The Mannequin House

by R. N. Morris

  Quinn squinted in disbelief. ‘What could possibly go wrong?’

  ‘Is it really necessary for me to answer that?’

  ‘We’ll make him think he’s helping us in the case. Perhaps he will be. As I said, these girls are not saying everything they know. I’m damn sure there’s some piece of this jigsaw that I’m missing. Everyone I speak to is holding something back.’

  Coddington said nothing. His moustache wriggled uncomfortably.

  ‘All I’m proposing is that he gets one of them to reveal some detail that she wishes to keep from us. I’m not suggesting he tries to induce her to commit suicide.’

  ‘I’m very glad to hear it.’

  ‘We need to make a breakthrough in this case, sir. And we need to make it soon. I think Yeovil can help us.’

  Coddington sighed heavily. The question of urgency clearly carried weight with him. ‘Which of the girls will you use?’

  Quinn suppressed a smile. For all Coddington’s hobbled indecision, he was as capable of being reckless as Quinn. All that was required was a little prodding. ‘I’ll let Yeovil decide that, I think.’

  When they returned to the drawing room, Miss Mortimer was there, distributing cups of tea from a tray of rattling china held by a trembling Kathleen. The mannequins held on to their cups and saucers as if their lives depended on it.

  Quinn noticed that the china was the same blue willow pattern as the discarded teapot he had seen on the rubbish heap. It was a common enough design.

  ‘Mr Yeovil.’ Quinn called the name firmly. A hush settled on the room. But Yeovil didn’t look up. He appeared lost in a trance.

  ‘Yeovil!’

  The second, sharper cry drew his attention. A frightened child – admittedly a very large frightened child – peered up at Quinn, one eye obscured by the white glare in the monocle lens.

  ‘It’s all right, sir. No need to be alarmed. I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s just that I need your help with something. Mr Blackley has offered your services to the police. The time has come, I think, for us to avail ourselves of them.’

  Yeovil had the mannequins stand in a line. He walked from one to the next, staring fixedly into each girl’s eyes. Nothing was said. But as a result of that inspection he tapped Marie-Claude on the shoulder. ‘Not her.’

  ‘Wha’s wrong wiv me?’ Marie-Claude’s wide face seemed to open up further with injured vanity.

  ‘Please sit down,’ said Quinn.

  Yeovil conducted a second pass along the remaining girls. This time he held up a hand in front of their faces, murmuring something that Quinn could not make out. When he came to the third girl in the line, she leaned forward slowly, until her forehead touched Yeovil’s palm. ‘Her,’ said Yeovil.

  The other two returned to the chaise longue, shaking their heads uncomprehendingly. Even Marie-Claude’s belligerence was subdued.

  Yeovil looked to Quinn for direction, his face meek and submissive. Since the time he had spent in the back of the Black Maria alone with Sergeant Inchball, the confidence had drained entirely from Mr Blackley’s special legal adviser. Quinn didn’t know what had passed between the two men. And he preferred to keep it that way.

  Quinn nodded for Yeovil to continue.

  Yeovil removed his monocle and polished it in his handkerchief for some minutes. When he returned the lens to his eye, it seemed that more than just its glassy gleam had been restored. The old Yeovil had snapped back into place.

  ‘What’s your name, my dear?’

  ‘Giselle.’

  ‘Giselle. What a lovely name.’ Yeovil pointed to his newly polished monocle. He shifted the position of his head minutely so that the sunlight constantly flared and vanished, flared and vanished, setting up a regular pulse of light. ‘You see my eyeglass? We call it a monocle, don’t we? Look at the surface of the glass. Can you see how smooth and bright it is?’ The sunlight continued to flicker. ‘Keep your eye focused on my monocle. Don’t look through the monocle. Look at the surface of the monocle. Let your gaze slide unimpeded over the surface of the monocle. Round and round it skates, like a skater on an ice rink. Your gaze skates over the round rink of my monocle. And as you circle the surface of my monocle you fall into a deep, deep, deep trance. You remain awake. You’re able to keep your gaze skating over my monocle, you’re able to hear my words, and at the same time you’re aware of a wonderful feeling of peace and calm and well-being. Can you hear me, Giselle?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re skating over the gleaming surface of my monocle, skating back, back in time, to last night. It’s Friday night, Giselle. Do you understand? You’ve skated over the surface of my monocle back in time.’ Yeovil allowed the glinting monocle to hold her for a few moments in silence. ‘What day is it Giselle?’

  ‘Friday.’

  ‘That’s right. Friday. Where are you?’

  ‘Home.’

  ‘You mean here, at the mannequin house?’

  Giselle’s eyes were fixed on Yeovil’s flashing monocle. Her head swayed constantly. The motion seemed to resolve itself into a nod.

  ‘What can you see, Giselle?’

  ‘It’s dark.’

  ‘It’s night time, is it? Are you in bed, Giselle?’

  The girl’s nodding grew more defined.

  ‘But you’re awake? Did something wake you, Giselle? A sound?’

  Her nods were more vigorous, more anxious, now.

  ‘What can you hear, Giselle?’

  The girl’s mouth fell open, and to Quinn’s astonishment she began to sing. Her voice had a cracked, lilting quality, as frail and uncertain as an echo in a dream. At the same time he was intensely aware of the physical mechanics of how that sound was produced; of the quivering membranes within her throat. Somehow, that made it seem all the more fragile. He knew full well the transience of flesh; how much more ephemeral were the by-products of its vibrations.

  She sang a wordless melody, her la-la-las faltering at times, her voice falling short of the note, flat like a child’s. Despite her flawed delivery, Quinn was able to recognize the tune. It was the theme from Swan Lake.

  Unprompted by Yeovil, Giselle raised her hands above her head, forming a loose circular shape with her arms. She crossed one leg in front of the other and began to rotate slowly on the spot, keeping up her melancholy singing.

  There were sniggers from one or two of the other mannequins, but Marie-Claude hushed them sharply. It seemed she was interested to see how Giselle’s performance played out. To judge from her grim expression, she was resigning herself to the possibility that this would not end well for any of them.

  Quinn’s attention was divided between the pirouetting Giselle and the other mannequins. So the disruption, when it came, took him entirely by surprise. It came from a source he had ceased to notice, but she was still there, at the edge of the room, holding the tray of tea things.

  ‘I don’t like it! It’s not right! It’s the Devil’s work!’

  Quinn turned just in time to see Miss Mortimer slap Kathleen across the face, causing the maid to drop the tray. The teapot, sugar bowl and milk jug crashed to the floor.

  ‘Look what you’ve done, you careless girl!’ Miss Mortimer flashed a sly look around the room as she tried to put the blame entirely on the hapless maid. ‘Pick it up now.’ To Quinn, she added: ‘She’s an ignorant Irish girl. She doesn’t understand.’

  The outburst was enough to break Giselle’s trance. She frowned in confusion at her own arms held above her head, before slowly lowering them.

  ‘I understand well enough,’ protested Kathleen. ‘I understand that every time he gives one of them a music box, I have to wash the blood out of the sheets.’

  ‘That’s quite enough of that filthy talk!’ Miss Mortimer stooped down to pick up the tea things, her sly glance encompassing the room. ‘Look at the mess you’ve made. That’s the second teapot you’ve broken in as many days.’

  Kathleen held up the detached handle. ‘You can stick it back on,
Miss Mortimer. You’re ever so good at mending things.’

  ‘It’s never the same. Now go and get a cloth from the kitchen, you clumsy girl.’

  Kathleen slumped from the room.

  Quinn intercepted her in the hall on her return. ‘Did you know there’s a way through to the yard at Blackley’s? You can get through the fence. Do you ever go through there? To put out rubbish, perhaps? Like the last teapot you broke?’

  The maid shrugged. It was the closest Quinn was going to get to a confirmation.

  Kathleen made a move to get past him, but he held on to her arm. ‘Who were you talking about? Who gives them the music boxes?’

  ‘Who do you think?’

  ‘Mr Blackley?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And have all the girls here received a music box from him?’

  She nodded unhappily, once.

  ‘And they were all virgins before the gift?’

  ‘Virgins.’ She nodded fiercely.

  ‘But not after?’

  A look of distaste came over her.

  ‘What about Edna? I mean Albertine.’

  ‘He hadn’t got to her yet.’

  ‘I found a music box in her room. It was broken.’

  ‘Someone got to her. Saved her.’

  ‘Is that how you see it?’

  ‘From a fate worse than death.’

  ‘It’s still murder, Kathleen.’

  ‘It wasn’t me!’

  ‘Do you know who it was?’

  ‘I cannot say.’

  ‘What happens when he has slept with all the mannequins in the house?’

  ‘The eldest is moved out, in order to bring in new blood.’ Kathleen cast an uneasy glance in the direction of the drawing room. ‘I have to go now. Miss Mortimer will be wondering where I got to.’

  And indeed, at that moment, Miss Mortimer appeared at the door. ‘There’ll be a stain in the carpet if you don’t hurry up.’

  Kathleen hurried past Quinn.

  ‘Miss Mortimer,’ said Quinn, ‘I’d like to take a look in the spare room again. I hope you have found the key to the wardrobe there.’

  ‘The spare room?’ The echo of his request was charged with indignant bemusement, as if looking in the spare room was an idea so outlandish it topped even the strange sequence of events that had just occurred.

  An Interest in Keys

  Quinn followed the housekeeper up the stairs, addressing thoughts to her back as they occurred to him.

  ‘You’re not really deaf, are you, Miss Mortimer? It’s an act. Not an affectation – no. There’s more to it than that. A necessity, I would say. A psychological necessity. You’ve turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to all that’s gone on in this house over the years. Everything he’s done. The girls that have come and gone. You’ve heard nothing. Seen nothing. The whole time. What a strain that must place upon you. Why do you do it? Why do you put up with it? Put up with him? Were you a mannequin once yourself? And when you got too old – and too fat, let’s face it – when his fancy turned to younger, slimmer girls, instead of casting you out he set you up to run the house. Is that what happened? He must have held some genuine affection for you at one time. He must have held you in high esteem, to make an exception of you and keep you here in the mannequin house. And so you felt you owed him a debt of gratitude? Is that why you tolerated his behaviour? Or was it more than that? You actually helped him. You prepared the girls. You talked them into it, if necessary. You were their confidante. They trusted you. When you told them to accept Mr Blackley’s gift, they complied. You could talk them into anything, couldn’t you?’

  Miss Mortimer had reached the top of the stairs. She turned and waited for Quinn. Quinn felt suddenly vulnerable. For once, the housekeeper loomed over him, her solid bulk blocking his way. It would have been an easy matter for her to push him in the chest and knock him down. He imagined himself toppling backwards in a neck-breaking reverse summersault. Given the bone-weary exhaustion he was suffering, the slightest shove from her would have been enough.

  He stopped two steps below the landing, their eyes level. She did not blink. He felt the blepharospasm start up again, running riot through the soft flesh beneath his eye.

  She gave no indication of having heard a word of what he had said. ‘What are you doing down there?’

  ‘You’re rather blocking my way, Miss Mortimer.’

  The housekeeper seemed poised on a fulcrum of decision: either she would push Quinn down the stairs or step back to let him pass.

  In the event, she stepped back. Quinn would never know if she had even considered the former option. Perhaps she had simply wanted to keep him, for a moment, on the same level as her.

  ‘Who took the rug out of Albertine’s room?’

  ‘The rug?’

  ‘Yes. The black and white, zebra-striped rug. It’s gone from her room.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yes. And here’s something . . . I saw it in the Rugs and Carpets gallery at Blackley’s. The very same rug. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘How did it get there?’

  ‘That’s very much what I would like to know.’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know.’

  ‘No. Of course not. How would you?’

  ‘Do you know?’

  ‘I have an idea. I have ideas about a lot of things, Miss Mortimer.’ Quinn felt a strange tense rippling in his heart; it was a stern sensation, a reminder of his mortality, of the excitement inherent in his own impermanence. He felt on the brink of something momentous: the cataclysm of discovery.

  He decided to delay the moment of crisis, as if doing so would prolong his life, as well it might.

  The room was cast in a shadowed chill. The window of the door that went nowhere afforded a dour light. Quinn crossed to the wardrobe.

  ‘So do you have it?’

  ‘Have it?’

  ‘The key for this.’

  ‘Mr Blackley has it.’

  ‘I see. That’s not what you told me before. Before you said it was missing. Now you are quite definite that Mr Blackley has it. Something has changed, I think. Once, you were willing to protect him. Now . . .?’

  ‘I looked for it, and then remembered.’

  ‘It was when we were in the garden, wasn’t it? When the monkey was in the tree. He shouted at you. Worse than that, he humiliated you. That’s when everything changed.’

  ‘You asked for the key. And I’m telling you . . . Mr Blackley has it.’

  ‘What will I find inside the wardrobe, Miss Mortimer? Do you know? Of course you know. You know everything. He has never hidden any of it from you, has he?’

  Some flicker of acknowledgement passed across her face. It was transient in the extreme but it was all Quinn needed. ‘Come now, Miss Mortimer. Are you sure you don’t have a key to this wardrobe somewhere on that wonderful housekeeper’s fob of yours? You have an interest in keys, don’t you, Miss Mortimer? You like keys. You like collecting them. And you like wielding them.’

  The housekeeper puckered her lips as if in reaction to a sharp taste. With a sudden flurry of decision she produced the fob from her skirt pocket. ‘There’s no big secret. You know it all anyhow, thanks to that stupid Irish lump.’ Miss Mortimer found a small key and opened the wardrobe door. She removed the key and backed away so Quinn could look inside.

  The wardrobe was empty apart from a square box about two feet high. Quinn lifted the cardboard flaps and peered in.

  The store of cloth-covered musical boxes was down to about half now.

  Quinn reached in and took out one of the musical boxes. It was, as he had expected, identical to those he had found in Amélie’s and Edna’s rooms. He wound the key and lifted the lid, releasing the pirouetting ballerina and the tinkling melody. The theme from Swan Lake.

  He watched as the mechanism wound down and the ballerina spun to a halt before closing the lid.

  He turned and looked at Miss Mortimer. ‘Do you still have the one he gave you?’
/>
  ‘No. You’re wrong about that.’

  This was a surprise. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘My love – our love – was different.’

  ‘Never consummated, you mean?’

  ‘Of course not!’

  ‘But you thought perhaps one day . . . You were saving yourself for him?’

  ‘His wife didn’t love him. And all those silly girls – none of them loved him. Least of all Amélie. They didn’t make him happy, not really, not deep down. I was the only one who really loved him. Who would allow him to be . . . the man he was, without judging him. I was the only one who could have made him happy. If only . . .’

  ‘If only he’d given you a chance.’

  She looked searchingly into Quinn’s eyes, a look that wondered if it really was possible that he understood.

  ‘How must you have felt, to be installed in that house, looking after all those girls? His harem.’

  ‘I was happy. I knew it made him happy.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Quinn. ‘I understand more than you can imagine. I once loved someone and would have done anything for them. Yes, even that. I would even have killed, if I thought it was what my love wanted. I think I’m beginning to understand why Amélie had to die.’

  Miss Mortimer’s brows descended in a troubled frown, as if to be understood was the one thing she feared.

  ‘It wasn’t because of the trouble she was threatening to make,’ continued Quinn, his voice still sympathetic. ‘No. It was because she was the only one he ever loved, wasn’t it? All those girls, in all those years. None of them counted for anything. But she . . . She was loved. She was the one he loved. Not you. Not any of them. Amélie. And what did she do? Refuse him! How dare she?’

  The dip of her head, the tremor of her lips . . . it was all he needed to know he had fathomed the mystery of her lonely heart.

  Suddenly she lifted her head and let out a howl of anguish. ‘The things she was saying! Wild, vindictive accusations.’

  ‘She confided in you about the rape?’

  ‘Rape?’ Miss Mortimer screamed the word back at Quinn. In the sudden violence of her paroxysm he had an intimation of her insanity. ‘There was no rape. There couldn’t be any question of rape. Mr Blackley had a right to expect . . .’