The Mannequin House

by R. N. Morris

  Quinn indulged his sergeant with a half-smile. He began rifling through the hanging garments. Quite an array. Not that he knew much about ladies’ fashions. Well, nothing – it had to be owned. But he could sense the fineness of the fabrics even through the cotton gloves. His hands delved into a black well of evening glamour, yieldingly inviting. The sparkle of sequins flashed here and there, glistening like dark promises. He had to suppress a desire to bury his head in the sheaths of enticement he uncovered between the garments. He settled instead for inhaling the frail, fleeting scent that clung to them. It was overpowered by other smells – mothballs and the aftermath of monkey faeces.

  In amongst it all he found one full-length fur coat and a silver fox stole.

  ‘How much do mannequins get paid?’ he asked, lifting out the fur coat and turning it to show Coddington and Inchball.

  ‘Knowing Benjamin Blackley, I shouldn’t imagine they get much in the way of a salary,’ said Coddington. ‘He operates on the principle of paying his staff just enough that they can survive, but not enough that they can escape. It is a form of bonded servitude.’

  ‘How could she afford these then?’ asked Quinn, returning the coat to the rail.

  ‘Having spoken to the other mannequins, I very much doubt she could,’ said Coddington. ‘They do not seem particularly happy with their lot. Unless she was paid significantly more than her peers she would not have been able to run to such expenditure.’

  ‘Maybe she nicked ’em,’ suggested Inchball, with a certain amount of relish.

  ‘Or they were gifts,’ said Quinn. He crossed back to the shelf where he had found the music box and picked it up again.

  ‘You think that was a gift too?’ asked Coddington.

  Quinn shrugged.

  ‘From who?’ said Inchball abruptly.

  Quinn nodded his approval of the question. ‘This room is bigger than the other girls’,’ he observed.

  ‘Yes,’ said Coddington. ‘It’s the largest in the house, apart from Monsieur Hugo’s.’

  ‘Monsieur who?’

  ‘Monsieur Hugo. He is the head of the Costumes Salon. And he lives in the house with the mannequins.’

  ‘Frenchy, is he?’ said Inchball suspiciously.

  ‘He pretends to be a Frenchman.’

  ‘Pretends to be a Frenchman!’ It seemed that as far as Inchball was concerned, this was an even greater offence than actually being one. He gave Quinn a look that suggested the case was surely closed. ‘Why in the name of Jesus would anybody do that?’

  ‘For professional reasons. All the mannequins do it too. Apart from Amélie. She was the only real French native among them.’

  ‘Who else lives in the house besides Monsieur Hugo and the mannequins?’

  ‘Just the housekeeper, Miss Mortimer, whom you have met. And the maid, an Irish girl called Kathleen. She’s as dumpy and plain as the other girls are pretty and slim.’

  ‘Was she the one who cleaned the monkey shit?’ Inchball’s tone was disapproving.

  ‘She can’t be entirely blamed. She’s not the brightest of creatures. A little bit simple, if you ask me.’

  ‘So Monsieur Hugo is the only man?’ asked Quinn.

  ‘That’s correct.’

  Quinn and Inchball exchanged a glance. ‘Lucky bleeder,’ was Inchball’s comment.

  ‘Having interviewed him, I rather think the prerogative is wasted on him,’ said Coddington.

  Inchball rolled his eyes. ‘Not another one of them blasted queers, is ’e? We ’ad enough of them with the last case.’

  ‘It’s true to say that he appears more interested in ladies’ costumes than in the ladies who wear them,’ said Coddington. ‘That said, he was very fond of Amélie. And is the only one who appears genuinely cut up over her death – apart from Albertine, that is.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘At work, of course. Blackley would not permit him to remain absent for long, no matter how upset he was. I dare say it was only because Albertine’s distress would repel customers that he has allowed her to stay here.’

  ‘What else do we know about the dead girl?’ said Quinn.

  ‘The housekeeper describes her as a good, quiet girl. She said she never had any trouble from her. I got the impression that this was another thing that set her apart from the others. Most of them, that is. I don’t think anything bad can be said against the poor wretch next door, either.’

  ‘Any enemies?’

  ‘No one would admit it, but my sense is that most of the other girls hated her guts. Albertine excepted, once again. Miss Mortimer dropped hints to that effect. She said she liked to keep herself to herself. Which perhaps led the other girls to believe she was something of a snob. Saw herself as a cut above them.’

  ‘What about admirers?’

  ‘I dare say everyone who saw her admired her. She was a looker, all right.’

  ‘But no one in particular? No beau?’

  ‘According to the housekeeper, Blackley wouldn’t stand for it. He was very strict with them. The front door was locked at nine o’clock every evening and only opened in the morning when it was time for them to go to work. They were only allowed out with Miss Mortimer, or another of the older female employees, as chaperone. They lived like nuns. It might have suited Amélie, but it didn’t suit the others.’

  ‘Nuns? Or prisoners?’ said Quinn.

  ‘It ain’ natural,’ said Inchball.

  ‘Sergeant Inchball is right,’ said Quinn. ‘When you impose conditions like this on healthy young people, you are asking for trouble. Mr Blackley may think he can control the lives of his employees, but they will find a way to evade that control. The monkey in the wardrobe is one example. We may be sure that there are other secrets that this young girl kept locked away somewhere.’

  Quinn dropped down on to one knee and peered under the bed. He retrieved an object that looked like a short wooden knitting needle.

  ‘We saw that,’ said Coddington quickly. ‘It’s a hairpin. Girls like this are very untidy. They drop things on the floor.’

  ‘There was nothing else under there,’ said Quinn.

  ‘It’s hard to see how it could have anything to do with her death. She was strangled, not stabbed. And there doesn’t appear to be any blood on it.’

  ‘Although it could have been cleaned up by the girl who cleaned the monkey faeces.’ Quinn handed the hairpin to Coddington. ‘Something else for Charlie Cale.’

  ‘I shall see to it now,’ said Coddington. ‘Unless there is anything else you wish to have sent?’

  ‘That will do for now.’

  Coddington walked out of the room and called for one of his subordinates.

  The bed had a polished brass frame. Quinn knuckle-tapped each of its legs in turn. The fourth had a more muffled, deader resonance than the other three. ‘Inchball.’

  That was all the command he needed to issue. Inchball tilted the bed back so that Quinn could examine the end of the leg in question. It was an open tube, stuffed with a roll of papers.

  DCI Coddington returned just in time to see Quinn tease the papers out: letters, still in their envelopes.

  ‘Lucky break,’ said Inchball begrudgingly.

  Coddington grinned as if he had just seen a stage magician pull off a particularly baffling trick. ‘We looked under the bed, of course,’ he said delightedly. ‘We didn’t think of looking in it!’

  Quinn barely acknowledged his effusion with a non-committal grunt.

  The Secret Letters

  The letters unfurled slowly, flexing themselves out of the tight rolls they had been bent into. There seemed to be something almost animal to their uncoiling, as if they were awakening after a long hibernation.

  There were six of them. On each envelope was written Amélie in a large, looping, slightly childish script.

  ‘Cheap stationery,’ remarked Quinn. ‘Which means the letters are unlikely to be from the same person who gave her the furs.’

  He extracted on
e of them from its envelope and straightened it out.

  My Dearest Darlingest Darling,

  I LOVE YOU!

  Oh my dear, sweet darling, if you only knew what it means to me to be able to call you FRIEND! You are the dearest and sweetest and most loved of all friends. How could I not love you? How could anyone not love you? Everyone who sets eyes on you must fall instantly in love with you: INSTANTLY, I say!

  And anyone who says they don’t is a LIAR . . . or a very big, stupid IDIOT.

  Oh my dear Amélie, I know I am a very big stupid idiot myself – a fool, a nobody, a nothing – and nobody should pay any attention to a word I say, but this is the truth and I will say it and I hope you will take this one thing I say seriously, though you may discount everything else I say as the nonsense of a flighty fool: YOU SAVED MY LIFE!

  Yes, it’s true. I am not exaggerating. Your friendship, YOUR LOVE, your kindness . . . SAVED MY LIFE.

  When I first came to this place I was friendless. The moment I looked upon you I was smitten, though I never dreamt that we could be friends. You were so beautiful and perfect. How could someone like you ever be the friend of someone like me? The others said you were aloof. (But let us not worry about what the others say. They are unkind. Bitter, resentful, jealous – FOOLS! I pity them.) Suffice it to say, they were not encouraging. But I saw something in your eyes. I saw that you were lonely too; that you were friendless. And in my simplicity – for I am afraid that I am a very simple person – I dared to look into your dear, sweet, sad eyes and, with a silent look of hope, I reached out to you.

  AND YOU RESPONDED! Your eyes met mine. Your silent gaze answered mine. I even saw a tiny flicker of a smile upon your dear, sweet lips. Or was I dreaming? If I was dreaming, it is a dream I never want to wake from.

  And so, at first, our friendship was conducted in silence. In those small, timid glances, stolen while no one else was looking. Such small, fragile, fleeting things, like sunbeams hanging in the dusty air, gone as soon as they are formed. How can such treasures be so insubstantial? They are nothing. They are everything. They were all we had.

  Until one of us – was it you? Of course it was you! I should never have dared – ventured to give voice to the sentiments our eyes transmitted. How my heart fluttered to hear you speak to me at last! And to hear from you those words that saved my life: ‘MA CHER AMIE.’

  My dear friend – for you let me know straight away what your words meant. That was the first of our little ‘French lessons’. You have been a wonderful teacher and I a hopeless pupil. But I hope that you noticed that, when I wrote ‘amie’, I remembered to add the e that makes it feminine, as you have taught me. How sweetly you scolded me the last time I made such a mistake! Yes, sweetly. For I confess that I would rather be scolded by you than smiled upon by anyone else. You are such a darling, lovable scold. How I wanted to kiss away the sweet frown that fell across your brow. Is it bad of me to want to make you cross so that I can kiss away that sweet frown? Is that the reason why I make so many mistakes when you are teaching me? I would like to say it is, but sadly it is because I am stupid and a poor student. I am afraid that I will never improve because I get so much pleasure from being wrong and being scolded by you! (I can see your frown now as you read this. Oh dear, sweet, darling Amélie! Please do not be too cross with me. Or if you must be cross, let me kiss away your frown.)

  From that day on, from the day you called me friend, and allowed me to do the same, my life changed. No. It is more than that. My life began. I came alive. You gave me life. You gave me reason to live. And, yes, it’s true, I really mean it:

  YOU SAVED MY LIFE!

  YOU ARE MY LIFE.

  Your loving,

  E.

  Quinn handed the letter to Coddington, who read it with a devouring gaze.

  ‘The others are in a similar vein,’ said Quinn, handing them on. ‘All signed by “E”. And the stationery is the same in every case.’

  ‘What do you make of it?’ asked Coddington, handing the letter back. Quinn passed it on to Inchball.

  ‘It’s intensely passionate. There’s a naivété to the writing. Note the frequent capitalization of words and the almost childish phraseology in places. But there is an intelligence in evidence too. It’s remarkably free from spelling mistakes and the other signs of poor literacy. One might almost begin to suspect that the naivété is feigned. The writer has been educated to a respectable standard. Perhaps she comes from a good family . . .’

  ‘She?’ cried Inchball. ‘What about all this I love you guff? It’s a love letter, ain’ it?’

  ‘That doesn’t mean it wasn’t written by a girl.’

  Inchball groaned.

  ‘But I don’t think it’s a love letter in the sense you mean. It’s the protestation of a deeply felt emotional bond – of love, yes . . . but of the kind of love that is felt between two members of the fairer sex. It puts me in mind of a schoolgirl crush.’ Quinn turned to Coddington. ‘The girl next door who’s crying . . . what did you say her name was, sir?’

  ‘Albertine.’

  ‘She’s not French, though?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So it’s unlikely to be her real name.’

  ‘You think she might be E?’

  ‘The depth of her grief seems proportionate with the intensity of feeling expressed in these letters.’

  ‘I’ll talk to her,’ said Inchball.

  ‘Gently,’ warned Quinn. ‘For now, just find out what her real name is. Don’t mention that we’ve seen the letters. And when you have done that, find the housekeeper and bring her to me.’

  Inchball shot out of the room with a heavy, forward-leaning stomp.

  Quinn met Coddington’s questioning eye with a shrug. ‘Despite what you say about Blackley not allowing admirers, someone must have bought her the furs and the other things. I suspect Miss Mortimer may know more than she has told you.’

  ‘It’s not that that I was wondering about.’ Coddington cocked his head, listening to the ebb and flow of despair that sounded through the wall. They heard the door open and Inchball’s heavy tread. The detective sergeant’s muffled growl failed to stem the tide of weeping.

  Quinn and Coddington watched each other warily as they strained to hear what was transpiring in the next room. More footsteps, Inchball’s judging by the weight and speed. Then a sound like a metallic groan: the bed springs straining under an additional weight, perhaps. The sobbing became somehow subdued – not calmer, but dampened, as though something large and soft had been placed over the mouth of the weeping girl.

  Coddington made as if to dart from the room, but Quinn caught him by the arm and held him.

  The timbre of anguish changed again. Desperate gasping for air. Then a sharp keening arose, a high, fierce spiral of sound. But it was immediately swallowed into the same smothering mass.

  There was a low, indistinct rumble from Inchball.

  The muted wail continued, before decaying into a jagged series of stifled sobs. The ferocity of the sobs gradually lessened at the same time as the interval between them increased.

  Quinn rippled his brows questioningly as he faced Coddington; the other man’s answering nod conceded whatever was implied by Quinn’s expression.

  Now there was only silence from the next room. For Quinn, it was a strangely thrilling silence, for it held in it the promise of a breakthrough. The girl had stopped crying. There was every possibility that she might speak.

  At last it came. Her voice, a fragile tremor, little more than a throb in the air, but full of the heat of her tears. They strained to make out what she said but her words were barely articulate, a vocal wrenching rather than speech. Nevertheless, she had spoken.

  ‘We couldn’t get a word from her,’ whispered Coddington.

  ‘He is a father,’ said Quinn, not bothering to lower his voice. ‘He has a father’s heart.’

  ‘All the same, it is surprising.’

  ‘That’s what motivates him. It’s why
he does this job. Why I want him in my team.’

  ‘And you, Inspector Quinn? What motivates you?’

  Quinn looked down at the bed. ‘I don’t like to think of them getting away with it.’

  Coddington smoothed out his moustache distractedly. ‘It must be more than that.’

  ‘Must it?’ Quinn shook his head to deter a reply. He held up the letters as if to ward off further prying. ‘Why did she hide these in the frame of her bed, do you think?’

  ‘Embarrassment?’

  ‘Then why not destroy them? No, she hid them in the way that we hide the things that are most precious to us. This is hidden treasure. She hid them from prying eyes. Perhaps from those who would coarsely mock the delicate feelings described in these letters. Or perhaps from one who might be jealous of this . . .’ Quinn waved the letters gently. ‘Love.’

  ‘You think the letters are connected to her death?’

  ‘Let’s say they pique my interest. Do they not yours?’ As an afterthought, almost insolently, Quinn added: ‘Sir?’

  Coddington continued to fuss away at his moustache as if he was trying to work something out. ‘Yes, of course.’

  In the next room the bed springs sighed musically as a weight lifted from them. Inchball’s terse footsteps clipped on the boards again. Quinn dashed for the door and intercepted him on the landing.

  ‘Did you get a name?’

  ‘Edna Corbett.’

  Quinn nodded. It was as he had expected. ‘Edna.’

  ‘That’s your “E”, guv.’

  ‘In all likelihood.’

  ‘Shall I still fetch the housekeeper?’

  ‘If you please.’

  Quinn returned to Amélie’s bedroom and passed on the name to Coddington.

  ‘So, you were right. She is our letter-writer.’

  Quinn made no comment.

  Coddington’s hand went back up to his moustache. ‘I say, Inspector Quinn, here’s a thought. You said that Amélie concealed the letters to hide them from someone who might be jealous.’

  ‘I merely put it forward as a possibility. A theory.’