Seventy-Seven Clocks

∨ Seventy-Seven Clocks ∧

13

Pandemonium

“Hey, you’re late,” said Nicholas. “You should have been here, helping me out. More delegates left this morning.”

Jerry stowed her bag and took her place behind the reception desk. Half a dozen security officers were standing in the reception area awaiting the departure of another Common Market dignitary.

“With the amount of security we have, you’d think they’d feel safer staying here than anywhere else.”

“Suppose this whole thing turns out to have a political cause? According to the Telegraph, the chap who got his throat cut was some kind of government spy.”

“You shouldn’t believe everything you read,” said Jerry.

“I suppose you know better.” Nicholas swept his hair back disapprovingly and turned his attention to the billing system. Jerry was about to answer a guest’s inquiry when she saw Joseph Herrick descending the main staircase. He smiled shortsightedly in her direction and headed towards the breakfast room.

“Be a pal and deal with this gentleman for me, Nicholas.” Jerry slid off her stool, running her fingers through her hair. It was now or never. “I won’t be long.”

“Look here,” complained Nicholas, “you’ve only just arrived. Where do you think you’re going?”

“I fancy a spot of breakfast.” She knew she could take liberties with him, so long as he continued to study her breasts from the corner of his eye when he thought she wasn’t looking. His recent humiliation at his parents’ house was obviously beginning to wear off.

Joseph had seated himself against the tall glass wall overlooking the Embankment, and was staring out at the grey expanse of the rain-pocked river. The smile of recognition he gave her suggested he would enjoy her company.

“Mind if I join you?”

“Not at all,” said Joseph, indicating the chair opposite. “Do you normally take breakfast with your guests?”

“All the time. It’s part of the service.” She seated herself and unfolded a napkin in her lap. “I’m surprised you’re still here. Most of the delegates are checking out. They’re being moved to a high-security residence.”

“Well, two deaths in the same hotel – it’s not exactly an advertisement for healthy living, is it?”

“It’s hardly our fault. It’s not the usual sort of thing that happens in a hotel. They were, you know – proper murders.”

“I see. You can be killed in a robbery and that wouldn’t be a proper murder, is that it?”

Jerry waited while one of the waiters brought their breakfast. “I mean a murder with a motive,” she explained. “Everything carefully planned out.”

Joseph took a bite of buttered toast and chewed it slowly, regarding his companion with an indulgent smile. “You mean like Sherlock Holmes. ‘Red-headed League,’ ‘Sign of the Four,’ stuff like that.”

“If you like, yes.”

“Forget it, Jerry, it doesn’t happen. I come from a port city where death is sordid and simple. Guys get drunk and rape women, or they beat on each other when they’re pissed. I don’t believe there’s any such thing as a carefully planned crime.”

“You’re wrong. Girls go for non-existent job interviews and vanish. They get chopped up and left in railway carriages. Murderers are men, and men are devious.”

“And you think the Savoy has a devious murderer? Maybe he’s even staying here?”

“I don’t know.” She looked down at her plate, embarrassed. “Maybe.”

“What did you tell the police?”

“Just what I saw.” She needed to change the subject. “How’s your show coming along?”

“Good,” he replied, pouring tea. “The theatre is a mess. The refurbishment is running behind schedule. It’s taking longer than anyone expected.”

“Which theatre are you working in?”

“I thought I told you.” He passed her a cup. “I’m right next door, at the Savoy. That’s why I’m staying here. The Japanese are paying for the renovation work, and they’ve appointed me as the set designer for their first production. We’re opening with a new Gilbert and Sullivan staging, very modern and irreverent. Actually, it’s not exactly new. It’s been touring the country for a while, but the production is getting a face-lift for its London debut, and that’s where my designs come in. I can get you tickets for the first night if you like.”

“Perhaps I could see you before then.”

“Sure. I’m here right through to the opening.” He checked his watch. “I’d better get going. I promised to call my girlfriend.”

Her stomach dropped. Of course he had a girlfriend. She was probably slender and beautiful. And sadly, still alive.

“Where is she?” she asked, drawing back slightly.

“She used to live in the US, but now she’s studying at Oxford. She’s gone to visit relatives in Edinburgh for Christmas. Listen, it doesn’t stop you and me from being friends. I’d still like that.”

Her instinctive reaction was to withdraw her offer, but she knew that would be childish. “All right,” she agreed reluctantly. “Friends, then.”

Joseph seemed genuinely pleased. “Now we’ve defused that particular time bomb, you can tell me more about your murder theories.”

“If you like…”

He laid a slim finger against his lips. “When you get off this evening,” he said with a smile.

♦

John May had woken to the sound of rain pounding against the bedroom skylight, and studied the dark turmoil beyond the glass. He had just taken his raincoat to the dry cleaners. Coffee was called for, but a routine check for messages pushed the thought of breakfast from his mind.

As he ran from his car to the entrance of Gower Street’s University College Hospital, the shoulders of his jacket became soaked. At five past six on Wednesday morning the hospital foyer was populated only by an elderly floor polisher. A word with the duty nurse sent him along the corridor to the overnight admissions rooms.

He found Bryant bundled up on a green leather bench, asleep. Arthur had sunk down into his voluminous coat like a tortoise vanishing into its shell for the winter. May’s shoes squeaked on the polished linoleum as he approached, and Bryant’s bald head slowly emerged at the sound.

“What happened, Arthur?” asked May. “Why on earth didn’t you let them page me?”

“There was nothing you could have done to help,” said the detective wearily. “There were quite enough people here. You would only have been in the way. She died at three o’clock this morning. Due to the unusual nature of the death, I asked the doctor if she would put down her findings in some kind of preliminary report. Raymond’s going to go crazy when he finds out what happened, and I’ll need all the information I can get.”

May sat down beside his old friend. Bryant looked done in. “What happened?” he asked.

“She suffered some kind of seizure. Violent convulsions, uncontrollable muscle contractions consistent with poisoning. It was terrible to watch.” He looked along the deserted corridor, listened to the distant clatter of the awakening hospital. “She seemed like a good woman,” he said sadly.

The administering doctor was about to go off duty, and stopped by to see them. “I wouldn’t want these notes to be used as a basis for any kind of evidential document, Arthur,” she explained, holding the file against her bosom, “but you’d better have them.” Bryant imagined that the last thing she had wanted to do after a long shift was fill in paperwork as a favour to the police, but the young Irishwoman had helped him a number of times in the past, and always did so without complaint.

“It’s very kind of you, Betty. I’ll leave you something in my will.”

“You’d better leave your friend your overcoat,” said Betty, glancing at May. “He’s going to catch his death dressed like that.”

As they walked back along the corridors, Bryant thumbed through the neat handwritten pages. “At first they thought it was tetanus, but it looks like strychnine poisoning,” he said. “I thought it would have to be. She died of asphyxiation and exhaustion. There’s only so long the body can stave off a total attack on the central nervous system before it gives in. The reaction time of the poison is normally ten to twenty minutes, but it was slowed because she’d eaten earlier, and because I was able to administer Valium to reduce the spasms. There was no point in pumping her stomach because the symptoms had already begun. Instead they intravenously administered succinylcholine to slow down the convulsions and take the strain off her heart. I suppose it didn’t work.” He closed the folder.

“What did she eat?” asked May. “Did you see?”

“She ate from the salad bar everyone else used. And she sat through the whole of the first act without showing any symptoms. She was just a few feet away from me.”

“Did she consume anything during the performance? Chocolates?”

“No. There was champagne, both before and during the intermission.”

“Did you see any of it being opened?”

“There were quite a few bottles, but as far as I know they were all sealed. I kept an eye on the one Bella drank from. She uncorked it herself and we all had a glass. John, we need to get everyone back to that box and re-create this thing while it’s still fresh in their minds. And I want the press kept out. They’ll catch wind of it soon enough.”

They ran through the rain to the waiting car.

♦

Dr Raymond Land, the acting chief, was not a man who enjoyed life, and today he was liking it even less than usual. His narrow shoulders rose and fell as he fidgeted with frustration behind his empty desk. His hand frequently rose to pat the greying hair combed in thin bands across his head. He did not want to be here at all, but if he had to be, he wanted his tenure to be a quiet one. This new unit was too experimental, too chaotic, too unregulated for his taste. Hopefully someone else would arrive to take responsibility for the division. All he had expected to do was keep his head down and stop his wayward detectives from embarrassing everyone, but now they had been landed with this ridiculous case, and he could see shame and public humiliation looming.

Land did not look up when Arthur Bryant entered the room. “I know that you and your partner have evolved your own odd methods of working,” he began, attempting to keep a quiver from his voice, “but this investigation will destroy the unit. Four people, Bryant!” he exploded. “This latest death managed to make the late-morning editions. The press are having a bloody field day. The Sun is running a ‘Solve It Yourself, Win A Ford Cortina’ competition. It’s pandemonium. I don’t think you need me to tell you that we’ve never seen anything like this before.” He stood by the window with his index fingers pressed into the bridge of his nose. “We live in a fractured time. People are becoming uprooted, unemployed. Strikes up and down the country. Heath is the most hopeless PM we’ve had since the war. Men are losing their wives, their families, their jobs, and their homes at an unprecedented rate. Reasons for murder are becoming as absurd as the times.”

Bryant was well aware of this. Indeed, he had attended Land’s recent lecture on the subject at Hendon Police College.

“Statistically, we’re catching fewer criminals. You know as well as I do that a murder file can only stay open while we receive help from the public. We can’t be expected to search for eternity. And we’re marking more and more homicides unsolved. Now we have three blood relatives in the same family dead in six days, and so far no forensic indications, no decent witnesses, no outside information. These aren’t random acts of violence, for God’s sake. Someone is playing a deliberate, arrogant game with us. What I want to know is, how can so much happen with so little result from this department?”

“Our problem lies in the evidence,” explained Bryant, “or rather the extraordinary surfeit of it. It’s as if there was a team of people involved in each act, altering everything that might be turned to our use. We have plenty of fingerprints but none of them match. Then there’s the problem of motive.”

“What about this German business the Mail’s been talking about, tying the deaths to the Common Market conference?”

“The design of the Whitstables’ sacred flame is admittedly similar to the wartime assassination symbol, but I’m positive it’s just a coincidence. There are no other corroborating factors.”

“You’re positive, are you? How did you manage to protect Bella Whitstable so well that she died while she was in your care?”

“As we have yet to discover how she died, I consider that an unfair remark,” replied Bryant, stung. “And I’d like to point out that in a murder investigation of this sort I would normally have expected as many as sixty men to be drafted on to the case. May and I are working with barely half a dozen staff. It’s essential that we talk to the surviving partner at Jacob and Marks, but because their office is in Norwich neither of us has had time to go there yet.”

“I know,” said Land angrily, “and at the moment there’s not a damned thing I can do about it. It’s this place you’ve built for yourselves. How can you expect organization without structure? It’s all very well wanting to conduct your investigations creatively, but you need to cover the groundwork, just as the Met have to. There’s no hierarchy here – ”

“That was intentional.”

“And assuming your information is fully collated, which I doubt, there’s nothing you can do with it because your system doesn’t cross-reference every piece of information received by the police.”

“We have many lines of inquiry that need to be followed,” said Bryant wearily. “What we need is greater manpower.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” said Land, picking up a folder and removing its contents. “But I don’t need to tell you that there’s a lot of resentment about this unit. Quite a few lads in the Met think you’re being elitist, that the old system isn’t good enough for you any more. They’re waiting for you to hang yourselves. But unless I receive positive proof that someone is physically trying to hinder the investigation, there’s nothing I can do. At least I’ve had a chance to go over your report,” said Land, brandishing a sheaf of paper. Bryant was pleased that he had found the time to do so; he’d been up most of the weekend assembling it.

As little as he cared for the superintendent, Bryant knew that Land was a reasonable man, and at the moment represented their only path to increased resources. It was important to have him on their side.

“Before you go through it, I need to explain something to you,” said Bryant. “It’s something I haven’t put in that document. Little more than a feeling, really. We’re looking for more than just a clever murderer. This is about revenge.”

“Don’t start, Bryant. I have a limit.”

“The methods rely on a knowledge of the victims,” Arthur continued, “and the approach is theatrical, as though each death is intended to act as some kind of warning. The standard investigation procedures can’t apply, because these are cold executions, cutting off branches of the family tree. I’m not sure there’s even any malice. It’s more a matter of – pruning. Something quite unprecedented in my experience.”

“Do you have any information on the Whitstable woman’s cause of death yet?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Land was clearly dissatisfied with his own powerless role in the proceedings. He stood at the window picking a flake of paint from the peeling ledge. “I want our backs covered with this one,” he said carefully. “There are rumours that the Australian Commonwealth delegates have been sent death threats. Their arts minister, Carreras, has scheduled another press conference complaining about the lack of security he’s experienced, in order to embarrass our government into official action.”

“We haven’t established a positive connection between – ”

“Did you know that, until this morning at least, the minister was staying at the Savoy?”

“Yes, I was aware of that.”

“Were you also aware that he attended the theatre last night?”

Bryant felt a crawling sensation in his gut. “At the Coliseum?”

“The very same. Box L.”

The box exactly facing the one in which Bella Whitstable was taken ill. Anger rose within him. There was a pattern here. Why could he not see it?

“We’ll step up our inquiries,” he promised, knowing that it would now be necessary to call a press conference. He would schedule it for late this afternoon. But first, there was a murder to reconstruct.

On his way out of the office, he walked into Jerry Gates. She had come up to the Mornington Crescent unit in her lunch break, and was still wearing her hotel uniform.

“What are you doing here?” He frowned at her in displeasure.

“You said you might need to talk to me again.”

“I said I’d call you when I was ready. How did you get in?”

“Sergeant Longbright admitted me. I want to help. I know there’s been another one. If you’d just listen to me for a minute – ”

“Miss Gates, neither I nor my partner has a moment to spare right now. Please, go back to work and leave it to us to take the appropriate steps.”

The police aren’t making any progress, she thought. I can do better on my own. And if anything bad happens, they’ll only have themselves to blame for not listening to me.

♦

They met in the foyer of the Coliseum, a forlorn, dripping crowd in suits and raincoats, like a party of tourists gathered for a particularly unpopular sightseeing tour. Bereft of their finery they seemed smaller and less significant. They awkwardly offered their condolences to Bryant as if attending the wake before the funeral.

“I’m afraid I must ask you all to come back to the box, and it will be necessary for you to don your outfits once more. It seems morbid, I know, but it’s necessary to recreate the exact circumstances under which Bella Whitstable died. It may help us to understand what happened.”

Below them, rehearsals continued as the Savoyards struggled back into armour and hose. Bryant stood patiently at the rear of the box with a smirking police photographer while the group dressed. Then he directed them to their places, marking the seat in which Bella collapsed.

“All right,” he said, raising his hands for silence. “How many members do we have here?”

“There are twenty-two of us,” said Oliver Pettigrew. “There are more in the society, but we vary in number according to each production. Principal cast members can’t be duplicated, and the main cast of Ida is fifteen.”

“So what does that make the rest of you?”

“Courtiers, Soldiers and Daughters of the Plough.”

“I want everyone to take the positions they held last night, at the time when it was first noticed that Mrs Whitstable was feeling unwell,” Bryant requested. There followed much shuffling and pulling free of snagged cloaks.

“Wait,” said Bryant, “there’s somebody missing.” The Savoyards looked at one another, then back at the elderly detective. “There was a little beggar in a hat standing against the wall.”

“Are you sure?” asked Pettigrew. “There aren’t any beggars listed in the cast of Ida.”

“I distinctly remember seeing him there,” said Bryant. “A tattered man. Surely someone else must have noticed him.” He searched the surrounding faces, positive that the assassin had been discovered, but the Savoyards rubbed their chins and shook their heads. He looked back at the empty chair where Bella had collapsed, and the spot beside it where she had put down her handbag. What could the beggar have done to cause her death?

As he moved toward the door of the box he turned back to the assembled group, who were still watching him and waiting for guidance.

“Thank you for coming,” he told the semicircle of baffled faces. “Please check that the constable here has your personal details written down correctly, and we’ll get back to you if there are any further developments.”

And with that he hastily left the theatre.

♦

“They found no trace of strychnine in the champagne?”

“None whatsoever,” said Raymond Land. “What’s on your mind?” Bryant had blasted into his office like a rainy night and was proceeding to soak everything with his umbrella and overcoat.

“I was thinking about strychnine,” he explained. “Such an old-fashioned poison. It’s fairly fast-acting, so it would have to have been administered within the theatre box. Why would the murderer make things so difficult for himself? Why pick a drug with such a startling effect, and risk capture by still being on the premises when she began to convulse?”

He dumped a large opaque plastic bag on Land’s desk.

“You’d have to be very sure of your method of administration, wouldn’t you?”

He carefully opened the evidence envelope and withdrew Bella Whitstable’s handbag, still covered in fingerprint dust. “When I saw her initial symptoms,” he continued, “I knew that something was paralysing her muscles. Strychnine poisoning starts in the face and neck.” He fished about in the bag and withdrew an object in a bony fist. “How does it look if you buy it in the form of, say, rat poison?”

“It’s a powder,” said Land. “Crystalline and colourless.”

“And it can kill on contact with the skin or the eyes.”

He opened his hand to reveal a powder compact. “She applied it herself when she freshened her make-up in the intermission. We’ll run print matches, but it’s likely our beggarman dipped into her bag and doctored the compact while we were watching the first act.”

Land took the compact from Bryant’s outstretched hand and carefully opened it. Beneath the face pad lay a pool of granules which appeared slightly more crystalline than the fine pink powder below it. “Well, I’ll be damned. Someone’s been reading Agatha bleeding Christie.” He looked up at Bryant in amazement.