Hall of Mirrors

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘I had no idea that Toby Stafford had sent you a letter,’ said Norma. ‘I would have stopped it had I known.’ She poured them both tea from the silver service that had been laid out on the walnut-inlaid table before them. ‘Men have had too much power for too long. Look at the mess they make of things. I feel sorry for Vanessa – if a girl has to make a living for herself, it makes sense to take money from foolish men. One can hardly condemn her for that. You and I should decide what to do.’

  ‘I think I’m ready to leave now,’ said Beatrice. ‘There’s nothing left for me here. But without your husband buying the hall, I don’t know what will happen to us.’

  ‘I shall keep his promise,’ Norma assured her. ‘The sale of Tavistock Hall will go ahead, but only if that’s what you truly want. It can become a business centre in accordance with my late husband’s wishes, and you will be finally free of the place.’

  ‘Then I suppose we must put our faith in those two peculiar young policemen.’ Beatrice rose and went to the window. The damp was bad for her bones. The wet afternoon fog still clung to the hedgerows, obscuring the outer world. ‘This has always been an unfortunate house. I remember the night the Marchioness of Abbingdon fell over her Pekinese. She went headlong down the stairs and broke her neck. Two years later one of the maids was violently assaulted in her bed. They never caught the fellow who did it, although we all knew who he was. We were so adept at hushing up scandals. How appropriate that there should be one final humiliation in store for us. I would dearly love to leave first thing in the morning, before anything else terrible happens.’

  ‘I feel sorry for you,’ said Norma, and instantly regretted it.

  The matriarch’s eyes were as clear and penetrating as polar ice. They looked through and far beyond her. ‘You have nothing to feel sorry for, Mrs Burke,’ she said crisply. ‘The Banks-Marions of Tavistock Hall have always known how to take care of themselves. I will accept your offer because it is time to do so and because it suits my purpose. Without the money to save it, the house is nothing but a burden. You may keep it all, the linens, the silverware, the china, the tapestries. And all of the paintings except for the Stubbs, the Gainsborough and the Reynolds, providing you have them reframed. The Pre-Raphaelites are vulgar and virtually unsaleable. I have no further need for them, and I have no further interest in the subject.’

  If Norma had felt any pity for the old lady, it was most tested in that moment.

  29

  * * *

  PEOPLE ARE STRANGE

  Beset by obscuring gloom inside and out, Tavistock Hall had become a creaking mansion of shadows and secrets.

  The mangled remains of the corpse lay hidden in a corner of the barn, covered with a tarpaulin, and Vanessa Harrow rested in her room, guarded by Dr Walgrave. The bright-eyed, egg-bald physician had been hoping for a sunny afternoon of cricket. Instead he had been visited by the cook, Mrs Bessel, and asked to attend at the hall. Not knowing what to expect, he had arrived with his usual satchel of palliatives and had found himself with an unconscious woman on his hands.

  ‘She’s lucky to be alive,’ he said, closing his bag. ‘I dare say your colleague must have thought she was dead. Her breathing and pulse were extremely suppressed. I’m sure these young people do it to seek attention. I expect she made the common mistake of taking too many tablets, which made her vomit. It’s harder than you’d think to get the amount right. Most of them came back up before they’d had a chance to reach the gut and dissolve.’

  ‘Can we at least talk to her?’ asked Bryant, trying to peer around Vanessa Harrow’s bedroom door.

  ‘No you cannot, young man, she’s asleep now and will be for some considerable time, probably until tomorrow morning,’ said Dr Walgrave. ‘Do you have any idea what made her do it?’

  ‘If she needs a counsellor I’ll arrange for her to speak to the appropriate service,’ said Bryant, who had little time for officious doctors.

  ‘As you wish.’ Walgrave saw that he would get nothing from the detective. ‘I suspect the gentleman, Mr Hatton-Jones, has a fractured clavicle. I’ve put him in a splint but he’ll need an X-ray and some orthopaedic treatment when he gets back to London. At least Mrs Bessel did a good job of bandaging him up. I must say, there’s always something happening up at this house.’

  ‘Why, have you been asked to attend here for other reasons?’

  ‘Those girls,’ said Walgrave, lowering his voice, ‘living in tents without sanitation. I’ve had to treat several of them for diseases of a delicate nature. And there’s a small child not being properly looked after. I’ll be writing all this up in a report. I should talk to Lady Banks-Marion. I suppose I don’t have to send it.’

  Do the upper classes get special treatment from everyone? thought Bryant. Even doctors? ‘Do you have any advice?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, don’t spend the weekend with people you don’t like,’ replied Dr Walgrave. ‘To whom should I send my bill?’

  ‘You don’t get to send anyone a bill, you’re helping the police,’ Bryant snapped. ‘And you can put that bag down, because you’re not going anywhere just yet.’

  ‘But the road gets flooded here, Mr Bryant, and I’m on foot. I really can’t stay here any longer. My wife gets most upset if I’m late back.’

  ‘We need to go inside Miss Harrow’s room for a minute.’

  ‘But I told you, she’s sleeping.’

  ‘We won’t disturb her. There’s something I need to clear up with you.’

  ‘Very well.’ He followed the detectives into the bedroom.

  ‘You say Miss Harrow didn’t keep down the pills she took,’ Bryant said in a low voice.

  ‘That’s right,’ Walgrave agreed, ‘I found four of them whole in the sink.’

  Bryant looked at the undisturbed patient. ‘If they weren’t dissolved, why is she sleeping so heavily now? She didn’t take a powdered sleeping draught?’

  ‘No, they were regular tablets. The bottle was lying on the coverlet. It has her name typed on it and the prescription is printed on the label, one a night for two weeks only.’ Walgrave felt he had been kept here long enough, and looked at the detective with ill-concealed impatience. ‘I assume two or three had time to dissolve in her stomach, which is why she’s sleeping so soundly now.’

  ‘But wouldn’t they have all dissolved at the same time?’ asked May.

  ‘She drank some gin – I can smell it. Then there’s the half-drunk glass of water.’ He indicated the tumbler on the bedside table. ‘I imagine she used either the gin or the water to wash the tablets down.’

  Bryant pointed back at the table. ‘Look at the glass. There’s sediment in the bottom of it.’

  Puzzled, Dr Walgrave reached out for the water tumbler.

  ‘No, don’t touch it.’ Bryant took out his handkerchief, raised the glass to the light and studied the thin trickle of white powder on its side. ‘There were two types of sleeping medication. One from the Nembutal pill bottle, which has a prescription in her name typed on the side. And another, in solution, already in the glass. She wasn’t trying to kill herself at all. She had a slug of gin and took a heavy dose of sleeping tablets but they were only five milligrams, and as they were the last ones in the bottle she was presumably familiar with their effects.’

  Dr Walgrave did not like anyone else trespassing into his area of expertise. ‘This is pure surmise on your part.’

  ‘Then let’s surmise a little further.’ He turned to May. ‘Miss Harrow finally goes to meet the man who has been so kind to her, but doesn’t see him. A little later she hears about his death, then everyone launches accusations at her. She goes to her room in a state of tension and misery. She just wants to be away from everyone and sleep for a while. She takes four five-milligram sleeping pills, washing them down with some of the water. But she coughs up the tablets in the bathroom and it’s the sleeping draught dissolved in the water that has put her to sleep. And the only thing that saved her life is not drinking the full glass.’
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  ‘Really, that sounds rather far-fetched,’ said Walgrave.

  ‘Then test the water,’ said Bryant. ‘See if the sediment matches this brand.’ He handed Walgrave the triangular sliver of shiny blue paper he had spotted in the waste-paper basket. ‘Somebody tore open packets of powdered sleeping draught and added them to her water glass. I suppose it’s possible they may not have considered that she would use it to wash her own tablets down. But the combined effect of the tablets and the powder could easily have caused her death.’

  ‘They very nearly did,’ said Walgrave. ‘Who would have done such a thing?’

  ‘That’s what we intend to find out,’ said John May.

  They finally let Dr Walgrave go home, and stood by the front-door steps, beyond the reach of the falling rain, breathing in the cool damp air.

  ‘One death and two near-fatalities.’ Bryant unwrapped a tube of Fruit Gums and offered them to his partner. ‘We’re in the middle of a war zone, figuratively and literally. At least they’ve stopped shelling the fields for a while.’ He listened, hearing rain in the trees.

  ‘It’s impossible to do anything more while we’re marooned here,’ said May. ‘Lord Banks-Marion doesn’t even have a telex or a decent working phone line. How are we going to get any concrete evidence? Everyone’s defences are up. They’re all so bloody English, all sarcasm and fish-eye stares when you question them.’

  ‘Now you’re starting to sound like me,’ said Bryant. ‘We’re not wanted here. Even innocent people are unnerved by police; you know that. The guests may not realize it, but they’re giving themselves away, offering up clues even though they don’t know it.’ Bryant took the tiny triangle of blue paper from his pocket and turned it over in his fingers.

  ‘Wait, you have clues?’

  He twirled the paper. ‘Oh, more than one.’

  ‘Do you want to tell me about them?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘If you wait much longer there may not be anyone left to tell.’

  ‘You must have noticed that there are alliances here as well as enmities. Which means there are those who are willing to supply alibis. I’ve been struck by a number of inconsistencies.’

  ‘You’ll be struck by something else if you don’t start sharing them with me.’

  ‘I need to understand a little more. I think we should talk to the staff.’

  May reluctantly followed his partner to the basement to speak with the hall’s invisible occupants.

  ‘You’ll have to be quick,’ said Mrs Bessel, the cook, who, Bryant could not help noticing, had flour above, below and inside her nose. ‘I didn’t get the afternoon baking out. Once I’d have served fresh eclairs, fig and walnut loaf, maids of honour, cheese and pimento sandwiches and queen cakes. We don’t have the staff or the budget for that sort of thing any more. There used to be twenty of us here, now there’s just six. It’s absurd to think you can run a house this size with what we’ve got.’

  ‘What have you got?’ asked Bryant, sniffing the air. The room smelled of rising dough, vanilla and fried butter.

  ‘A butler, me, the housekeeper, a part-time parlourmaid, a valet and the groundsman. What’s more Mr Parchment is older than God’s boots and the groundsman isn’t allowed inside the house.’

  ‘Have you always been in service?’ Bryant’s hand crept towards a piece of plum cake and was slapped away.

  ‘My mother and grandmother, and her mother too,’ said Mrs Bessel proudly. ‘That was back when they used to run two servants’ tables, top and second, with its own rules and dinner times just like them upstairs.’

  ‘Did you meet Mr Burke?’ asked May.

  ‘The cook doesn’t meet guests.’ It was clear that Mrs Bessel considered the very idea to be absurd. ‘We was told he would only eat salads and have meals in his room, that’s all. And cherry huffkins, if you please, which I haven’t made since I don’t know when. We used to flavour them with hops around here, and leave a little thumbprint in the top of each one, proper traditional.’

  Mrs Janverley was the housekeeper, crimson-handed, baggy and burnished by years spent in lightless laundry rooms. She looked as if she had never heard a joke in her life. Seated in her room behind the kitchen, she glanced up from her linens book and removed her glasses. ‘Yes, I heard about the unfortunate accident,’ she told them. ‘Not the first in this house.’

  ‘How often do the sewage men come out to the barn?’ asked Bryant.

  ‘They’re here once a fortnight to empty the septic tank,’ Mrs Janverley explained. ‘The mechanism has to be hosed out and its blades are changed once a year. There’s also a fortnightly maintenance check. That’s the groundsman’s job.’

  ‘You mean Mr Metcalf?’

  ‘That’s right, although of course it’s difficult for him to get about. He can’t do stairs. I’m given to understand that Mr Burke fell from the walkway. Is that correct?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Bryant. ‘He could have been lowered in just as easily. Can you think of any reason why Mr Burke might have gone out to the barn?’

  ‘There is no reason to visit it at all, less’n you have to empty it,’ said Mrs Janverley firmly. ‘The smell alone would keep anyone away.’

  Elsie the parlourmaid agreed with a sour little moue. ‘It’s a horrible smelly place, proper nasty. I wouldn’t go down there, not with my nerves.’

  ‘She’s on edge,’ said Mrs Janverley. ‘We all are.’

  ‘Elsie, were you taking care of Mr Burke’s room?’ May asked.

  ‘Only tidying up and making the bed, not laundry,’ she explained. ‘The guests used to arrive with their own maids but those days are long gone. Mr Parchment’s on call for all their other needs, if you can manage to wake him up. He stays in his night booth on the first floor.’

  ‘How often does Lady Banks-Marion host weekend parties?’

  ‘Hardly ever now, at least not since I’ve been here. This is my last maid’s job. When they close the house up I’m going to my sister’s place in America.’

  ‘You don’t like working for Lady Banks-Marion?’

  Elsie pulled a face that was even less flattering than the last. ‘Oh no, she acts like King Edward’s still on the throne, and she pays the same wages an’ all.’

  Next they went upstairs and spoke to Parchment, who was knitting in his nook. The valet’s night booth was a cross between a stationery cupboard and a ship’s berth, its comforts arranged with military precision. Bryant had seen similar slatted wooden compartments at pensioners’ barracks. They were designed to remind old soldiers of their days in service.

  ‘I understand you’re in charge of laying the tables and keeping the bedrooms and their guests comfortable,’ said May.

  ‘The world’s changed, hasn’t it?’ Parchment replied, setting down a partially finished scarf and turning up his hearing aid. ‘The old order’s gone, sir. There are no country squires any more. The prime minister says we’re all equal now. Look at the Beatles, all of them millionaires and they’re from Liverpool!’

  Bryant caught his partner’s eye.

  ‘There’s no work left for me,’ Parchment said tiredly. ‘When the last war broke out most of the country house owners around here couldn’t wait to sell up to the Ministries of Defence and Education. Soldiers and schoolkids did what the bombs couldn’t; they smashed up everything they could lay their hands on.’ The speech, probably one of the longest he had made in thirty years, looked as if it had worn him out. ‘Knole House is the only other big manor house around here, sir, over in Sevenoaks. One of the biggest in the country, that is.’

  Bryant had heard of it. Virginia Woolf had set her novel Orlando there. ‘Could you get a job at Knole?’

  ‘I’d like to,’ said Parchment. ‘It’s a calendar house. Three hundred and sixty-five rooms, fifty-two staircases, twelve entrances and seven courtyards. I don’t suppose they need anyone like me.’

  ‘Do you like working for the family?’ Bryant asked.

  ‘I like La
dy Banks-Marion, she’s a decent sort. She has rules that can’t be broken. But her son is soft in the head. He still makes fun of me. I told him, I’m Ernest Prabhakar; it’s an old Indian name. My mother was Indian, see.’

  ‘What will you do, then?’ asked Bryant.

  ‘Me? I’ll get myself a cheap little flat near one of the big London hotels. My references are good. They still do silver service at Claridge’s, Simpson’s and the like, and the money’s better. I’m not young and I like my sleep in the afternoons, but I’ve still got my knees and most of my eyesight. I can manage dinner and supper sittings until all hours.’

  ‘Did you meet Mr Burke?’

  ‘I saw him but I didn’t talk to him. It’s not my place.’

  ‘Do you talk to any of the guests?’

  ‘Only Mr Wilson. He needed some help with the measurements for the bedroom but I wasn’t about to stand on a chair.’

  ‘So none of the servants were allowed to talk to Mr Burke?’

  ‘Nobody except Mr Alberman, sir. He’d be the only one who could do that.’

  They went to check on the butler.

  Alberman could shed no further light on the deceased houseguest. He continued to pack his suitcase as he spoke. ‘Mrs Burke took care of him,’ he explained. ‘It was my impression that his health was poor.’

  ‘What made you think that?’

  ‘He walked slowly, and she had to guide him. I thought perhaps he had gout. I heard cross words between them.’

  ‘Why would he want to buy a house this size if his health was failing?’

  ‘It is not my position to ask questions about the guests of my employers,’ Alberman replied. ‘My job is to ensure the smooth running of the household, not to hold views.’

  ‘You certainly held views a short while ago,’ May pointed out.

  ‘That needed saying, sir.’ He placed a perfectly folded shirt into his case and lovingly smoothed out the material, adding a set of whalebone brushes. He had very few belongings to pack. ‘I had been intending to hand in my notice for several months,’ he replied to Bryant’s unasked question. ‘It was only out of respect for Lady Banks-Marion that I held off. But the time has come to leave.’