Bryant & May 01; Full Dark House

∨ Full Dark House ∧

61

SPIRITS OF THE CITY

Margaret Armitage sipped the glass of vervain tea made from leaves she had specially shipped to her from a French necromancer in the town of Carcassonne. Beside her, Arthur Bryant and John May dangled their legs over the ancient wall of the riverbank, nursing foamy pint mugs of bitter. Above the pub door was a large blackboard that read: HITLER WILL SEND NO WARNING – ALWAYS CARRY YOUR GAS MASK.

The waitress of the Anchor had looked at Maggie as if she was mad when she asked for a glass of freshly boiled water. It did not help that the teenage leader of the Camden Town Coven, an organization that had counted Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allan Poe among its members, was wearing a purple and gold kaftan belonging to an African tribal chief, topped with a peacock-feather hat and half a dozen amber necklaces inscribed with carvings representing the souls of the dead.

“I’m a bit disappointed about there not being an actual phantom at the Palace, just a poor tortured boy,” said Maggie, looking out across the placid grey water at the bend in the river, where it widened to the docks. “Let me get under your overcoat, it’s big enough.”

“Yes, that was rather an intriguing aspect,” Bryant agreed as he extended his gaberdine. “Of course, Todd Wynter was never at Jan Petrovic’s house, so there were no walls to walk through, so to speak. But when he vanished from the top-floor corridor, and again from the roof, he had me fooled for a while. John, you remember I asked you about the wind that night?”

“Yes, I wondered what you were on about.”

“We found Todd’s jacket,” he told Maggie. “The one his mother had made for him, just a hood and cloak stitched out of blackout curtain, but it was absolutely huge, rolled up like a sheet. When I ran after him, I imagine he simply remained still at the end of the passageway and unfurled the cloak. It was too dark for me to see him. An old magician’s trick; he’d witnessed plenty of those at the Palace. He threw it off the roof when he was finished with it, and waited until he could return to his private quarters. We found it hanging from the steeple of St Anne’s Church in Dean Street. The wind had carried it like a sail.”

“What a pity,” said Maggie. “I had hoped you might be able to give us proof of the spirit world.”

“Oh, I’ve no doubt Andreas Renalda is possessed, but he’s possessed by the spirits of his childhood.” Bryant swallowed some of his bitter, savouring the pungent taste of hops. “In her own way, so was Elspeth Wynter. Her life was shaped by the ghosts of the theatre. She was a woman forced to survive in a world of harmful magic.”

“That’s what witches are. Do you think she was a witch?”

“Well, someone dropped a house on her,” said Bryant, “so she might have been.”

“You can’t fool me. You were keen on her.”

“I was only ever keen, as you quaintly put it, on one girl. Once you’ve met the one, all the others are just phantasms.”

Maggie lightly stroked his hand. “Perhaps it’s time to let her memory go, Arthur.”

Bryant looked out at a pair of swans settling on the oily water. “It’s not a matter of choice. I have to wait for her to do that.” He took a ruminative swig of beer. The evening’s chill had blanched his cheeks and knuckles.

“Did you hear about your landlady?” May was anxious to change the mood. “She stabbed the editor of Country Life in the foot with your swordstick.”

“Serves him right,” said Bryant, cheering up. “He has no business being in London.”

“And Davenport’s very pleased. He came into the unit this morning and wandered around for a while, shifting pieces of paper about, looking into drawers, fiddling with things. Turned out he’d come to congratulate us formally, and was having trouble uttering the words.”

“Perhaps he could jot it on a postcard,” offered Bryant. “He means well but he’s such an awful clot. Fancy ordering our front door to be barred.”

“I think he was a bit embarrassed about that. You should have seen his face when Biddle stood up for you. He looked as if he’d been stabbed in the back.”

“I don’t suppose Davenport’s good mood will last. The Lord Chamberlain has changed his mind about the show. Says it’s indecent and has to come off. I think somebody higher up must have had a word with him.”

“So all of Elspeth Wynter’s efforts were wasted. The production would have closed anyway. How sad. God, we’re such a lot of hypocritical prudes.”

“You didn’t sleep with her, did you?” asked Maggie. “You didn’t get your conkers polished by a murderess?”

Bryant looked horrified. “No I did not, thank you,” he said, as though the thought had never even occurred to him. “For a spiritualist, you can be very crude.” He suddenly brightened. “Mind you, he did, our Mr May, he made love to a murderess.” He pointed at John May.

“Unproven,” said May hastily. “I mean Betty’s involvement in the death of Minos Renalda. There’s nothing on record, only the conversation I had with Andreas.”

“I thought her real name was Elissa.”

“That’s right, abbreviated to Betty. She has a sister in the Wrens. I should introduce you.”

“I don’t think so. Once bitten and so on.” Bryant raised his trilby and shook out his floppy auburn fringe.

“I should be going.” Maggie Armitage set down her tea glass. “I’ll be late.”

“What have you got tonight?” asked May. “Druid ceremony? Séance? Psychic materialization?”

“No, Tommy Handley on the radio at eight thirty. I never miss him.” She thrust a lethal-looking pin through her hat. “I was listening when Bruce Belfrage got bombed. We hadn’t laughed so much in ages.” Belfrage was a BBC news announcer who became a national hero after carrying on his live radio broadcast even though the studio had received a direct hit and several people were killed. “I actually think I’m going to miss the war when it’s over.”

“Don’t be obscene, Margaret,” said Bryant hotly, swinging his legs down from the weed-riven embankment wall. “Death is stalking the streets, death made terrifying by its utter lack of meaning.”

“The closer you are to death, the more attached you become to life,” the coven leader reminded him. “The city is filled with strengthening spirits.”

“The city is filled with brave people, that’s all,” said May, and took a long drink of his beer.

“If people ever stop thinking about the ones they leave behind, Mr May, your job will cease to exist. All that you see – all this,” she gestured around her, “is about generations yet to be born.”

“Don’t take her too seriously,” Bryant warned his partner. “You were wrong about one of us dying in an explosion, Maggie.”

“It’s never a dead cert, otherwise I’d make my fortune on the geegees instead of helping the police with their inquiries,” she snapped at him, stung.

“You told me you once copped a monkey on a nag called Suffragette racing at Kempton Park because he was possessed by the spirit of Emmeline Pankhurst,” complained Bryant.

Maggie saw more than she ever dared to tell anyone. Time compressing, days blurring into nights, speeding skies, great buildings whirling into life, wheels of steel and circles of glass. She saw a girl her age but half a century away, a girl too afraid of life to leave her house.

She saw the future of John May’s grandchild.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized suddenly. “I have to go. Don’t be downhearted, Mr May. And don’t worry about the future. Things have a way of working out. The song of the city will live on, so long as there is someone to sing it.”

“Well, I wonder what got into her?” exclaimed Bryant. The detectives watched as she walked off down the street, pausing to stroke a tortoiseshell cat on a doorstep, listening to it for a moment, then moving on.

“You know some very peculiar people, Arthur,” May pointed out.

“Oh, you haven’t seen the half of it. I intend to bring many more of them into the unit. I have a friend who can read people’s minds by observing insects. He’d be useful. And I know a girl who’s a ventophonist.”

“What’s that?”

“She can throw her voice down the phone.”

“Now you’re teasing me.”

“Our work is far from finished. I think I’ve finally found a purpose to my life. Something I can dedicate myself to. Thanks to you.”

Bryant looked over at his partner and grinned as the sun came out above them, transforming the river into a shining ribbon of light. He rubbed his hands together briskly.

“But where to start? We have yet to discover the lair of the Leicester Square Vampire. He’s still got my shoes, you know. And that poor girl he snatched, buried alive with all those rabid bats and someone else’s head. There are other cases starting to come in. We’ve got a twenty-one-year-old Hurricane pilot accused of a brutal stabbing in Argyll Street, several witnesses, his bloody fingerprints on the body, and a cast-iron alibi that places him in the middle of Regent’s Park, tied to the back of a cow. He’s one of the Channel heroes, so it’s in everyone’s interests to exonerate him, but how? No, our labours here are only just beginning. This city is a veritable repository of the wonderful and the extraordinary. Isn’t that right, Mr May?”

“I couldn’t agree with you more, Mr Bryant,” replied May with a lift of his glass, and this time he really meant it.

Bryant looked over his friend’s shoulder, in the direction of Waterloo Bridge. Something drew his eye to the centre of the bridge. There was a coruscating flash of dark sunlight, a spear of greenish yellow, and for the briefest moment two elderly men could be seen leaning on the white stone parapet. Then the light settled, and they were gone.

Far above them, the silver-grey barrage balloons that protected the city turned lazily in the early evening air, like old whales searching for the spawning grounds of their youth.