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

by Christopher Fowler

  “This is as bright as it gets, I’m afraid. Parts of the theatre are always in darkness. It gets worse beneath the stage and up near the roof.”

  May peered up into the gloom, but could discern little more than the vague outlines of four boarded upper windows. The interior had once been green and gold, with red draped curtains, but had subsequently been painted a depressing chocolate brown because a job lot of railway paint had become available at low cost. The sepia walls were rubbed through to the original gilt where members of the audience had paused to touch the plaster cherubs in the friezes, as though they had the talismanic power of saints.

  “Theatres are much more artificial than most people realize,” said Elspeth, leading them down a passage beside the stalls. “Much of the auditorium decoration is built from painted papier mâché. The marble panels you see around the proscenium arch are false. There are no pillars blocking views because the whole structure is made from steel cantilevers, like Tower Bridge. The bricks are mere cladding. Along this side used to be the entrances to the cheaper seats. There were several kiosks selling drinks and cigars, and here is the royal entrance, nine steps up to the royal box, which is partitioned and has its own retiring room, the idea being to keep the classes quite separate. There are other boxes, ten in all. The sightlines are poor, but of course they’re for being seen in, not for seeing from. The company office is to the right of the stage door, as is dressing room two. All the dressing rooms are on this side, along with the front-of-house changing room and a number of quick-change areas, but it would take a week to discover all the hidden spaces.”

  “You’d have to find a way of gaining access to the building before you could hide yourself,” Bryant pointed out.

  “Quite,” agreed Elspeth, opening the door that led to the lift where Capistrania had died. “We’ll take the stairs if it’s all the same to you. The entresol floor has three dressing rooms, a smoking lounge and salon, and the booth for the projectors.”

  “Projectors?”

  “The music hall would show a short silent film as part of the variety bill,” Elspeth explained. “In nineteen twenty-two they premiered The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse with a live orchestra and a staff of thirty making the sound effects.” She led them higher. “Next is the dress circle, more dressing rooms, then the upper circle, also the wig room, and finally the balcony, formerly the amphitheatre. The casting offices are right at the top, along with the conference room, the archive rooms, storerooms, the fly gallery and the loading gallery, and a ladder leading up to the grid that I’ve never seen anyone use.”

  “I had no idea the place was so enormous,” said May.

  “Five floors no member of the public ever sees.” Elspeth pulled back a curtain leading through to the balcony. “Be careful here, it’s so steep that some people become sick. Please use the handrails.”

  Bryant took one look down and put his hand over his eyes. “I can’t,” he admitted. “How could anybody sit up here?” Some fourteen rows of seats were arranged in plunging descent to a low parapet over the auditorium. “I don’t think we need to see this, do you, John?”

  “You’ve seen the public and business side of the theatre. Now I’ll show you the mechanical areas. We’ll have to go single file.” She led the way into a musty narrow corridor filled with boxes and wiring, and pointed through an archway. “I can’t get you across without returning to the pass door, but you can see from here. There are three gantry levels, a carpenter’s bridge, five stage bridges, two hanging bridges. The slopes and bridges raise scenery, and there’s a flying counterweight system that’s hardly ever used. At the top is a drum and shaft mechanism capable of lifting half a dozen backcloths at a time. There are a further three floors under the ground,” explained Elspeth. “I hope neither of you has a problem with confined spaces.”

  If Bryant had discovered that he suffered from vertigo, May found the backstage areas claustrophobic. It was impossible to imagine what these areas were like when they were filled with staff and actors. They were now inside an Alice in Wonderland arrangement of wooden columns and twisting corridors, their tracks crossing over each other like ghost-train tunnels. There was nowhere to move except slowly forward. The lights, hanging from bare wires and wedged into corners, only disorientated May even more. He felt beads of sweat breaking out on his forehead.

  “As you can see, the lower levels are crowded with chariot cuts and sloat cuts. Sloats are cut-out pieces of scenery. There’s a chariot and pole system for the wing flats, but it’s all too elaborate even for grand opera, and no one has ever really used it to the full extent for which it was designed. There’s the grave trap and the revolve, the star traps, and lots of other little doors. It’s terribly over-elaborate.”

  “What powers it all?” asked May, peering uncomfortably into the darkness.

  “In nineteen hundred and seven they started producing their own electricity from three coal-fired boilers which drove the steam turbine engines.”

  May tried to imagine the hellish scene below, with stagehands stoking glowing furnaces, and felt sicker than ever.

  “I wonder how they managed to top up the engines with water,” Bryant mused, fascinated by the chaotic machinery of beams, cogs, wires, pulleys and rods.

  “Oh, there’s an artesian well down here too,” Elspeth explained, pointing out the eerie green shimmer of water reflected on the distant bricks opposite. “The pump is under the orchestra pit. They’re supposed to keep the hatch cover on the well because it’s very deep and hard to see in the dark.”

  “Can we go back up?” asked May, wiping his forehead.

  “I say, are you all right?” Bryant shot him a look of concern. “Feeling shut in?”

  “I hope it’s helped you get the lie of the land,” said Elspeth, returning to her box office.

  “Absolutely,” Bryant told her enthusiastically, but all she had shown him was how easy it would be for a murderer to hide in such a building and never be found.

  ∨ Full Dark House ∧

  19

  THE WEIGHT OF THE WORLD

  “Ten minutes, everyone,” warned Helena Parole. “We’ve still got a lot of work ahead of us tonight.” She rose and gathered her notes from the seat next to her. “Harry, where are you?”

  “Over here, Helena,” called her assistant. “I wonder if I could talk to you for a moment.” He was standing at the back of the stalls with Olivia Thwaite, the show’s costume designer. Olivia’s wardrobe designs had graced enough Noel Coward productions to inspire new fashions at the Café Royal, but the Blitz had forced her family back to their country home in Wiltshire, and she was now thinking of retiring. She intended to make Orpheus her swan song, and would not settle for anything less than perfection. Consequently, the costume manufacture was running late, which at least kept this aspect of the production in step with everything else, even though it was giving Harry heart failure.

  “It’s about Eurydice’s first-act costume,” he explained as Helena strode up to him. “Olivia would like to double the amount of flowers sewn on her dress.”

  “I know the material’s in short supply,” said Olivia. “I promise you it’s entirely necessary. The bodice is transparent, and since you specified no undergarments, her breasts and buttocks will clearly be seen beneath the lights. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that the Lord Chamberlain’s rules forbid nudity except in motionless tableaux under special lighting arrangements and a special licence, a licence I understand we do not have.”

  “I assure you there will be no vulgarity,” promised Helena. “The semblance of nudity is entirely as I intended.”

  “But not as Miss Noriac intends.” Harry spoke for Olivia. It was something he was in the habit of doing whenever possible. It allowed him to defuse tension between stage personnel by rephrasing overheated arguments into the semblance of reasonable conversations. “She is concerned that as a woman with a voluptuous figure, she will not look her best if the audience can see her entire bod
y.”

  Eve Noriac had joined the production on loan from the Lyon Opera House, and represented a heavy investment as their Eurydice. It was important to keep her happy in order to maintain courteous relations with the prestigious French company.

  “She’s somewhat on the portly side, but she has a marvellous poitrine and should be proud of it. Olivia, can’t you make her see that?”

  “I don’t see that it’s my job to tell your female lead that she has to appear in the buff before one and a half thousand people every night,” reasoned Olivia.

  “I think Olivia would like to add flowers in the top half of her costume for the sake of decorum,” said Harry gently.

  “I don’t want her to go on looking like a walking advertisement for the Kensington Roof Gardens, thank you, Harry. Go and talk to her, would you? Tell her I’m not having daffodils sewn over her nipples just because she can’t leave spuds alone.”

  “I’ll suggest she speaks directly to you about your perception of her appearance, bearing in mind her reservations about the décolletage.” Harry didn’t mind liaising between the director and her cast, but it had reached the point where he was acting as an interpreter.

  He left Helena and Olivia arguing about the wardrobe and made his way backstage. The scenery for the opening tableau had arrived, and he squeezed between freshly painted scrims depicting sheaves embroidered with hand-sewn cornflowers, courtesy of the ladies of the Bank, Holborn and Aldwych underground stations, who had wanted something to do in the evenings.

  Above his head hung a great globe painted a rich cyanic blue and topped with a set of opened steel compasses, a symbol of cartography and freemasonry denoting the mapping of the earthly world. The globe had been manufactured for a Glyndebourne production of The Magic Flute, then junked after the production was cancelled on account of the site’s proximity to the exposed Sussex coastline.

  The shepherds and shepherdesses of the chorus had returned to the flies. The principal players were familiarizing themselves with the finer details of their roles, having taken musical direction at rehearsal rooms in Covent Garden. At this stage of the production, when the librettist was belatedly putting the finishing touches to his new translation of Offenbach’s work, it seemed that nothing would ever come together, but this was how it always was. The production would not coalesce into a performance until the dress rehearsal on Friday.

  “Corinne, I don’t have you in my diary until late this evening,” said Harry. “You’re not due on for another two hours.”

  “I’m recording a talking book for the blind over in Greek Street,” explained the diminutive comedienne who had been cast in the role of Mercury, a tenor role usually played by a male. “The producer’s called a break while they sort out their wiring or something, so I thought I’d come and see how everyone was coping with La Capistrania’s mysterious disappearance. I’m dying for a snout, love. You haven’t got one on you, I suppose?”

  “You know you’re not supposed to smoke back here,” said Harry.

  “Don’t give me that. I’ve seen you creeping out the back for an oily rag. Go on, chuck us a Du Maurier. Has anyone dared to mention Tanya today?”

  “God, no. You can cut the atmosphere with a knife. I’ve only got a Woodbine, but you can have it. Helena’s still waiting to see if her replacement is up for tonight’s run-through.”

  “There’ll probably be an air raid and we’ll all spend the evening under the stage trying to play whist by the light of a forty-watt bulb again. I suppose you know they’re saying she’s been murdered?” Corinne airily brandished Harry’s proffered cigarette. “Working as a spy for her father and assassinated by fifth columnists, apparently.”

  “I’ve heard rumours,” admitted Madeline Penn, the skinny, nervous ASM. “Stan’s been putting the fear of God up everyone as they sign in, but there’s been no real news. She’s walked out of jobs before, hasn’t she?”

  “He reckons she was carried out of this one in the dead of night,” offered Charles Senechal, a chubby Anglo-French baritone who, like their Eurydice, was on loan from Lyon. “Slaughtered by a lover. Body parts missing.”

  “Well, if that’s the case, somebody made a jolly good job of cleaning up the blood,” said Corinne.

  “If I had a franc for every story I heard circulating around a theatre I’d be rich by now.” Charles had been assigned the role of Jupiter. It was a part he had performed so many times before that his performance was in danger of becoming petrified, but audiences loved him.

  “Apparently she was having a torrid affair with someone right here in the theatre,” whispered Madeline.

  “I haven’t heard about that.” Harry looked shocked. “I’m sure I would have seen her with someone.”

  “The trouble with you, Harry, is you never notice flirting between the sexes,” snapped Corinne. “She was being rogered by someone in our esteemed cast. I should know, because I caught them at it. Walked into her dressing room thinking she’d gone for the night and there she was with her heels in the sink and her bloomers hanging from the light. She didn’t even make the effort of trying to look embarrassed.”

  “Who was it?”

  “That would be tittle-tattle, Harry, and I know you don’t approve. Besides, I was fascinated by the sight of his hairy bottom poking out of his shirt-tails.”

  “You should tell the detectives.”

  “What, and have them hanging around all week ogling the chorus girls? You know how I feel about outsiders. Elspeth, put that thing down, love. It weed all over the stage yesterday.”

  Elspeth Wynter had been watching from the wings, where she had gone to retrieve Nijinsky. The tortoise refused to stay in its box, and regularly headed for the dim warmth of the backstage areas. “Sorry,” she called, picking up the animal and putting it inside her cardigan. “Is that another air-raid warning?” She cocked her head and listened to the distant rise and fall of the siren.

  “Bugger, does that mean we all have to go down to the understage again?” Corinne complained. “Quelle bore. I’ll have to get another coffin nail from somewhere, I can’t do Woodies, they slaughter my throat. Doesn’t anyone smoke Park Drives or Kensitas these days? Charles, have you got un clope, love?” Nearly all of the French contingent smoked.

  “I only have roll-ups,” said Charles. “Three Nuns or Dark Empire Shag, take your pick.”

  “God, no thanks, I want some voice left.”

  “Then try the sparks.”

  Corinne pushed past Jupiter and the young assistant, crossing to the far side of the stage, where Elspeth stood. Harry looked over and saw her searching for an electrician. As he idly watched, he noticed something was wrong. The stage had been cleared but the spotlights were still on, and the house lights had been dropped. The spots should have been off and the stalls lights raised. He could barely see beyond the edge of the stage.

  “Charles,” called Corinne, her gravelly voice absorbed by the sound-deadening backcloths of the Hades set, “there’s nobody over here – ask someone on that side, would you?”

  Harry turned in the direction of the shepherdesses, but they had gone down to the section of the basement that had been designated a shelter. He looked back over at Corinne, who was waiting in the flies, but could barely make her out. He felt Charles brush past him, and saw an unlit cigarette in his hand. Either he had asked someone for Corinne, or had decided to palm her off with one of his homemade specials.

  Harry noticed that Charles was halfway across the stage when he heard something rip – later, he recalled the sound as being like someone tearing a sheet, which was also the noise a bomb made as it fell – and glanced up just in time to see the great blue planet break loose of its moorings.

  He wanted to call out, but the words were stuck in his throat.

  Charles had not noticed. The globe was swinging towards him in a graceful arc. Harry heard the impact that lifted the Frenchman off his feet. The sound was followed by a dull crack as Senechal’s head was slammed into the bri
ck wall at the rear of the set. When Harry looked again he saw that the sphere had come to rest on the floor. It took him a few moments to realize what had happened.

  As he lurched towards the giant prop he heard other shouts in the auditorium. Blood the colour of crushed blackberries pumped across the floorboards. A thick dark puddle was soaking into the backcloth. One end of the compasses had speared the baritone through his ribcage, just below his heart. Charles coughed loudly in the sudden silence, and sprayed the stage with blood. His left foot beat a reflexive tattoo on the floorboards before falling still.

  He was dead before Harry, or anyone else, could reach his side.

  ∨ Full Dark House ∧

  20

  SOMETHING IN THE ARCHIVE

  “Two deaths in the same theatre,” said Bryant, rubbing the chill from his hands as they descended the stalls staircase of the Palace. “I’d call that a bit more than coincidence.”

  “You sound sorry you didn’t see it,” May remarked.

  “Well, I am. Of course I am. From a professional point of view it would have been instructive.”

  “Two talented people just had their lives cut short,” said May hotly. “You might be able to put their relatives at peace as to how and why they died.” He was growing tired and irritable. The air-raid siren had proven to be a false alarm, and had caused them to miss the real drama. Bryant’s heartlessness bothered him. “People are suffering all around us, and there’s nothing one can do except try to keep the lives of their survivors in some kind of order. One must heal wounds by providing answers to questions.”

  “Quite, old chap. Still, two extreme acts of violence in a public auditorium.” Bryant lightly tapped his partner’s arm. “They feel like symbolic rites, don’t you think? Signs that the mad illogic of the war is entering places of sanctuary. After all, British theatre is a bastion of common sense, civilized, safe, middle class, old-fashioned. Theatrical performances are structured on the principles of cause and effect. The auditorium exists outside of time or place, and only comes alive with the rising of the curtain.”