Full Dark House

∨ Full Dark House ∧

36

THE BROADER PICTURE

“What on earth happened to you?” asked Bryant. His partner was covered in streaks of mud, his jacket torn from shoulder to waist.

“Came a bit of a cropper on an army motorbike,” May explained, examining himself. “Our man moved like a bat out of Hell. I lost him in the back streets, didn’t Biddle tell you?”

“He said you stole an army emergency vehicle and smashed it up. Don’t worry, I’ll square it with them later. Are you all right?”

“Took the skin off my hands, no real damage. What are you doing?”

Bryant was standing on an upended metal milk crate in the car park of Bow Street magistrates’ court, preparing to throw a muslinwrapped leg of pork onto an iron sheet that was balanced on a pile of masonry rubble. “I’m testing out a theory,” he explained, swinging the leg and letting it go. “Bloke fell out of the balcony. I suppose they told you. Slashed to bits with a straight razor. Not one of the cast, though.” He climbed down from the crate and bent over the joint of meat, which had landed squarely on the metal sheet. “It’s all right, condemned black-market pork, quite inedible, but it’s about the same weight.”

“As what?” asked May, bemused.

“As a pair of feet, obviously.” Bryant threw him an old-fashioned look as he hoisted the leg for another swing.

May had no time for such foolishness tonight. He was starting to wonder if his partner was all there. “Mr Davenport’s waiting for us in your office,” he warned. “At least, I assume it’s him.”

“Raw-boned, red-faced man, tufts of grey hair coming out of his ears, staring eyes, lots of broken veins in his nose, reeks of chewing tobacco?”

“That’s the one. I hope he doesn’t see your plant.”

“What plant?” asked Bryant, his eyes widening in innocence. “Don’t pretend you don’t know. That one with the serrated leaves. Chinamen dry them out and smoke them. Reefers. Used by Limehouse dope fiends.”

“Are you accusing me of being a dope fiend? Actually, it’s an old herbal remedy.”

“Well, I’ve hidden it under your desk just in case.”

“Thanks, old man.” Bryant grinned. “You’re a sport.”

♦

Farley Davenport stared with distaste at the mouldering Tibetan skull surrounded by African juju charms that inhabited Bryant’s bookcase. “Perhaps one of you can explain what’s going on at the Palace Theatre? Someone just wrote off an army bike, another one is still missing.”

“Mr May here was in pursuit of our murderer. We’re lucky he’s still with us. I’ve asked for an apprehension on the other number plate.”

“Who was this bloke who died?”

“He shouldn’t have been allowed inside the building,” Bryant explained, in that way he had of not answering the right question. “I requested an access restriction, but the company’s director overruled me.”

Davenport was finding it hard to make the detectives understand why he was so angry with them. He ran his hands through his thinning grey hair and made a frightening face. “I asked for all visitors to be signed in and out. That should have been enough.”

“That’s exactly what we did,” said Bryant, “but somebody still got hurt. We shouldn’t have been allowing any visitors in at all. There are people wandering about all over the place. It’s like Hyde Park on a bank holiday in there.”

Davenport grunted with disapproval. “I had a phone call from some mad harpy named Parole, typical bloody showbusiness type, complaining to me about areas of the theatre staying shut. She couldn’t seem to tell the difference between a real-life murder and a staged drama.”

“I’m sorry, sir. I told her we needed exclusive access to certain areas for forensic examination, but she refused point blank to close off the rest of the building. Apparently it’s beyond her control because there are two separate companies involved, hers and the management who own the theatre.”

“This bloody war is giving everyone an excuse to defy the law.” Davenport’s nose looked redder than ever. “I tell you, when it’s over all these women will go back to being bloody housewives and we’ll be able to get on with running the nation again.”

“Miss Parole answers to a board that’s determined not to allow anything to hamper the production.”

“It’s going to be hampered a bloody sight more when Westminster shuts it down,” snapped Davenport. “If this had happened in peacetime the building would have been cleared without question. Good Lord, three people dead, ghostly sightings and what have you, people frightening one another with stories about phantoms that walk through walls. It’s the Palace Theatre, not Borley Rectory. Do you want to tell me how it happened?”

“I’d like to, sir, but we’re not sure ourselves. Mr Darvell, the boy who was attacked in the balcony, is the son of a member of the cast. He and a friend were watching the run-through. The friend left, Darvell was seen to stand up at the front and turn his back to the stage, he was cut and fell over the parapet. It’s a low rail, and the floor slopes steeply. The fall broke his nose, his jaw and his collarbone, he lost too much blood and died. The person he nearly landed on, Miles Stone’s mother, glimpsed his attacker from below, and what she saw matches the description of the man Miss Trammel gave last night. This is the man who got away on the stolen bike.”

“What a bloody nightmare. It wasn’t Darvell’s friend?”

“He was already in the pub when it happened.”

“I suppose you know that the press has got the story now.”

“We kept it back as long as we could,” said May, “but the chestnut vendor was discovered by the News of the World. Luckily that particular rag only comes out once a week.”

“You really are a dunderhead, Bryant,” Davenport complained. “Half their stringers do double duty with the Daily Sketch. There’s bound to be something in tomorrow’s paper.”

“I think you’re overestimating the Daily Sketch’s interest in theatre,” Bryant protested. “Coverage of Orpheus is too intellectual for their readership.”

“You think a murderer loose in an old music hall is too intellectual? ‘Hellfire Show Summons the Devil’, that sort of thing, a bit too brainy for the masses? You may be academically on the button but you’re not much good at understanding people, Bryant. I suggest you go down there,” he slapped his hand against the window, “and see how the ordinary man in the street is passing his days. There’s a typing pool sitting out on the corner of the Aldwych in the pouring rain, working under a makeshift shelter of corrugated iron because the roof’s been blown clean off their office. You’re telling me they don’t want to have their minds diverted by a juicy murder?”

Chastened, Bryant fell silent. It seemed to May that their superior might have a point.

“The partially digested meat in Miss Capistrania’s stomach showed positive for hemlock,” he pointed out. “There was an empty sandwich tin in one of the wings, and hers are the only prints on it. Nobody seems to know where she got her food. Quail is not the sort of item you often find outside of Simpson’s in the Strand these days. We’ve checked with all the butchers’ shops in the area. There’s a place in Brewer Street that sells quail, but they don’t recall serving her, and besides, they’re noted for carrying out stringent quality checks on their meat.”

“Anything new on Senechal?” asked Davenport.

“The cable ends were examined under a microscope and came back with an open verdict on them.”

“What do you mean? Either the wire was cut or it wasn’t.”

“Dr Runcorn thinks there’s a possibility that it sheared under its own weight. He reckons the cable had been reused so many times that it was probably full of stress fractures. But if it was cut, the person who cut it had to be standing on the gantry at the time in order to judge the moment for the globe to hit Mr Senechal.”

This news made Davenport far from happy. He liked the unit’s cases to be tied up neatly so that he could present them to his superiors as solved and closed, another job well done. He wanted someone to blame. He would have put everything down to sheer bad luck if it wasn’t for this latest attack. And, of course, there were the feet.

“How the hell did they get onto a chestnut stand?” he asked again. “Come on, Arthur, you must have an idea by now.”

“I do, but you won’t like it much.”

“Try me.”

“I think they were thrown into the cart from the canopy of the theatre.”

“What on earth makes you say that?”

“The evening was dry, and the vendor had griddled his fire before the air-raid siren called him away. On the morning of the discovery, PC Crowhurst noted that the coal dust on the pavement was unmarked by any footprints. Mr May and I saw it for ourselves. There are several sets of small mullioned windows above the canopy. One on the second landing has a pane missing, and another has a broken hasp. They’re not big enough for a person to climb through, but you could stick an arm out of them. I think somebody dropped the feet out of the window, intending them to land on the canopy. Instead, they rolled off and fell onto the chestnut stall, which happened to be standing by the kerb below.”

“You mean the Turk just left it there and scarpered?”

“He was obeying the law, sir, getting himself to a place of shelter. Obviously, the blackout was still in effect when he returned, so it’s feasible he didn’t notice that anything had been disturbed.”

“Have you checked the canopy beneath the window for blood spots?”

“We didn’t find anything swabbable, but it has rained since then.”

“I’d like to be able to tell Miss Capistrania’s father that his daughter’s death was a bizarre but unfortunate accident.”

“I don’t see how you can do that.”

“In case it’s escaped your attention, Mr Bryant, there are no motives. Capistrania hardly knew anyone in London. Senechal was universally admired. This last chap isn’t even directly connected to the production, for God’s sake.”

Davenport lowered himself into Bryant’s chair and attempted to straighten his legs beneath the desk, but something was in the way. He peered under the desk. May gave his partner a grim look.

“Worse still, if Capistrania’s death could have been mistaken for food poisoning, why would someone make it look like a murder by throwing away the bloody feet? And why attack a boy who’s got nothing to do with the theatre? There’s no sense in it, is there? I bloody give up with you lot.” He reached beneath the desk and pulled up Bryant’s marijuana plant. “What on earth’s this?”

“Ah,” stalled Bryant, “so that’s where it is. Evidence. I’ll bag it.”

“What evidence?” asked Davenport suspiciously.

“Ah, the Leicester Square Vampire. Dr Runcorn wanted some items removed from his house for examination.”

Davenport was thrown off guard. “I didn’t know we’d caught him,” he said.

“We haven’t,” countered May as he gently drew the plant away from Davenport. “He’s a suspect. A, um, Lithuanian botanist experimenting on rare plants with, er, horticultural grafting techniques. I’ll get rid of that for you.”

“You’re telling me the Leicester Square Vampire is an experimenting Lithuanian botanist?” Davenport rose and walked to the door, vaguely troubled. “Do you think I’m completely stupid? I’ve been fielding hourly calls from Albert Friedrich, Capistrania père, who, you’ll be pleased to know, is staying at the Austrian ambassador’s house this weekend, where he’ll be receiving no less a personage than George VI himself for tea. I’m seeing the Home Secretary on Saturday morning. I want your written conclusions about this investigation presented to me no later than six o’clock tomorrow night. And give me rational solutions, none of your psychological supernatural mumbo-jumbo.” He slammed the door behind him.

Bryant stuffed the plant into the top drawer of his desk. “I think that went quite well, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t, frankly. Have you come to any conclusions?”

“Well, there’s a madman on the loose, obviously. Someone who hated Capistrania enough to have her mutilated, who had Charles Senechal killed in full view of his peers, who slashed a young man to death just because he was close to a member of the cast. We’ll test the bike for prints when it turns up but I don’t suppose we’ll get anything.”

“He was wearing gloves.”

“Then there’s the Greek aspect of all this. Which reminds me, we need to find out who gave Zachary Darvell the flower.”

“What flower?”

“The silk carnation. Stan Lowe says he’d never seen the boy wearing a buttonhole before. Not his usual style. Don’t those gypsy women in Piccadilly press them on you as you pass? I’m sure they’re not made of silk these days, though, unless someone’s cutting up parachutes. And then there’s the business with the flute.”

“You’ve completely lost me,” said May, exasperated.

“Anton Varisich halted the orchestra when the accident occurred, but his first flute released a high-pitched note of alarm. Except of course he couldn’t have, because two of the woodwinds, of which the flautist was one, had failed to turn up that morning – so who played the note?”

“Arthur, I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I’d like to tell you,” said Bryant, “but I think I’d better make sure I’m right first. While I’m doing that, you might pause to wonder why Davenport’s so anxious to keep this out of the newspapers.”

“I imagine he doesn’t want the unit made to look foolish.”

“Nobody knows about the unit,” said Bryant. He raised his voice. “Come in, Mr Biddle. Don’t hover outside.”

Sidney Biddle looked defiant. “I wasn’t listening,” he said at once, thereby confirming he was. “I was coming to see you.” He warily ventured into the cluttered sepia office.

Bryant threw his partner a questioning look. “Oh? What’s on your mind?” Biddle’s tie was knotted so tightly under his collar that it appeared to be choking him.

May stretched back in his chair. “Why don’t you take a seat, Sidney?” he prompted.

The young man twisted awkwardly round to look at each of the detectives in turn. “I want to transfer out of the unit, Mr Bryant.”

“You’ve only just got here. Can we ask why?”

Biddle looked uncomfortable. “I don’t believe I’m suited to this kind of operation.”

“Could you be more specific?” asked May, sensing what was coming.

“Mr May, my aim was to get inside the Home Office end of the London force, reach the important stuff, and I thought I’d hack it by working for an SIO. I knew Serious Crimes only handled murder cases. I was told how different this unit was to anything else currently available. I didn’t realize working practices would be so – not how things are supposed to be.”

May peered at him in what he hoped was a manner of surprise. “Would you care to give me an example?”

“Even the most basic procedures aren’t followed. Take custody of evidence.” Biddle began to grow heated. “I was taught to maintain continuous control over crime-scene evidence from signing and dating of possession to court introduction, keeping copious notes throughout the process. Mr Bryant walks into Dr Runcorn’s lab and pokes about, and takes whatever he likes out of the property room. Half the time he doesn’t even secure it as he leaves. When I remind him of protocol, he shouts at me, or he laughs.”

“So this is about Mr Bryant,” said May solemnly.

“Yes, sir. I was always warned that we would have to work reactively on suspects, eliminate or associate them according to the likelihood of their involvement in a crime. Mr Bryant doesn’t do that, sir. He doesn’t share information, and he starts with the unlikeliest scenario. He won’t cold-type fingerprints or correlate his data with colleagues. He starts writing up reports before he even receives blood-typing results. Mr Finch should have run epithelial cell checks on the lift doors, the globe cable and the balcony seat backs by now, but Mr Bryant doesn’t even seem interested. It’s like he thinks he’s above the law.”

“I understand your concerns. You must bear in mind that no fingerprints other than the victims’ have been found at any of the three crime scenes. Still, sometimes Mr Bryant fails to respect the fact that criminology is a modern science.”

Bryant was keeping quiet. He had known this moment was coming, had seen it in the boy’s disillusioned eyes.

“I’m sure Mr Bryant does not consider himself above the law,” May continued. “His mind just takes him off the beaten track.”

“Think about why this case came to us,” suggested Bryant, relishing Biddle’s discomfort. “Does it appear to involve any of the elements present in your college case histories? Domestic violence, burglary, spousal assault, alcohol-related crime, pick-pocketing, grand larceny?”

“No, sir.”

“You see, Biddle, our cases get prioritized for the wrong reasons: they have a higher profile, meaning there’s an influential relative somewhere in the background, or there’s a more complex political element involved, or they’re a publicity risk, or they’re against the public mood. Most importantly, they’re cases that can cause damage to public morale during a time of conflict. Thanks to Hitler, we are no longer living in a world that cares about the death of someone because they were loved in the past. It cares only if that death can do damage to the future. It’s a grim truth, Sidney. Like Orpheus leaving Hades, we are rushing headlong into the light of a terrible new world.

“There is a way of providing accountability, though. You get a grant from the Home Office to run an autonomous unit like this, one that siphons off the publicly embarrassing cases during wartime and takes the heat, and you head it up with men whose operations run so contrary to traditional methodology that once in a while they produce the goods. That’s what everyone’s baying for now, the press, the state, they’re only interested in culpability. Take a look at the witch-hunting that’s going on out there, most of it whipped up by rumour and conjecture. We lump everyone we don’t like in with the Germans, most of whom are probably as decent as you or me, and God help you if you disagree, because you’ll be tarred and feathered along with them.” Bryant fumbled about in his waistcoat for some matches. “Tell me, Sidney, are you aware of the recent troubles in Greece?”

“Greece?” Biddle looked thrown. “No, sir.”

“Last week some British soldiers got into a fight on a border checkpoint that they had no right to be on in the first place. It ended up with a local man being tortured and killed. The man was a Greek national suspected of collaborating with the Italians. When that happened, his family was shipped off and his private property was seized. The victim was probably innocent, but he was travelling without the right papers, and had bribed our boys to let him through. The British ambassador to Greece extradited the men, and the blame for the death was placed on an extremist Turkish national group. There have been quite a few violent incidents in Greece inspired by Turkish national activity, and relations between the two countries are poor. Meanwhile, we have a British building programme going on in Istanbul. Is this starting to make sense to you?”

Biddle stared furiously at his hands. “No, it isn’t.”

“Let me spell it out. The Orpheus production company is owned by the son of a Greek shipping magnate, and has its headquarters in Athens. The closest thing we have to a suspect is an illegal immigrant who happens to be a Turk. What will the Foreign Office’s position be if it can be proved that a powerful Greek company deliberately framed an innocent Turk for murder?”

“You’re telling me that this is about keeping building contracts in Istanbul?” asked Biddle.

“Add to this mix a powerful Austrian with Mosleyite connections in London, a man whose only daughter has died in mysterious circumstances, and a theatrical production, of all things, that simultaneously demonstrates international solidarity and co-operation while challenging the nation’s moral dignity. Is it any wonder that the matter is attracting attention in high places? You see, Biddle, you have to look at the broader picture. Four days and three murders on, we’re no further forward than when we started, so I’m going to handle the case in the manner I think fit. I know I’m an unlikelylooking subversive, but it’s people like me you have to watch out for. I won’t toe the party line and I don’t have to cover my back against losing a court case over technical irregularities – ”

“You’re talking about contaminated evidence, failure to observe – ”

“ – because,” Bryant cut across him, “our cases get solved before they ever reach a public court, something you’d have realized if you’d studied the unit’s history a little more thoroughly instead of worrying about logging procedures on trace evidence.”

He rose, bringing the meeting to an end. “Now you may want to reconsider your transfer. You seem like a smart chap. Put your talents to good use. Check out the spot where Darvell was butchered. Ask Runcorn about the blood patterns in the aisle. Forget the paperwork and get stuck in. That’s where you’ll be best used. Don’t let your ambitions pull you in the wrong direction. I know you asked Davenport down here today. But think about what I’ve said. You can let me have your answer by tomorrow morning.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Biddle, looking at Bryant as if he was mad, “but my mind is made up. I’m requesting a transfer from the unit at the first available opportunity.”

He’s angry that John saw action and he didn’t, thought Bryant suddenly. He wants to be out there rugby-tackling the villains. It was all he needed to understand to get Biddle back on track.