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

by Christopher Fowler

  “A little better, thank you.”

  “Renalda has a very good reason for wanting to sabotage his own production.” Bryant clutched at his partner’s sleeve. “Wait, before we go in, listen to me. The whole thing starts with his brother Minos. Something bothered me when I read Summerfield’s article: if Minos murdered Andreas’s wife, why did he stop there? Because their mother had made him believe that Andreas was protected. She wanted Minos to think that he couldn’t harm Andreas without hurting himself.”

  “I’m with you so far,” said May, turning up his collar.

  “To do this, she had to make her crippled son believe it, otherwise he would have made them both vulnerable. From the day Sirius decided that this child would own his empire, Diana filled the boy’s head with tales of old gods, and Andreas grew up believing in his protectors. He’s even built a shrine to them in the Palace Theatre. That’s why he chose the Palace, because of the statue of Euterpe on the roof. It was a sign to him. The building was guarded by a Muse.

  “I hadn’t realized who the statue represented at first, because nobody in the theatre could remember, and I was misled because the statue is wrong. Euterpe has a flaming torch in her hand instead of a flute. The original figure had been smashed, so it had to be rebuilt from scratch, but the delicate instrument she held, hard to see from the ground, and much less dramatic, was replaced with a burning brand. This much I know. But now I see how everything fits together.”

  “For God’s sake, let’s get back in the car until you’ve finished. It’s falling like stair rods out here.” May settled back into his seat and turned on the Wolseley’s heater. “Come on then, give me the rest of your hypothesis.”

  “Which gods did Renalda’s mother believe in?” There was excitement in Bryant’s voice. “Euterpe was one of the nine Muses of Greek mythology. Diana summoned the Muses to protect her son. These nine sacred goddesses nurture and inspire, bringing continued wealth and good fortune. But if you’ve ever studied mythology, you’ll know that every request made to the gods exacts a price. The price for this protection was losing Elissa, Andreas’s wife. Andreas believes that everything in his life has been decided by the Muses his mother invoked. Now that Diana is dead, Renalda is exorcizing his guardian spirits, getting rid of them one by one. He no longer has need of them. Worse, they’ve become his gaolers.”

  “What do you mean, his gaolers? I thought they were helping him.”

  “My guess is he doesn’t want their help any more. He wants to prove himself, to make his own way, just as his father did. So what does he do? First he negates Euterpe’s power by daring to stage a sacrilegious play in her temple, the building over which she presides in the form of a debased statue.

  “Then he chooses Offenbach’s version of the Orpheus legend, because it’s a cruel mockery, and because it will give him access to all the representatives of the Muse. The mother of Orpheus was Calliope, one of the Muses, remember?

  “After this, the removal of his gods begins in earnest. He drugs Tanya Capistrania with hemlock, a poison his mother would have taught him how to use, but panics when he can’t tell whether the drug has worked. He isn’t sure the dancer is dead, so he drags Capistrania’s feet through the trellis of the lift to make certain. Tanya, a representative of Terpsichore, the Muse of dance, loses her feet, you see?

  “Next, Renalda impales Charles Senechal, a perfect living example of Urania, Muse of astronomy. How better to kill him than with a giant planet? Urania is usually depicted carrying a globe and compasses.”

  May shook his head, trying to free it from the clouds of Bryant’s madness. “But surely Senechal was the wrong sex to represent a Muse.”

  “Come on, John, gender is virtually interchangeable in Greek legend. So, where are we? Ah, yes.” Bryant nodded vigorously. “Andreas watches and waits for his next opportunity. Nobody knows when he’s in the theatre, he told us that himself. He spots Zachary Darvell, the son of the performer representing the Muse Clio, proclaimer of history, smoking up in the gods. He waits until Darvell is alone and attacks him with a razor he has taken from one of the dressing rooms, pushing the body over the balcony.

  “Why Darvell? Because in ancient mythology, Clio’s son was murdered. Renalda nearly got two for the price of one, because the real-life mother of the stage Orpheus – Calliope, the chief of the nine Muses, represented by Miles Stone’s mother, Rachel – was seated in the dress circle underneath. But Zachary yelled as he fell, enough for her to look up and get out of the way.”

  “Do you have proof for any of this?” asked May, shaking his head sadly.

  “I bet you anything that we’ll find out Zachary is, you know, a confirmed bachelor. Clio’s son was murdered by his male lover, and a flower sprang up in the blood he shed. The blood-spattered silk carnation in Darvell’s buttonhole, remember? Whoever gave it to him is implicated in the murder, but we don’t know where he got it. Which brings me to the woman he missed, Stone’s mother. She had time to get clear, and it’s ironic that she was alerted by the shrill blast of a flute, because it’s the sound that always accompanies Calliope in Greek mythology.

  “Andreas partially failed this time, but he can’t allow himself to stop, so he must go on removing the power of each Muse, moving towards the day when he will be free of them all. Thalia, one of the three Graces, represented by Jan Petrovic, is missing presumed dead, then Melpomene, in her mask of tragedy, represented by the figure of Valerie Marchmont, Public Opinion, gets flattened. Five Muses down, four more – Erato, Polyhymnia, Clio and Calliope – still to go. Then he’ll finally be liberated from his mother, and free to act for himself.”

  “He’s a cripple, Arthur. He can barely manage to get out of a chair.”

  “For a man who makes a noise like a pile of saucepans falling downstairs when he walks, we still had no idea he was attending rehearsals. He knows every inch of the theatre. Everyone keeps telling you the building is filled with hiding places. It’s a mechanical hall of mirrors.”

  “I don’t know – he doesn’t sound like the person Betty Trammel saw when she stayed overnight in the theatre. How could he have vanished from the roof right in front of the firewatcher? And how could he have got in and out of Jan Petrovic’s flat without being seen? Anyway, why is it so damned important for Andreas Renalda to be free of his protectors?”

  “Because they prevent him from doing the one thing he longs for most of all.”

  “Which is what?”

  “To take revenge on his brother for the death of his wife. Revenge, John – that most classic of all motives in mythology. He can’t do it so long as he thinks the Muses guard him. So he’s showing them who’s boss. He’s humiliated them and now he’s sacrificing them. The whole play has been set up just to do that.”

  “And the Muses will let him without striking him dead with a thunderbolt? What about the creature? The terrible face? Others have seen it at night in the theatre.”

  “Masks and make-up. The prop room is filled with disguises. They’re used in virtually every scene of the production. They must be lying around all over the place. A Greek tragedy mask? Bit of an obvious touch, that.”

  “Do you know what I think?” said May, his voice cracking with anger. “You’re deranged. In a week of utter lunacies, you’ve finally lost your mind. Do you have any idea how insane all of this sounds?”

  Bryant’s eyes widened even further. “That’s why I didn’t want to tell you, not until I was sure my theory was watertight.”

  “I think you’re tight.”

  “No, no. I have you to thank for seeing clearly. You’re part of the maieutic process.”

  “The what?”

  “Socratic midwifery.” He shook out his fingers in frustration. “You know, the easing out of ideas. You help things out of my head, things that were already there but unformed. It’s because you’re so sensible, you’re like the control part of an experiment.”

  “All right, let’s confront Andreas Renalda and you’ll see how
crazy this – delusion of yours is.”

  At the top of the drive, the magnate’s housekeeper had heard the car doors slamming and now stood in the doorway to the entrance hall. “Mr Renalda is getting ready for bed,” she warned as they approached. “He won’t want to see anyone.”

  “We’ll wait downstairs while he dresses,” said Bryant, loosening his scarf and walking into the hall. “Can we get some strong tea? It’s been a long night.”

  After a few minutes Andreas Renalda entered the lounge. He was dressed in a blue silk dressing gown, and was drying his neck with a towel. The steel calipers were still fitted to his legs, and May saw now that they were bolted through the flesh of his shins, deep into the twisted bones.

  “It’s late and I’m very tired,” he warned. “I thought we had finished speaking.” Renalda’s housekeeper helped him into a seat opposite the detectives. He looked thunderously from one face to the other. “Good Jesus in Hell. What has happened now?”

  “Public Opinion. The stage revolve jammed and she was hit in the head.”

  “Is she hurt?”

  “Um, actually she’s dead.”

  Renalda swore in Greek. It sounded as though he said ‘God in a gondola’.

  “Did anybody see her die?”

  “Quite a few people. The stage was full – ”

  “I mean in the audience. Did the audience see anything wrong?”

  “No, the cancan number covered it.”

  He thought for a moment. “I am not without heart, you understand, but I must think of the show.”

  “I think I understand very well,” said Bryant.

  “There have been mechanical problems with the traps and flies ever since my company moved into the theatre. The equipment had not been touched in half a century. We cannot get any new parts. The company that made them is now making armaments. Every spare scrap of metal is going to the war effort.”

  “Whatever caused Miss Marchmont’s death, the theatre is closed as of this moment,” Bryant warned.

  Renalda’s face set. “I think not.” He hurled his towel aside. “Until you come up with proof that these misfortunes are the result of negligence, I can promise you that I have the necessary paperwork to keep the show open.”

  “You’re insured, so what difference does it make?” asked Bryant. “I’ll let the press in and turn the case over to Westminster Council. At that point, your personal involvement in this will surface.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Renalda, his anger growing. “You know I have nothing to do with these tragedies.”

  “Arthur, are you sure you want to do this?” asked May, wincing.

  “I’m fine, John.” Bryant drew a deep breath. “Andreas Ares Renalda, I am arresting you for the murders of Tanya Capistrania, Charles Senechal, Zachary Darvell and Valerie Marchmont, and for the abduction of Jan Petrovic.”

  Renalda’s face transformed from anger to amazement. A nerve in his neck blew some kind of synaptic fuse and started making his mouth twitch.

  Breathing ever more deeply, Bryant explained his hypothesis. It took him a quarter of an hour to do so, and when he finished he sat back, exhausted from the effort. He waited for Renalda to explode.

  “All right,” said the tycoon, in a suspiciously affable tone. “This is most amusing.” He wagged tanned fingers at Bryant as though he was pointing a loaded revolver. “The true part of your – what shall we call it? – fable is how my mother protected me from my brother. He was not a bright man, Mr Bryant, no sharper than the average police detective. He believed he could not touch me for fear of something terrible happening to him.”

  “And that’s why you’re taking revenge on him now.” Bryant was sticking to his guns, May had to give him that. It took guts for a twenty-two-year-old detective to accuse a middle-aged millionaire of multiple murder and abduction.

  “No.” Renalda laughed politely. “Of course not.”

  “Can you prove that?”

  “I do not have to prove it.” He stared defiantly at Bryant, and a slow, terrible smile spread across his gaunt face. “Even if I wanted to take revenge on Minos, I have no way of carrying it out.”

  “Oh, why not?” asked Bryant.

  “It is common knowledge. Even the most stupid Greek policeman knows about it.” Andreas Renalda shrugged theatrically. “Minos, my brother, is dead. I buried him myself.”

  ∨ Full Dark House ∧

  51

  THE END OF THE ROAD

  “You honestly thought I would destroy the Orpheus production and ruin my company’s reputation to take some kind of warped revenge against my dead brother?” said Renalda. “British police. Too much Agatha Christie, no?”

  Bryant wasn’t about to give up without a fight. “Can you tell me how you know that Minos is dead?”

  “Well, I saw his eyelids and mouth stitched shut with catgut, and I saw him nailed into a coffin and placed in the ground, then the earth put over the top of him, and the shovels flattening down the earth, if you think that’s proof enough.”

  “How did he die?”

  “He was killed in a car accident near Athens two months before the war started. He had been drinking all day. He lost control of the car and went off the road into a canal. He drowned, and so my wife, in some strange way, is avenged. I saw his body pulled from the wreck and buried in the family cemetery.”

  “It doesn’t make sense that Minos is dead,” said Bryant, staring down at the floor in confusion.

  “I’m sorry it doesn’t fit your theories. I suppose you can arrange to have his grave reopened if you like – you wouldn’t be able to make yourself any more foolish. My brother’s death is well documented.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Why should I? If you had any connection with your police friends in Europe instead of keeping to yourselves on your funny little island, you would know how many times the press has told the story.”

  “I thought you said you sued them all.”

  “All the ones I knew about, but there were plenty of others. ‘The cursed family, the child protected by ancient gods.’ Journalists scaled the walls of the house to take my picture, they tried to bribe me, harassed me so much that I moved here, where I thought things would be different. The English, so private, so aloof, so secretive. They would leave the memory of my family alone. But no, along come you two, the music-hall comedians. Yes, I am sure that Minos killed my wife, but I am not glad that he suffocated in the filthy waters of a drainage ditch. He was blood of my blood. And I will not allow his memory to be defiled by young men who think too much about the wrong things.”

  “I didn’t mean to imply – ”

  “I know exactly what you meant. In your own clumsy way you suggest we are nothing but ignorant pagans. Our private beliefs have been raked over in your News of the World. You think I would slaughter my own cast and wreck my production, you arrogant little boy?” The veins were pulsing in his temples, and he began to shout. “You pious English Christians, always so right, what do you know of the world that you have not read from your precious books? Do you know how many times I have heard these idiocies since my wife died? Her death was a godsend to your journalists, another tragedy in a rich family, and you believe it just because you read some news clippings? Get out of this house now, before I have you thrown out. Get out!”

  ♦

  “Well, that went well,” said May, stepping out into the pouring rain. “I thought I’d discovered something new. I was sure Renalda was setting himself free from his past.”

  “No, Arthur, you believed what you wanted to believe, no matter how demented the notion was. You squeezed the facts to fit your theory.”

  Bryant was indignant. “I did not!”

  “Of course you did. That thing about the high note warning Miles Stone’s mother. The flautist was late that day, remember? There was no high note from a flute, just somebody scraping a violin in the orchestra. And another thing. Edna bloody Wagstaff and her chatty cat. She could
n’t have heard Dan Leno in the Palace, because he never came to the Palace. He died in 1904 without once performing there. She’s just a crazy, lonely old woman. Andreas Renalda’s story appealed to your romantic notions of classical literature and myths, that’s all. Maybe Biddle was right when he asked to leave. You don’t share information and you don’t listen to reason. I’m not sure I’m cut out for the unit any more than he is.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You, Arthur. I’ll never get used to working like this. Just sitting in your room is enough, all those volumes on clairvoyants, astrologers, white witches, spiritualism, covens. While everyone else is reading the Daily Mail, you’re studying the Apocryphal Books of the Dead. All the stories they laugh about over at Bow Street while you look for a vampire that preys on foreigners in Leicester Square.

  Running down alleyways in the dead of night, trying to catch some kind of shapeshifting wraith that sucks the blood out of Norwegians. How do you talk people into believing stuff like that?

  Why did DS Forthright spend her New Year’s Eve in a King’s Cross goods yard waiting for a priest to mark out crucifix patterns in holy water? And did you ever catch him? According to her, you’re the only one who saw him dash into that cul-de-sac. He must have run up the wall, you told her, they can do that in moments of stress. You have us all mesmerized under the spell of your insanity. Well, no more. I’ve just not got that turn of mind. It’s the effect you have on people, you mean well but you get everyone caught up in these ridiculous fantasies. Why can’t you just face the truth and admit you’ve not got the right experience for the job? You should be curating in a museum or something, lecturing on ghosts and goblins, digging out Egyptian tombs. It was good enough for Howard Carter, he didn’t decide to be a policeman, did he?”

  “May I remind you,” said Bryant, trying to muster some dignity, “that this is called the Peculiar Crimes Unit?”

  “The day we met, you told me that their definition of peculiar and yours were different. You just didn’t warn me how different. I know you’re a bit older than me, but I’d like a chance to handle things another way, before Davenport hears what you’ve done and nails boards across the entrance to the office. I should have put my foot down when you brought in the clairvoyant, then perhaps none of this would have happened. Why don’t you take a break, go and give the ARP boys a hand, make use of yourself, and try not to think so much?”