Full Dark House

∨ Full Dark House ∧

47

DEADLY DEPARTED

Euterpe and the flaming torch.

He recalled Bryant’s theory about the statue as he made his way through the crowded Camden streets. Euterpe had survived the war and was still cemented in place on the roof of the Palace Theatre, over half a century later. Not much else was, when you looked around the city. The Palladian stucco, the elaborate wroughtiron railings, the secluded courtyards and mysterious alleyways in permanent shadow, the absurd flourishes that gave the metropolis its character had mostly been removed, demolished, stolen. Developers had reinvented the future so ruthlessly that the London of his youth had disappeared. Offices were revealed behind glass walls, as though they had to offer proof of their profitability to pedestrians. There was no room in the modern world for anything unnecessary. At least Camden hadn’t changed as much as people said. The layout of the streets was exactly as he had always remembered it.

The rain had eased, but the damp air invaded his leg muscles and made walking a chore. May wondered if he was being followed by the fanged man. He checked the pavement behind him. Camden was filled with students and tourists wandering between the market stalls. Every tribe and fashion was represented; nose-rings, navel piercings, velvet hats, leather jackets, Goths and God-Squaders, skinheads and Sex Pistolettes. A permanent carnival atmosphere had settled across the area. May was the oldest person on the street. Outsized sculptures of a spacecraft, a tank, a Dr Marten’s boot, a rocking chair were suspended from the first floors of the high-street shops like toys discarded by a giant child. Camden Lock survived as a polyglot arrangement of stalls selling clothing, jewellery, incense, noodles and furniture. The pavements were dirty, noisy, chaotic, but alive in a way that the poplar-lined avenues of the suburbs could never be.

May felt bad about dismissing Longbright, but this had to be done alone. He stopped in front of the door leading to the flat above the World’s End pub. A chunk of floorboard had been nailed over the letter box, giving the entrance an air of dereliction. A scuffed steel plaque on the lintel read:

COVEN OF ST JAMES THE ELDER

North London Division

No Hawkers or Circulars

Below this, a photocopied sheet read:

Suppliers of Equipment to the Spiritualism Trade Wholesale Only

The woman who answered his knock had a square, friendly face framed by ragged curls of bleached hair. She appeared to have missed when applying her lipstick, and missed again with her eye shadow, so that she looked more like a confused plump poodle than a white witch.

“John, thank God, I was beginning to worry,” Maggie Armitage cried, propelling herself into his arms and hugging him fiercely. “I’m sorry I didn’t come to Arthur’s funeral but the vibrations would have overpowered me. Isn’t it awful? I mean, I know it’s a great adventure for him, navigating a pathway into the celestial beyond, but I’ll miss our monthly piss-ups. Sorry about the front door. Drunks kept being sick through the letter box. Don’t talk to me about care in the community. Come on up.” She led the way into a tilting dark passage. “Neema wanted to host a leave-taking ceremony for Arthur, but I couldn’t bear the idea. She’s a Muslim and I like to use dry sherry in the ritual, so we fell out.”

May followed the little witch into her front room, a riot of busy purple seventies wallpaper, battered Formica counters and plastic orange lamps. The thunder of a heavy metal band playing in the pub below was shaking the crockery in the kitchenette.

“What exactly is a leave-taking?”

“The idea is you summon the departing spirit with madrigals and conduct a ceremony to send it on its journey, but Neema’s Yamaha badly needs a service.”

“She rides a motorbike?”

“No, her electric organ. It sounds so awful that decent spirits won’t answer its call any more. The last time she performed the ritual she summoned an Icelandic incubus, and we had to burn incense-soaked cloths to clear it out. Unfortunately, she also set fire to the sofa and we all nearly wound up on the other side. Flammable kapok. I called Watchdog and lodged a complaint.”

Maggie’s amber necklaces rattled as she threw herself down into a broken-backed orange armchair. “There are only five of us left, you know. We had a membership drive for the new millennium but it’s dropped off.” She waved a dismissive hand in the direction of the street. “You’d think that lot out there would be curious about spiritualism, but they’re more interested in shopping. Olive, the lady who used to conduct our séances, had to pack it in because she can’t get up the stairs. She only attends the Hendon branch now because they have a ramp. Nigel and Doris have both passed over, and unless I use a spirit guide I never get to see them.”

“Do you still have Edna Wagstaff’s cat?” asked May, looking around for the Abyssinian.

“I use it as a doorstop,” Maggie admitted. “I fear its days as a source of spiritual succour ended when it got the moth. Of course I can’t throw it out, because I have nothing else to remember Edna by, and she doesn’t answer the Call” – Maggie pointed at the cracked Tibetan bell that hung above the fireplace – “because she’s a lost soul. Either that or she’s gone deaf. You’ve lost a bit of weight. Are you dying?”

“God, I hope not.”

“God’s not got much to do with it any more. You’re not coping well without Arthur, are you?”

“I’ll manage,” May replied wearily. “Do you have anything to drink?”

“I just made tea. You can have a shot of whisky in it.”

“What brand?”

“PG Tips.” She made her way to the kitchenette and rinsed a mug. “I suppose you want ‘closure’. That’s the buzzword these days, isn’t it? When will people learn that there’s no such thing? Life and death are open-ended. Everything begins and ends in the middle.”

“Not this time,” said May, accepting the mug. “I know who killed Arthur. I just don’t know where he is.”

“Perhaps I can help you there. Hang on a minute.” Maggie crossed to the window and shut the curtains. “Did you remember what I asked for?”

“Here.” May withdrew a plastic bag from his overcoat pocket and emptied the contents onto the coffee table before him. “You said bring something that belonged to him.”

“What is it?”

“A souvenir of our first case together. It belonged to a tortoise called Nijinsky.”

Maggie picked up the tortoise shell and peered through its leg holes. “What did you do with the body?”

“I guess it just, you know, decomposed or something. Bryant was given the tortoise because it wouldn’t hibernate in the theatre. It lived right through the war, although its nerves went towards the end.”

“It’s a bit Steptoe-ish, but it’ll have to do.” She lit a pair of candles and set them at either end of the tortoise’s earthly remains. “Rest your fingertips on one end of the shell.”

“Which end?”

“It doesn’t matter.” She seated herself opposite and extended her fingers to touch the tortoise, then began breathing deeply through her nose.

“You think you can really contact him?” May could hardly believe that he was doing this, after all the times he had given his partner grief about believing in the afterlife.

“As long as it’s an object he touched many times in the past.”

“Oh, he had many happy years with Nijinsky.”

“Good. Now shut up and let me concentrate.”

May watched in the half-light of the front room as Maggie rolled back her head and fell into a light trance. After a few minutes, she started snoring. May wondered whether he should wake her. He leaned forward and reached out his hand, but just as he was about to touch her, she spoke. “Do you remember the first time we met, John? What a sceptic you were in those days?”

“I still am,” he whispered.

“I can’t be right all the time.” Her eyes remained closed. “But you – I was right about you. You always did have a very powerful aura.”

“That’s what Edna Wagstaff once told me.”

“So you do, and it’s that which enables the sensitively gifted to read from you. You’re a bit of a tuning fork.”

The wind breathed around the sashed windows, pulsing them in their casements. The sound faded from the street, and time was gently suspended. He remembered his first visit to the flat in 1942, when Maggie had just passed her nineteenth birthday. The surroundings were more elegant; she had fallen on hard times since then. But the flickering candles were the same, and so were the oddly shadowed corners of the room. He remembered the settling silence of the street outside, the suspiration of the wind, and the strange visions she had described to him.

“Oh, we’re like hypnotists,” said Maggie, her slack mouth barely moving. “Nobody believes in our effectiveness until some time later. You and I have known each other for over sixty years, and you still don’t really have faith in me.”

“I wouldn’t say – ”

“There’s no point in pretending, John. We’re both far too old for that.” She drew a long breath, her trance state deepening. “I am speaking now to the owner of this shell.” She tightened her eyelids, focusing her thoughts. “He is dead, but present,” she explained casually, “here in the room with us, right now. He is standing between us, silently watching.”

A chill lifted the hairs on May’s arms as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Arthur?” he called, searching the shadows.

“He can’t speak, poor man, he’s dead. His injuries are terrible to behold. I can barely bring myself to look. He’s put on quite a bit of weight. There is something he must communicate, but it’s so difficult, so painful…”

I must be daft, thought May, sitting in darkness above a London pub, listening to the ramblings of a mad old woman. This is doing neither of us any good.

“He wants to show you what he feels, but to do so he must cross the divide between the spiritual and physical worlds.” Maggie raised her arms in a creaky gesture of prestidigitation, like an elderly magician’s assistant. May had started to rise from his armchair when, to the surprise of both, a low rumble shook the room. There was a sheen of metal in the kitchenette, and something shiny shot between them. When May glanced down, he realized he was looking at a kitchen knife, and that it was sticking out of his calf. He sat down sharply in shock.

“Why on earth would he become violent?” asked Maggie, examining the cut on May’s leg. “That’s not like him at all.” She found a length of crêpe bandage and unrolled it over the cut. “It’s not deep,” she consoled, “but I’m surprised by his behaviour. It’s rare for spirits to react so violently.”

“It was the underground,” said May, wincing. “Just a passing train. The vibration made your breadboard fall over and it flipped the knife from your drying rack, that’s all. This bandage isn’t very clean.”

“Well, you can choose a rational explanation if it makes you more comfortable.” Maggie poured herself a generous tot of Scotch. “You never were much of a believer.”

“Not when the alternative is believing that my dead partner just tried to kill me. This is crazy. I’m being trailed by a man with werewolf fangs, and now this.” May rose and collected his coat. He saw what a mistake it had been to come here. “Thanks for the drink.”

“But how are you going to find Arthur’s killer?” Standing in the middle of the faded rug she suddenly looked lost and frail. This was how it would end for her, he realized, alone and bewildered, stranded by the world racing ever faster past her window.

“I’ll think of a way,” he promised, taking a card from his wallet and handing it to her. “That’s my new address. If you need me, please call.”

It was the least Arthur would have done, he thought as he headed back down the stairs to daylight.