Hall of Mirrors

by Christopher Fowler

  They found a length of branch, climbed around the side and lowered it into the water. It came out wet to a depth of almost two feet. ‘This section of the road is below the level of the surrounding fields,’ said May. ‘Let’s hope the rain stops soon, or nobody’s going to be able to reach us at all.’

  The crows turned their heads to watch as the pair headed back to the hall.

  31

  * * *

  DAZED AND CONFUSED

  The detectives were heading along the first-floor corridor when they were once more grabbed by Monty, popping out of his room. The tourniquet of bandages now extended to his neck, leaving him with an alarmingly crimson head.

  ‘How could you just go off and leave me like that?’ he demanded to know. ‘It’s too late for Burke; I’m the one who needs protecting!’

  Bryant pushed his way past Monty into his bedroom and began opening drawers. ‘All right, where’s the box?’ he asked. ‘You took it back, didn’t you?’

  ‘What box?’ Monty had a lousy poker face.

  ‘The grey metal one, flat, heavy, lock on the front.’ He looked under the bed. ‘You had it in your luggage and you had it in this room.’

  ‘It was you who searched my room?’ cried Monty, outraged. ‘It has nothing to do with you. Your only job is to get me to the Law Courts on Monday.’

  ‘Since the murder attempt on you and Mr Burke’s death, everything is to do with us,’ said Bryant. ‘If you don’t tell me I’ll search the room again. I think I’ll start by cutting the linings out of all your clothes.’

  ‘No, don’t,’ Monty pleaded. ‘You made enough of a mess last time. You’re supposed to be a detective. Don’t you have a system rather than chucking everything on the floor?’

  ‘Where is it, then?’

  ‘Under my pillow,’ sighed Monty.

  Bryant pulled the pillows from the bed and dragged the box out. ‘Do you have a key?’

  ‘In the top drawer of the chest over there.’

  He fitted it into the lock and thumped the battered lid until it popped open. Inside was a pocked grey lump of stone.

  ‘No wonder it was so heavy. What is it?’ asked May.

  ‘Unless you’ve been given clearance to view all the evidence in the case against Chamberlain, it has nothing to do with either of you.’ Monty folded his arms with finality.

  ‘For God’s sake, Monty, do you want us to help you or not?’ cried May.

  ‘Oh all right.’ He leaned closer. ‘If you must know, it’s a piece of concrete.’

  ‘I can see that. Why are you carrying it around?’

  ‘To prevent tampering,’ Monty explained. ‘It’s part of my evidence for Monday. It’s a sample of the resinated material Sir Charles was using in his buildings. I didn’t trust his lawyers to make a case for it, so I got one of my men to locate a sample from the Hackney housing project.’

  ‘That’s industrial espionage, Monty,’ said May, ‘and it’s been through your mitts so it’s potentially contaminated evidence. You won’t be able to get it seen in court.’

  ‘I can damn well try.’

  Bryant closed the lid of the box and set it down on the chest of drawers. ‘I don’t understand you. Why is it so important to take Chamberlain down?’

  ‘Why?’ Monty seemed amazed by the question. ‘After all I’ve told you about him?’

  ‘You’re still not telling us the full story. You came here to raise capital from Donald Burke.’

  ‘That’s right. He sent me a letter saying he was interested.’

  ‘What was the deal?’

  ‘My testimony will destroy Charlie’s credibility in court. The scandal will wipe him out. I’m doing the right thing, but it’s also an opportunity.’

  The truth dawned on May. ‘You’re raising the money to take over Chamberlain’s company.’

  ‘Obviously I was going to keep my name out of the deal. But it’s academic now, seeing as Burke is dead and I’ve lost my backer.’

  ‘Monty, you are a piece of work,’ said May angrily.

  Monty shifted his shoulder and grimaced in pain. His face was redder than ever. ‘Burke and I could have made a fortune together. I just needed a little extra capital to ease my cash flow, no more than thirty thousand. He would have got me back on my feet and given me a way out. It was a safe deal for him.’

  ‘You obviously enjoy doing deals,’ said May, ‘so I’ll do a deal with you. Appear in the witness box on Monday morning, give an honest testimony so that the law can decide Chamberlain’s culpability, and we won’t press charges.’

  ‘For what?’ Monty was indignant. ‘I did nothing wrong!’

  ‘You had an undeclared motive for prejudicing the case.’

  Bryant poked him in the chest. ‘We need each other, Monty. If we don’t close the case, you don’t get to testify.’

  A ravine had opened in the rainclouds, revealing blue sky. The sun was setting behind the emerald palisade of cypress trees. As in the days of trench warfare, birdsong had returned in the brief absence of gunfire. It appeared to be the perfect Kentish evening, pink with mist and fresh with the scent of wet grass.

  Bryant looked upon it with a jaundiced eye. There was mud everywhere, the cows stank and were all these trees really necessary? As a child he had been terrified of the bare, sickly elm in his street with a branch that scraped at his bedroom window like a witch’s hand and sent him under the blankets. And now here he was, surrounded by them. Instead of homely, chirruping sparrows there were huge black birds, omens of misfortune that hopped towards the house as if preparing to invade it. He had read somewhere that the collective noun for ravens was an unkindness. If that’s what they were, it suited them perfectly.

  It was no good, he decided. He was a Londoner. He belonged indoors.

  John May, as usual, seemed to fit in perfectly well. In the city he was brisk and decisive. Here he was chatty and apt to linger. Even his clothes appeared to have lost their starch. Where Bryant was brittle and uncomfortable, May was supple and relaxed. He fell naturally into male conversation and luxuriated in the company of women. These displays of social ease only made Arthur edgier. To counteract the effect he stepped back inside the reception room, Iris, and went to work.

  Pamela Claxon stood beside a gigantic Qing dynasty vase, smoking with her right elbow in her left hand, lost in thought. She jumped when Bryant came up behind her, almost knocking the vase from its pedestal.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,’ said Bryant, who had intended exactly that.

  ‘Given the likelihood of one of us being a murderer and that we’re not allowed to leave the house tonight, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t creep about like a strangler.’ She blew smoke in his face.

  ‘That’s one thing he hasn’t done,’ said Bryant.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Strangled anyone. Although he seems to be working his way through a repertoire of elimination attempts. But why Vanessa Harrow? What did she know that could place her at risk?’

  ‘You do realize how absurd our situation is, I suppose?’ said Claxon. ‘If I put this in one of my crime novels nobody would believe a word of it.’

  ‘Stranger things happen,’ Bryant countered. ‘John Reginald Christie was a respectable community officer and a serial killer who managed to get an innocent neighbour hanged for his crimes. And at the Savoy Hotel an Egyptian prince called Ali Fahmy was shot to death by his wife, who got off and then faked a pregnancy to try and cheat his will. Real lives often play out like melodramas, especially in the East End, where I come from. Lords and ladies commit murders too. They just stand a better chance of getting away with it.’

  ‘But nobody really knew Donald Burke, did they? He was just a visiting guest. So why would anyone kill him?’

  ‘He was more than a guest, Miss Claxon. Everyone in this entire village needed something from him.’

  ‘Then why don’t you have any leads?’

  Bryant pulled a notepad and pencil from his jacke
t. ‘I made a list of all the people I’ve met here,’ he said. ‘Please.’ He showed her to the armchair opposite. ‘One person is dead and two have been attacked, so we can rule out those names.’

  ‘Inspector Trench wouldn’t,’ said the novelist. Her large eyes were accentuated by accretions of black mascara. ‘That fellow Monty could have faked an accident to shift suspicion from himself.’

  ‘How? He was hit by a falling gryphon.’

  ‘He might have tied a length of fine fishing wire around the gargoyle and pulled it, taking care to manoeuvre himself so that he only suffered minor injuries.’

  ‘He fractured his collarbone, Miss Claxon. Apart from the sheer unlikelihood of such an act, we’d have found the fishing line, wouldn’t we?’

  ‘Not if he’d quickly detached it and hidden it in his clothing.’

  ‘He’s not a character from a John Dickson Carr novel,’ said Bryant. ‘In real life people don’t go around staging elaborate murders. What would be the point? He came here to try and massage a deal out of Burke, not kill him via some ludicrous Heath Robinson contraption. They’d never even met.’

  ‘That’s a bigger stumbling block, I admit,’ said Claxon. ‘I’m used to reviewing problems in their more abstract form. But without premeditation it could be anyone. A drunken tramp hopping over the outside wall.’

  Bryant decided that he was growing to like the novelist. ‘Motive, Miss Claxon,’ he reprimanded her.

  She lit another cigarette from the end of the last one. ‘All right, who else do you have on that list?’

  Bryant checked his notes. ‘Discounting the indoor staff, who lead entirely separate lives from the members of the household and their guests, I’ve met eleven potential suspects here.’

  ‘You mean including me.’

  ‘Of course. Of these eleven, two live in the grounds but not at the house, and have minimal contact with the residents. Those two are the groundsman, who never comes inside and is barely equipped to walk, let alone commit murder, and ditzy Melanie, Lord Banks-Marion’s girlfriend, who lives in the ashram smoking dope with an assortment of comatose friends, none of whom is allowed inside Tavistock Hall.’

  ‘What about class war?’ Pamela suggested. ‘We know how hippies feel about the gentry.’

  ‘Then that would make Lady Banks-Marion and Harry the most obvious targets, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Hippies require no motive, or at least not one that makes sense.’ She took a drag and blasted smoke everywhere. ‘Look at what just happened to Roman Polanski’s poor wife. Flower power might have been well intentioned but it backed a large part of an entire generation into a cultural dead end. What if the same breakdown of order is happening here? Who knows what strange ideas go through the minds of those spaced-out twerps sitting in the mud? They could have started a cult and be planning to massacre all of us in our beds.’

  ‘Would your Inspector Trench discount them?’ Bryant asked.

  ‘Probably, because he prefers a satisfying motive.’

  ‘Then we shall as well.’

  ‘That’s not very scientific.’

  ‘Let’s play it your way for a moment. If it’s a proper country house murder it needs to follow country house rules.’ Rising to his theme, he counted off on his fingers. ‘Of the other suspects, there’s the vicar, whom we now know to be a drug addict. Diminished responsibility? Mania? A misguided attempt to obtain money?’

  ‘What about Slade Wilson? He may seem very nice but he was quick to throw suspicion on poor Vanessa. He needs the commission for the house and was hired by Mrs Burke, so why would he jeopardize his position by killing her husband? What would he have to gain? Now, if Inspector Trench—’

  ‘Can you not drag in imaginary policemen?’ asked Bryant. ‘It’s hard enough sorting out the real characters without having to deal with literary conceits.’

  ‘What about Lord Banks-Marion, or even his mother?’ she suggested. ‘What if they changed their minds about the sale and could think of no other way out?’

  ‘Setting aside the fact that they’re at war with one another, why would they attack Monty and Miss Harrow? It makes no sense. And can you honestly imagine someone like Lady Banks-Marion lowering a body into a grinder?’

  ‘Frankly, yes,’ replied Pamela. ‘I’ve met more members of the aristocracy than you. They lack empathy except when it comes to guns and horses.’

  ‘Which brings us to Mrs Burke,’ sighed Bryant. ‘Embittered over her husband’s unfaithfulness, she decides to take matters into her own hands …’

  ‘… and in doing so, destroys the source of finance that allows her to live a life of ease.’ She wafted the thought aside along with her cigarette smoke. ‘She admitted she knows nothing about her husband’s business. OK, she might have a valid reason for attacking Miss Harrow, but that chap you arrived with, Monty? Why clobber him with a gargoyle?’

  ‘Then that just leaves you,’ said Bryant. ‘But I can’t think of a single reason why you would want to kill Burke unless it was for research, which seems a bit drastic. And you asked the local ironmonger about committing a murder, something I can’t imagine you doing if you were really planning one.’

  ‘You get around, don’t you?’ said Pamela, impressed.

  ‘So what do you think?’ He watched her intently as he closed his pad. ‘We’re out of suspects unless you count Toby Stafford, who has just lost his biggest client and therefore his motive, or the butler, who has never done it in any mystery I’ve ever read.’

  ‘You obviously missed my novel Trench’s Last Case,’ Pamela pointed out, ‘in which the butler Bellows stabs his master with a sharpened dessert spoon before lobbing it into the chandelier.’

  ‘And they say that the detective story is the recreation of noble minds,’ said Bryant.

  ‘It can’t be Claxon,’ he decided as he walked in the night-garden with May. As the clouds closed in once more, the sky grew darker than the surrounding treeline. ‘Not that I ever really thought it was her. Writers can take out their murderous frustrations on the page.’

  ‘Could this have something to do with the permissive society?’ May wondered. His cigarette and Bryant’s pipe left contrails of smoke in the ominously still evening air. ‘I mean, the moors murders raised the possibility of a link between moral permissiveness and violent crime, didn’t they? Could we be looking at entirely motiveless murders?’

  ‘If we weren’t in this location I’d be inclined to agree,’ said Bryant. ‘But why here? Why this weekend? Could you honestly think of a worse time to go after someone, in a house full of incredibly nosy guests?’

  ‘If it was about acting before Burke signed the papers on the hall, the killer had no choice. They had no way of knowing that Toby Stafford had power of attorney over the sale.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because if they did they would have known that the result would be the same whether Burke was dead or alive. It would have removed the purpose of killing him.’ May raised his hand and felt the first fat drops of rain falling once more. There was a distant sound like an immense, slow rock fall. ‘Monty, Burke and Vanessa. Come up with the next one in the sequence.’

  ‘Fishing line,’ said Bryant. ‘Pamela suggested that Monty staged his own accident. She’s enjoying all this.’

  ‘If we turn up in her next book I’m suing her. Let’s get inside. I think there’s a storm coming.’

  Bryant fell in beside him. ‘Good idea. We’ve left our witness alone for too long. Fruity can only watch the place from the outside. We need to be in there with them.’

  ‘Then why don’t we take Monty back to London tonight?’ asked May. ‘The cars are all still here. We could get him out of harm’s way and turn the others over to Canterbury CID. If they try to haul us back we’ll put the CPS on to them.’

  ‘That’s a point. Where are all the vehicles?’ Bryant swivelled around. ‘Did Alberman put them away?’

  They headed around to the front of the house and the e
mpty forecourt. The sky had sealed itself again, and the rain was returning in earnest. In the lane beyond a solitary street lamp had come on, lighting the silvered pathway that meandered through the meadows. When they reached the garage beside the east wing they found its heavy wooden doors padlocked. Bryant peered through a crack in the planks. The cars were all lined up inside.

  He hopped through the long grass to Metcalf’s cottage. ‘Fruity,’ he called, knocking, ‘where is the garage key?’

  Metcalf appeared from the side of the gatehouse in his ratty woollen cap, immense wellingtons and a wartime greatcoat, the empty right sleeve neatly fastened by a large gold safety pin. For a man with only two limbs he managed to scuttle about with considerable speed. Reaching past Bryant, he spat out chewing tobacco. ‘Hang on a minute, sir, I’ll get it.’

  Bryant followed him into the little kitchen and waited while he checked a drawer. ‘That’s odd. It’s gone. I always keep it in here.’

  ‘Do you have a spare?’

  ‘No, sir. I locked the garage doors last night because of the soldiers in the area. The hall has had trouble with them before. And the car keys have gone as well. I put them all in a tobacco tin, right here.’

  ‘Do you always leave the front door of the gatehouse open?’

  ‘It only has a latch. There’s no reason to put a lock on it, sir. No one comes down here.’

  ‘Where were you just now?’

  ‘Clearing the leaves on the drive. The work has to go on, sir. There are always chores to do in a house this size. I wanted to get finished before the storm.’

  ‘Could somebody have come into the gatehouse while you were out?’ asked May.

  ‘They’d have to know what they were looking for.’ He turned to Bryant. ‘What’s going on? You’re a copper, you must have some idea.’

  ‘I’m more of an academic,’ Bryant admitted. ‘John and I belong to a specialist unit. In London we have resources to call upon. Is there any way we can get into the garage?’