Full Dark House

∨ Full Dark House ∧

30

THE THREE HUNDRED

Thursday morning brought evidence of the previous night’s bombing, but the streets of central London were mostly quiet and unscathed. John May was alarmed to discover that he had somehow used up his week’s rations of everything except lard. He hadn’t the faintest idea what to do with lard beyond trying to swap it for something edible. On the second to last page of his ration book was a list of mysterious serial numbers and a government message that read: DO NOTHING WITH THIS PAGE UNTIL TOLD WHAT TO DO. It summed up the official attitude to everything.

But nobody seemed to mind. In 1939 it had been estimated that at least a quarter of the population of Britain was undernourished. Now, families were thinking carefully about nutrition, discovering vegetables they had hardly ever seen or used before.

May prided himself on his youthful fitness but had begun to put on weight. His aunt had taken the war to the kitchen front with a vengeance. Overnight she started presenting her favourite nephew with unappetizing combinations of shredded cabbage, spinach, beetroot and turnips. She rustled up scabby-looking potato pancakes and fish-head soups seasoned with sorrel and grated nutmeg, baked purées of bile beans with celery and chestnuts, liberally lubricated with dripping or stiffened with suet. One night she boiled something experimental with slippery elm and condensed milk that took the finish off the dining-room table so completely she was using Karpol on it for weeks after to restore the shine.

“Why don’t you go and buy us a couple of coffees while I finish up here?” instructed Bryant as his partner arrived for work. “We’re out of tea, and the Carlucci brothers have traded all theirs. Get a couple of Bath buns while you’re at it.”

“It’s a bit embarrassing,” May admitted, “but I’m afraid I’m low on funds. I’ve already spent my first week’s salary.”

“Too busy impressing the girls. I suppose I’ll have to give you an advance.” Bryant dug into the pocket of his voluminous woollen trousers. “Here’s ten bob. Don’t worry about getting into debt. I’m spending wages I’m not due to earn until about six years after my death.”

“Thanks awfully. Biddle says you saw the Phantom last night.”

“Indeed, but I do wish you wouldn’t call him that. I trapped him on the roof, actually. When I got up there I found a surprised firewatchman sitting on a ventilation flue. He told me he’d seen someone come flying out of the door, only to rush at the side of the building and vanish over it. When he ran to the ledge and looked down, there was no sign of anyone. It was as though he’d simply flown off into the night air. Poor bloke was beginning to think he’d imagined it when I turned up.”

“Where on earth could he have gone?”

“Buggered if I know. There aren’t even any windows he could have dropped through. Nothing but a sheer brick wall and a long drop to the street. I’ve sent Crowhurst up there this morning to take a look around. What bothers me more is that your chorus girl locked the bathroom door from the inside when she entered, and yet this creature materialized right behind her.”

“You’re telling me it has the ability to walk through walls and vanish over the edges of buildings like a vampire bat.”

“No, you’re telling me. I can see your lips moving. Go and get the coffees.”

May went and got the coffees, but the image of someone sinister materializing in the bathroom next to the semi-naked girl stayed with him.

“I feel it’s my duty to offer Betty police protection,” he said when he returned.

“Hm. I thought you might say that. I’m studying you for tips, you know. Your manner of dealing with the opposite sex could form the basis of an anthropological study. The most annoying part is, you don’t even realize you’re doing it.”

May was anxious to change the subject. He was staying with his aunt because his father’s philandering had destroyed their family, and May lived in fear of taking after him. He set down the coffees and looked over Bryant’s shoulder. “What have you got there?”

“Zurich. They came back to us overnight. Damned efficient, the Swiss, although not to be trusted, of course.”

“What’s in Zurich?”

“We’ve been tracking the money,” Bryant explained. “The finance to stage the show. From Lloyd’s of London, across to the continent and into neutral territory.”

“And you can find that out from here? I’m very impressed.”

Bryant studied the teleprinter paper for a moment and isolated a number of addresses. “The production is being presented by a financial group registered in Victoria under the name of Three Hundred International.” He unravelled another foot of paper and carefully folded it. “Listen to this. Three Hundred International Banks is registered in Zurich but is Greek-owned. Central European office, Athens. Other companies in the group include shipping, automotive accessories, property, blah blah, ah, here, a chain of theatres. Shipping and theatre, odd bedfellows, don’t you think? I wanted a profile of the whole group but all I’ve managed to find so far is a general prospectus, and that tells me nothing. I spoke to some jobsworth in the Victoria office, but he wouldn’t give me any information. What would make a shipping magnate diversify into the theatre?”

Shortly before he died, Arthur Bryant was interviewed about his earliest case. He told his interviewer, “After the hostilities ended in nineteen forty-five, over a fifth of London’s theatres had been destroyed or rendered unusable by bomb damage. The rest were bought up by a single consortium. The old theatrical families and their peculiar way of life, the life we briefly experienced, vanished almost overnight.” The interviewer had pretended to take notes, but he had only been interested in hearing about the murders…

“How many companies do these Three Hundred people own altogether?” asked May.

“I haven’t counted them all. I was endeavouring to do so when you tipped up. It’s rather hard to keep track of.”

“Here, let me give you a hand.” May pulled up a stool and began glancing through the text.

“Fine,” said Bryant, fishing in a top pocket for his spectacles. “My eyes aren’t too good this morning. We arrived late at the Gaumont last night and had to sit right at the front; it nearly blinded me. Stay and help.” He grinned. “We can send Biddle on all the horrible running-about jobs.”

The checking process took over an hour. After a while, Bryant grew irrationally annoyed that May was more proficient with the new teleprinter keyboard than he would ever be, and went off to scrounge a packet of tea from the station next door.

“So, how many have you found?” he asked when he returned.

“I should have guessed.” May gave him a meaningful look. “Exactly three hundred.”

“They own three hundred companies? Are you sure?”

“Some of them are very small. There’s one listed here in Scarborough, a theatrical talent agency called Curtain Call Productions. I just rang them and spoke to the managing director. He was delighted to talk to me.”

“Could he tell you anything?”

“Only that Andreas Renalda, the big boss, lives here in London.”

“Handy. Ever hear of the Club of Rome? It’s supposed to be an Anglo-American cabal of business managers and planners. It was first secretly assembled in the late nineteen twenties to form some kind of one-world government. That was based on something called the Three Hundred Club, which gets its title from a biblical passage, Romans, chapter three. Just before the Great War, Germany’s Jewish foreign minister announced that the economic future of the continent was in the hands of three hundred men who all knew each other. They’re also called the Olympians, following on from the Illuminati and the Cathars. It’s one of those paranoid theories that suggests a small elite group runs the financial empires of the world.”

“I wouldn’t go looking for conspiracies where there are none,” May advised, reading through the printed addresses.

“You’ve got to agree it’s a bit of a coincidence that the group controlling the theatre company should be named after them.”

“It’s a coincidence that doesn’t make any sense,” said May heatedly. He was beginning to see where Bryant was going with the idea. “Why would the owner of such a company wish to kill the cast of a play that’s costing him a fortune to stage?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Bryant smiled annoyingly.

“Don’t you think there are enough crazy rumours about Nazi infiltration in British business without us adding to them?”

“If any lesson from war is to be learned, John, it must be always to prepare for the unexpected and face the unthinkable. There is no orthodoxy to follow now. Everything is in a state of flux.”

As if to emphasize Bryant’s warning, a pebble knocked sharply against the windowpane. When May peered down into the street he saw Betty Trammel looking up at him imploringly. “Your lady sergeant won’t let me in,” she explained. “I told her I simply had to see you.”

One look at her darkly swollen eyes warned him that the stifling dream world of the Palace was taking its toll on those who depended on it.