The Memory of Blood

∨ The Memory of Blood ∧

21

Victoriana

Arthur Bryant was sitting on the beach with the trouser legs of his frayed suit rolled up, watching a recalcitrant donkey attempting to tug free from its owner. The smelly, haggard beast kept its legs straight, its head down and pulled, showing the kind of mean determination for which the seaside town’s residents were famous.

“Really, though, what on earth are we doing here?” asked John May in exasperation.

“Sun, sea, sand, summer,” Bryant pronounced slowly and carefully. “Gruesome, isn’t it? France has St Tropez, Italy has Portofino. England has Broadstairs.”

In front of him, a small boy had lost the ice cream from his cone and was attempting to pick it out of the wet ochre sand. His mother bent over him, ready with a slap. A handful of hardy visitors were wading knee-deep in the bristling grey sea. The watery sunshine had a suspicious chill in it, as if at any moment the clouds might cover the sky and revel in the disappointment they caused.

“I can’t believe you insisted on coming here in the middle of an investigation,” said May. “Charles Dickens stayed there in Bleak House. It won’t just be work, it’ll be fun. One minute you’re measuring my nose, the next we’re heading for the coast. If this is the onset of Alzheimer’s, can you at least remember enough to let me know?”

Bryant had resisted all attempts to engage him in conversation on the train down. “This is part of the investigation,” he muttered.

“You said we’re supposed to be meeting someone. I think it’s about time you explained, Arthur. I mean, we’re here now, so even if I get angry with you, I can’t do much about it.”

Bryant checked his ancient Timex. “Come on, he should be waiting for us.” He stuck out his hand and his partner grudgingly pulled him to his feet. Surveying the maritime scene before him, he waited with arms outstretched while May dusted him down. A seagull stumped past them with a ketchup-covered chip in its mouth. Several of its friends flew down to take a closer look at the detectives and decided they probably weren’t worth landing on.

“Look at them,” Bryant complained. “Virtually the only birds you can’t eat. Why aren’t there shooting ranges on the beach? You could make a fortune. Look over there.” He pointed to a dingy doorway with the word Willy’s Waxworks picked out in gold against black. Next to it was a rock shop, selling hard-candy false teeth, giant baby pacifiers and plates of fake bacon and eggs. “What would aliens think if they found themselves in the average British seaside town? All this gruesome Victoriana on display, death masks in wax and body parts made from sugar. Rickety rides and penny slot machines. Ghost trains. Clairvoyants. This is where the past truly survives.”

“That’s why you like it so much,” May told him. “You’re still a Victorian at heart, aren’t you? You’d like to see the return of fog and cobbled streets and tuberculosis, and sticking kids up chimneys.”

“It’s all still here. Look at the grotesques wandering around us – instead of the healthy bodies and chiselled features you see in London, we’re surrounded by fat people with terrifying red faces. The seaside is full of people who look like they’ve been carved out of Spam.” A woman in front of Bryant turned around and glared at him. After many decades of working together, May was used to his partner’s rudeness, but forgot that it still came as a shock to others.

“You’re saying it’s a class issue.”

“Well, of course,” Bryant retorted impatiently. “These days only the rich are thin. And they holiday in Tuscany and the Riviera. The working classes always headed for the English seaside, and were never content just to sit and look at the view. They wanted to eat and drink and be entertained. What a selection the Victorians had to choose from! Shell grottoes, sand artists and seaweed gardens, Pierrot troupes, concert parties, champion pier divers, phrenologists, burnt-cork minstrels, goat carriages, bathing machines, sword swallowers, pugilists, fortunetellers. Come on, let’s get some cockles and whelks and cover them in white pepper and vinegar.”

Neither of the detectives had enjoyed a proper holiday in years, and this little Thursday-morning mystery jaunt was the closest they were going to get to one. Their last abortive trip to the seaside had left them trapped in the winter’s worst traffic jam, investigating a murder. As both were born Londoners, the strange sense of discomfort they felt upon leaving the capital mitigated any real desire to travel.

Most of the lightbulbs edging the Las Vegas Amusement Arcade were broken and corroded by the salt air. A less Vegas-y venue was hard to imagine. The illuminated machines in its cavernous interior blinked and shook in the gloom, tawdry treasures awaiting discovery by some third-rate Aladdin. The sharp scent of brine mingled with the pungent reek of stale doughnut fat and candy floss.

They passed a battered bandstand with an octagonal roof of oxidized green tiles and a row of blue and white public deckchairs awaiting the arrival of summer’s senior citizens, who would turn to follow the path of the sun like ripening tomatoes before folding up at five for tea. A large red sea mine had been converted into a charity box for guide dogs and had been draped with a plastic banner that read Ho-Lee-Fook! The Best Chinese Restaurant In Broadstairs! A sign above the serving hatch of a tea hut read: Half Price Cream Teas For Pensioners – No Seconds.

“Pensioner is such an ugly word,” said Bryant vehemently. “How quick we are to give everyone labels. In London I like to think I’m regarded as an expert, an authority, a man with experience to impart. Down here I’d be treated as a child or ignored as a pensioner.”

“Don’t worry, Arthur, no one’s expecting you to retire,” May replied, reading his thoughts. “We all know you’ll die in harness.”

“True. Hopefully I’ll be gazing down at a body with a knife in its back and just drop in my tracks, whereupon Banbury will draw a chalk outline around me and I’ll join my own cases.”

“Arthur, there you are! I thought we were supposed to meet in front of the clock tower? I gave up waiting.” A very odd-looking man was squinting at them from behind the Hook-a-Duck stall.

“Dudley Salterton!” Bryant exclaimed. “Sorry, Dudley, I lost track of the time. John, this is a very old friend of mine. We went to school together in Whitechapel.” He hadn’t seen the elderly seaside entertainer in years, and it was hard to tell if he’d got the right man. People described Salterton as ageless in a way that wasn’t intended as a compliment. He seemed to exist somewhere between post-menopause and post-mortem. He dyed his hair and eyebrows a weird shade of gingery-brown and never shaved properly, leaving a patina of stubble around which a crust of stage makeup could be discerned, so that he looked as if he’d been inexpertly embalmed. He was wearing a too-short school tie and what appeared to be a red flannel dressing gown over a very old mismatched suit.

“I thought you only knew strange people in London,” May said from the side of his mouth as the trio walked away together.

“I did, but they started spreading out to all parts of the country,” Bryant replied with a hint of pride. “Dudley is a ventriloquist. Are you still working with Barnacle Bill, Dudley?”

“No, I had to give him up. I left him in the shed a few winters back and he got woodworm. Did you ever use those lessons I gave you?”

“The ventriloquism? No, I forgot most of what you taught me.”

“Pity, you were very good at it. Gave me quite a fright, if I recall.”

“What have you been up to?”

“I was performing magic tricks at the Winter Gardens last winter until Health and Safety started giving me grief about keeping doves down my trousers. Then I took over the Punch and Judy show from my pal Arnold after he had his colon shortened.”

“Why?”

“Well, he couldn’t reach up any more. The puppet booth is too high for him now.”

“No, I mean why the Punch and Judy show? I thought you hated children.”

“Oh, aye, I do. But I get a grant from the council for keeping English folk traditions alive. They pay me to put the fear of God up ankle-biters twice an hour.” He released a high laugh that sounded like a seagull with a bone stuck in its throat. “Mind you, I have to fight for their attention.”

“What do you mean?”

“Texting. The little buggers spend all their time taking photos on their phones and texting each other. Arnold used to give out oranges and walnuts at the end of the show. Not much point in doing that when the kids have all got these fancy mobiles. Punch and Judy is a play about the unstoppable power of the human life force. How can I teach kids that when they’re busy blowing up aliens and texting folk on the other side of the world? They know it all now. Even Mr Punch cheating Death doesn’t impress them.” He shook his head sadly. “The truth is, Arthur, I can’t keep up with them any more, even down here. There’s no dignity in ending up like this, I can tell you. I can’t be long, I only get an hour for lunch.”

“Actually, we came to see you with a problem. Do you still own the waxworks?”

“Aye, the place is falling down but I can’t get rid of it. Part of me heritage, is that place.”

“Can we go in and take a look around?”

“If we’re quick. This way.” Salterton crossed the road and brought them to the waxworks entrance. Now May understood why he had been dragged out here. His partner was suspicious of Robert Kramer because he believed the Mr Punch clues pointed to him. May was of a different opinion, and would have resisted making the trip if Bryant had forewarned him.

Salterton instructed a tiny old woman who sat behind the scratched Plexiglas of the entrance booth. “Betty, let these gentlemen in on discount tickets, will you? They’re under fifteen.”

“Don’t make me laugh,” grumbled Betty. “I caught a right little tearaway with his hand up Princess Diana’s skirt just now. Couldn’t have been more than ten. You have to have eyes in the back of your head.”

“You know, Betty, you could have been my assistant on stage, you’ve got the legs for it,” said Salterton.

“No, really, don’t make me laugh,” said Betty. “I mean it, I’ve just had my womb lifted. I’m not allowed to crack a smile for at least a fortnight.”

The waxworks had once been a private house, where Dudley’s great-grandparents, a sturdy well-to-do Edwardian family from Kingston upon Thames, had entertained their summer guests visiting from London. Back in the 1930^s the rooms had been stripped out and hung with red velvet curtains and waxworks of historical figures had been installed. After the Second World War the enterprise had struggled to compete with flashier fare on the promenade, and the building’s fabric had deteriorated. Cary Grant and Elizabeth Taylor had been removed, Steve McQueen and Raquel Welch had been installed. Welch had recently been refitted as Keira Knightley, but these days the reality-TV celebrities came and went so fast that there was no point in changing most of the exhibits any more. Mice, moths, woodlice and spiders inhabited the damp drapery and warped floorboards, and the only paying customers now were bored children looking for something to make fun of.

“I’ve no money to fix the roof,” Salterton explained. “I thought I might get a grant from the council, but times have changed since the credit crisis. We’re all having to fend for ourselves.”

He led the way into the first room. “We got rid of the historical figures and all the old film stars. Nobody’s interested in Norman Wisdom and Diana Dors any more. I dressed up some of our old cast-offs with new wigs and clothes and I’ve given them new names. The Duke of Wellington and General Wolfe are now Big Brother contestants. Anne Boleyn and Mary, Queen of Scots have become X-Factor finalists. Nobody notices, nobody cares.”

The room had the spirit-lowering air of a hospital chapel. Half a dozen gruesome, ill-kempt figures were grouped in attitudes of supplication. “They need a wipe-down,” said Salterton apologetically, “but there’s only Betty and me left, and she can’t get about much.”

“Arthur, what are we really doing here?” asked May. “I’ve been very patient, but I think I’ve indulged you long enough. If we hurry, we can catch the two-thirty train.”

“You asked me if I had any idea about the case,” Bryant countered. “Well, I do. We need to understand a very devious and particular kind of mind-set. Dudley, kindly show Mr May your pride and joy, would you?”