The Mannequin House

by R. N. Morris

  Quinn tried to put himself in Blackley’s shoes. The cupola represented the high point of Blackley’s achievements, as well as literally being the highest point in his building. Was it fanciful to speculate that at a moment of stress he might want to reassert his dominion over his commercial empire by ascending to its summit?

  In the event, it was all Quinn had to go on.

  The green-liveried lift attendant welcomed him back with a knowing leer.

  The idea of the bottomless pool came back to Quinn. He imagined the lift shaft plunging endlessly downwards. Not to Hell, beyond Hell. He decided not to get back inside the lift car.

  He felt the rigours of the night in every step he took. He took consolation in the thought that his career would, in all likelihood, soon be over. Coddington had meant it as a threat. It seemed like an enticement now, one which he could hardly wait to be fulfilled.

  He was tired. Physically tired. But tired, too, of the corpses, of so long an acquaintance with the dead.

  Tired of the killing.

  He had always believed that he had needed his job to make sense of his life, to give it purpose. He had met the chaos and violence of existence with a constant search for rational explanations. He wondered whether, paradoxically, it was this very search that had prevented him from finding meaning, and therefore peace. Was the secret instead to embrace the mystery, to surrender to it?

  Quinn thought of Father Thomas and the consolations of religious faith. He wondered if he himself had the courage to surrender himself to that particular mystery, perhaps the greatest of all. For some reason he took comfort in the idea of entering the church of the Sacred Heart again after the case was over. He was not a Catholic, but he craved the redemption offered by the confessional.

  He was so tired that if the next floor had been Beds he would have simply thrown himself down on to the first inviting mattress he came to. He emerged instead on the Floor Coverings gallery. Turkish rugs were draped over the balcony, advertising to the floors below their crimson richness. Quinn inhaled the distinctive smell of new carpets: strangely inviting, almost intoxicating.

  He hurried along the gallery, stumbling more than running, weaving in and out of the piles of rugs like the shuttle on a giant loom. The patterns on display progressed from the traditional to garish sprawls of colour no doubt influenced by the latest movements in art and theatre. Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of a black and white rug cast haphazardly on the ground. The pattern snagged on his consciousness; he had the feeling that he had seen it somewhere recently. More distractingly still, he couldn’t help thinking that whoever had left it there was in danger of a reprimand – or worse – from Blackley. But fortunately for the staff on this floor, Blackley was nowhere to be seen.

  The next floor up was the Drapery Gallery. Bolts of iridescent silk flowed down over the balcony into the chasm of the Grand Dome, like multicoloured waterfalls frozen in mid-cascade. There was no sign of Blackley amid the forests of upholstery fabrics or gardens of curtain material. Silent birds stretched their wings without moving, as if they had been startled and petrified by his passing.

  Upwards, then, to the Haberdashery Gallery. At some point, Quinn’s exhaustion began to play tricks on his mind. He was suddenly unsure whether he was in pursuit or in flight. The further he ascended, the greater the sense that he was escaping the tentacles of the past. But he also knew that he was forcing this confrontation not simply for the good of the case. There was something in it for him too. Something linked to his past.

  Blackley, he realized, had become a proxy for his own father. When he confronted him, he would put to him the wrongs that he had committed against his son – or sons if Spiggott was to be believed. He would charge him with abandonment and betrayal. It was hard not to be aware of the correspondences with his own predicament.

  The very top floor of the Grand Dome was taken up with a tea room and restaurant, as well as a Ladies Lounge and lavatories for both sexes.

  On this floor weary shoppers could come to restore their energy while looking down on the fray. No doubt this was why Blackley chose to place these facilities at the top of the store. Quinn had noticed that the higher he ascended the fewer customers he encountered on each floor. This may have been the result of the gradual evacuation of the store. However, he felt that there was a commercial principle at work. Anyone who was sitting down was necessarily no longer shopping. Their purses were resting as well as their legs. Blackley would understandably wish to discourage any respite at all from consumerist activity. If you were determined to sit it out for a period, however briefly, he would make sure you worked hard for that privilege, having first dragged your bones up the full height of his Grand Dome. And from the tea room there, you would have a tempting view of the Costumes Salon, the beating heart of the House of Blackley. This view could not but be of interest to you, for you were more than likely to be a woman. Quinn accepted that you might possibly be a man accompanying a woman, in which case, he speculated, Mr Blackley was probably not very interested in you at all.

  He saw Blackley patrolling the tables of the tea room, his affable smile once again back in place as he charmed and chatted to the ladies taking refreshment.

  To confront Blackley in front of an audience of adoring females would inevitably place him at a disadvantage. Quinn seized his moment.

  ‘Mr Blackley! May I have a word?’

  ‘Can’t you see I’m busy?’ Blackley squeezed out the words through gritted teeth.

  Quinn looked around at the handful of middle-aged to elderly women scattered around the tea room. Their faces were turned in fearful interest towards the two men in their midst. ‘Busy? Here?’

  ‘You have no conception what it takes to make a business concern like the House of Blackley function smoothly. Every department places equal demands upon my attention. Regrettably I am unable to be in more than one place at once. There is only one of me.’

  ‘Why have you abandoned your son?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Ben. Does he not need you more than the store does?’

  ‘Ben will be all right. You’ve got no reason to hold him. You’re just fishing. As soon as your fishing expedition comes up with nothing you’ll be forced to let him go. In the meantime I have alerted his mother to his predicament. She is at the station where he is being held with our family lawyer. Everything that can be done is being done.’

  ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t be so sure. You think you can rely on him because he’s your son. But you ought to know that a son’s feelings for his father can be ambivalent in the extreme. It can turn from admiration to contempt overnight. The truth can change everything. What truth did Ben discover on Tuesday night, Mr Blackley?’

  ‘Fishing again! You won’t catch me out that way, Inspector!’ Blackley almost seemed to be enjoying himself.

  ‘You should know, we found the way through. The way to the mannequin house. The swivelling fence panel. That’s how you are able to come and go without anyone knowing. You climb up the ladder to open the door to the spare room that Miss Mortimer keeps in readiness for you.’

  ‘Why do I need to go to such lengths when I have a perfect right to stay in that house any time I like? I own it, for God’s sake!’

  ‘Sometimes it suits your purpose to keep your visit secret.’

  ‘Now listen to me, Inspector. You cannot come here, in my place of business, in front of my customers, making your nasty insinuations. I will not stand for it, do you hear?’

  ‘Why did Amélie kill herself, Mr Blackley?’

  ‘What do you mean? How could she kill herself? I thought she were strangled?’ His Yorkshire origins came through with sudden force. A sign of stress? Quinn wondered.

  ‘She was. But we now believe that she engineered the circumstances of her death herself.’

  ‘So you can let Ben go!’

  ‘She may have killed herself, Mr Blackley. But she didn’t rape herself.’

 
There was a gasp from the tea-sipping ladies, who were enrapt by the men’s exchange. Blackley regarded his audience with a sheepish look. ‘Ben had nothing to do with that.’

  ‘Is that an admission, Mr Blackley?’

  Blackley flashed a complex look towards Quinn. It was a look that seemed to confess to every crime that could be imagined, let alone committed. But there was contrition in it too.

  And – for the first time – fear.

  Less Than Perfect Fathers

  ‘What is it you want to tell me, Mr Blackley?’

  Quinn sensed the attention of all the tea room ladies focused intently on them. Blackley must have felt it too.

  ‘Nothing. I have nothing to tell you. Except . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The last thing I wanted was Amélie’s death.’

  There were sympathetic noises from the ladies.

  ‘We can’t always control the consequences of our actions.’

  Blackley’s eyes narrowed. The thought had evidently never occurred to him before.

  ‘You felt bad, didn’t you, about what happened? That’s why you wanted to put the new pictures up in the hall. Scenes of Paris. You had never seen her so upset. It shocked you. Your monstrous egotism meant that you couldn’t possibly understand that you were the cause of her distress. You thought perhaps it was because she was feeling homesick. So you endeavoured to make her feel at home. To try to make amends.’

  ‘No, you’re wrong. It wasn’t like that. I already had the pictures.’

  ‘Before you raped her, you mean?’

  ‘Come now, Inspector. You won’t catch me out like that.’

  ‘You sensed her moving away from you and thought that the pictures – and the monkey – would buy back her affections?’

  ‘I was worried about her. Amélie meant a lot to me. She was my best mannequin. Naturally it upset me to see her upset. As it would any caring employer.’ A wistful expression passed over Blackley’s face. ‘If she had only seen the pictures . . . they might have cheered her up . . . she might still be alive.’

  Quinn was having none of that. ‘Did Yeovil hypnotize Amélie? Did he plant the seed of suicide in her mind?’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘Because you told him to.’

  The suggestion drew a gasp from the audience.

  Blackley shook his head vigorously, as much for his ladies as for Quinn. ‘No. You’re barking up the wrong tree there, Inspector. If Yeovil did hypnotize her – and I don’t believe for a minute that he did – it was not at my request.’

  ‘Why do you have Mr Yeovil in your employ, sir?’

  ‘He has certain skills that are useful to me.’

  ‘He has been spying on Spiggott?’

  ‘Yeovil has been helping me with that particular problem, yes. That young fellow Spiggott has been causing me a deal of trouble. Despite what I might wish, I cannot be everywhere. I have to trust men like Yeovil to be my eyes and ears.’

  ‘Do you know anything about the theft of Shizaru from the Menagerie? Did Mr Yeovil help you with that too?’

  Blackley seemed taken aback. A mask of indignation settled over his features. But he could not prevent a glimmer of amusement showing through. He might even have winked at the ladies. ‘It’s not a crime. Everything in the store belongs to me. I cannot steal from myself. I merely wished to take the monkey without the men in the Menagerie realizing.’ He drew closer to Quinn and lowered his voice confidentially. ‘I knew that Amélie had a soft spot for the little fellow. But discretion . . . discretion was important. I can trust Yeovil to be discreet.’

  ‘But Mr Yeovil can be more than discreet. He can ensure that others are discreet too.’

  A smile of grim acceptance flickered on to Blackley’s lips. ‘You’ve worked so much out, Inspector.’ He fixed Quinn with a steady, pleading look. His voice was once again raised. He was playing to the gallery. ‘Can you not work out who is doing this to me? Who is attacking me in this way? Not even you can believe I was responsible for putting that girl in my own shop window.’

  ‘To be frank, Mr Blackley, the difficulty I face is that you have made so many enemies. I just now saw you assault a member of your staff in Umbrellas and Parasols. There have been others, I believe. Didn’t I once read about you taking a cane to a man for yawning?’

  The ladies tut-tutted their disapproval at this. One or two cried ‘shame!’.

  Blackley grew irritable, sensing that he was losing their sympathy. ‘My people know where they stand when they enter my employ. There are rules. The rules must be obeyed. They sign a contract to that effect. I cannot be blamed if I hold them to it.’

  ‘They don’t sign up to being beaten, I rather suspect.’

  ‘I am firm but fair!’ protested Blackley. ‘And even if what you say is true, does that really give some bugger the right to do this? To murder a poor defenceless girl, just to get back at me for a little heavy handedness? Is that what you’re saying happened, Inspector?’

  It was a point well made. Blackley had won his audience back over. Quinn sensed heads bobbing in approval around them.

  Quinn’s shrug was more of a convulsion of exhaustion, as if he was trying to slough off the worries of the case. ‘I am beginning to fear that we will never know the truth of what happened.’ His words sounded defeated even to his own ear.

  ‘Remember my offer, Inspector.’ Blackley drew himself up as if he had sensed the issue swing in his favour. His old confidence seemed to return to him, along with his habitual smile. ‘Yeovil . . . Yeovil can help you.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I shall be speaking to Mr Yeovil soon enough.’

  The ladies of the tea room seemed satisfied with the outcome of the exchange. They were more intent now on their own chatter, which was no doubt energized by the scene they had witnessed. They had experienced a frisson of outrage, the hint of scandal, but somehow the universe had been restored. When it came down to it, it seemed that most of them approved of Blackley’s approach to staff discipline; or at least did not object to it strongly enough to forgo the privilege of shopping at his store.

  Quinn could not help but feel a strong sense of anticlimax. The brief look of contrition that Blackley had let slip was the closest he would come to an admission of guilt over the rape. A guilty look was not enough to secure a conviction in a court of law. In such crimes it invariably came down to a question of the man’s word against the woman’s. Even if Amélie had lived it would have been difficult enough to prove, especially with a man of good standing and character such as Blackley. Furthermore, given Blackley’s power over her, there was no guarantee that Amélie would have made an accusation; far more likely, in fact, that she would have kept quiet. Despite what Dr Prendergast had said in his report about the association between rape and murder, the motive for Blackley to kill Amélie simply wasn’t strong enough.

  It was not only Blackley’s failure to own up to his misdeeds that frustrated Quinn. His disappointment went deeper than that. He remembered the idea that had come to him as he had ascended the floors of the Grand Dome: that he was chasing not Blackley but another less than perfect father.

  ‘What is the matter, Inspector? You look as if you have seen a ghost.’

  ‘My father killed himself, you know.’

  ‘What has it to do with me?’

  ‘You think that you are protecting yourself when you hold on to these secrets of yours. But it’s quite the opposite, Mr Blackley. Secrets put you at great risk. They expose you to blackmail and extortion. And they drive a wedge between you and those who could love you, and whose love could truly save you. My father was killed by his secrets. I’m imploring you not to make the same mistake that he made.’

  ‘I am not your father.’

  ‘I don’t care whether you tell me the truth or not. I’m used to people lying. But please, I beg you, be honest with Ben.’

  ‘Have you quite finished, Inspector? I am a busy man.’

  Quinn nodded a re
luctant release. Whatever resolution he had hoped for, it was clear that Blackley would not provide it.

  The lift attendant pulled the latticed gate to with a nod of satisfaction. ‘Find what you were looking for, sir?’

  Quinn ignored the question. He looked the man squarely in the eye but could not penetrate his permanently ironic manner. He became convinced the man was another of Blackley’s spies. And so he couldn’t help feeling that he was now Blackley’s prisoner; in other words, the prisoner of the man he had set out to catch.

  ‘Which floor?’ said the attendant, holding and reciprocating Quinn’s steady scrutiny.

  ‘Ground.’

  The attendant nodded and pressed a button. Somewhere wheels shifted, machinery rumbled. The lift shuddered and sank. Quinn’s sense of confinement intensified.

  He could not help voicing his thoughts. ‘How do you bear it, just going up and down all day? Do you not feel caged in?’

  The man shrugged. ‘It makes me appreciate the horizontal all the more when I am able to enjoy it.’

  They picked up more passengers on the next floor, a young couple with a gaggle of children of various ages. They filled the lift car with noise and heat. Quinn looked up at the empty shaft above, concentrating on the greased cable and grimy brickwork to take his mind off his present discomfort.

  As the lift shuddered into descent, he became aware of a series of sharp blows dealt repeatedly to his shins. He looked down to see one of the children, a boy of about seven, determinedly kicking at his legs. The boy was looking up at Quinn to monitor his reaction. Quinn couldn’t help noticing that he was wearing a sailor suit that reminded him of the one hanging in the dead child’s bedroom at the Sledges’. He wondered if the Sledges’ son had been a shin-kicker, and whether that had contributed to his early, violent death in any way.