The Mannequin House

by R. N. Morris

  Quinn tapped the boy’s father on the shoulder. ‘I say, your son is kicking me in the shins.’

  The man’s expression was doleful, but not apologetic. ‘Well . . . he doesn’t mean any harm.’

  ‘Can’t you get him to stop?’

  The man sighed. ‘Archie, do you mind awfully stopping that for a moment, old sport?’

  ‘For a moment?’ Quinn was incredulous. ‘I rather want him to stop it for good.’

  ‘Stop it, Archie. There’s a good fellow.’

  Archie gave one final crack with his shoe, just on the edge of the bone. When Quinn looked down, the boy’s expression was utterly unabashed; it seemed to suggest that the blow was no more or less than Quinn deserved.

  At last the lift attendant drew back the gate on the ground floor. Quinn’s torturer and his innumerable siblings burst out with an explosion of screams. Their mother called after them ineffectually: ‘Children! Children! Oh, do be careful.’

  Quinn was glad to see Macadam bounding towards him with an eager, excited step. He knew what his sergeant was going to say before he opened his mouth: ‘We have him, sir. Yeovil. He’s in the back of a Black Maria outside.’

  ‘Good work, Macadam.’

  Less enthusiastically, Macadam added: ‘Sergeant Inchball is with him. He seems to think that he can soften him up in anticipation of your interviewing him, sir.’

  ‘Take him round to the mannequin house. Mr Blackley has offered us Mr Yeovil’s services. I see no reason not to avail ourselves of them.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I’m interested to see just what he is capable of. How great his powers really are. That will allow us to form an opinion on a crucial head.’

  ‘What do you have in mind, sir?’

  ‘An experiment, Macadam. To find out whether Yeovil is capable of persuading a young, impressionable girl to take her own life.’

  ‘Are you sure this is a good idea, sir? I am afraid it may end unhappily. Perhaps we should wait to talk to DCI Coddington . . .’

  ‘It’s all right, Macadam. I know what I’m doing. You’ll need to gather up the rest of the mannequins too. They should still be in the Costumes Salon. You can bring them round in the Black Maria with Yeovil. I shall see you there, at the mannequin house.’

  It was unfortunate that at just that moment Quinn’s exhaustion from the night’s surveillance operation got the better of him, causing a violent and prolonged spasm to ripple the soft sac of flesh beneath his eye.

  Macadam’s expression clouded with dismay.

  The Experiment

  Quinn crossed the dispatch yard, watched all the way by Kaminski. He pushed the swivelling panel and emerged in the garden of the mannequin house.

  A shape moved in the small window of the rear room, someone backing away as soon as Quinn came through. The flare of sunlight on the glass made it difficult to identify who had been looking out. It was enough, for now, to know that someone had.

  They had been watching from the spare room. Blackley’s room.

  Quinn entered the house through the scullery. Kathleen was at work, wringing damp clothes through a mangle. She rubbed at an itch on the side of her nose with the knuckle of a red raw hand.

  ‘Where’s Miss Mortimer?’ said Quinn.

  The maid seemed to shrink into herself, cowering away from the question.

  Quinn went through into the kitchen. Miss Mortimer wasn’t there either. He met her in the hall. She was coming downstairs.

  ‘What do you want?’ demanded the housekeeper.

  ‘Has anyone told you about Edna?’

  ‘We use their French names in here. Mr Blackley insists on it.’

  ‘Albertine.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘She’s dead.’

  Miss Mortimer showed no sign of emotion. Quinn wondered if she had heard.

  ‘I said she’s dead. We found her body in a shop window at Blackley’s.’

  Now the colour drained from her face. She seemed to lose her balance for a moment, reaching out a hand to the wall to steady herself. Quinn had never seen a more spontaneous – and, it seemed to him, unfeigned – display of shock.

  ‘No! But that’s not possible!’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  After a moment’s more consideration, Miss Mortimer seemed to regain her composure. She was able to stand up without support. ‘Does Mr Blackley know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Quinn was surprised by the vehemence of the sob that escaped from Miss Mortimer at this point. Even more surprised when she put a hand to her mouth and fell to her knees. ‘Oh . . . this will break him.’

  Quinn’s natural instinct was to recoil from the unexpected display of emotion. At the same time, it fascinated him. Reluctantly, as if he feared that emotion could be communicated by touch, he approached her and helped her to her feet. ‘On the contrary, Miss Mortimer. He claimed it would take more than this to hurt him.’

  Miss Mortimer looked at him sharply.

  ‘Now, I need to look in Albertine’s room.’

  ‘In Albertine’s room?’ The woman had reverted to the obstructive repetition of questions that Quinn had noticed the first time he had interviewed her.

  He gestured impatiently for Miss Mortimer to lead the way upstairs.

  The door to Albertine’s room was locked. Miss Mortimer produced her great fob of keys from her housekeeper’s apron. Quinn half-expected the keyhole to be blocked by a key on the other side, but Miss Mortimer was able to unlock the door without any obstruction.

  There was something very different about the room, but Quinn couldn’t, at first, work out what. Undoubtedly it had a forlorn, abandoned air to it. But there was more to it than that.

  Was it just his sense of loss at Edna’s death? Or was there something else missing from the room, other than a girl’s life?

  Quinn breathed in deeply through his nostrils, as if he believed he would be able to sniff out the solution to the mystery. Did he half-expect to inhale the smell of death there? He detected a far sadder scent: the sickly mixture of stale perfume and unwashed body odours that formed Edna Corbett’s ghost. The image of the grieving girl on the bed came back to him, her last days both unhappy and unhealthy.

  Quinn was aware of Miss Mortimer watching him. He held a challenging finger towards her. ‘I saw you. At the back of the house just now. Looking down from the spare room. From Mr Blackley’s room. Why were you in there?’

  ‘I go in all the rooms. It’s my job. I have to tidy them up. Get them ready.’

  ‘Did someone sleep in that room last night? Was Mr Blackley here?’

  ‘I have to go into all the rooms.’

  ‘Why were you watching from the window? Who did you expect to see come through the fence? Mr Blackley? Were you expecting Mr Blackley to sleep in the room tonight, perhaps? You were getting the room ready for his visit tonight?’

  ‘I’ve seen that monkey again.’

  Quinn frowned at the abrupt change in the conversation. ‘You have?’

  ‘I’ve put poison out for it.’

  ‘Is that strictly necessary?’

  ‘Dirty little beast. We can’t have a monkey running wild.’

  ‘Where did you see it?’

  ‘On the fence. Looking at us. Cheeky bugger.’

  ‘Just now?’ Quinn had not noticed the monkey when he came through. Perhaps the woman was deluded.

  ‘Before.’

  ‘You hoped to see it again? That’s why you were watching?’

  ‘I want to see it eat the poison.’

  Quinn began to feel sorry for the animal. ‘Why do you want to kill it?’

  ‘Hasn’t it done enough harm?’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘There was no trouble here before it came along. Never should have been in the house in the first place. Mr Blackley wouldn’t have allowed it.’

  ‘Would it surprise you to learn that it was in fact Mr Blackley who gave Shizaru to Amélie as a gift?�
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  ‘He shouldn’t have done it. It’s against the rules.’

  ‘But doesn’t Mr Blackley make the rules? He can do what he wants, surely?’

  Miss Mortimer shook her head emphatically. ‘No he can’t.’

  ‘You’re not frightened he might be cross when he finds out you’ve put poison out for the monkey? I remember he was cross with you once before.’

  ‘He has to learn to obey the rules like everyone else.’

  ‘And you will teach him?’

  Miss Mortimer was prevented from answering by the sound of the front door bell.

  ‘I believe that will be my colleagues with Mr Yeovil and the other mannequins. Could you please let them in and ask them to wait downstairs. Perhaps you could serve tea for everyone?’

  ‘What do you think this is, a Lyons’ Corner House?’

  ‘The girls who are in your care have had another very unpleasant shock today. Do you not wish to make sure they’re all right?’

  ‘Oh, I’ll look after my girls, don’t you worry about that. It’s all these policemen and the like that I object to.’

  ‘I’m afraid that is an inevitable consequence of murder, Miss Mortimer. Once one starts killing people, one does tend to draw the attention of the police.’

  Quinn heard the front door open downstairs. Presumably either Kathleen had answered it or one of the mannequins had produced her own key. In contrast to the mood in the garden a couple of days ago, there was no boisterous shrieking as the mannequins came in. Evidently it required two fatalities to impress them with the chastening gravity of death.

  Quinn smiled and nodded to dismiss Miss Mortimer. She took her leave, frowning at his words.

  Now that he was alone, he could begin his examination of the room in earnest.

  Somehow it made sense to start with the place where, in Amélie’s room, he had found the vital clue of the wooden hairpin, under the bed.

  His own body felt heavier than he had ever known it to be; the core of the weight was a knot where he suspected his heart to be. The floor seemed to pull him down.

  The bare boards bit into his knees with merciless rigidity.

  The gloom beneath a dead girl’s bed is laden with its own quality of despondency. Staring into it, he was faced with a granular blankness. He caught sight of a small object nestling among the fluff clumps at the far side of the bed. It was just beyond his reach.

  A strange dread took hold of him. What he feared was not that the solution would remain beyond his grasp, but that in discovering it he would be left staring into an emptiness more terrible than the one he glimpsed now. His job, he had always believed, was to effect restitution on behalf of the dead. But what if restitution was not possible? Certainly it was not possible if he was denied his usual recourse to the law-enforcer’s privilege of violence.

  He realized that the killing habit that his superiors lamented was not, as he had so often protested, the result of any number of regrettable accidents; it was the only thing that made sense of it all.

  His shins ached, the after-throb of the torment inflicted on him in the lift. He felt it as the focus of the pressure that always built in a case. The pressure that could only be released in one way.

  He flattened his chest to the floor and stretched his arm out, fingers splayed to retrieve the object. The first touch sent a jolt of recognition back through his fingertips. Immediate, unmistakable. It was the same kind of cloth-covered box as he had found in Amélie’s room. The same kind of musical box as was on sale in the Locks, Clocks and Mechanical Contrivances department where Spiggott worked.

  One more stretch and he locked a pincer of fingers and thumb on to the musical box. He teased it closer so that he was able to strengthen his grip and retrieve it.

  His joints creaked as he hauled himself to his feet. He tried to turn the key that was projecting from the side but it was jammed. When he sprang the lid, no sound came out. The tiny ballerina had been snapped off her base.

  It was at that point that he realized what was missing from the room.

  Sergeant Inchball was waiting for him as he came downstairs. He held out a slip of paper. ‘’E ’ad it on ’im all the time, the lyin’ bastard.’ The preponderance of dropped aitches was again an indication of Inchball’s emotional state.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Charlie Cale’s report. I thought you ought to see what it said about the key. Coddington couldn’t make head nor tail of it. That’s why he wanted to keep it from you, I’ll warrant. Didn’t want to make himself look stupid in front of you.’

  Quinn took the paper and unfolded it. ‘How did you get this?’

  ‘I have my methods.’

  ‘Does he know you have it?’

  ‘Give me some credit.’

  Quinn glanced down at the paper. His gaze went immediately to a scaled-up sketch of the trapezium-shaped bow of the key. Charlie Cale had drawn a number of short, horizontal marks coming in from the sides, more or less at the centre of the bow. These marks were continued in drawings of the side sections. He had written the word striations.

  ‘Maybe it don’ mean nothin’,’ said Inchball. ‘But I thought you should see it so you could decide for yourself, guv.’

  Quinn read through the notes that Charlie Cale had appended to the sketch. The scientist offered no opinion as to what had caused the marks. His account was technical and almost incomprehensible to Quinn. As far as he could tell, Cale had discovered some loose grains of brass in the microscopic grooves indicated. It seemed to be noteworthy that two types of brass were recovered, each with different proportions of copper and zinc. One formulation matched that of the key itself. The other represented an external source. No explanation for the discrepancy was given.

  ‘Why would he keep it from me?’

  ‘Because he wants to be the one who cracks the case. Either that, or he’s too stupid to understand what it means.’ Inchball nodded emphatically, to indicate he tended towards the latter explanation. Then a pall of confusion came over his expression. ‘’Ere, what does it mean, guv?’

  ‘It means . . . at least I think it means . . . I know who killed Amélie.’

  ‘I thought she killed herself, guv?’

  ‘That’s what I thought too. But this evidence changes everything. If only he had told me.’ Quinn folded and pocketed the sheet.

  The surviving mannequins, Marie-Claude, Giselle, Minette and Michelle, were huddled together on a chaise longue, heads bowed towards a centre of intense whispered communion. It seemed to Quinn, as he entered the drawing room, that Marie-Claude was hissing out instructions.

  It was hard to know what to make of this, except that the four hard and heartless girls were at last beginning to feel some measure of guilt for all the misery they had inflicted on their two weaker fellows, both now dead.

  The homeliness of the drawing room struck Quinn as a sham; as false as the vignettes presented in the store’s windows. Everything in the room came from Blackley’s, of that he had no doubt. The japanned table, the oversized vases that looked like they had been grown in some kind of ceramic forcing house, the chaise longue that served as a mannequin perch, the deep brown leather armchair into which the mountainous Yeovil was pensively sunk. All of it was, in Quinn’s eyes, contaminated by its source.

  Of course, Coddington was there. He strode up to Quinn and led him back out of the room. Just before he left, Quinn caught Macadam’s look of contrition.

  ‘What’s this all about, Quinn?’

  Quinn decided against challenging Coddington over the withheld forensic evidence. There would be time for that later. Besides, he wanted to enjoy the reciprocal pleasure: to experience for himself the obscure sense of power that came from holding back all that he knew. He did not believe that DCI Coddington would have been able yet to reach any meaningful conclusions regarding the forensics report. If he had, he would have hardly refrained from showing off his brilliance and wrapping up the case without Quinn’s involvement. But it was
clear that Coddington was very far from putting the pieces together.

  In fact, given the evidence Inchball had just shared with him, the experiment Quinn had had in mind was no longer strictly necessary. But he did not, as yet, want to show his hand to Coddington, so he decided to stick to his original plan. At the very least, it would serve to throw Coddington further off the scent. At best, it might provoke a crucial revelation.

  ‘I want to test a theory.’

  ‘What theory?’

  ‘I think these girls know more about what has been going on in this house than they have told us. I think Mr Yeovil can help us to get it out of them. He has certain talents, which Blackley is experimenting with in order to control his staff further. How much more obedient they would be if he could bend their individual wills to his own. Beyond that, perhaps, he may also be interested in influencing the minds and decisions of his customers.’

  ‘And what has all this to do with the case?’

  ‘When I was in the garden the other day, Yeovil tried to hypnotize me. He failed, of course. Nevertheless, I believe he may have greater success with more impressionable individuals.’ Quinn refrained from adding: such as yourself. ‘I believe he may have hypnotized Amélie. Blackley denied it – or at least he denied it was anything to do with him. I want Yeovil to hypnotize one of the other girls.’

  ‘To what end?’

  ‘To get her to do something that she would naturally be extremely opposed to – consciously, at least.’

  ‘Why should he? Won’t he be helping you to build a case against him?’

  ‘I believe the man’s vanity will not be able to prevent him from doing it.’

  DCI Coddington’s moustache jutted forward aggressively. ‘Sergeant Macadam warned me that you were planning something like this.’

  ‘Oh, he did, did he?’

  ‘Now don’t go blaming Macadam. He’s only trying to do what’s best for you, believe it or not. He’s trying to protect you.’

  ‘Protect me? From what?’

  ‘From yourself.’