would spend the next sixty years locating lost objects for his partner.

  ‘Renalda’s brother is implicated in the death of the tycoon’s wife. Now he’s missing, possibly here. Who would he want to strike at most? At Andreas himself. So he attacks the theatre to destroy his brother’s empire.’

  ‘But then he gains nothing financially.’

  ‘What if it has nothing to do with financial benefit, but is simple revenge?’ May leaned on the balustrade, watching the red fireboats pumping water.

  ‘Why would he have waited until now to take action?’ Bryant checked his watch. ‘I have to find Andreas. He can’t be far from the theatre. Let’s have him removed directly to the unit for questioning, show him we mean business.’

  ‘That’s more like it.’ May looked up at the dark, scudding sky. ‘Listen.’

  Bryant cocked an ear. ‘What? I can’t hear anything.’

  ‘Neither can I.’ May grinned. ‘Wonderful, isn’t it?’

  43

  MERRY HELL

  ‘I have no time to talk to you,’ said Helena Parole impatiently. ‘When we hit our half-hour call in around one hundred and thirty minutes, the backstage area is sealed until the performance ends. Only the audience can enter and leave. Have you ever been backstage before the start of a first public performance? It’s a nightmare, people running in every direction, and there’s barely a corridor more than two feet wide in the entire building. You saw the understage area. Imagine it filled with actors waiting for their stage-lift cues. As far as I know, nobody’s heard from Petrovic. Got a snout?’

  John May dug a packet of Three Bells from his jacket and offered her one.

  ‘We’re not supposed to smoke back here either.’ She flicked a cigarette between crimson lips. ‘All these timber struts. But with buildings ablaze all around us these days, what’s the difference? God knows there are enough fire buckets scattered about. Geoffrey fell over one by the grave trap and nearly broke his ankle. Quite how a bucket of sand is supposed to put out a raging fire is anyone’s guess. The truth of the matter is, anyone caught understage would be fried alive. A theatre’s no place for claustrophobics.’ She rubbed smoke from her eye. ‘This tastes like it’s got vegetable shavings in it.’

  ‘Mr Bryant got them for me.’ He examined the strangely misregistered lettering on the packet. ‘I don’t think they’re kosher, not at a shilling for twenty. He has a theory that Petrovic’s abduction is somehow separate from the killings. You can’t think of anything that would single her out?’

  ‘She filled in the same employment forms as everyone else. We don’t check their backgrounds. Right now, we’re grateful to find anyone at all. I suppose it’s possible she had another identity. Have you seen her rent book?’

  ‘Yes, and I spoke to her landlord about her references. Nothing unusual there.’

  ‘You know we have a full house tonight. How are you going to keep a check on the doors?’

  ‘The only admittance to the auditorium is via the front of house. The ushers, bar staff and ticket tearers have to sign the book, and everyone else needs a ticket.’

  ‘You’ve been around the building, you realize there are a thousand places to hide, and this maniac could be in any of them.’

  ‘I know that,’ admitted May. ‘We can’t search them all. We’ve only been allocated two extra PCs. Andreas Renalda insists that he’s keeping the production open whatever happens.’

  ‘I’d better get going. He’ll be here soon.’ Parole finished th
e cigarette and checked her watch. ‘God, these things burn up fast. What do you make of him?’

  ‘Seems very determined. A bit of a cold fish.’

  ‘I just wish he’d keep his distance. He thinks we don’t hear him, but we do. He gives me the creeps, thumping about in his leg-irons like the captain of an ancient vessel. This isn’t just a financial enterprise for him, it’s more personal.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He’s had one of the entresol dressing rooms converted into a sort of chapel, and spends twenty minutes in it before he watches rehearsals. We’re short of space here, John—may I call you John?—there’s nowhere to put anything and there aren’t enough dressing rooms, yet he’s had one turned into a shrine. Doesn’t count as normal behaviour in my book.’

  ‘Is there bad feeling about that?’

  ‘About that and everything else, Charles’s death in particular. It was the one event witnessed by several people, and it’s got everyone disturbed. You try standing in a dark corridor with ten other performers waiting to go on, and see if the atmosphere doesn’t get to you. They fairly race out of here after rehearsals. No one wants to be the last to leave.’

  ‘Who’ll be last out once you start the run?’

  ‘Elspeth, I suppose, although she’s FOH, so actually it would be Stan Lowe at the stage door. He can’t leave until the last of the backstage staff has gone. After the evening performances the actors invite friends up to the dressing rooms, but they’re supposed to be out by eleven. Now that the run is starting, they’ll go over to the Green Room, one of the actors’ clubs off the Strand, or to Macready’s in Covent Garden. You have to be an Equity member or working in a current production to get into such places. Absolute dens of vice, but I suppose they’re a lot more convivial than staying here, drinking out of chipped mugs as the heating goes off.’

  ‘Well, I’ll let you get on,’ said May. He stopped at the top of the stairs and turned. ‘My colleague wanted me to ask you—the statue on top of the building, in the centre of the roof. You don’t happen to know who it is?’