It was my usual barber as well, a friendly place, with all-white porcelain sinks, gilt mirrors, and that smell that all good barbers emanate. Giant bottles filled with green and red liquid stood in the window. The three barbers, two brothers and a cousin, worked with brisk efficiency when needed, or at a leisurely pace when the customer was there for relaxation, surrounded by dark Cherrywood furniture and advertisements for hair cream and unbreakable combs. There were two customers waiting; one was leafing through a saucy magazine – there was a low table piled with them – the other a retired gent clearly in no hurry, and they gestured for me to go next.
I was overdue a haircut, one of those things which the busy schedule working as an attendant while keeping up with other commitments had pushed back, and I took the chair next to Arthur. The barber pumped the chair down to a more convenient height, threw a white cape over me and, with comb and clicking scissors, proceeded with the usual trim.
“Stubbsy,” said Arthur, genial enough, looking at me in the mirror. “How are you keeping? Working down the local Colney Hatch, I gather.”
“I’ve been obliged to take up a position there for an investigation,” I said, “on behalf of that American lady I mentioned.”
Arthur raised his eyebrows and waited for me to go on. He probably knew all about it but wanted to hear my version of events. Small locks of hair tumbled over my shoulders, one after the other in quick succession, like autumn leaves.
“A man called Gillespy died in there,” I said. “And something happened to an associate of his called Ryan outside.”
The barber moved around and stood between us, giving me a clear reflected view of Arthur once more.
“What’s going on, Stubbsy? You think there’s murder?” Arthur did not like mess and untidiness, and killings invariably brought both.
I had helped bring matters to a satisfactory conclusion, and wittingly or not prevent further disorder, in previous cases. Arthur had come to value my work. Though he remained politely sceptical about what he termed the “hocus pocus” aspect of my work and credited me with an overactive imagination, he respected my activities.
“I’m still very much in the dark on that,” I said. “You know I’ve been involved in some strange cases? Well, this is another one of those.”
“If you take my advice, you’d steer well clear,” said Arthur. “That place… Well, it has a bad smell about it. A hotbed of buggery, not to put too fine a point on it, and I daresay much other unnatural behaviour besides.”
“It’s not that bad,” I said.
He made a sound in his throat which might have been a growl, and I understood that, as far as he was concerned, being an attendant there was enough to make you complicit, at the very least, in sexual deviancy.
“You don’t exactly have a reputation as a ladies’ man as it is, even after I fixed you up with that Sally,” said Arthur. “I hope she’s well?”
“Very well, thank you for asking,” I said. I did not see that my love life was anybody’s concern but my own. I felt the cool metal as the barber cut around my ear.
“And Stubbsy…” He hesitated delicately. “You don’t want to pick up any more crazy notions than you already have.”
His laugh was a little forced; mental illness made everyone who was not familiar with it uncomfortable. I had been similarly awkward, myself, a few weeks before.
“The other thing was a strange cinema reel,” I said. “Did you hear about that?”
“Everyone’s heard about that,” he said. “Sending people raving. The manager, Bellingham, is in six kinds of trouble over that. Word has it that the Germans are involved, and that’s all I need.”
I closed my eyes as the barber combed over my forehead and snip-snip-snipped across.
“There’s enough talk of another war already, with all this business over Hindenburg,” he said gloomily. “It’s bad for trade. People can’t stop doing business with people because they’re German, or might be German, or because some shipment happens to come out of Hamburg.”
“Maybe I can find out where it really came from,” I said, “and put that rumour to rest.”
“Once they get an idea in their heads, it takes more than a little thing like the truth to dislodge it,” said Arthur. “German infiltrators—I ask you! Still, if you can sort out where that reel came from, it would be a start. We don’t need any more disturbance.” He closed his eyes as the barber sprayed eau de toilette over him. It smelled sharp, but not unpleasant; it was clean and crisp.
The barber held up a mirror so Arthur could inspect the back of his head. His hair was grey and thinning, but he was still handsome. You would not mind looking so well at his age. He looked at his reflection critically, as if assessing the value of a crate of damaged but still serviceable stock, then nodded.
He stood up, feeling for a sixpence to tip the barber, then patted me on the shoulder. “You need to be on the straight and narrow, Stubbsy,” he advised me. “Not in a place like that where even the doctors are a bit funny. Working with those head cases… You’ll get tangled up in something that even I can’t unravel.” He turned to the barber. “His cut is on me,” he said, and the other man bowed obsequiously.
My next stop was the West Norwood Library. I did not have an appointment to see Assistant Head Librarian Mr Hoade, but we had developed a sort of understanding.
Hoade was consulting some arcane tables of numbers, but he immediately dropped a leather bookmark between the pages and shut it with a snap when he saw me. “Afternoon, Stubbs,” he said, smiling as though I’d brought a gift.
“Afternoon,” I said. “I hope you’re not too busy.”
“Pshaw.” He waved a hand at the book he had pushed aside. “It can wait. I received your note the other day.” His eyes sharpened. “This would be relating to the disturbance at the Roxy last week, I assume?”
“Yes,” I said, there being little point in dissembling. There was no small talk with Hoade; he was straight down to business.
“Quite a puzzle. There are lots of films which are meant to shock and horrify and no shortage of propaganda, but I couldn’t find anything quite like it. Nothing deliberately meant to upset the mind. But how does this sound?” He slipped a folded sheet of paper from an inner pocket and declaimed: “A purely psychological warfare, wherein weapons are not used or battlefields sought… but rather… the corruption of the human reason, the dimming of the human intellect, and the disintegration of the moral and spiritual life of one nation by the influence of the will of another is accomplished.”
“That sounds quite apt,” I said. “Who said it?”
“Major General JFC Fuller, writing about tanks in the Great War. His point was that half—more than half—the effect of tanks was psychological. A purely psychological weapon with no physical element might be even more effective. The image of the tank rather than the tank.”
“And how far has he got with this psychological weapon?”
“He’s a prophet without honour in his own country,” said Hoade. “But his theories are well regarded in Germany.”
I took out my notebook.
“The other thing that might interest you is that Major General Fuller is a keen student of the occult and a chum of Aleister Crowley. Though, given that Fuller is on active duty in Camberley, and Crowley was last heard of in Tunis, I doubt whether there’s a direct connection. But plenty in Germany and elsewhere have read Fuller. And while they’re not allowed to build tanks, we can’t stop them making motion pictures.”
Even as I was taking it down, Hoade was unfolding a second sheet of paper.
“As to your other riddles, the only thing I can tell you is that ‘Father of Terror’ is what the Egyptians call the great Sphinx at Giza. But I’m looking at the others.” I had given him a list of the title cards from the film to see if any of them might make any sense or suggest connections. “Oh, and your robber-ro, robber-ro—I think I cracked it.”
That was the phrase I thought Hooper had been
saying when he told me about Gillespy being “taken.”
“And what’s the answer?” I asked, as Hoade seemed to expect prompting.
“It’s not robber-ro, its o-robber-o, or rather Ouroborous. It’s an alchemical symbol, a snake in a circle, swallowing its own tail.” He showed me the word as it was written, and a rather competently executed copy of a picture from a book. “The name is from the Greek, meaning ‘tail-devourer.’ It’s used as a symbol of eternity or infinity, among other things, also the fusing of opposites and the cycle of life.”
I could feel myself frowning. I had not expected anything from Hooper to make a great deal of sense.
“Interestingly,” Hoade went on, “the symbol first cropped up in ancient Egypt, circa 1600 BC, where it had a protective function. Which makes me wonder if you’re now engaged in some sort of Egyptological activity. A British occultist discovering ancient Egyptian mysteries, which are turned into a modern weapon by Germany…”
It was half a question. Ryan had spoken of an “Egyptian Astral,” and some of the desert scenery in that disturbing film had looked very much like the Egyptian desert. I could not properly remember whether there had been a pyramid, but it seemed to me that there might have been. Hooper showing some knowledge of Egyptian magic, and a hint of a sphinx, threw me. “It’s starting to look that way,” I said.
Chapter Seven: The Projectionist’s Wife
Eric Woods, the cinema projectionist, lived in a cottage towards South Norwood. I had the morning off, in consequence of having worked a night shift, and wanted to talk to him there rather than at his place of work. He worked in semi-darkness next to a whirring projector, and it would be more convenient to carry out an interview in good lighting and without too much background noise. I felt also that there was a greater chance of his being truthful if there was no chance of being overheard by his boss.
While it was conceivable that an extra reel of film had been slipped into the pile by an outside agent, that called for some stretches of the imagination. An intruder would have to appear at exactly the right time, and I doubted that they could really hang around inside the cinema, waiting for the projectionist to abandon his station for a minute. I wondered how easily they could find where to put it. I had seen inside the projectionist’s booth, and it was not a neat arrangement. There were empty film cans, odd reels, and boxes everywhere. While it might sound easy enough, finding anything in another man’s working space is never as straightforward as that. Nobody could have inserted another film can in the right place unless they knew his system, and according to Bellingham, nobody knew Woods’s working arrangements except Woods.
Unless whoever did it knew exactly where to insinuate the spurious reel, there was no chance of the scheme working. And even if they found the right stack, would the projectionist really not notice, even when he loaded it on to the projector? Did he not check the reels off against a list to ensure they were all present and correct?
And equally damning, had he not watched it himself in the matinee? The arrival of a new stock of films must be a major event. Even if he did not feel a need to check them for scratches or other flaws, I would have expected him to watch everything out of interest.
I needed to talk to Mr Woods, but already I was forming the impression that he might have something on his conscience. Because, whatever Mr Bellingham might think about the reliability of his staff, the whole business smelled to me very much like what burglars term an “inside job”: one carried out with the assistance of someone on the premises.
Woods’s bungalow was a dingy affair, with paint flaking off the door frame. If it had been in better decorative order, it might have presented a certain charm, but everything about it suggested neglect. The gate was stuck half-open, its hinges broken. A spade and a fork, both leprous with rust, leaned against a wall. The vegetable patch was overgrown; there would be no harvest this season.
I removed my bowler and rapped twice with the knocker.
A woman with a baby on her hip answered the door. She might have been a rougher version of Sally, more careworn and without Sally’s innate good humour. She was untidy and kept her hair hidden under a headscarf. A small girl of two or three years held a doll and peeked at me from behind her mother. The smell of cooking wafted through the open doorway; I had interrupted her in the middle of preparing lunch.
“Sorry to disturb you, madam. My name is Harry Stubbs,” I said, the business card ready in my hand, “of Lantern Insurance. I was wondering if I might have a word with your husband?”
“We’re with the Prudential,” she said, her tone none too friendly. She did not make to close the door immediately, though. Perhaps she was glad for the interruption, and for having another human being to talk to after a long morning with the children.
“I’m not selling insurance,” I said. “I would like to talk to Mr Woods—about his work.”
She set her mouth in a line. “Is he in trouble?”
“Oh, no,” I said, a little too quickly. Chances were that he was in trouble. But I doubted Eric Woods was the man I was really after.
“I’m afraid he’s not in,” she said. The baby let out a squall, and she bounced him up and down, which seemed to quiet him. The action seemed entirely automatic. Her hands were red from work. “He’s messing with something at the cinema.”
“Do you know when he will be back?” I said.
“Half an hour ago,” she said. “And he better have remembered the bread, or there won’t be any with dinner.”
The baby, mollified, had turned to gaze at the bowler in my hands, which was level with his head, as I fed it through my fingers.
“I’ll come back tomorrow,” I said. “Or—is there somewhere I might find him? A pub, perhaps? I’ll send him back your way and remind him about the bread.”
“You can come in if you like,” she said suddenly. “Wait for Eric.”
It was rude to refuse, but I was not sure how Mr Woods would take it if he found his wife with a strange man. Of course, I could look after myself if it came to a physical confrontation, but at the expense of some embarrassment. I half-suspected that Mrs Woods might have welcomed such a scene.
“He’s probably at the cinema, fiddling with his projector and his reels. What did you want him about?”
“I wished to inquire about an incident in the cinema earlier this week,” I said. “There might be insurance repercussions.”
“Idiot,” she said, and for a moment I thought she meant me. “It’s that phantom film, isn’t it? I’ll get him to explain the whole thing.”
“Did he tell you what happened, then?”
“People fainting and screaming and going berserk? I should think he did tell me,” she said. “Not that I wouldn’t find out soon enough.”
I realised that I was unconsciously rotating the hat in my hands, and that was what was attracting the baby’s attention. I stopped. Then, when he looked up at me in confusion, I started rotating it the other way instead.
“It was a rather peculiar business,” I said. “Some patrons found it unsettling.”
“Unsettling! It was mad. I know,” she said. “I saw it.” She jerked a head over her shoulder. “He has a projector in the back room. ‘You’ve got to see this,’ he says. I said, ‘You’re never going to show that. They’ll sack you.’ Daft bugger. Did you see it?”
“I did.”
“Lunacy,” she said, shaking her head. I had expected a show of protective loyalty to her spouse, but Mrs Woods was well beyond that stage. “So, are folks trying to get compensation from the cinema, is that what this is about?”
I reversed the direction of rotation of the hat again to keep the baby’s attention. So long as the baby was calm, she kept talking. “Nothing has been determined yet,” I said. “But one thing I did want to ask was where that reel of film came from.”
“He made it himself,” she said levelly. “Here in the back room. There’s no sense in denying it.”
“He made it?” I echo
ed.
There were hundreds of extras, and those huge stage sets, the ruined city and the sweeping desert vista. Some of it was faked with painted scenery and models, but it looked like a full production and not some cheap, homemade work.
“He didn’t make it from nothing,” she added. “But he did put it all together. He’s got a machine for turning the wires into pictures. He did all the title cards himself from scratch. There’s special kit for it. He put it all together frame by frame, twenty-four pictures for every blessed second of it. It took him hours and hours with razor blades and tape and glue and everything.”
For the first time I detected a twinge of defensiveness, even pride. That film was probably the one thing he had ever made, and there was no doubt it was powerful.
“So where did the original material come from? These wires?”
“A friend,” she said, a little too casually. “But Eric says it’s like a print shop. The letters, they’re gobbledygook until the print setter puts them all into the right order and makes sense of them. That film was all his work.”
“Do you know where I might find this friend?” I asked. “Just to corroborate.”
“Tom’s a photographer. A real photographer.” She looked down at the baby in her arms, who was bored with me and drifting into slumber. “He comes here every other Sunday morning and brings more film, and they talk and look at what Eric’s done with it. He’s a very respectable young man. I don’t know where he lives.”
“That’s interesting,” I said. “I don’t suppose you know Tom’s second name?”
“No.”
“Well, I’d best be going. Thank you very much for your help, Mrs Woods. You have a fine baby there.”
“Hope he doesn’t take after his father,” she replied. “And if you do see Eric on the way, tell him not to come back here without the bread.”
I replaced my hat on my head, tipping it to Mrs Woods, and left her to her domestic arrangements.
Master of Chaos (The Harry Stubbs Adventures Book 4) Page 8