Hall of Mirrors

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘Surely you can’t desert her in her hour of need? You can’t leave tonight anyway,’ May warned. ‘The road is closed until tomorrow.’

  ‘I have lived in this house for the past twenty-seven years,’ said Alberman, drawing himself up. ‘There are arrangements to make before I go. Staying one more night will be no hardship.’

  As they came out of Alberman’s room and headed downstairs, they passed Harry Banks-Marion and his smiling piglet on the grand staircase. For a heavy man, he tripped down the steps with balloon-lightness.

  ‘I wanted to ask you,’ said Bryant. ‘How did you come to know Donald Burke?’

  ‘We were introduced through Toby Stafford,’ Harry replied. ‘Toby and his wife were staying in Crowshott in the spring. They were passing through Kent looking at properties, and I nearly ran him over.’

  ‘Was he all right?’ asked May.

  ‘Oh yes, just got splashed with mud. There are no pavements, you see, and I was doing a toad.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Toad of Toad Hall. Driving a bit too fast. But we got talking, and I mentioned the problems I was having with the house. Toby explained that he was looking for a property where he could open his client’s business centre, and one thing led to another.’

  ‘Was your mother in the car with you?’ asked Bryant.

  ‘What? No, she was at home.’

  ‘And Mr Burke rang you?’

  ‘The very next day.’

  ‘Well, that was extremely revealing,’ said Bryant as they continued on down the staircase and out of the house.

  ‘You think so?’ asked May.

  ‘Oh, very. Didn’t you?’

  ‘Not really, no. Did I miss something?’

  ‘Probably.’ The familiar glint of mischief appeared in Bryant’s eye. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t tell you. It will be interesting to hear your observations later. We can compare notes.’

  ‘I’m not sure I have any notes.’ May was put out. They had always shared their information in the past.

  ‘I need to break open the box I stole from Monty’s room,’ said Bryant. ‘Interesting that he hasn’t mentioned it. What did you do with it?’

  ‘Ah,’ said May. ‘I was going to tell you about that. I left it in the library, under one of the armchairs, but it seems to have disappeared.’

  ‘What do you mean? Where could it have gone?’

  ‘I’m not entirely sure. It’s possible that Monty may have searched the house and taken it back.’

  ‘Well, we don’t have time to find it now. You have to come back to the village with me,’ said Bryant, ‘somebody there must know something. Shopkeepers. We should be able to catch them before they close. You need to come with me in case I miss anything. You know what I’m like.’

  ‘All right, but I’ll tell Fruity to keep a close eye on the place and make sure nobody else gets in.’

  A few minutes later they set off for the village of Crowshott, watched by a shell-shocked parliament of rooks.

  30

  * * *

  WALKING IN THE RAIN

  In London, the rain had yet to arrive and ruin the afternoon.

  Gladys Forthright checked the telex memo she had been keeping in her pocket. ‘The prosecution has confirmed that if Monty doesn’t appear on Monday they’ll have no case,’ she said, handing Roger Trapp the offending note.

  ‘All right, Gladys, I can read.’ Trapp snatched the sheet from her. He should have been at a cricket match in Regent’s Park and was most put out that Gladys had insisted on meeting up with him.

  They were seated in a garishly painted Camden Town coffee bar called My People Were Fair and Had Sky in Their Hair. Until last year it had been called Eddie’s and had sold pie and mash, but since the name change their counters were filled with pineapple upside-down cake and espressos, catering for the in-crowd.

  ‘I guess this tape recording Hatton-Jones made of Chamberlain’s bribery attempt isn’t enough to convict him,’ she said.

  ‘No, but it’s a back-up,’ said Trapp, scanning the page. ‘The main thing is that we know the Hackney development collapsed because of Chamberlain’s faulty designs. Surely there’s enough evidence to secure a conviction?’

  ‘Too many rogue elements in the production chain, apparently.’ Gladys pointed a crimson nail lower down the message. ‘It’s in there somewhere. The defence is going to put up an argument saying that the land was subject to subsidence and should never have been chosen as a public housing site. Smoke and mirrors. They’ll say they can’t guarantee that Chamberlain’s company is directly responsible for the fault.’

  ‘But what about his conversation with the planners, the recording, the bribery, the failure to tender?’

  ‘Unless there are names directly mentioned on the tape it’ll be circumstantial at best. They need a direct witness.’

  Trapp lowered a spoon into his cappuccino with dismay. ‘I hate these things,’ he complained. ‘Why do they put chocolatey stuff on the foam?’

  ‘You could have had a latte or an espresso.’

  ‘I don’t want to have to remember ten names for a cup of coffee. You don’t have ten names for tea. Anyway, we’ve got a direct witness, haven’t we? Monty’s not going to back down or anything.’

  ‘No, but …’ She wondered how much to tell him. There was already a vein like a fireman’s hose throbbing at Trapp’s temple.

  ‘Out with it, for God’s sake.’

  ‘The situation has become more complicated,’ she ventured. ‘Shall I order you a cup of tea instead?’

  ‘What do you mean? Bryant and May are in a country house in the middle of nowhere. How much trouble can they possibly get into?’

  You’d be surprised, thought Gladys as she beckoned a waitress. ‘There’s been an unexplained death.’

  ‘What do you mean: “unexplained”?’

  ‘Well, an accident or a murder.’ After the waitress had set down a plain froth-free coffee before her boss, Gladys described the situation to the best of her understanding.

  Trapp was appalled. ‘Are you telling me that Hatton-Jones could be a suspect?’

  ‘John thinks not, because he has a solid alibi. He tells me Monty was having lunch with the others at the time,’ said Gladys.

  ‘So there’s no problem.’

  ‘There will be when Canterbury get hold of it. Monty knew the deceased; he was a fellow guest at the site of his murder. They’ll move to disbar his testimony.’

  ‘And how do you come to know about this?’ asked Trapp suspiciously. ‘Bryant and May are keeping this under their hats, aren’t they? They haven’t informed the local constabulary.’

  ‘Mr Bryant’s fear is that if outsiders become involved they’ll detain Hatton-Jones, and he won’t be able to deliver his testimony on Monday morning. Even if they don’t, his eligibility as a witness will come under question.’

  ‘Well, that’s just great.’ Trapp glared at the young coffee drinkers around him with hatred and frustration. The Peculiar Crimes Unit had a history of inheriting easily frightened department heads operating beyond the limits of their expertise, a practice that had begun at its inception and which would continue long into its future. ‘Of course, a local force won’t care about any other ongoing investigations. In fact, they’d probably relish the chance to screw everything else up for us. They all hate this unit, you know. Those detectives of yours get the pick of the cases.’

  ‘Well, they’ve got one now,’ said Gladys.

  ‘Then you’d better pray that they solve it fast,’ warned Trapp. ‘It’s going to be the last case they ever get their hands on.’

  ‘Bloody hate the lot of ’em,’ said Major Julius Tilden, who clearly did not believe in holding back, even to complete strangers. He owned the second grandest house in Crowshott but preferred to potter about in its whitewashed stable cottage behind the Goat & Compasses. ‘Once they had the run of the land around here. Now they’ve ended up without a pot to piss in, if you’ll pardon my
French.’

  The major was leaning on his gate with an umbrella raised in one hand and pruning shears in the other. Undeterred by the weather, he had been torturing his roses to within an inch of their lives when the detectives came past and introduced themselves.

  ‘I went to Eton with the old lord,’ Tilden continued, happy to have someone to talk to. ‘An appalling human being, although he took out his fair share of the Hun in his time, unlike the conchie son. The grounds were opened to the public for a while, you know, but some of his wife’s jewellery went missing so he closed them again. It wasn’t the first time things vanished from that house. We all assumed it was a member of the public, but then rumours started flying around about the son needing money. You know he went off on the hippy trail, seeking some kind of spiritual enlightenment?’

  ‘So we heard,’ said John May.

  ‘He was paying a fortune to a friend of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, that ridiculous guru chap the Beatles all went to stay with. These mullahs and mystagogues were wandering about collecting followers as easily as holy men in nineteenth-century Russia.’

  ‘I take it you don’t believe in that sort of thing,’ said May, picking up the major’s cuttings for him.

  ‘To the people of Kent, transcendental meditation is something you do on the loo.’

  ‘And to you?’

  ‘I can reach a higher plane of consciousness simply by nodding off in an armchair.’ The major snapped his shears shut. ‘I say, ramrod back, I bet you’ve a good seat. Do you want to come riding one morning? I’ve a middleweight bay hunter that should suit you.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t ride,’ said May. ‘Did the police become involved? About the robberies, I mean?’

  The major reached over and snipped the top off a perfectly healthy nasturtium. ‘Good heavens no. The house always dealt with its own problems. Getting the police involved would have been quite unthinkable.’

  ‘What happened to the house during the war?’ Bryant asked, studying the obsessively manicured garden with distaste. What was the point of living in the country if you didn’t let it grow wild about you?

  ‘They didn’t want any more soldiers billeted there,’ the major explained. ‘One can hardly blame them, what with all the damage they did to so many fine houses – so they turned the state room into a dormitory for a reputable boarding school. But there was more trouble. Harry was only young but even back then he couldn’t be trusted around girls.’

  ‘How do you feel about the hall being sold?’

  ‘It’ll be disastrous for most of the older residents. They still have tied tenancies. Tempers get very heated at the village hall.’

  They thanked the major and left him murdering some marigolds.

  In an ironmonger’s shop in the high street they spoke to a man the customers called Young Albert, although he had to be at least sixty. His clipped moustache matched his brown overalls, and his hands were calloused and deformed from decades of using ratchets and saws. He stood before a hundred tiny wooden drawers containing screws, bolts, nails and washers. The shop smelled of brown paper, oil, sawdust and metal filings.

  ‘We never see them down in the village,’ he confirmed. ‘The boys take groceries up on their bikes. The vicar came in once or twice. Asked me if I wanted to buy some silver plate, wouldn’t tell me where he got it. Needs a haircut, that fellow. And that crime-writer woman, Claxon, she came in yesterday.’

  ‘What did she buy?’ asked May.

  ‘Nothing. She wanted to know about the sewage treatment plant up at the hall, how it all worked. I asked her if there was something wrong with it and she said no, it was research for a murder mystery she was working on. She asked me if it could grind up a body, if you please.’

  ‘Did she indeed?’ Bryant gave May another one of his over-emphatic looks.

  ‘I told her that some probably could, but only if the corpse was fed in directly from above so that it couldn’t clog the blades. I know about that sort of thing. I was in the Home Guard. We drew up plans for what to do in the event of an invasion. Anyway, she decided it was too far-fetched and settled for rat poison instead. Writers are a funny lot. I read one of her Inspector Trench novels once. This chap dissolved his nagging wife in an acid bath. It was very enjoyable.’

  They found Edie Markham further along the high street. She was a heavily upholstered lady with a helmet of tight curls who sold eggs and butter while dispensing nuggets of advice. She was quick to add her tuppenceworth. ‘It’s a nice place to live. We have everything we need here. There’s a community hall and a very good library with no smut. We even had an amateur dramatics society until they staged a Harold Pinter and put people off. There aren’t so many little ones now, though, like there were during the war. Evacuees. They did some thieving around the shops, and then there was some bigger trouble. One of the girls was sent home.’

  ‘Why?’ asked May, ‘what happened?’

  ‘Nobody in the village really knew, but there were stories about Lord Banks-Marion – well, he wasn’t the lord then. He’s what we call a toucher. His father wanted him put away. We thought he’d be sent to Broadhampton.’

  ‘If there was criminal activity why didn’t the police get involved?’

  ‘The Chief Inspector was an old friend of the family. He used to go up there after church for a glass of sherry, and things mysteriously sorted themselves out.’ She girded herself and leaned in closer. ‘There’ve been more recent scandals too. It’s said Lord Banks-Marion makes dirty films up there. It’s none of our business, of course. We always saw all the family at the summer ball and the Christmas fayre. They used to put on a lovely spread.’

  ‘What will happen if the hall changes hands?’

  ‘I imagine we’ll all be kicked out of our cottages, unless the new owner has an accident and dies. We don’t want anything to change. You’re in London, where everything’s different all the time. Topless dresses and Perspex coffee tables won’t catch on down here.’

  ‘How do you know I’m from London?’ May asked.

  Edie stifled a laugh. ‘You’re dressed how a townie thinks he should dress in the country. Begging your pardon, you think we’re your poor cousins, but that’s how we see you: rich in wealth and poor in health.’

  ‘We’re not even rich,’ said Bryant indignantly as they walked back to Tavistock Hall, umbrellas locked against the squalling rain. ‘I can’t help being from the Smoke. My most distant relative only lived three streets away. Nobody around us was evacuated in the war.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Our parents were more scared of woods and animals than bombs. A squirrel got into our house once and everyone had hysterics. The closest we ever got to the countryside was a Sunday afternoon walk on Hampstead Heath, and even then we always got home before dark, just in case we got lost. It’s funny when you consider I was quite happy wandering around the Whitechapel boozers at midnight.’

  The war games had started up again. From somewhere in the distance came the popping of rapid gunfire. Suddenly the hedge parted and several panicked sheep shot across the road. Bryant kept a wary distance.

  ‘So what did you do as a nipper?’ asked May.

  ‘When I was ten I spent all my time in the British Museum, trying to translate the Rosetta Stone. I couldn’t imagine life outside London, where people were surrounded by mud and had to get up at five o’clock to milk the owls.’ Bryant gave an involuntary shudder. ‘All this getting to know your neighbours malarkey isn’t natural. I come from a city where it’s a badge of honour to still not know who lives next door ten years after they’ve moved in. It’s too dark and too quiet here. I’m quite glad of the odd explosion. It reminds me of London.’

  ‘You don’t think Vanessa Harrow killed the old man and then tried to commit suicide out of guilt, do you?’

  ‘It’s a theory.’ Bryant dug out his Lorenzo Spitfire and made a valiant attempt to light it while May held his umbrella. ‘He arranges to meet her in a place where they won’t
be overheard, for the purpose of breaking off the affair she says they never had. She attacks him in the heat of the moment, and is then filled with remorse and shame.’

  ‘You sound as if you don’t believe it,’ said May.

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Appetite,’ Bryant replied. ‘She still attended luncheon and ate like a horse. You wouldn’t, would you, not after doing something like that?’

  ‘It does seem rather unlikely.’

  ‘And then we have Miss Claxon, asking how to dispose of a body.’ He paused to take a long, pleasurable puff on his pipe.

  ‘If you were really going to kill someone would you get advice on it first?’ asked May. ‘Besides, what would her motive be?’

  ‘Unrequited love,’ replied Bryant glibly. ‘She’s knocking on and she probably doesn’t get many suitors with legs that thick.’

  ‘You’ve never been very good with women, have you?’ May suggested.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong: I think she’s perfectly charming. I’m trying to see her with a copper’s eye.’

  ‘And that’s how the police decide guilt, is it? Her legs are a bit thick so she doesn’t have suitors, therefore she’s a murderess. Heaven help you.’

  ‘I told you, people aren’t my strong point,’ Bryant replied, twirling his umbrella dangerously.

  ‘Then it’s time you worked on your social skills,’ said May. ‘You can take over the questioning when we get back. Just try not to antagonize everyone.’

  ‘How else are we going to get results if we don’t?’ Bryant asked, not unreasonably.

  ‘You know what I’m saying,’ said May. ‘I just don’t want to see anyone else throw spaghetti over you.’

  ‘Oh, that was ages ago. The bishop has probably forgotten all about it.’ At the next bend in the lane they found that the road was now flooded. A wide, dark pool ran between the hedgerows. ‘Cripey, how deep is that, do you think?’