Bryant & May 01; Full Dark House b&m-1

by Christopher Fowler

  May’s taxi pulled up outside his flat in a spray of effervescent drizzle. He had recently sold his house and moved to St John’s Wood, to a small apartment with bare cream walls and a marble balcony that very nearly overlooked Regent’s Park, if you stood on a chair. The old house had become hard for him to manage. Now he had a lift and a porter, and invisible neighbours who arrived and left without so much as a shoe squeak or latch click. Here he could sit and dream, and wait for death. Without Bryant, there seemed to be no alternative. It was as if the future had suddenly been walled off. He had always known that his partner would die first. Dreams of loss had disturbed his sleep for more than a decade. Bryant had laughed when he had described his nightly fears. Arthur had always been the stronger one. There was something callous in his nature that protected him from pain. Now the nightmare had sprung to life, and with it a new enemy. He wondered how he would cope alone.

  May paused in the hall and sifted through the pizza deals on the mat. Beneath them he found a folded sheet of plain paper posted from the flat next door.

  Dear Mr May,

  I thought you ought to know that someone has been looking for you.

  —Mrs R. Mamoulian

  May rang the doorbell of number 7, and it was answered by a tiny old lady with unruly grey hair knotted in a bun as big as her head. She beckoned him inside with a wave of her noodle ladle. Around her slippered feet scampered a kickable dog with bug eyes. May inched his way through a blue corridor lined with fragile china animals, into an obstacle course of a sitting room. Every available inch of space was taken up with occasional tables covered in doilies, glass ducks, ceramic fish, glazed birds, antelopes, tiny gilt cups and, above the fireplace, a large porcelain bear in the coils of a snake. He wondered how the dog managed not to smash anything.

  “I wouldn’t have put a note through – we keep ourselves to ourselves,” explained Mrs Mamoulian, “but he was loitering in the corridor with the lights out, and frightened the life out of Beaumont” – the dog yipped at the sound of his name – “so I called my husband. Maurice spoke to him, but the man refused to give a name or explain what he was doing outside your door.”

  “What did he look like?” asked May, carefully unsnagging himself from a china okapi.

  “Creepy, with these awful glaring eyes and huge fangs, like a werewolf.”

  “Oh, really?” May’s assessment of his neighbour expanded to include the option that she might be insane.

  “My eyesight’s not that good but I’m sure he was trying to force open the latch. I wanted to call the police but, well,” she eyed the neat arrangements of china ornaments as if they contained secret mysteries, “you don’t want everyone to know your business, do you?”

  May opened up his flat, leaving his wet bags in the hall, and seated himself in the lounge to make some calls. Ringing the Wetherby clinic, he managed to locate the doctor Bryant had seen the day before he had been blown up, and explained the situation.

  “Of course I remember him, he walked straight through into the private ward without stopping to get permission from our duty officer.” Dr Leigh sounded distracted. He was trying to talk to someone else in his office while fielding the police call. “At first I thought he was one of the patients.”

  That sounds like Arthur, thought May. “Did he tell you what he was looking for?”

  “Yes, eventually. He seemed to be in a great hurry. He wanted to check our files for long-term residents, but he wanted records going back sixty years. I told him we didn’t keep them for such a length of time, and anyway, they were incomplete because we’d had a fire here a few years ago, so he left.”

  “Did he give you the name of the person he was looking for?”

  “You’ll have to hold on.” The receiver was dropped, to be picked up half a minute later. “That was the odd thing. He told me the patient was male, probably suffering from deep trauma, and would have been admitted without a name. I tried to help him but didn’t know where to begin looking. What could I say? Those who enter the clinic as residents usually have a history of treatment. Their cases are heavily documented. Mr Bryant seemed to think that we might have taken in war victims who’d lost their memories, or at least their identification documents. I told him if we had, they’d be deceased by now. I’m afraid he became rather abusive.”

  “Yes, he does that,” May sympathized. “But were you able to help him?”

  “Look, I’m really not sure. We’re very busy here.” Dr Leigh was not prepared to admit that one of their patients had set fire to the ladies’ toilets and was now locked in a cubicle, threatening to swallow his tongue if his demands weren’t met, and as these demands included the reinstatement of the Great Hedge of India and a meeting with the late singer Freddie Mercury to discuss the hidden meanings in his lyrics, they were all in for a long day.

  “He was going around questioning the nurses,” said the doctor impatiently. “Wanted to know when various patients had arrived, how long they were staying, that sort of thing. But I don’t think we were able to help him.”

  “Why not?” asked May.

  “Well, when my staff tried to answer his questions, he ignored them and went off to talk to someone in the day room.”

  “Do you know who?”

  “I have no idea. But he was making notes on some kind of a list.”

  ♦

  Alma Sorrowbridge put down her squeegee and gave him an odd look. She was the only woman in the Battersea street who still washed her front step, and was proud of the fact. “What sort of a list?” she asked.

  “Names of people – patients. Something from the Wetherby clinic. In his room, perhaps.”

  “I’ve disinfected his floor but I left everything where it was,” she said dolefully. “I couldn’t bring myself to throw nothing away. There’s a lot of boxes.”

  “Fine, then that’s where I’ll look,” said May.

  Alma folded her arms across her chest. “There is seventy-two of them.”

  “Good God, where have you put them all?”

  “I’m an old woman, Mr May, I got no strength left to start moving stuff about. They’re where he kept them, in the basement. Besides, I been Mr Bryant’s landlady on and off since the war. I’m not going to start touching his things now, just ‘cos he’s with God.”

  “Would it be all right if I had a quick look through?” asked May.

  “I suppose so,” Alma sniffed, “but remember,” she raised a fat finger at the ceiling, “he can still see you.”

  “He always did like watching me work. Take me to the boxes.”

  May spent several fruitless hours wading through the files and papers in the cartons, but they were arranged according to the workings of Bryant’s disordered mind. The human male possesses a powerful urge to collect things; Bryant had collected books, papers and magazines that revealed a lifetime of idiosyncratic behaviour. As May rummaged through the photographs of forgotten faces, the absurd news clippings, the abstruse monographs of disbarred lawyers, maverick scientists and mentally unstable professors, he knew he would find little of use. Sixty years of tangled memories; there was simply too much to decipher.

  A papery cloud of moths fluttered out of a carton containing nothing but old razor blades. One box contained several hundred keys, another held only seed packets and raffle tickets.

  May raised himself from his knees and dusted down his trousers. Perhaps Bryant had thrown the list away. His partner had, to his certain knowledge, visited one other place in his final days. The archive room of the Palace Theatre.

  He dug out his mobile and rang ahead for an appointment. It felt good to be doing something, however uncertain. Positive action was the only way to keep his mind from sinking back.

  ∨ Full Dark House ∧

  12

  INTO THE PALACE

  Dr Runcorn had already instructed the Palace not to open its doors to the public that morning. The last thing he wanted was for customers to tramp any remaining evidence through the mage
nta pile of the foyer carpets.

  Theatrical rehearsals were under way for Orpheus in the Underworld. The production was due to open without previews on the coming Saturday night. The unusual step of premiering on a day when the critics had normally gone to the country was deliberate. Nearly all of the first week’s performances were sold out, thanks to shocked stage whispers along Shaftesbury Avenue that the production would not survive for more than a few performances before the Lord Chamberlain closed it down. Nobody knew exactly what had been altered in this radical reworking of Offenbach’s operetta, but the scenery going in depicted all the damnations of Hell, including several freshly invented for the occasion. The carpenters were telling their mates in the public bars that they had never heard such dirty language recited on the London stage, and there were tales of skimpy costumes on the girls that put the Windmill in the shade and left nothing to the imagination.

  Bryant knocked at the theatre’s main entrance. PC Crowhurst nodded to him through a gap in the boarded-over glass, and hastily unlocked the door. The interior of the Palace was mock-Gothic, with a central marble staircase that offered views back on itself like a recurring image from an Escher etching. Its steps and walls were worn pale, scoured by their nightly brush with more than a thousand bodies. Dusty electroliers hung down through the stairwell, their crystals gleaming dully like ropes of low-grade pearls.

  “Hm. Nobody home.” Bryant peered into the frosted-glass lozenge of the box-office booth. “Let’s try the floor above.” He enthusiastically took the stairs in pairs and triples, forcing May to trot beside him. “We’re not going to give the press anything on this one. Davenport wants us to screw the lid down tight because of the victim’s background.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Apparently her parents are Austrian. She trained in Vienna, mother’s dead, father’s Albert Friedrich, the international concert organizer. He’s a pretty well-known chap, worked with C.B. Cochran here in the twenties, but Friedrich has lost a lot of good faith lately over his attitude towards the Jews. He has enough right-wing connections in neutral territories for the FO to keep files on him. He’s also a professional litigant. I imagine he’d be prepared to make trouble for everyone if anything unsavoury leaks out about his daughter. Do you have a girl?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I was wondering if you had a girl. You know, a sweetheart. I don’t, more’s the pity.” Bryant sighed and shook his head with incredulity. “It’s not through lack of trying. I don’t understand it. There’s supposed to be a shortage of decent men. You just don’t seem to meet the right ladies in this job.”

  “I don’t have a girl at the moment,” May admitted. “I was seeing someone, but she’s been posted to Farnham and isn’t keen on writing letters.”

  “Oh well, we anchor in hope, as the sailors say. Our contact here is a woman called Elspeth Wynter, supposed to be a mine of information.” He held up the cloth bag and checked that it was still dry. “I must walk these feet back soon so that Oswald can get started on them.”

  “Which one is Oswald?” asked May.

  “Finch, our pathologist over at West End Central. Keen as mustard but such a stick you can’t help winding him up. At least, I can’t.” He stopped and studied the framed posters arranged along the corridor ahead. “Thank God No, No, Nanette came off. All those performances of ‘Tea for Two’ would turn anyone into a murderer. I don’t understand it; America gets Ginger Rogers and we get stuck with Jessie Matthews. Nobody up here. Let’s try again.”

  Bryant turned on his heel and dodged past the confused May, rattling back down the stairs to pass into the theatre’s centre foyer. “I used to be quite a fan of the theatre,” he called over his shoulder, “but I haven’t been since the war began. They’re all variety halls now, of course. People have lost the taste for anything serious. Who can blame them?” He looked about and sniffed the air. “Theatres have a particular smell, don’t you find? Mothballs and Jeyes fluid. It’s so gloomy in here with the windows boarded up and all this cold marble, like a morgue. I wonder what D’Oyly Carte would make of the place now.”

  “Wasn’t this where Carte set up his national opera house?” asked May.

  “Oh, it was to be his crowning glory. Nearly one and a half thousand seats spread across four floors, five bars, unrivalled backstage facilities, a modern mechanical marvel with room for more scenery than any other house in London. Poor chap opened it with Sullivan’s Ivanhoe in 1891. The thing ran for a while, but it was a real plodder by all accounts, po-faced, arse-numbing, no good tunes, riddled with self-importance. Audiences wanted the bouncy songs and jokes of The Mikado, not wailing British epics about duty and fortitude. They tried a few more serious operas, then gave up the ghost and turned the place into a variety hall.”

  He rapped on the box-office window with the handle of a furled umbrella he had spotted leaning against the wall. “I say, are you in there?”

  The frosted glass slid back to reveal a small tired-looking woman in a shapeless brown jumper and skirt. Knitted into the jumper was the title of Offenbach’s operetta, the capitals picked out in blue wool. An overpowering smell of 4-7-11 cologne assaulted the detectives. The woman had an old-fashioned marcel wave, her hair held in place with kirby grips, and wore a pince-nez. May guessed that she was nowhere near as old as she appeared to be. She had nice eyes, large and rather sad.

  “Ah. You must be Mr Bryant. I was wondering when you’d get here.”

  “Miss Wynter? I see you’re already advertising the show.”

  “Oh, this.” She pulled at her jumper, embarrassed. “Isn’t it awful? Insistence of the new management.”

  “John, this is the front-of-house manager, Elspeth Wynter. My partner, John May.”

  “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr May.”

  “A pleasure to meet a lady of the theatre,” said May, in the charming tone he unconsciously reserved for women.

  “We looked in once but couldn’t see anyone.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. I was on the floor with Nijinsky.” Elspeth opened the door of her office and emerged carrying a tortoise in a straw-filled cardboard box. “I keep him under my stool because of the electric heater,” she explained, “but I can’t leave him alone because he chews through the wiring. Nijinsky’s supposed to be hibernating but he’s an insomniac. It’s the bombs, they’re enough to wake the dead. Do you want to go down and meet the company? They’re about to start today’s rehearsals.”

  Bryant looked surprised. “Have they been told what happened?”

  “Only that Miss Capistrania went missing yesterday and will be replaced.” She walked ahead of them with the tortoise box under her arm, leading the way to the stalls. “The artistic director is a lady, Helena Parole. This is a bit of a comeback for her. She’s been away for a while, if you know what I mean.” She made a drinking gesture with her cupped right hand. “Problems mixing grape and grain. The insurers aren’t allowing her to touch a drop for the entire run.” She pointed down to the group standing in front of the bare stage. “Not all of the sets have arrived, and everyone’s getting nervous because they can’t finish blocking.”

  “Forgive me – blocking?”

  “Fixing their physical movements, Mr May. Talk to me if you want to know anything. I’m always here, and I keep tabs on them all. The one in the yellow bandanna is Helena. The coloured gentleman with the artistic haircut is Benjamin Woolf, Miss Capistrania’s agent. The confused-looking fellow is Geoffrey Whittaker. He’s the stage manager. The girl beside him is Madeline Penn, the ASM, she’s on loan from RADA because our other girl got bombed out and had a nervous breakdown. The man sitting down on the box steps in the snappy cardigan is Harry, he keeps the peace around here. They’ll introduce you to the company.”

  “Is it necessary to meet them all?” asked May, who was not at home in theatrical surroundings.

  “It might throw some light on Miss Capistrania.” Bryant shrugged. “We need to know if she was clo
se to anyone, that sort of thing.”

  Helena Parole had a handshake like a pair of mole grips and a smile so false she could have stood for Parliament. “Thank you so much for taking the time to come down and see us,” she told May, as though she had requested his attendance for an audition. Her vocal cords had been gymnastically regraded to dramatize her speech, so that her every remark emerged as a declaration. May felt the hairs on the back of his neck bristle with resentment. “I haven’t told them a thing,” she stage-whispered at him. “The spot where we found the corpse has been made off-limits, but they think it’s because of repair work on the lift. Everybody!” She clapped her hands together and waited for the members of the company to quieten down and face her. “This is Mr May, and this is Mr…” She leaned over to Bryant. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Mr Bryant.”

  “Oh, like the matches, how amusing. Is that a nom de plume?”

  “No it’s not,” snapped Bryant.

  Helena turned back to her cast. “Mr Bryant,” she enunciated, thrusting her tongue between her teeth in an effort to extend the name beyond two syllables. “They’re going to be asking you a few questions about Miss Capistrania. It shouldn’t cut into our time too much, should it, Mr May? We do have rather a lot to get through. Perhaps you can conduct your interviews out of the sightlines of my principals. It throws them off. I’ll have a folding chair put out for you over there, and do try to keep the noise down, thank you so much.”

  Having put May publicly on the spot, she accepted his silence as agreement, thrust her hands into her baggy khaki trousers and went back to directing her cast. Bryant felt as though he had been dismissed from the auditorium. Helena’s eye rested easiest on men she found attractive, and clearly John May was in her sights. With a grimace of annoyance, Bryant stumped off to the side of the stage.