Hall of Mirrors

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘The first thing we have to do is seal off this area and put a call out to a forensics unit,’ said Bryant. ‘Given that the army’s playing silly buggers all around us they may have to be choppered in.’

  They emerged from the stifling barn with relief. ‘It makes no sense,’ said May. ‘What was he doing anywhere near the septic tank?’

  ‘One has to assume he didn’t know what was in there. Let’s not jump to any conclusions just yet,’ Bryant warned. ‘We need a positive identification. I’m afraid it’s going to mean asking Mrs Burke to examine the remains.’

  ‘We don’t have the authority to handle this, Arthur. Shouldn’t we phone it in to Canterbury first?’

  ‘We can’t afford to waste any time.’ Bryant breathed out and looked up at the thunderous sky. ‘Whatever’s left of him will break down fast.’

  He ran across to Metcalf’s gatehouse and found the door open. An old Bakelite telephone sat on a window ledge, but when he raised the receiver the line merely buzzed and crackled. Dialling 999 made no difference. As he replaced the handset, clouds darkened the room.

  As the detectives headed back to the main hall, a bloated crow strutted past them on the grass, turning to caw. Everything had assumed a sinister significance. The anxious guests stood motionless, waiting at the windows.

  ‘Do you want to tell them or shall I?’ asked May.

  23

  * * *

  LET IT BLEED

  ‘There’s been a …’ May looked at his partner, unsure of what to say.

  ‘An incident,’ said Bryant.

  ‘Mrs Burke, we need you to come with us. I’m afraid it won’t be a very pleasant experience.’

  Norma’s eyes widened. She looked to the others for help.

  ‘Norma, do you want me to come with you?’ asked Pamela Claxon, rising from her chair.

  ‘I think it better that she comes alone,’ said May.

  Growing more alarmed by the moment, Norma Burke followed them out of the house. They walked in silence, down through the field and around the hedge to the barn. In the distance, the boom of a large gun shocked starlings into the sky. Mrs Burke reached out for May’s arm as she slipped on the muddy grass.

  Inside the barn, Harry had found some hand-held battery-operated lights, and had set them around the macerator. Laid out on an unfolded piece of oilskin were the tie, the watch, the remains of a white shirt, a piece of grey waistcoat, the torn-up Oxford toecap shoe and some pieces of white glove.

  ‘Oh.’ Norma looked from one item to the next and took a step back to steady herself. Nobody needed to ask if she recognized them.

  ‘There’s some other … material …’ May said gently. ‘I wonder if we could persuade you to take a look.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I need to see.’

  He brought her slowly back to the edge of the oilskin sheet and opened the second bundle, revealing the left arm and the hand with its wedding ring, and the torn ear. As she examined the remains he took a torch and held it over each of the chunks of flesh in turn.

  Harry ran another torch beam over the side of the macerator. ‘There are some more pieces,’ he called back. Shockingly white fragments of bone protruded upwards from between the blades. More grey hairs caked the sides of the trough. Mrs Burke looked away and covered her face. May thought she might fall, but she recovered sufficiently to return to the items on the oilcloth.

  ‘Give me a minute,’ she asked.

  May waited. Norma leaned in closer to examine the hand with its wedding ring. ‘He never removed this,’ she said quietly, ‘not once during the entire time of our marriage. On the inside you’ll find an inscription – cor fidele – faithful heart. See the little scar on his wrist? When he was twenty-one he decided to tattoo himself with his girlfriend’s name, but they broke up, so he cut it out with a penknife.’

  Bryant thought of the arms Monty had seen pushing against the gargoyle on the roof. Was it conceivable that he had been attacked by Donald Burke? If he knew that to be the case, Monty would be a suspect.

  He spotted something else glinting in the mire. At first he thought it was a cufflink or a marble. ‘Mrs Burke, did your husband have anything wrong with his eyes?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said forlornly. ‘The left one was artificial. The result of a childhood accident. It was one of the reasons why he hated meeting new people. They could always tell that one was false.’

  Bryant reached down and removed the shattered eyeball, its iris a brilliant blue, and discreetly wrapped it in his handkerchief.

  ‘What on earth could have happened?’ she asked.

  ‘When did you last see your husband?’

  ‘I suppose it was just before lunchtime. I really don’t keep track of his whereabouts. I told you, he was going to Knotsworth to meet Toby Stafford.’

  ‘It seems Mr Burke returned without seeing his lawyer and came out to the barn.’ Bryant pointed up at the broken railing in the walkway. ‘He must have fallen in from up there.’

  ‘Why would he have deliberately walked into a place like this?’

  ‘We have no answers yet,’ Bryant admitted. ‘It seems out of character. Maybe he was just having a look around and wondered what was in here.’

  Norma headed to the wooden walkway and started to climb up.

  ‘I don’t think you should do that, Mrs Burke,’ said May.

  ‘I want to see.’ She stood at the top of the stairs, so unsteady that she had to grab one of the wooden posts to keep herself from falling.

  May climbed the stairs. ‘Please, come down. We don’t know how safe it is, or why the railing should have broken just in that spot.’

  ‘Perhaps he was leaning on it,’ she said, taking his hand.

  ‘This is no accident, Mrs Burke,’ said Bryant. ‘I think somebody pushed him.’

  She looked back at him and her face crumpled. ‘Oh, Donald.’

  ‘We’d better take you back to the house for a while.’ May took her arm and led her back down. ‘We’ll try to find out what happened here.’

  ‘Can I at least have the wedding ring?’

  ‘I’m afraid it will have to stay where it is for a while.’

  It seemed a cruel thing to do, but he had no choice. After they had taken her back to the house the detectives returned to the barn and climbed the steps to the walkway. When Bryant bent close, he found that the split in the pine railing smelled fresh. He touched his forefinger to the wood. ‘The sap’s still wet. It was partly sawn through. I could see the saw-marks from down there. The tool must be around here somewhere. It all seems rather amateurish.’

  ‘Or opportunistic. You might have avoided telling her that her husband was murdered,’ said May.

  Bryant shrugged. ‘She would have found out sooner or later. It had to be somebody Burke knew well. Not many people would agree to come to a darkened barn smelling of sewage. He must have had a good reason for being here.’

  ‘Vanessa Harrow.’

  ‘Hard to imagine but I suppose it’s not impossible,’ said Bryant. ‘You had breakfast with her, but she got back before you.’

  ‘I dawdled. The lawyer, Toby Stafford, he’s not staying at the house.’

  ‘A possibility. Or someone we haven’t met. I mean, Burke’s hardly been hanging out with the rest of us, has he? Perhaps he knows someone else in the neighbourhood.’

  ‘So he gets a call telling him to meet not at the house but in the barn? And when he does so he’s lured up on to the walkway and pushed through the barrier? No, Arthur, it’s all wrong.’

  ‘Then come up with another scenario,’ said Bryant, passing him a Fruit Polo. ‘This’ll stop you thinking about the smell. What are we going to do with those?’ He pointed at the crushed grey body parts laid out on the sheet.

  ‘Cover them for the forensic team,’ said May, waving away flies. ‘We’ll have to call them from the main house.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Bryant, heading over to a large piece of hooked equipment hung
with pulleys and weights, and suspended from the rafters on thick ropes. ‘Looks to me like a block and tackle. I suppose it’s there to remove anything that gets stuck in the rotor. Look, there’s a counterbalanced pulley that can move it over the chopper.’

  ‘So if it can be used to pull things out, can it also be used to lower something in?’ asked May. ‘That would make the job much easier. Then you just saw through the railing to fake a fall.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Bryant. ‘What if somebody instructed Burke?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What if they said, “Go to the barn, climb the walkway and look down into the macerator,” and gave him a reason for being here against his will? They could have hidden something here, something they knew he’d want to get back. And then when he tried to reach for it, boom, he fell through the railing.’

  ‘A bit elaborate, isn’t it? And hardly guaranteed to work. Why not just conk him on the head—’

  ‘That’s it, even better,’ said Bryant enthusiastically. ‘They send him a note: “Meet me somewhere no one will see, be at the barn in an hour.” Burke pushes open the door and peers in, bang, a whack across the back of the bonce, he’s hooked on to the block and tackle and raised up – a child could do it – to be chucked into the macerator. The railing’s sawn through so it looks like he’s gone upstairs and fallen in, and the assailant leaves with the machine still running, chewing him to bits, job done.’

  ‘Footprints out,’ said May.

  They left to check the ground outside, but the mud was far too churned up to reveal anything. They returned to the patio and stamped clay from their shoes. ‘So no boot marks,’ said Bryant. ‘And most of the body chopped up into pieces the size of a stock cube. A perfect murder, just not the one we were expecting. Now what?’

  ‘Well, I think we have at least ten culprits to choose from,’ said May, nodding back at the house. ‘It doesn’t look as if we’ll have to play murder games this afternoon. We have a real one to investigate. And I’m afraid the consequences could be much nastier.’

  24

  * * *

  BORN UNDER A BAD SIGN

  For over a century the British public followed the trials of meticulous, manipulative murderers like John George Haigh, Florence Maybrick, George Joseph Smith and William Palmer. Pathologists and barristers like Bernard Spilsbury and Edward Marshall Hall became stars in their own right. We will never know how many murderers were ingenious enough to evade capture. However, the nation was at the centre of two world wars that robbed death of all dignity and grandeur, and so the age of the clever killer soon came to an end.

  Bryant replaced the book and took down another.

  The Victorian obsession with poison and being poisoned came from its ease of availability. Arsenic was everywhere, in paint and cosmetics, dresses and wallpaper. It was cheap and readily available, and half an ounce could kill fifty people. Victorian gardens were filled with poisons. The seeds of the wisteria vine (Wisteria floribunda) contain high levels of wisterin and are lethally toxic.

  This book too, he replaced. His eye was caught by another slim volume: Australian Postal History & Social Philately. He thought about nicking it.

  ‘What are you doing?’ called May from the hall, where he was trying the telephone.

  ‘I’m, er, investigating the library,’ said Bryant, stepping back to admire the shelves. ‘There are dozens of books here about murder. Somebody here collects them.’

  ‘You’re reading books while I’m trying to get hold of a forensics team?’ May dialled a third time and held the receiver away from his ear as the same series of squeaks and crackles ensued. ‘It sounds like a duck eating crisps.’

  ‘I bet it’s the MOD,’ said Bryant, examining the spine of a volume on Dr Crippen. ‘The army intelligence corps could be using some kind of signal jammer.’

  ‘More likely engineers making repairs. Or if we’re being melodramatic, someone could have tampered with the line to the house.’

  ‘No, if that were the case it would simply be dead.’

  ‘Didn’t you say Fruity’s line wasn’t working either? Someone knows we can’t just drive out of here, and now we can’t call anyone, either.’

  ‘But one of us can still walk to the village.’ Bryant reluctantly left the bookshelves and wandered out into the hall. ‘The other can find out where everyone was when Mr Burke did a tour jeté into the bone-grinding machine. There’s so much information to process. And yet I feel the first faint stirrings of apophenia.’

  ‘I don’t know what that is,’ May admitted.

  ‘The experience of seeing patterns in seemingly meaningless data.’ He held out his fist. ‘Paper, scissors, rock. Loser goes to the village.’

  ‘There has to be a more professional method than this,’ May complained. ‘Besides, I always lose.’ He feinted twice with his fist and opened his palm flat. Bryant had formed scissors. ‘Damn. Best out of seven? Who do you think killed him? I mean, assuming you don’t think he was suicidal and jumped in.’

  ‘They all need Burke.’ Bryant’s paper covered May’s rock. ‘Maybe they’re in it together. Who stands to gain the most?’

  ‘That’s the problem,’ said May. ‘If someone’s killed the goose that lays the golden eggs, they all miss out. Slade Wilson won’t get his commission, the vicar won’t get his roof, Lady Banks-Marion is stuck with the house, Lord Banks-Marion will lose his ashram, the novelist doesn’t get her book, Vanessa Harrow loses her benefactor, Toby Stafford loses his client.’ May’s scissors were blunted by Bryant’s rock. ‘Did we say best out of seven? Make it thirteen.’

  ‘Tell you what, I’ll cut you a deal,’ said Bryant magnanimously. ‘I’m no good at getting the right answers to questions. I’m an academic. You do the suspects. I’ll try to reach the village without getting my ears blown off by any passing shells. Make sure nobody leaves, and see who’s got an alibi.’

  Together they peered around the door of Lavender. The guests now had the desperate appearance of citizens awaiting relief in a besieged town.

  ‘Look at them all with their greedy little faces still plastered against the glass,’ Bryant whispered. ‘I honestly don’t think it could be any of them. They haven’t the stomach for murder. It’s more likely that Burke was rolled for his wallet by a couple of hippies from his lordship’s ashram.’

  ‘A robbery gone wrong?’ May attempted to wipe mud from his shoes with a filched dinner napkin. ‘You think Burke felt a bit frisky and followed one of the nymphets into the barn hoping for a roll in the hay? In his white gloves? Then got over-excited and toppled into the mulcher? This isn’t one of Pamela Claxon’s murder mysteries, although heaven knows it could pass as one. You’d better see if you can get help before things get out of hand.’

  Bryant was indignant. ‘We’ve as much chance of uncovering the truth as anybody else. The plods from Canterbury are more used to investigating who dug up the daffodils in the council flowerbed. We know murder. We’re Londoners.’

  With that, he donned a pair of enormous galoshes from the set arranged by the door, took the largest umbrella from the elephant-foot stand in the hall and, looking decidedly Christopher Robin-ish, set off for Crowshott.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Toby Stafford demanded to know as May re-entered. ‘Is there someone coming to sort this out?’

  In the corner of the room, Norma Burke’s usually immaculate coiffure had lost its formality. She was being poured teak-coloured tea while the others stood around awaiting instruction. Like actors without scripts, their air of helplessness was palpable. At their centre Lady Banks-Marion sat silent and frozen, her hands folded in her lap.

  ‘It appears that Mr Burke has been murdered,’ said May. ‘His remains have been positively identified. There will probably be other – pieces of evidence, but we have to wait for help to reach us from Canterbury.’

  ‘Oh dear Lord, what on earth could possibly have happened to the poor fellow?’ asked Reverend Patethric wit
h such forlorn empathy that May wanted to punch him.

  ‘Mr Burke fell into the macerator that treats raw sewage from the house.’

  ‘That’s preposterous,’ Stafford said. ‘You’re saying it minced him into pig food and none of us heard a thing?’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ said May, suddenly aware of his inexperience and youthfulness in a room mostly filled with his superiors. ‘He may not have had time to cry out. Perhaps he couldn’t be heard above the noise of the machinery. We’re hoping that somebody might have seen him entering the barn.’

  ‘But we were all in here,’ said Vanessa. ‘Weren’t we?’

  ‘Hold on, some came down to lunch later than others,’ said Pamela. ‘Can any of us say we saw everyone else?’

  ‘We’re not the only ones here, what about the staff?’ asked Wilson. ‘They’re in and out all the time. And those hippies living in the walled garden?’

  ‘I need each of you to write down your movements for me,’ said May. ‘Add any details you can think of. Did you look at the clock as you entered the room? Did you happen to glance out of the window? Did you see anyone outside?’ He spoke to Alberman, who went to fetch paper and pencils. ‘The more exact you can be, the easier it will be for me to eliminate you.’

  After Alberman had returned and the pencils were distributed, along with a fistful of blank postcards, everyone found a seat and settled down to writing. May looked about the room. He felt as if he was holding an English class.

  ‘Mr May, perhaps I might have a word with you,’ said Lady Banks-Marion, rising and leading the way to the hall, not waiting for him to follow.

  She stood beside the grandfather clock, grand and imperious, and waited while he closed the dining-room door. ‘Tell me, do you have any experience with something like this?’

  ‘A certain amount, your ladyship,’ said May. ‘My colleague has gone to the village to get help from a local team.’