Full Dark House

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘So you decided to close the show.’

  ‘It was my boy, Todd. I called him that after Todd Slaughter, the star of Maria Marten—The Murders in the Red Barn. That was the show his father had been in. Todd was growing up fast. He took a shine to Tanya Capistrania, watching her from the wings while she practised. I thought he might try to do something cruel, something bad. I thought, history’s going to repeat itself if I don’t do something, he’ll become like his father, and I won’t be able to control him. He’s too big for me now. He’s seventeen. He’s already started to slip out during the air-raid warnings, moving under cover of the dark, while everyone’s off the streets. I didn’t want to see Tanya raped and left pregnant with some awful— I thought, if she dies, there’ll be a scandal. They’ll shut the place down and I’ll have to go. I’ll be forced out. It was the only way I’d ever be able to leave.

  ‘No one liked her, no one was close. I didn’t want her to suffer, so I poisoned her. I thought it would just put her to sleep. The hemlock was the easiest thing to get hold of. It grows on the bomb sites, you see. I put it in a sandwich and gave it to her. I thought she’d be able to tell if there was something funny about the flavour, so I got quail, something she’d never eaten before. She trusted me. Everyone trusts me. The hemlock made her fall down, but she wouldn’t die. Todd saw she was sick and got very angry. He tried to pull her out of the lift, and, God forgive me, in my panic I pressed the call button.

  ‘He went crazy when he saw what the lift did to her. He threw the severed parts out of the window in a rage. He wanted me to be caught. They rolled off the canopy and landed somewhere below. When I went to look for them they were gone. Tanya’s body was discovered, and I thought the show would be shut down at once. But no, Mr Renalda kept it going. I’d met Mr Renalda at the start of rehearsals, and instantly disliked him. I read about his family in the papers, all that stuff about him being raised to believe in Greek myths, and I thought, this is perfect.

  ‘A theatrical mind, you see. Plot mechanics. I see them every day of my life. Plots and puzzles and murder mysteries. Faking the way things look, it was second nature to me. I thought, I’ll just keep going until they close us down and someone puts the blame on him. Todd had helped me once, so I got him to help me again. I’m his world, Arthur, he’d do anything for me. I told him to watch certain people and to look for opportunities, things he could do that would make everyone get out of our house.

  ‘I made him wear gloves, the same gloves his father had worn on the stage in his role as a murderer. He knows the theatre better than anyone. He cut through the cable holding the globe, and he pushed the boy over the balcony, and he jammed the stage revolve so that Valerie Marchmont died. I knew if he acted during the raids, no outsiders could come into the theatre and discover him. But whatever he did, it seemed that everyone just became more determined to stay. The Blitz mentality, it’s infected everything.’

  ‘It was you who locked me in the archive room,’ exclaimed Bryant. ‘Why, because you wanted to keep me away from the site of Valerie Marchmont’s murder?’

  ‘No, I was just really annoyed with you.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I thought I was leaving such an obvious pattern, using symbols of the Muses. You were supposed to go and arrest Mr Renalda. The show couldn’t continue without him. But you made it so much more complicated. He slipped out of your hands, the show went on, and I was still stuck here, with Todd upstairs, threatening to expose us, becoming more disturbed with every passing hour.’ She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her cardigan. ‘Now you’ll have to take me out of here, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Bryant admitted, ‘but you’ll be swapping one claustrophobic building for another, I’m afraid.’ He looked at his watch. Half past eight. Biddle was supposed to have brought May here by now.

  ‘Where is Todd?’ he asked. ‘What’s planned for tonight?’

  ‘He’s under the stage right now,’ said Wynter. ‘You may already be too late.’

  ‘Bryant! You’re back! So Biddle wasn’t pulling a fast one!’ May rushed forward across the foyer, followed by Sidney. He clapped his partner on the shoulder, then looked at Elspeth Wynter and saw that she had been crying. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Come with me,’ said Bryant. ‘There’s not a moment to lose. Sidney, whatever you do, don’t let Miss Wynter out of your sight.’

  May fell into step as they headed off along the corridor. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Do you have a torch?’

  ‘Yes, I always carry my Valiant.’

  ‘Good,’ said Bryant, pulling his scarf tighter. ‘Where we’re going, we’ll need it.’

  58

  LIVING LEGEND

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Janice Longbright, trying to catch her breath. An absurdly long McDonald’s truck had nearly run them down on the Strand. ‘Where are we heading?’

  ‘There’s not a moment to lose,’ May warned. Longbright strode beside him as they raced off along the pavement. May was forced to push his way through a slow-moving crowd of backpacked tourists, and for a moment the detective sergeant was worried that she would lose him.

  ‘What have you got there?’ She pointed at the bulky plastic Sony bag slung over May’s shoulder.

  ‘Something I thought we might need. Keep up with me, the sun’s nearly set,’ May called back. Lorries and vans chugged sluggishly onto the bridge, their exhaust fumes obscuring the kerbs with grey waste. Longbright caught up with her former boss as he waited for the pedestrian signal to change.

  She pushed her hair out of her eyes, turning to face the stale breeze from the river. ‘Tell me what happened. Did you have any luck with the dentist?’

  ‘He’s in Sydney, Australia. I woke him in the middle of the night. Arthur had an appointment with him just before he left. He’d cracked the top plate of his false teeth and wanted them replaced. The dentist didn’t have time to cast new moulds before he left, and typically Arthur had lost the old mould he was supposed to keep safely stored away for just such an event, so he had to make do with a pair that didn’t fit. They were far too big.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Longbright. ‘Why does it matter how big his teeth were?’

  ‘According to my next-door neighbour, the intruder who she thought was trying to break into my apartment had beady eyes and abnormally large teeth. Do you know anyone with beadier eyes than Arthur? Alma Sorrowbridge said that someone had been in Arthur’s room, but the front-door lock hadn’t been forced. There are few things more personal than your dental records. Who else would take them?’

  ‘Wait a minute. You’re telling me Arthur’s alive?’ shouted Longbright.

  ‘Oh, he’s alive all right, but I think he’s suffering from amnesia. Over sixty years ago, Elspeth Wynter’s deranged son climbed out of the well at the Palace via its drainage tunnel. Bryant recently tracked him down to the Wetherby clinic. He disturbed a forgotten history, even added a footnote to his memoir before changing his mind and hiding it. Todd followed him back to the unit with the intention of attacking him.

  ‘I think Todd took some kind of explosive device along, but it went off at the wrong time, and Todd was killed. He was only five years younger than Bryant. We found the remains of Todd’s body, and Bryant’s old teeth. Bryant had been placed at the site, and we weren’t looking for anyone else. I think he survived, but he’s confused, or concussed or something. He went home, but didn’t stay. He came to me, but couldn’t get in. I’ve been stalked by Arthur, not Todd. And if there’s anywhere in the world that he does still remember, it’s here, on Waterloo Bridge at sunset, where he’s walked every night for most of his life.’ He pointed across the dual carriageway. A blood-red sun shimmered through exhaust fumes behind the Houses of Parliament. ‘You take one side, I’ll take the other.’

  It was May who saw him first.

  Bryant was standing at the spot where his fiancée had died, peering over the edge of the balustrade into the opalescent b
rown water. He was wearing his favourite gaberdine coat, several filthy scarves and a torn hat. He looked—and, as May got closer, smelled—like a very tired tramp.

  ‘Arthur, it’s you. It’s really you. I thought you were dead.’

  May grabbed his arm and twirled him round for a better look. Bryant had a raw-looking gash on his head which he had tried to bandage with an old tie. He was sporting a set of ridiculous ill-fitting teeth that looked as though they had been made for someone with a much bigger head.

  ‘Look at me.’ May grabbed his empty face and tilted it up. ‘It’s me, John May. You’re here on the bridge, on Waterloo Bridge where we always go, where Nathalie died. You’re Arthur Bryant of the Peculiar Crimes Unit and you’re my best friend. Look at me.’ He held Bryant’s face steady in his strong hands, but the old detective’s eyes remained impassive.

  ‘For God’s sake, Arthur,’ May shouted, ‘you’d remember Edna bloody Wagstaff well enough if she was still alive. Well, take a look at this.’ He dumped the carrier bag on the pavement and pulled the stuffed cat from it. Time had not been kind to the Abyssinian. Most of its fur had been eaten away with mange, its remaining eye had fallen out and one of its back legs was missing.

  ‘You remember Rothschild?’ May thrust the deformed cat carcass in his partner’s face. ‘It was her familiar. Squadron Leader Smethwick used to send messages through it. Edna left it to Maggie Armitage in her will.’

  It was the only thing he had been able to lay his hands on that Bryant might recognize. Rothschild had sat on his desk like a moulting familiar for over twenty years. Slowly, very slowly, the light of recognition began to return to the elderly detective’s eyes. Finally, he opened his dry, cracked lips.

  ‘John, what are you doing here?’

  ‘It lives! It speaks!’ He turned excitedly to Longbright, who had reached them. ‘Look who this is—Janice is here!’

  ‘Why are you talking to me as if I’m a child?’ Bryant complained. ‘Is there something wrong with you? Hello, Janice. Have you got anything to eat?’

  Then he fainted.

  May caught him and sat him against the balustrade while Longbright rang for an ambulance.

  59

  THE CRUELTY OF THE MOON

  ‘Sergeant Forthright has got your landlady stationed across the stairs,’ May explained.

  ‘What on earth for?’

  ‘She thought we might need reinforcements. We’ve only got Crowhurst and Atherton in the auditorium.’

  ‘The White Witch of Camden gave me a warning about tonight,’ Bryant cautioned. ‘The killer can’t go back to his lair because I took the key to his room out of the tortoise box.’

  ‘I think it’s this one.’ May pointed out the brown door that led to the first of the understage areas. ‘What’s been going on?’

  ‘Well, it struck me that if you removed Jan Petrovic from the victim list, all of the deaths took place in the theatre. Why? I asked myself, knowing there could only be one answer. They happened here because the murderer hardly ever leaves the building. Elspeth Wynter has been trying to close down the show because she needs to be free of this house. But she’s become agoraphobic. I remember her sweating in the restaurant when we went out to lunch. She can’t bear to be trapped in here any longer, but on that day she couldn’t wait to get back. Hiding her boy all these years was easier than hiding her own feelings, but she managed that as well. Hardly surprising, seeing as she’s spent her life in the theatre watching people fake emotions. In a way, she’s more talented than any of them.’

  Bryant pulled the door shut behind them and flicked on his torch. Ahead lay a maze of bare wooden walls. Makeshift timber railings prevented them from falling to the lower levels.

  ‘She couldn’t have killed anyone,’ May pointed out. ‘You only have to look at her, she’s tiny.’

  ‘She staged the murders for her son to carry out. He’s getting too big for her to take care of any longer, creeping around the theatre frightening the ladies in their dressing rooms. He’s down here somewhere. Elspeth can never have a life, never be close to anyone, never ever leave so long as a production continues. She needs the show to close so she can finally escape. And now it’s all too late.’

  He led the way along the wooden bridge that ran round the central dark square. ‘We’re nearly under the orchestra. Look up.’ Above them was the dust-caked wire mesh that indicated the start of the orchestra pit.

  ‘So you were right, in a way. It was about the assassination of theatre gods—just not the ones you thought. Mind your head.’ The corridor was lower now. They passed several rusted iron-rung ladders leading to the star traps, segmented doors through which an actor could be catapulted onto the stage under cover of smoke. At the downstage centre point stood the grave trap. Light from the spots above the dancers shone down through the grille.

  ‘I don’t like this, Arthur. He could be hiding anywhere.’

  Bryant pulled something metallic from his pocket. The click of a ratchet sounded.

  ‘Are you armed?’ asked May.

  ‘It’s a service revolver that belonged to my brother.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had a brother. Do you know how to use it?’

  ‘The principle’s not hard to grasp. Trigger here, bullets come out of the end. It’s my understanding that he kept it loaded. I don’t think the boy is on this level.’ Bryant peered over the side of the rickety balustrade and shone his torch into the darkness below. ‘We’re going to have to go further down.’

  ‘I don’t like this at all,’ May complained, feeling for the steps ahead. From the stage above their heads came the sound of the orchestra launching into the show’s grand finale set piece, the cancan.

  The stamping of the dancers dislodged showers of dirt. Sawdust sifted past their faces. Bryant pulled out a handkerchief and discreetly coughed into it.

  ‘Are you sure he’s down here?’ May shifted uncomfortably. He was starting to feel shut in.

  ‘Listen.’ They stopped as they reached the middle of the three floors constructed beneath the theatre. The music was distorted by the gurgling steam pipes that ran all around them. Bryant shone his torch beam over the walls. The shadows of the stage props, a dozen twisted demon heads, stretched and fell away. The giant eyes of Cerberus, the watchdog of Hell, gleamed wetly at them from a corner. Spiders and mice scuttled from the light. Ahead, just out of the beam, something moved.

  ‘I think that’s him.’ Bryant’s eyes widened. ‘Stone the crows.’

  The boy caught in the torchlight seemed more frightened than angry. His pale, fleshy face was cicatrized with the marks of a badly healed infection, the skin pulled taut and shiny across his skull, his right eye milky with cataracts. His chin was sunk into the bulky mass of his chest, so that he appeared to have no neck at all. Having never left the confines of the theatre, he had the typical deficiencies of a human deprived of sunlight and nutrition. His bones were twisted with the effects of rickets.

  ‘The light’s hurting his eyes, keep the torch trained on him,’ Bryant called over his shoulder as they advanced.

  ‘Go away from me. I know she sent you,’ cried Todd suddenly, throwing his hands across his eyes and edging from the circle of brilliance cast by May’s torch. The voice was as dry and dead as the air in the theatre, no louder than the rasp of a scrim sliding in its oiled wooden groove, and yet its tone was clear and cultured. He had spent his life listening to actors’ declamations.

  ‘Todd, we don’t mean you any harm, we want to help you, but you’ll have to come with us.’ Bryant took a step closer.

  ‘She intends to leave me here, all alone here.’ The boy backed away with his arms still raised.

  ‘No, she doesn’t, your mother is going to take you with her,’ Bryant promised.

  ‘I’ve seen you, both of you. I did it for her, so we can get out. But I know she’s not taking me.’

  ‘Where did he get this idea from?’ whispered May.

  ‘I hear everything through
the grilles and traps. I heard her telling you.’ Todd thrust an accusing finger. ‘You, the short one.’

  ‘I’m not short,’ said Bryant indignantly.

  Todd suddenly broke free from the light and dropped down the wooden staircase leading to the lowest level of the theatre. The detectives were forced to move forward over the narrow footbridge, one behind the other. Far above them, thirty dancers bared their thighs and hammered out the steps of the cancan.

  Beneath the three great turbine engines, the steam pipes and oiled cables that led to the flies, Todd darted along the open corridors, loping from side to side like an ape, dislodging props and items of clothing that hung along the walls, a half-wild creature at home in a penumbral world of brick and iron.

  ‘Keep away from me.’ They heard him before May could shift the torchlight onto his face. He was on the far side of the understage. The ground beneath the detectives’ feet had turned from planks to stone and earth.

  ‘Keep the torch trained on him, John.’

  May picked out the boy’s twisted features with his beam. Todd released a despairing bellow of pain as the light seared his eyes.

  ‘All right, wait.’ May moved the circle of light lower, over the boy’s chest, until he had grown calmer.

  ‘I didn’t want to hurt her,’ he called back, ‘the dancer, she was so beautiful, but Mother poisoned her. Then she started the lift and it ruined everything. She wanted to shock the outsiders. Poor precious feet, I threw them from the window of the smoking salon, hoping someone would see. But outside was all black, there was no one about.’

  ‘The air raid,’ murmured Bryant. ‘You weren’t to know.’

  ‘My mother says it is too dangerous to go outside, there are bombs falling from the sky. But I’ve been out. I know how to drive a bike.’