Hall of Mirrors

by Christopher Fowler

  Bryant sat down on the corner of the bed and opened the folder. Pages of monthly statements cascaded out and landed around his feet. Other sheets contained notes on monthly running costs. He dug out a packet of aniseed balls and began to read.

  This was what Monty was going to show Donald Burke? A prospectus for a new company? Disappointed, he turned over more papers: invoices, projections, evaluations, boring lists of typed figures.

  From this angle he could see under the chest of drawers. At first he mistook the grey metal container for a cash box, but it was longer and flatter. He tried sliding it out with his foot but it was surprisingly heavy, so he got down on his knees and dragged it. When he tipped the thing no sound came from inside. He shook it and tried raising the lid, but it was wedged shut. Rising with the box in both hands he felt something fall out of his trouser pocket and heard aniseed balls rattle all over the floorboards.

  Then he heard footsteps outside.

  A bed, a chest, a chair – there was nowhere to hide and no time to think. He had scattered Monty’s belongings everywhere. Dropping to the floor he tried to slide under the bed and realized that there was no room. The maid had stacked folded piles of curtains beneath it.

  He dropped between the bed and the window. His idea – as much as he had put any thought into it at all – was to borrow the box for a few minutes and find a way of opening it, then return it before Monty noticed its absence. He could see that the window was half raised. Outside was the wrought-iron covered balcony entwined with wisteria branches.

  The bedroom door opened wide.

  ‘What the bloody sodding hell!’

  Monty’s polished brogues passed him, then stopped dead before the mess. His shoes crunched down on aniseed balls. Then they turned and headed towards the toilet.

  Bryant extricated himself with difficulty from the side of the bed, grabbed the box and climbed through the window on to the balcony just as Monty returned.

  There was a good chance that he could not be seen from the far side of the railings, behind the wisteria branches. With the box weighing heavily in his hands he clambered over and lowered himself in among the leaves.

  Unfortunately, as soon as he had done so the box began to slip out of his hands, and Bryant watched in horror as it slowly dropped. Squeezing his eyes shut, he waited for the smash, but none came.

  Monty re-entered the bedroom and was now going through the chest of drawers. Bryant peered through dusty, dead flowers, fighting his hay fever, praying that Monty would not look under the chest of drawers and see that the box was missing.

  Monty saw that the box was missing.

  His eyes bulged from their sockets as he felt around on the floor, cursing the ache in his damaged shoulder. He stormed about the room, tearing back the coverlet and batting the curtains, squeaking with pain all the time.

  Bryant looked down. The box had fallen into a cleft between the wisteria branches about three feet below his left foot. He raised himself and peered over the railing once more. Monty swore spectacularly and stormed from the room. This time he took the key and locked the door from the outside.

  Bryant tried to shift his position in the tree, stretching downward to reach the box, but he felt the wisteria branches crackle and shift. A spray of dried blossoms tumbled down on to the patio below. As he could not climb lower he tried to reach the box once more, but it was too heavy to lift with his fingertips.

  There was a bang as a branch came away and fell below.

  A panicked wood pigeon flew into his face and he swung backwards like a trapeze artist, neatly turning upside down and slithering to a stop so that he was hanging on to the vines by his shoes. One of his trouser braces was caught around a branch. The remains of a bird’s nest fell past him.

  There was another lurch downwards as more pieces of vine cracked. His braces stretched and made a peculiar noise. He felt himself sliding lower. At least now he was able to grasp the box, which had sustained a large dent in one side. Unfortunately the lid was sealed tighter than ever.

  He realized that the back-strap of his braces was now caught on a stump. He didn’t fancy unbuttoning them and ricocheting headfirst to the patio without his trousers.

  Peering through the leaves he could see that the French windows were open, but he needed May to come outside again. He wondered if he could impersonate a wood pigeon’s call.

  This, he decided, is a very undignified start to a weekend at a country house.

  16

  * * *

  REACH OUT I’LL BE THERE

  While the others topped up their drinks before retiring, drifting between Lupin and Snowdrop (the library and the billiard room), John May seated himself in a wing-backed chair and made a list in his notebook.

  Monty Hatton-Jones

  Lord Banks-Marion

  Lady Banks-Marion

  Donald Burke

  Norma Burke

  Vanessa Harrow

  Slade Wilson

  Pamela Claxon

  Reverend Trevor Patethric

  Toby Stafford

  Ten not including himself, his partner or the staff, or their informant Fruity Metcalf, whom he had yet to meet. Arthur’s right, he thought, we have the cast of a murder mystery right in this house. The businessman, the lord and lady, the millionaire, the wife, the singer, the designer, the novelist, the vicar and the lawyer. And nine of them share a single reason for being here. They all want something from Donald Burke. But could any of them be a potential assassin? He bounced his pencil on the pad, thinking. In the room beyond, Vanessa Harrow was laughing softly with the interior designer. On the stereogram Sandie Shaw was singing ‘Always Something There to Remind Me’.

  May rose and went back out into the hall. At the open front door the butler, Alberman, was taking in a package from Parchment.

  He slipped behind a grandfather clock and listened. ‘It’s for Mr Burke,’ the valet explained. ‘He left it in his car. He’s most anxious—’

  ‘You can leave it with me.’ Alberman held out his hand. ‘I’ll make sure that he gets it.’

  May heard the front door close and risked peering around the edge of the clock. Alberman was setting down the black leather case on the hall stand.

  ‘Alberman, where the devil are you?’ Lord Banks-Marion called from the billiard room. ‘Why don’t you ever come when I need you?’

  May tiptoed out as the butler obeyed his master’s call.

  The box lay on the hall stand with its lid closed. It looked like a cutlery case, rectangular and flat, but was embossed with italicized initials, DB, in gold. Checking that the coast was clear, he flicked open the catch and peered inside.

  On a red velvet pad lay six pairs of pristine white cotton gloves, identical, thumbs upwards, neatly pinned in place. He quickly closed the box and headed out of the front door, leaving it ajar.

  It was a warm night. The air was filled with mayflies. A full moon illuminated the drive of cypress trees. As he walked around the house, he looked in at the glowing rooms. The guests could have been arranged to form perfect tableaux, illustrations of wealth and privilege from an earlier time.

  As he stepped across the herringbone brick, May considered the gap between these images and their reality. The guests of Tavistock Hall might appear carefree, but he was starting to see how desperate they were. From the snippets of urgent conversation he had overheard, it was clear that most of them needed financial support to make it into the approaching decade. Drawing a deep breath, he took in the countryside’s crisp night air.

  At the rear of the house he was hit on the head with a stick. When he looked up, he found his partner hanging upside down from a tree.

  ‘What on earth are you doing up there?’ he called.

  ‘I’m just having a rest, what do you think?’ Bryant stage-whispered. ‘I was trying to reach something.’ He rotated slowly, dangling like a bat in a cave. ‘Can you get me down?’

  ‘I don’t know. Hang on.’ May climbed up a piece of trellis
and reached out a hand. ‘Can you untangle your braces?’

  ‘No, they’re sort of knotted.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to undo them and let go. You just have to trust me.’

  Bryant popped the buttons and let go.

  May made a grab for him but the falling weight was too much. His partner was swung into a rhododendron bush with a crash, like a portly acrobat who had lost his rhythm.

  ‘I found something in Monty’s room,’ Bryant said, crawling out on all fours and spitting leaves. He had clumps of wisteria stuck down his shirt, bits of wood and petals all over his jacket and a piece of nest in one ear. The right knee of his trousers was torn open. He dropped the metal box on to the lawn with a thud. Luckily there was nobody around to hear them.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I have no idea. I can’t get the lid open. It weighs a bloody ton.’

  ‘What are you going to do with it?’ asked May. ‘It’s all bashed up. We can’t return it to his room in this state.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Bryant brought the heel of his tap shoe down on the lid and tried to break it open.

  ‘Are you sure you’re up to field work?’ asked May. ‘It’s safer being a back-room boy.’

  The lid was jammed tight. ‘I have to find somewhere to hide this until I can get into it. For God’s sake, hold it for me.’

  May took the box. Bryant held his trousers up with one hand and brushed himself down with the other. ‘At least I made contact with Fruity Metcalf. There’s something very strange going on around here.’

  ‘Stranger than you falling out of a tree – how?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when I’ve a bit more to go on. Go back to the house and cover for me, will you? You might have to calm Monty down a bit. Punch him in the neck.’ He stuck out his tongue and removed a piece of branch. ‘I don’t know how James Bond manages it.’

  Fruity Metcalf stumped to the door of his gatehouse, wiped his mouth on his working sleeve and answered the knock. ‘Mr Bryant. I was just having some supper. Want some? I shot it myself. Where have you been?’

  ‘Sorry about that, Fruity, I got stuck in a tree,’ Bryant explained. ‘You don’t have a spare belt I could borrow?’

  ‘I’ve got a piece of string.’

  ‘That’ll do.’

  Metcalf held open the door. The inside of the gatehouse was chaotically furnished with items left over from the main house, but warm and cosy. ‘I saw Hatton-Jones outside. What was all the ruckus?’

  ‘He was attacked by a gryphon,’ said Bryant. ‘He’s swearing at everyone so I think he’s all right.’

  ‘That fellow’s been up to something all evening.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Bryant asked, accepting a length of baling twine from Metcalf and threading it through his belt loops.

  ‘I saw him over by the herb garden, looking back at the house and counting the first-floor windows. He seemed to be searching for a particular room. I thought you were more worried about somebody going after him, not the other way around.’

  ‘I am,’ said Bryant. ‘Did you have any luck digging up dirt on him?’

  ‘I made some notes.’ Metcalf checked his watch. ‘Come on, I’ll buy you a swift pint at the Goat and Compasses.’

  ‘Won’t they be shut by now?’

  ‘They keep their own hours.’ He ushered Bryant out of the door so he could lock up.

  ‘Is this your regular haunt?’ asked Bryant as they walked.

  ‘No, I usually go over to the Red Lion at Knotsworth. I’ve an old comrade-at-arms there, and the beer’s cheaper.’ Metcalf had a severe rolling gait that made him move like a sailor on a storm-tossed sea. ‘Lost my leg below the left knee,’ he explained. ‘Landmine. Got a prosthetic fitted at Roehampton, but it chafes. In a funny way the loss always balanced me out, what with the right arm gone. Now I tend to rock about. I still get around all right though. I can manage the gardens. It’d take a bit more than this to slow me down.’

  The pair headed out of a side gate in the garden and down a winding lane that cut deeply between the fields. The twisted, dense patchwork of the land showed through in rectangles of brown and olive green, stitched by the anthracite thread of roads. Their route was lit by the faint amber aurora still glowing on the horizon. The air smelled of honeysuckle, cut grass and cow dung.

  ‘Unusual name,’ said Bryant, studying the sign above the inn that showed a goat standing upright in leather thigh boots with a masonic compass in one raised hoof.

  ‘It’s a corruption of “God Encompasses”,’ Fruity explained as they ducked beneath a low warped beam. The half-timbered structure had weathered several centuries but seemed unlikely to manage many more; its red-tiled roof sagged alarmingly and even its entrance was leaning so heavily that a new door had been shaved down to accommodate its posture.

  Inside, the barman stood slowly drying a dimple mug with a tea towel, making Bryant feel as if he had stepped into a Hammer film.

  Fruity eased himself against the bar. ‘It’s early seventeenth century, so they tell me. The only pub in Crowshott.’

  ‘What’s the village like?’

  ‘Nothing to write home about. Twenty houses, most of the residents bad-tempered and over seventy.’

  Bryant cast a critical eye over the beer pumps. ‘Do they know that Lord Banks-Marion and his mother are planning to sell the property?’

  ‘Yes, and they’re very upset.’ They ordered pints of opaque mahogany-coloured bitter in mugs as the barman rang one of several last bells for the sake of propriety. ‘Her ladyship and her son have to stay out of the village now.’

  ‘What have you got on Monty?’

  Metcalf checked his notes. ‘I put out a few calls to old friends in Fleet Street. They didn’t come up with much,’ he said as they seated themselves. Apart from the barman there were only two other occupants, old farmers as shrunken and wizened as windfall apples. Metcalf scraped a match along its box and lit the stump of a roll-up. ‘Hatton-Jones’s company posted a bad year. If Chamberlain goes down Monty’s business will collapse. Past relations between them were fine by all accounts.’

  ‘Monty’s story that he’s acting as a witness for the prosecution on an anti-corruption ticket feels false,’ said Bryant thoughtfully. ‘I can’t imagine he’s out for anyone but himself.’

  Metcalf drank the head off his beer. ‘Maybe you’ve misjudged him.’

  ‘What about his personal life?’

  ‘Last year Monty’s wife caught him having an affair so he kicked her out of their Mayfair flat. She tried to take him to court but didn’t get anywhere. He’s a notorious philanderer, but the lawyer dug up some past rumour of an indiscretion on her side and the judge ruled in favour of him, so she got nothing. Why is he here?’

  Bryant took a slug of his bitter and grimaced. ‘He’s after some lolly. Reckons he’s got a proposition for Donald Burke, but Burke only came down here to sign the papers and be with his mistress. He’s staying well out of everyone else’s way for now. I can’t say I blame him. What do you know about this proposed business institute?’

  ‘I’ve no head for business,’ Metcalf admitted. ‘The war killed any ambition I once had. You see someone die in front of you and making money no longer matters. They’ve promised to see me all right here, so I’ll stay on. What is it they say? The crows always ride out the storm better than the pilot. What happens up at that old house has no effect on me.’ He glanced towards his empty right sleeve. ‘Nothing affects me any more.’

  ‘What about this weekend?’ Bryant asked. ‘How was it planned?’

  ‘Burke was the first to be invited.’ Metcalf wiped froth from his whiskers. ‘The whole thing was arranged for him. Harry and his mother have spent their last shilling on the event. Harry wants permission to keep his ashram in the grounds and stay on.’

  ‘Why, though? Surely he’ll have enough money to go wherever he likes.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it,’ said the barman, who had a broad old Kentish accent
and had apparently been listening to every word of their conversation. ‘This feller they got coming to buy the hall is being charged well over the odds from what I heard, but his lordship spends every penny that trickles through his fingers. He paid some madwoman from London five hundred pounds to cleanse the building’s aura, if you please. She went up there, read some incantations, waved a few magic sticks around and sprinkled salt everywhere. Londoners!’ He barked alarmingly. ‘His lordship had trouble finding anyone who was interested in taking the place off his hands. Tavistock Hall needs half a million spent on it to become proper habitable again. His lordship’s run up bills for miles around. I supply his spirits but I haven’t been paid for three months, and the butcher’s worse off. And that’s not the half of it. There’s many folk here who’d like to do him harm. Move over.’

  ‘Top us up first.’ Metcalf indicated his empty pint to the landlord.

  They moved in front of the crackling fire with full glasses, the young detective, the crippled old soldier and the bored barman. Cinders ascended from the hearth and burst from the pub’s chimney pot as if trying to alert constabularies of the licensing infringement.

  Some time later, Arthur and Fruity heaved themselves out of the Goat & Compasses and crossed the pub forecourt. As Metcalf turned the corner, something flew past his right ear. He touched his hand to his woollen cap and turned around. Two gumbooted young men were leaning against a dry-stone wall, dimly outlined against the night sky. ‘Garn, clear off!’ shouted one. ‘Go back up to the hall and stay out of our village!’

  The other stooped for a rock and hurled it. Bryant pushed Metcalf out of the way. It cracked against the wall of the car park. He was about to head over to the lads and threaten them with arrest when he realized that doing so would ruin his cover. He had no idea who they might know, so he reluctantly carried on walking. ‘I presume they’re tenants?’ he asked.

  ‘The natives are restless,’ Metcalf replied. ‘They’re losing their homes. Let’s get out of here.’ They headed off up the moonlit lane as further stones clattered behind them. ‘The whole village is up for sale now,’ he said, ‘but nobody in Crowshott can afford to buy their own place. If you’re looking for a reason why somebody might get hurt, that’s it.’