Hall of Mirrors

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘You are related to Donald Burke?’

  ‘I am his sister. I’m three years younger than him.’

  ‘You chose not to volunteer this information.’

  ‘It’s in the front of my first book.’

  ‘I know. I saw it in the library.’ He turned to Norma Burke. ‘What can you tell me about the Silver Thread?’

  ‘It was the name of my husband’s yacht,’ Norma explained.

  ‘But I imagine you chose the name. You’re Kentish born, after all.’

  ‘Yes, I did choose it. But I don’t understand—’

  ‘Where was it moored?’

  ‘On the River Medway.’

  ‘So that’s where it was in the summer of 1962?’

  ‘I imagine so, I really can’t remember.’

  ‘But that was the year of your husband’s breakdown, wasn’t it? Let me remember for you. In 1962 Donald Burke took you sailing. Mrs Burke, would you like me to guess what happened on that trip, or will you tell us in your own words?’

  An uncomfortable silence followed, during which only the falling rain could be heard.

  ‘What happened that day was not my fault,’ Norma Burke said finally.

  ‘No,’ Bryant agreed, ‘but you’re the cause of much that has occurred this weekend.’

  Realizing there was no point in trying to deny the truth, she lit a cigarette with unsteady hands. Pamela moved closer to her.

  ‘He was not an easy man to live with,’ Norma said, glancing up at her sister-in-law. ‘He could be very cruel. And he was certainly not as clever as everyone thought. When his business empire started to collapse I helped him to save it, not that he ever gave me credit. To Donald, I would always be “the little woman”, the wife in the kitchen. I could have graduated from the London School of Economics with a first-class degree. He didn’t consider any female the equal of a man. I was allowed to keep my own money but there were many things I couldn’t do.’

  ‘So financially your hands were tied.’

  ‘That’s right. If I wanted to buy something I needed my husband’s signature to do so. Until very recently all wives did. Donald’s latest business venture had failed, and he was very stressed about it.’

  ‘How old was he?’

  ‘He had just turned fifty-seven. On the day we took the boat out there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Pamela came with us. She’s an expert sailor. It was the day everything changed.’ She caught Bryant’s gaze and held it. ‘But you know, don’t you? It was the day my husband died.’

  46

  * * *

  YESTERDAY

  The oil lamps supplemented the watery light from the French windows, casting jaundiced patches across the faces around the room. Everyone waited for Norma Burke to speak.

  ‘It’s an odd thing,’ she said finally, nervously pulling at her cigarette. ‘People often insisted that they’d met my husband even when I knew they hadn’t. I suppose in certain financial circles he was famous. People liked to promote the idea that they were associated with him. If you’d been talking to Donald it meant you were someone important. But I think he saw himself as a failure.’

  ‘What happened on the yacht?’ Bryant asked.

  ‘We sailed out past Gillingham, past Sheerness and into the Channel. It was terribly hot. Pamela had taken the helm while Donald went to get himself another whisky. He talked about going for a swim. He was rather drunk, but that was nothing unusual. I don’t know how long he was gone, but when I looked around he wasn’t there. The air was so still. There was hardly a sound. He’d just slipped into the sea and disappeared. We looked in the water for ages but we couldn’t see him.’

  ‘I was going to radio for assistance,’ said Pamela.

  ‘I told her not to.’ Norma passed her cigarette from one hand to the other. Smoking did not come naturally to her.

  ‘Why did you tell her not to get help?’ asked Bryant.

  ‘I don’t know. There didn’t seem to be any point. It wasn’t going to bring him back. I knew he wasn’t out there somewhere just bobbing about in the water. I just thought I could manage without him.’ She batted smoke away from her face. ‘For the next seven years I made the world think that my husband was alive. I wasn’t allowed access to funds without his signature. I simply carried on investing his money and opening bank accounts. It wasn’t as hard as you’d think. Forging letters was the easiest part. I told people that he’d been ill and could no longer come to meetings. I gave myself power of attorney. It’s surprising how accommodating everyone was. Whenever I needed an approval, Pamela impersonated him on the phone. On the rare occasions that he absolutely needed to be seen in public, she dressed like him – they have the same facial features – and she allowed herself to be photographed from a distance, usually shielding herself with a hat.’

  ‘I didn’t think it was a good idea to leave fingerprints,’ said Pamela, ‘so I started wearing white gloves. The germ phobia was my idea. Once people got used to seeing him in the gloves, that was all they needed to see. It’s like airline pilots – you see the jacket and cap but not the face. They only saw his hands.’

  ‘I dealt with the banks by letter or phone,’ said Norma, ‘and while I rebuilt my husband’s businesses, I made sure that he legally transferred his stocks to me.’

  ‘If she had told the truth – that Donald had either committed suicide or accidentally drowned – she would have lost everything,’ Pamela added.

  ‘When I decided that he should die, I enlisted Pamela’s help again, because she’s a crime novelist,’ said Norma.

  ‘Why did you want to end the deception?’ asked May.

  She ground out the cigarette with distaste. ‘For a long time the system worked without any problems. Nobody minded so long as the money continued coming in. I was very good at making a profit. Then the tax regulations changed and more security checks were required. It became increasingly difficult to make Donald’s absence convincing. He couldn’t attend a shareholders’ meeting or a bank manager’s dinner because he was away on a trip, or ill, or busy, or had missed his train. They were all men, you see, they expected to get together every now and again. I started to run out of excuses, and the shareholders became suspicious. In order to buy the hall this weekend Donald had to be seen here, so I made sure that Pamela was with me.’

  ‘On Friday afternoon, soon after we arrived, we went for a walk around the grounds,’ said Claxon. ‘Norma told me that Donald needed to put in an appearance. We tried it out a couple of times. I put on his old suit and a grey hairpiece, and made sure we stayed some distance from the house. Norma could go off to get the deed signed, and we hoped Mr Stafford would accept it. But I had my doubts. I felt sure he would want to see Donald. So, we were out walking, and when we reached the big oak I saw something lying in the bushes. I pushed apart the branches and knew I was looking at the handle of the sledgehammer covered in flies. There was a man’s body lying in a sack at the base of the tree, half-buried under the leaves. I looked inside and saw for myself. His head had been split apart like a pomegranate.’

  ‘You’re not writing a novel now,’ said Bryant. ‘Just tell us who it was.’

  ‘We thought it was a vagrant,’ Pamela explained. ‘We’d spotted the hippy tents nearby, and of course we’d both read about the Manson murders. I mean, who hadn’t? I had an awful feeling they might have killed some poor tramp for the fun of it.’

  ‘But you also realized it was the perfect time for Norma to get rid of her phantom husband.’

  ‘Yes, I just needed time to think it through, to make it foolproof. I asked myself: What would Inspector Trench do? We were terrified that someone would find the body and report it before we’d come up with a plan. It occurred to me that a house like this would have a septic tank and a way of treating sewage, but we didn’t find the barn until Saturday morning.’

  ‘We carried the body to the barn easily enough,’ said Norma. ‘There was no one around and it hardly weighed anything. The block and tackle allo
wed us to get it over the macerator. I could identify the body and Donald would finally be declared dead. The whole thing only took a few minutes. We needed a lookout, so I sent a note to Vanessa, asking her to come down to the barn. I didn’t explain why. I’m afraid she unwittingly covered for us. Pamela said it needed to look like an accident, so she sawed through the handrail and broke it. She didn’t reckon on you two deciding that it was murder.’

  ‘All police officers are naturally suspicious,’ said Bryant. ‘I didn’t believe for a second that a germ-phobic man would go near the barn. That was the first mistake you made. The second was Pamela not fitting her brother’s clothes. Millionaires wear hand-made suits. There were other errors.’ He thought back to the conversation he had overheard between Norma and Pamela masquerading as her husband, and filled in the blanks.

  It’s gone too far. We’ll be found out. Vanessa can’t be trusted.

  You must stay away from her.

  I don’t want to do this any more, Norma.

  But it was your idea in the first place.

  I’m leaving as soon as the deeds are signed.

  They know you’re not well, so it won’t come as a shock.

  ‘Pamela, you shouldn’t have taunted us,’ said Bryant. ‘You said that “nobody really knew Donald Burke”, and Norma, you forgot to take away Vanessa Harrow’s water glass.’

  ‘I knew that as soon as you all started attacking Vanessa she would admit that she had never met Donald,’ said Norma. ‘We had to stop her talking for a while, so we thought it would be a good idea if she just slept for the afternoon. We didn’t know she had her own supply of sleeping pills as well.’

  ‘It’s a good story,’ said Bryant. ‘Cruel husband, ignored wife who helps him make his fortune, he cracks under the pressure of work and drowns himself, you take over the business. There’s only one problem with it all. The Silver Thread.’ He turned to the others. ‘My knowledge of English history is largely confined to London, so it was lucky that I also found this in the library.’

  He raised the book and showed them its cover. ‘A Guide to English Miracles, Myths and Legends. That’s where I read the story.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, what story?’ asked Trevor Patethric.

  ‘Hang on a minute, I marked the page.’

  Bryant had always possessed a flair for the theatrical. He opened the book and read aloud:

  ‘In 1171 a boy from Rochester drowned trying to catch frogs. While he lay lifeless on the bank of the Medway, his mother measured him from head to foot and promised to give a silver thread of equal length to St Thomas. A miracle occurred and the boy came back to life.’

  He closed the book. ‘It goes on to say that around this part of Kent, the legend of the silver thread is very well known. I think it was you who named the boat, Norma. You planned to kill him all along, and bring him back to life.’ He let that sink in for a moment. ‘But there’s more. My friend Maggie here has turned up another surprise. Maggie, do you have the sketches that your hippy friend made?’

  Maggie rose and handed over the pages.

  ‘I’m afraid you’re all in for another shock.’

  Everyone was preparing for this when the French windows exploded.

  47

  * * *

  COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN

  John May was the first one out of the room. Even so, it took him a minute to realize that a shell had landed in the middle of the lawn. It must have been powerful because the crater it had left behind was immense and the ashram’s yurt was blown flat. The hippies had been blasted awake and were sitting up in various states of undress and bemusement. May ran over to check on them.

  ‘Wow,’ said Donovan, pushing down his hair and pointing to the smoking pit. ‘Ley-line energy.’

  ‘It’s a full moon tonight,’ said Melanie wistfully.

  Something was pattering down on to the lawn and the patio beyond. Assorted pieces of amphibians and lily pads had been blasted from the ornamental pond.

  Bryant had got his rain of frogs.

  Inside Iris, the reception room’s heavy brocade curtains had caught nearly all of the flying glass. Unfortunately the whole lot had then come down, tearing the brass rail from which they hung out of the ceiling. This brought with it a spectacular cascade of plaster, filling the room with choking dust. A further part of the ceiling cracked and fell in.

  ‘I take it that’s not the shock you meant,’ said Monty, dusting himself down. He had the good grace to be barely surprised by the latest turn of events. ‘That couldn’t have been the army. They’ve packed up.’

  ‘Everyone stay inside,’ warned Bryant, holding up his hands for calm, but as a failed student of human nature he had reckoned without the survival instinct that brought everybody out into the garden.

  ‘Stay off the lawn,’ May shouted. ‘There could be other devices.’

  ‘We’re under bombardment now?’ asked Pamela. ‘This sort of thing would never happen in an Inspector Trench novel.’

  ‘It’d be better if it did, just to wake the reader up occasionally,’ said Maggie Armitage, who was following the serial confessions with unfeigned delight.

  As the smoke cleared, the chatter gave way to an ominous silence. Bryant turned around, trying to see what they had spotted. Someone in a knitted cap and combat fatigues was standing in front of them with a stick grenade in his left hand.

  ‘Who on earth is that?’ asked Harry, squinting over his granny glasses.

  ‘Fruity Metcalf,’ said Bryant.

  ‘No, that’s not Fruity,’ Harry replied vehemently. ‘We employ a jolly good groundsman called Fruity Metcalf, utterly reliable, but that’s not him. Fruity only has one arm and one leg.’

  He was right. The man standing before them possessed the full complement of limbs. But he was certainly the man with whom Bryant had been to the Goat & Compasses.

  ‘Hand him over to me,’ said the man with the grenade.

  ‘Who?’ asked Pamela, not unreasonably.

  ‘Hatton-Jones. He is coming with me.’

  ‘I knew it,’ said Monty, turning to Bryant and May. ‘I said there could be somebody on the inside but you didn’t believe me.’

  ‘I’m confused,’ May admitted.

  The others were distancing themselves from Monty, backing away until only he and the detectives still stood on the far side of the crater.

  ‘I’ll count to three. If you don’t hand Hatton-Jones over by then, I’ll just kill him, and probably both of you.’

  ‘That’s not in your brief, though, is it?’ said Bryant. ‘You’re only supposed to terrify him. That’s what Charles Chamberlain wants you to do, so that Monty won’t testify tomorrow. If you kill him you won’t get paid.’

  ‘One.’

  It was a standoff. Monty pulled himself free of May’s arm. ‘I told you Charles was behind this. I’m not going with that fellow, he’s a nutter.’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Monty, you have to go with him for now,’ said May. ‘We’ll make sure you’re all right. It’s the only way to stop anyone else from getting hurt.’

  ‘We’ll make sure you’re all right?’ Monty scoffed. ‘Forgive me if I don’t invest a huge amount of trust in that promise.’

  ‘Three.’

  The assassin raised his grenade higher. Everybody ducked. Just then an unearthly, bone-trembling roar filled the air. Heads tilted up towards the source of the noise. A second roar was even louder.

  ‘It roars twice as a warning,’ Celeste had said, ‘but if you hear it a third time you know it’s right behind you, about to attack.’

  Walking delicately along the largest branch of the hawthorn tree that grew behind the grenade-clutching murderer was a slender black creature with shining yellow eyes and a twitching tail almost as long as its body. It roared again, revealing fearsome incisors.

  ‘The Beast of Crowshott!’ cried Maggie, her eyes like saucers.

  ‘It’s a panther, you silly woman,’ said Bryant.

&nbs
p; ‘The army,’ said Toby Stafford. ‘I heard they blew up a couple of sheep and accidentally shelled the wall around the safari park. The landlord at the Red Lion told me the police were still trying to round up animals.’

  The panther stretched itself forward, each huge front paw wavering before carefully planting itself further along the branch. Nobody dared to move. As it crept nearer, the branch began to bend.

  A third and final roar turned into more of a yawn. The animal flopped down on its branch, which splintered beneath the sudden weight.

  The panther fell on top of their assailant in a thunderous cascade of leaves, knocking him flat and swiping away his woollen headgear. Having been stared at through bars for most of its life, the animal decided it had had enough and bounded off towards the ashram, scattering hippies in every direction.

  As the man who had taken Fruity Metcalf’s place searched for his cap, the detectives saw that the top of his head resembled a badly stitched baseball.

  48

  * * *

  RUNAWAY

  Monty made a run for it. Everybody screamed. The hippies proved excellent at climbing trees. May threw himself at Cedric Powles, the stitch-headed arch manipulator late of Broadmoor Hospital, and knocked the stick grenade from his hand. The thing somersaulted through the air like an Indian club and Pamela Claxon caught it with the finesse of a baseball outfielder.

  Lady Banks-Marion witnessed the mayhem with increasing incredulity, and was somehow reminded of the drunken parties they had held on the lawn before the war. She watched as Powles pulled himself free and hurled himself across the lawn with Bryant and May in pursuit.

  Powles raised his arms across his face, punched his way through a wall of hedge and fell out into the road in a shower of leaves.

  Harry turned to Norma Burke. ‘Don’t even think of moving from this spot,’ he warned. ‘Alberman, lock her in the still room until we get this sorted out.’