Full Dark House

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘We have been granted a stay of execution,’ he said, indicating that May should pour whisky into a pair of glasses. ‘You will join me? “The council was not presented with any proof that these deaths could have been avoided by better safety regulations within the theatre.” I told you. Their inspectors found only minor infringements. We must open the second pass door to comply with fire regulations, then we get a clean bill of health. The exact word they use to describe recent events is “unfortunate”. So we go on, and unless you can come up with any positive evidence for nightly turning away over one and a half thousand people, your job here is over.’

  ‘I’ll still be close by,’ threatened May.

  ‘Your partner behaved in an irresponsible manner.’

  ‘Mr Bryant voluntarily tendered his resignation. Our director endorsed his decision for a transfer, and has closed down the unit. He’ll probably take me off the case as soon as he can find me.’

  ‘One would hope to discover friends in adversity, Mr May, but I suspect this makes us enemies.’ Renalda smiled knowingly. ‘Your people are famous for supporting each other against the rest of us, even when you’re not in agreement.’

  ‘I have no quarrel with you. I was trained to believe that the case is always greater than the officer.’

  ‘Well, that is very diplomatic of you, but I come from a long line of grudge-bearers. I know how the world works. Business decisions are not made for the good of the people, but for the sake of profit, loyalty and expedience. Why do you think I am financing this production? You think I am honouring my wife, paying a debt to my Muses, giving something back to the world of theatre?’

  ‘I imagine your motives are the same as anyone’s in business.’

  ‘I go where I see the money going next. There’s no future in manufacturing during peacetime. Once we have rebuilt the cities, people will have more time on their hands. They’ll have money to spend.’

  ‘They’re turning the theatres into boxing rings, Mr Renalda.’

  ‘Only while the war lasts.’ He knocked back the rest of his whisky. ‘Afterwards they will pay fortunes to see spectacle. There will be many more young people. We are killing off the older generation. Shows like this are just the start. What humanity wants most is crude sensation.’

  ‘Really? I thought what humanity wanted most was dignity.’

  ‘He was a shrewd man,’ May told his biographer decades later. ‘But someone else beat him to his big idea. Two years after Orpheus, a play called Oklahoma! opened, spawning over thirty thousand different productions. It is one of the highest-earning entertainments of all time. Then popular television programmes arrived. Renalda hailed from a shipbuilding family, but he missed the boat. It’s not enough to have vision, you need foresight. I often wonder what happened to him and his dream of entertaining the masses. He was in it for money, not pleasure. That was why success eluded him.’

  ‘Let’s get back to the murders,’ said the biographer.

  ‘Tell me something.’ May turned to the tycoon, watching as Renalda’s broad hands absently massaged the steel pins in his knees. ‘Where did we go wrong?’

  The magnate sipped his whisky. Drinking dulled the pain of his strapped-up legs. ‘By looking for someone foreign,’ he said at last. ‘I suppose it’s only natural during a time of war. You don’t see it, do you? The English cruelty. That is what your crimes stink of. The culprit is English. You are a cold race. You don’t beat your animals, you’re subtler, less human. This killer does not think of others, he cares only about himself. You could not find him because you, too, are English.’

  ‘It seems to me that you care only about your company, and the City’s faith in it.’

  ‘Faith is a fragile thing these days. A good businessman takes nothing personally. It is unfortunate that lives have been lost. This whole war is unfortunate.’

  ‘Thank you for the advice,’ said May, buttoning his coat. ‘I’ll see you this evening at the theatre, and I will bring the violence to an end. The unit may have been shut down, but it will not stop operating until justice has been served.’

  He only wished he was as confident as he sounded.

  He left Renalda’s office and walked into the dimly lit corridor, where his eye was caught by the ornate gilt-framed wall mirror that stood there. The glass was cracked, and something had been scrawled across it with a blood-red stick of greasepaint. The letters were six inches high: GET OUT OF OUR HOUSE.

  I’ll get out, thought May grimly, but I’m taking you with me.

  ‘I have a terrible feeling about tonight. He should be here,’ said May fretfully. ‘It doesn’t seem right without him.’

  ‘I understand how you feel, John, but you have to give him some breathing space.’ Forthright hooked back the dusty brown drapery and studied the edge of the stage. ‘They’re running late again. The curtain should have gone up five minutes ago.’

  ‘We’re starting it late because the trains are disrupted again,’ said Harry, listening for the backstage sounds that told him things were running to schedule. ‘There’s hardly any service from the east. A church steeple fell on the line outside Fenchurch Street. They reckon Winchester’s going to cop it next, after Southampton. Trouble is, it’s all getting back to Hitler.’

  ‘What is?’ asked Forthright.

  ‘The air-raid damage reports. Franco gets them in code from the Spanish ambassador in Whitehall. That’s what Lord Haw Haw reckons.’

  ‘Things have come to a pretty pass if you’re believing him,’ said Forthright indignantly.

  ‘There’s a lot of coughing and sneezing in the audience this evening. My mum says it’s because everyone stands around outside at night watching the planes circling. Right, there goes the signal.’ Harry darted off through the narrow corridor leading to the left wing just as applause broke out across the auditorium. The conductor was taking his place at the podium.

  ‘Where’s Biddle?’ May checked the area behind him. ‘I thought I told him to keep in the backstage area. I have a suspicion he’s rather enjoying his new role.’ May had spread his constables around the theatre, but with tickets changing hands for high prices on the black market, they had been refused seat allocations and were forced to stand conspicuously at the rear of the stalls.

  ‘He wanted to write up his report, so I gave him permission to use the company office. He said he’s expecting some news.’

  May sniffed the air and looked at the sergeant suspiciously. ‘Are you wearing eau de Cologne?’

  ‘Why, yes.’ Forthright blushed. ‘I thought, well, it’s a night out at the theatre.’

  ‘You’re not worried about Davenport closing us down, then?’

  ‘I have confidence in you, Mr May.’ Her hand squeezed his shoulder. ‘You’ll see us through.’

  ‘I wish I had your faith.’

  ‘Oh, it comes from being around Arthur. It’ll rub off on you, don’t worry.’

  The orchestra launched itself into an allegro version of Offenbach’s overture, and May was forced to raise his voice. ‘I don’t know which area to watch first,’ he confessed. ‘A murderer operating in an area the size of a football pitch, and we can’t find a damned thing.’

  ‘More like eight football pitches, with all the other levels,’ said Forthright. ‘If someone wanted to stay hidden, what chance would you have of finding them?’

  ‘Everyone backstage is signed for. It would have to be someone in the audience.’ The music thundered to a crescendo. ‘Or someone we haven’t thought of,’ mused May.

  ‘I missed that,’ shouted Forthright.

  ‘Forget it.’ He realized he was following the same mental patterns as Arthur Bryant. He’d been about to wonder if it could be someone they had dismissed as dead. But all the victims were accounted for. There was no one else.

  Slowly the realization dawned. ‘Blimey.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘We’ve overlooked something. You’d better come with me.’

  A tidal wave of
applause broke over the theatre as the conductor took his bow. May pushed Forthright back towards the right-hand pass door. ‘I was thinking the other day—suppose she’s not dead.’

  ‘Who?’ asked the sergeant, trying to keep up with him. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Elissa Renalda. I’ve had a chance to go through some of the other clippings, and there’s been a fair amount of speculation since her death. They never properly identified her body. What if she didn’t drown? Suppose she was the gold-digger that Minos had always suspected her to be? She could have married Andreas for his money. Sources agree that Sirius liked her, she managed to wrap him round her little finger. But she lost everything when Minos warned her to get off the island. Imagine. She has to flee before dawn, while her husband is away. She has nothing but the clothes she’s standing in, and maybe her passage on a fishing boat. Minos tells the police she accidentally drowned. He protects her memory for the sake of his brother. Only Andreas believes she was killed. Elissa comes back to England, her home country, and bitterly follows the business exploits of the Renaldas in the newspapers. She waits for an opportunity to exact revenge. She returns to Athens and tracks down Minos, who’s killed in a car crash after a day of heavy drinking. But we don’t know the details of that event.’

  ‘So Minos is killed by Andreas’s wife. For what motive?’ asked Forthright.

  ‘Elissa was in the line of succession, but her “death” cut her out of the will.’

  ‘You realize you’re sounding like Arthur.’

  ‘I know,’ May admitted. ‘Once she was declared dead, she was free but penniless. Mere revenge isn’t enough for the way she’s been treated. She stages an attack on Renalda’s empire, to ensure that his credibility is destroyed for ever. She’ll back off, though, if he gives her a cut. Who is she? She could be anyone. None of us has even seen a decent picture of her. She could be operating here, inside the company.’

  Forthright struggled with this new idea. ‘You think Renalda knows who she is now?’

  ‘I think he was lying the night Arthur accused him.’

  ‘But why wouldn’t he have told the truth?’

  ‘Because . . .’ May clutched at the air, trying to make sense of his idea, ‘he would have been forced to admit that he was still married. If Elissa is alive, she’s still an heir, and the case would have to go to court.’

  They had reached the musty company office, where Sidney Biddle was working.

  ‘Sidney, I need you to check whether there was another vehicle involved in the crash that killed Minos Renalda. If there was, find out whatever you can about who was driving. Bryant left all the relevant phone numbers in his work folder. I don’t care who you have to disturb to do it.’

  Biddle’s smile broadened at the thought of upsetting people in the name of the law. ‘Right away, sir,’ he cried, only just resisting the temptation to salute.

  Andreas Renalda was watching the performance from the sealed-off royal box. The divider between the two sections had been restored. In one half sat a group of noisily enthusiastic businessmen. On the other side of the brown partition, the millionaire sat in the shadows, absently chewing his thumb. When the door opened a crack it threw a shaft of light across his pale, angry face. ‘You cannot possibly wish to see me now,’ he hissed at May. ‘The American investors are here. It is the time of Orpheus’s big duet. We have the Times critic sitting in the front row.’

  ‘Fine,’ whispered May. ‘I’ll come in and tell you why I think your wife is in this theatre. Then you can try to convince me that you’re not an accessory to murder.’

  Even in the dim light of the box, he could see Renalda blanch. ‘Help me up, damn it,’ he hissed. May opened the door wider, ushering him out into the corridor. For the first time since they had met, Renalda looked unsure of himself. May wondered if he was deciding whether to lie again.

  ‘Can we talk where your clients can’t hear us?’ May asked as he pulled the box door shut behind them.

  ‘Here, this is the eviction staircase, nobody uses it any more.’ Renalda unlocked a door on their right and led the way onto a concrete landing faced by damp-tainted ochre walls. ‘What do you need to know about Elissa?’

  ‘You could start by telling me how long you’ve known she’s alive.’

  The millionaire rubbed at his broad forehead, as if afflicted by a migraine. ‘You’re saying that—’

  ‘Any delay now risks everything you’ve worked for.’

  Renalda sighed heavily. ‘She contacted me about eighteen months ago. A phone call out of the blue. At first I did not believe her.’

  ‘But you arranged to see her.’

  ‘We met for a drink at the Savoy. She told me that she had been ordered off the island by my brother. Minos had acted in good faith. It is the way of our family, to protect one another. She was very beautiful, very young, and I was blind, a cripple bewitched by a girl who tricked me into marriage. Minos scared her away for my sake. The police found the body of a drowned swimmer a month later, and after I spoke to them, they conveniently decided that it was my wife’s. It suited us for her to appear dead. No loss of face, you understand.

  ‘But she was alive. Elissa timed our meeting well. I was about to sign the deal with the theatre. She asked me to sign half of my holdings in Three Hundred International over to her. If I did not agree to do so, she said she would go to the press, tell everyone that she was still legally my wife, that I had conspired to have her killed and that she had survived the attempt. Me, who had only ever loved her! I could not allow an ugly court case, just when I was fighting to make a name for myself in London. I was not prepared to risk losing the confidence of our shareholders. But I would not sign over my father’s empire. We drank, and I let her talk until she talked too much. She said she had heard about Minos’s death.’

  ‘She caused his accident, didn’t she?’

  ‘She was in the other car, the one that ran him off the road. I saw in her eyes that I had won. She had only one card to play, you see. Any accusation from her would bring a far more serious accusation from me. How the press would have loved that! We had reached an impasse.’

  ‘So she followed you here, and the trouble began. Do you know where she is now?’

  ‘Of course. She is here all the time, where I can keep an eye on her at every single performance.’

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘Who do you think? That girl in the chorus, the one you spent the night with.’

  May’s jaw fell open. ‘Betty Trammel?’

  ‘Elissa. Elissabetta. Betty. You see? She is a little older and more experienced than she looks. What could I do, tell Helena not to hire her because she was my wife?’

  ‘She’s not only your wife, she’s a murderess,’ said May, horrified that he could have been such a poor judge of character.

  ‘She followed Minos in a state of frustration and anger, and ran him off the road. She did not mean to kill him. And I don’t think she’s harmed anyone in this theatre.’ Renalda gave a sour smile. ‘Although she’s broken a few hearts. I imagine she found it exciting to seduce a boy who could have her arrested.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘Backstage, I suppose, waiting to go on. She’s a natural performer, as I’m sure you have discovered.’

  Andreas Renalda pressed his hands against the sides of his calipers to steady himself. ‘God spare me from the designs of angry women.’

  56

  A DEATH FORETOLD

  If John was now thinking like Arthur, the reverse was also true.

  Bryant was pursuing a more logical line of enquiry. Forget mythology, he told himself. Don’t be misled by the intrigues of the Renalda family. The feud is a red herring. Start afresh, follow a new path. How, he asked himself, would a sensible, methodical man like John May interpret the facts?

  After his humiliating experience at Renalda’s house, the young detective had carefully rethought his strategy. Seated on his favourite bench by the river, as clo
se as he could get to the memory of his fiancée, armed with the blue crystal fountain pen that Detective Sergeant Forthright had given him on his twenty-second birthday, he mapped out the personal details of the Palace’s victims.

  Immediately, one name separated itself from the others. One of the two key factors, he felt sure, was Jan Petrovic. Phyllis, her housemate, had told May that Petrovic wanted to leave the show because she wasn’t up to the part. Two days later she had gone missing.

  The other key was the fact that, however much you allowed for coincidence or fate, the deaths were patterned exactly on Renalda’s family mythology. It followed that the murderer not only knew about his past, but was attempting to shift the focus of blame onto him. But why? To take revenge on him for some perceived slight? Possibly. Surely it was more likely to have been arranged out of convenience? The killer was going to commit acts of violence whatever happened, and it made sense to deflect suspicion by implicating an innocent man.

  Bryant raised his head and looked across the sluggish brown river, out towards the open sea, the breeze lifting his fringe from his eyes. Two further possibilities presented themselves. Either the person he was looking for had read about Renalda’s background—according to the tycoon, it wouldn’t have been difficult—or Renalda himself had provided the information. Which meant that it was someone he trusted, somebody close to him in the production.

  Petrovic’s flatmate said she had lied her way into the job, and was unable to handle it. Suppose she had used the murders as a way of disappearing? She fitted Renalda’s mythological beliefs perfectly—almost any chorus girl would have done so—and it was easy to fake her own abduction. But in her haste she had made a mistake, failing to allow her ‘abductor’ any method of entering the flat. The doors had been shut from the inside, and the neighbours had seen only Petrovic herself entering and leaving the house.

  Bryant gently shook ink into the nib of the pen, and drew a series of connecting lines on his pad. Petrovic had wanted to break her contract. Her fellow performers at the Palace were mysteriously disappearing, so she used it as a chance to vanish, to set herself free from a contract she didn’t feel capable of honouring. She couldn’t provide a body, of course, just a few tiny drops of blood, and a smear of crimson nail polish when they didn’t look enough. The rest was easy. When someone had a little money in their pocket and didn’t want to be found, Bryant knew, it was difficult to track them down. With the war on, it seemed that everyone was on the move.