Full Dark House

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘I suppose it was a ritual, wasn’t it?’ May was amazed he hadn’t thought of it earlier. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow, sweetheart. There’s something I have to put right.’

  And he was off along the pavement, moving around the crowds and into the road, the pain in his leg forgotten, breaking into a run as he speed-dialled Janice Longbright’s number, praying that she would pick up the phone.

  54

  FULL DARK HOUSE

  ‘There’s nothing to report that a layman can’t see with a cursory examination of the body,’ said young Oswald Finch, rinsing his hands at the deep ceramic sink. The remains of Valerie Marchmont, Public Opinion, lay under an ordinary bedsheet; the army had requisitioned the pathology unit’s entire supply of rubberized covers.

  ‘It’s the same as the others. There are no second-agent marks on the skin or clothing, just a few fragments of corroded metal at the contact point. I presume the iron rod that passed through her head was slightly rusted. Some of the rust was scraped off by the edges of the skull. Not much point in making a toxicological examination, but I’ll do one if you want. The damage is consistent with what you’d expect to find in an accident of this kind. You see wounds like this all over London these days.’

  ‘Dr Runcorn has been over the stage equipment but he’s come up with nothing,’ said May, leaning against the sink with his hands thrust into his pockets. ‘The skycloth came down a fraction later and slightly further over to centre stage than it was supposed to, and the revolve stuck for a moment. The stagehands reckon they oiled the revolve before the performance but say it still judders occasionally.’

  ‘An unfortunate combination of factors. Although I daresay young Mr Bryant would have us believe something different if he was here.’ Finch rubbed a lotion into his fingers that was supposed to remove the smell of chemicals. ‘To be honest, it surprises me that Bryant could be so completely wrong. I mean, we’ve had our disagreements, and he’s certainly going to make mistakes during a time like this when you can’t get your hands on basic equipment, but there’s usually something vaguely right about his thinking. Are we having a farewell party?’

  ‘I don’t think any of us could stand it,’ said May despondently. ‘His landlady hasn’t seen him, only his boxes. He’s not been home for a change of clothes. It’s been two days now. I wondered if he might have gone to stay with relatives.’

  ‘He could be at his mother’s in Bethnal Green Road. Forthright tells me the house next door to Mrs Bryant’s got bombed out and she’s worried about her walls falling in. I know he wanted to help her move somewhere safer. She’s not on the telephone but I daresay someone in the local nick could run round.’ Finch leaned back on a stool and administered drops to his right pupil. The atmosphere of formaldehyde left him with perpetually red-rimmed eyelids.

  ‘Do you think Davenport will keep us open with Bryant gone?’ asked May.

  ‘That’s a tough one, seeing as he set you chaps up in the first place. It could be construed as failure on his part. He’ll probably merge you with one of the other divisions: fraud or this special squad that’s been set up to deal with looters. At least it’ll keep you afloat. Did Forthright mention that your Mr Biddle has had a change of heart? He’s decided to stay on after all.’

  ‘That’s good,’ May said. ‘Arthur thought he might come round. What happened to the tree he gave you?’

  ‘Bit of a sore point, that. It was too big for the bureau so I took it home, and now the wife won’t talk to me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Her cat ate one of the leaves and died. She tried to chop it down with a kitchen knife and it leaked some kind of poisonous sap on her. The doctor reckons her arm should stay bandaged for at least a week, which is inconvenient because she plays the organ. I have a suspicion,’ he said, blinking the drops from his left eye, ‘that it was one of Bryant’s pranks. He really was the most impossible man.’

  ‘He’s not dead,’ said May.

  ‘Well, he is missing,’ responded Finch, dabbing his eyes on a flannel and blinking.

  May was surprised by the way his partner had responded to failure, but his first duty was to the case. ‘He’ll turn up,’ he said unsurely. ‘You might try liaising a little more with Dr Runcorn rather than telling me you can’t find anything. Four dead, one vanished, a few near misses. I need physical proof fast, or we’ll all be out of a job. A couple of heel marks, no fingerprints, no real murder weapons to speak of, it’s not much to go on. You’d think we were dealing with someone who doesn’t exist in the real world.’

  The annoying thing was that, although he had not believed Bryant’s explanation, his partner was still the only one to come up with any suggestions at all.

  He looked in on Forthright and Biddle, who were continuing to check customs information from air, sea and freight terminals for the whereabouts of Jan Petrovic. At dusk he walked through brown smoke billowing across Lincoln’s Inn Fields, searching the darkness of the unsettled trees as he tried to work out how they had gone so wrong. Crows called loudly from the lower branches as he passed beneath them, their old eyes glittering between the leaves. An elderly man was hoeing a muddy trough through an allotment, one of many that had been dug across the once-perfect lawns.

  Just when he was free to follow traditional procedures, May tried to imagine how Bryant would consider the evidence. Minos Renalda was dead, and with him died a motive for revenge. Forthright had confirmed that Andreas was a witness to his brother’s burial. The body had also been identified by close friends and relatives.

  But what of Elissa Renalda? Her body had been too long in the water for proper identification. Suppose it hadn’t been her, and she had survived somehow? What if she had returned and disguised herself as a member of the cast, and was trying to destroy her husband for—what? Failing to save her from his brother? May angrily kicked a stone into the bushes. That was the trouble with thinking like Bryant, it made absolutely no sense.

  When he reached his aunt’s house in Camden Town, he opened his briefcase and pulled out a stack of the unit’s files. Bryant had perversely embedded his private notes into illustrated cryptograms representing Offenbach’s theatre posters. To provide the reader with clues, he had painted sections of the posters in the wrong colours to their originals. He had taken Davenport’s precautionary measures to a ludicrous degree, without disobeying his orders. Codes, encryptions, puzzles, everything was a game to him, thought May as he began to sort through the material, wondering if Bryant, wherever he might be, was thinking of the files and chuckling at his partner’s confusion.

  He sat on the candlewick bedspread and laid the posters before him, trying to plot a new direction through the details of the case. He could hear his aunt on the landing outside, polishing the lino for the third time in a week. Perhaps as a response to the chaos outside, she had become obsessed with keeping the house immaculate. She made her own cleaning fluid from Castile soap, saltpetre and ammonia, and mixed up polishes and liniments from turpentine and vinegar until the entire house stank. He felt trapped in the dark little terrace, too broke to be able to take a girl anywhere, unable to get away from the blighted city, unwilling to knock mugs with the sanctimonious doomsayers and patriots who gathered around the piano in the corner pub.

  His best bet, he knew, was to sort out the mess at the Palace and get a recommendation out of the unit. He thought of the way he had arrived at Bow Street the previous Monday, full of expectation for the days ahead. Instead he felt lost and abandoned. Arthur Bryant was the most annoying man he had ever met, but at least he was fun to be around. May lacked the confidence to continue without him. Now all he saw in the days ahead was failure and shame.

  The door of Helena’s office burst open, and Harry ran in. ‘Can you come quickly?’ he gasped. ‘The Phantom, we’ve got him cornered.’

  It was the middle of Monday morning, and the first rehearsal after the start of the run was in as good a shape as could be expected. Reviews were in, a combination of outra
ge and ecstasy in equal measure. Sandwiched between cheering articles about opera singers becoming train drivers and church wardens who had narrowly missed being hit by bombs were the sexy photographs that Helena Parole had approved for use. The scantily clothed chorus girls were already being nicknamed ‘Dante’s Infernettes’, and had prompted outraged calls to the Public Morality Council. This august body already had its in-trays full, thanks to the problem of ‘undesirable women’ approaching servicemen in the West End, and had formally asked the Provost Marshal for military police to help close London’s illegal gambling and drinking dens. Without the Lord Chamberlain to back them, the council could only acknowledge complaints against the theatre and suggest that it was carrying out investigations into the matter of public indecency.

  Harry excitedly led Helena up the central staircase and down through the upper circle. ‘Look over there,’ he cried, pointing up into the gantry that ran along the right side of the stage. ‘One of the profile spots came loose and fell onto the stage, missed Eve by inches. Luckily she’d just been called back by Ben Woolf.’

  ‘What was he doing up onstage?’

  ‘I don’t know, giving her some kind of legal advice, I think. The stagehands saw someone up on the rear gantry, moving about by the lights. He’s trapped against that far wall.’ A dark shape could be discerned caught in the crossbeams of torches.

  ‘He’s making weird noises,’ said Harry. ‘Nobody’s had the nerve to go and challenge him because the walkspace is very narrow, and the rails are low.’

  ‘Can’t you get more light on him?’ asked John May, beckoning to Biddle.

  ‘We can put the house lights up and all the backstage ones, but it’ll take a few minutes. Half the areas near the top of the house will still be in darkness,’ warned Biddle.

  ‘All right, let me think. Sidney, how’s your foot?’

  ‘I can be pretty sharp on it if I have to be.’

  ‘Then you can give me a hand. Get Crowhurst off the stage door. You go up to the balcony.’

  Sidney hobbled forward as the others approached the figure behind the torchlights.

  ‘I know who it is,’ Harry announced as they stepped onto the gantry. ‘It’s that rude critic who wrote about us being cursed and snored through the second half on opening night. He trod on my foot at the intermission, rushing to get to the bar, without so much as a by your leave.’

  ‘Gilbert Riley?’ asked Helena Parole. ‘Are you sure? What’s he doing up here? Mr Riley, is that you?’

  ‘Dear lady,’ called a wavering voice. ‘I was making some notes, but I’m stuck. My trousers are caught on something.’ His arrogant tone had vanished. As more torch beams pinpointed him, they could see the goateed critic splayed above the stage like a Savile Row–suited barrage balloon.

  ‘Sidney, see if you can get him free,’ directed May.

  ‘Maybe we should just leave him there.’

  ‘Don’t tempt me. What are you doing here, Mr Riley? You know it’s off-limits.’

  ‘That’s the problem,’ whined Riley. ‘No one will talk to me about what’s going on. I’m trying to do a feature and no one will tell me the truth. I’m doing your show a favour, bringing it the oxygen of publicity. The least anyone could do is return my calls.’

  ‘So you thought you’d break in and nose around.’

  ‘It’s hardly breaking in. I know the boys on the stage door.’

  ‘You mean you bribed them. And you nearly killed someone.’

  The critic raised his hands in a gesture of horror. ‘I leaned on one of the lights to get a better view and it came loose. Everything is held together with clips and ropes up here.’

  ‘You’re not supposed to be here at all, Riley,’ said Biddle, reaching over and tugging at his trousers. ‘There you go.’ There was a tearing sound, and the critic fell forward with a yelp. The officers helped him back onto the balcony.

  ‘For this I thank you, dear fellow,’ said Riley shakily. He dusted down the knees of his trousers, regaining his composure. ‘It was ghastly. There was someone else back there with me, breathing heavily through his nose. It sounded like he was wearing a gas mask. I could hear him moving around, jumping between the gantries. He stopped right in front of me, watching, then moved away.’

  ‘You didn’t get a good look at him?’ asked May.

  ‘Only enough to see that he was barely human, hulking and hunched over, a giant dwarf or some kind of large animal, great big teeth. I’m sure he meant to do me harm.’

  ‘He’s not alone there,’ muttered Parole. ‘And I’m not sure what you mean by a giant dwarf.’

  ‘I think you should go down to the stalls and apologize to the cast for nearly wiping out the star of the show,’ Biddle told him. ‘Then we’ll go and write up your report while Mr May decides what to charge you with.’

  ‘Charge me?’ Riley looked shocked.

  ‘Unlawful entry and trespass,’ agreed May, taking his cue from Biddle, ‘circumstances of actus reus, some broken by-laws because this is a public building, several causation and situational offences, and anything else the lads can think of, the precedent of the Crown v. Woolmington nineteen thirty-five springs to mind. Then Miss Noriac will probably want to press charges for invasion of privacy and attempted assault, and sue you and your paper, assuming you were acting under its auspices, for causing her undue distress.’

  ‘Please, no! Think of the publicity!’ Riley wheezed.

  ‘I imagine her attitude could be mitigated by the level of contrition you show her.’

  ‘And you might want to pin yourself up, seeing as your arse is hanging out of your trousers and there are ladies below,’ added Biddle, leading the horrified critic downstairs. Parole and May followed at a polite distance.

  ‘Are you really going to press all those charges?’ asked Helena as they descended to the stalls.

  ‘No, I was talking absolute rubbish. So, another false alarm.’

  ‘It’s wearing down my cast. They’re seeing things in every dark corner. We’re all spooked, but of course nobody wants the show to close. I think I preferred it when there was just a murderer loose. Now all they talk about is this—creature.’

  ‘You shouldn’t believe everything you read in the papers,’ said May.

  ‘No, other people have seen things. Corinne says she glimpsed it again in the upper circle. Says it was running on its hands like a monkey. Madeline, my ASM, was understage and heard something hooting, or crying, near the orchestra. She reckons it sounded like an animal in pain. Your Betty still hasn’t got over her nasty turn.’

  That’s a point, thought May. We were supposed to see each other at the weekend. He suddenly realized that he had been too preoccupied by the investigation to call her.

  ‘They can’t all be imagining things,’ Helena continued, ‘but what on earth could it be? It’s not like anybody’s keeping a noisy pet tucked away backstage. Stan Lowe was the only one in last night, and said he was just about to lock up when he saw the shadow of something swinging back and forth on the underside of the dress circle. I know they’re very artistic people but this is a kind of collective madness. It’s a dilemma: do we stay open for business and hope to catch this thing, or close and never discover the truth? Have you heard anything from the council?’

  ‘Still no word from Westminster on the safety ruling,’ said May, ‘and the Lord Chamberlain’s office is suspiciously silent, so I think it’s safe to assume that Renalda nobbled them.’

  Helena stopped as they reached the landing. ‘I hear your partner accused Andreas of sabotaging his own production, and that he’s been chucked off the case.’ She smiled ominously at him. ‘Don’t look so surprised. Everyone talks around here. You should hear some of the rumours. I even heard that he was having an affair with poor Elspeth, but I know that’s not true.’

  ‘Why are you so sure?’

  ‘Darling, she’s a professional virgin. Married to the theatre. It takes some people like that. They get like nuns, very voc
ational.’

  ‘What else are your cast discussing in their dressing rooms?’

  ‘They’re saying the Phantom will attack again tomorrow night, during the show. It’s a gala charity benefit and we have a lot of celebrities attending, including Vera Lynn, half of the Crazy Gang and Mr Claude Rains, if you please, so if the Phantom does appear perhaps the two of them can have it out on one of the electroliers.’

  ‘You don’t sound very worried.’

  ‘At this point, Eurydice would have to explode into flames and burn to death in front of a thousand people before anything could surprise me. Although of course poor old Valerie did get her brains knocked out in front of a full house.’ Helena examined the end of her cigarette. ‘And to think she was always so worried about being upstaged.’

  55

  ENGLISH CRUELTY

  The front door was locked and barred with planks.

  For added emphasis, a DO NOT ENTER poster had been glued across it. This was how May found the Peculiar Crimes Unit when he returned to it in the afternoon. He walked round to the Bow Street duty desk, where Sergeant Carfax could barely suppress the smile on his face.

  ‘Ain’t you heard?’ he asked May. ‘Davenport’s closed you lot down, pending an official inquiry. You and your weedy book-reading chum are for the high jump, mate.’

  May was shocked, but wasn’t going to let Carfax see how upset he was.

  ‘Then I’ll set up a base at the theatre,’ he told the sergeant. ‘If Mr Davenport has anything to say to me, he can do it to my face.’ There was a typewriter in the company office at the Palace, and a telephone. That was all he needed. With Bryant gone and Forthright’s position hingeing on her undecided marriage, he was now in charge, and determined to make sure that everyone knew it.

  At five P.M. the Westminster Council ruling came in. The envelope arrived by messenger and was taken to Andreas Renalda’s office. The tycoon summoned May, who was in the process of taking up residence on the ground floor. May found Renalda sprawled on his leather couch, resting the steel calipers that caused him so much pain.