Full Dark House (21 page)

Having waved the tin lantern for long enough, he finally peered round the corner.

And found himself inches from a white staring face. He yelled, the face yelled, and he dropped the lamp in terror.

Luckily the lamp had a safety wick, so it didn’t splash burning oil everywhere, but it went out all the same. It took Bryant a full minute of fumbling in the dark with trembling fingers to get it lit again, and then he found himself sitting on the floor next to a full-length mirror.

From somewhere up near the roof he heard boots scraping on iron rungs, then the slam of a steel door. Whoever he had been chasing was now locked outside on the roof with no way down. Thank God for that, he thought, smoothing his hair and straightening his clothes into a more ordered appearance. I can tell the girls I scared him off.

30

THE THREE HUNDRED

Thursday morning brought evidence of the previous night’s bombing, but the streets of central London were mostly quiet and unscathed. John May was alarmed to discover that he had somehow used up his week’s rations of everything except lard. He hadn’t the faintest idea what to do with lard beyond trying to swap it for something edible. On the second to last page of his ration book was a list of mysterious serial numbers and a government message that read: DO NOTHING WITH THIS PAGE UNTIL TOLD WHAT TO DO. It summed up the official attitude to everything.

But nobody seemed to mind. In 1939 it had been estimated that at least a quarter of the population of Britain was undernourished. Now, families were thinking carefully about nutrition, discovering vegetables they had hardly ever seen or used before.

May prided himself on his youthful fitness but had begun to put on weight. His aunt had taken the war to the kitchen front with a vengeance. Overnight she started presenting her favourite nephew with unappetizing combinations of shredded cabbage, spinach, beetroot and turnips. She rustled up scabby-looking potato pancakes and fish-head soups seasoned with sorrel and grated nutmeg, baked purées of bile beans with celery and chestnuts, liberally lubricated with dripping or stiffened with suet. One night she boiled something experimental with slippery elm and condensed milk that took the finish off the dining-room table so completely she was using Karpol on it for weeks after to restore the shine.

‘Why don’t you go and buy us a couple of coffees while I finish up here?’ instructed Bryant as his partner arrived for work. ‘We’re out of tea, and the Carlucci brothers have traded all theirs. Get a couple of Bath buns while you’re at it.’

‘It’s a bit embarrassing,’ May admitted, ‘but I’m afraid I’m low on funds. I’ve already spent my first week’s salary.’

‘Too busy impressing the girls. I suppose I’ll have to give you an advance.’ Bryant dug into the pocket of his voluminous woollen trousers. ‘Here’s ten bob. Don’t worry about getting into debt. I’m spending wages I’m not due to earn until about six years after my death.’

‘Thanks awfully. Biddle says you saw the Phantom last night.’

‘Indeed, but I do wish you wouldn’t call him that. I trapped him on the roof, actually. When I got up there I found a surprised firewatchman sitting on a ventilation flue. He told me he’d seen someone come flying out of the door, only to rush at the side of the building and vanish over it. When he ran to the ledge and looked down, there was no sign of anyone. It was as though he’d simply flown off into the night air. Poor bloke was beginning to think he’d imagined it when I turned up.’

‘Where on earth could he have gone?’

‘Buggered if I know. There aren’t even any windows he could have dropped through. Nothing but a sheer brick wall and a long drop to the street. I’ve sent Crowhurst up there this morning to take a look around. What bothers me more is that your chorus girl locked the bathroom door from the inside when she entered, and yet this creature materialized right behind her.’

‘You’re telling me it has the ability to walk through walls and vanish over the edges of buildings like a vampire bat.’

‘No, you’re telling me. I can see your lips moving. Go and get the coffees.’

May went and got the coffees, but the image of someone sinister materializing in the bathroom next to the semi-naked girl stayed with him.

‘I feel it’s my duty to offer Betty police protection,’ he said when he returned.

‘Hm. I thought you might say that. I’m studying you for tips, you know. Your manner of dealing with the opposite sex could form the basis of an anthropological study. The most annoying part is, you don’t even realize you’re doing it.’

May was anxious to change the subject. He was staying with his aunt because his father’s philandering had destroyed their family, and May lived in fear of taking after him. He set down the coffees and looked over Bryant’s shoulder. ‘What have you got there?’

‘Zurich. They came back to us overnight. Damned efficient, the Swiss, although not to be trusted, of course.’

‘What’s in Zurich?’

‘We’ve been tracking the money,’ Bryant explained. ‘The finance to stage the show. From Lloyd’s of London, across to the continent and into neutral territory.’

‘And you can find that out from here? I’m very impressed.’

Bryant studied the teleprinter paper for a moment and isolated a number of addresses. ‘The production is being presented by a financial group registered in Victoria under the name of Three Hundred International.’ He unravelled another foot of paper and carefully folded it. ‘Listen to this. Three Hundred International Banks is registered in Zurich but is Greek-owned. Central European office, Athens. Other companies in the group include shipping, automotive accessories, property, blah blah, ah, here, a chain of theatres. Shipping and theatre, odd bedfellows, don’t you think? I wanted a profile of the whole group but all I’ve managed to find so far is a general prospectus, and that tells me nothing. I spoke to some jobsworth in the Victoria office, but he wouldn’t give me any information. What would make a shipping magnate diversify into the theatre?’

Shortly before he died, Arthur Bryant was interviewed about his earliest case. He told his interviewer, ‘After the hostilities ended in nineteen forty-five, over a fifth of London’s theatres had been destroyed or rendered unusable by bomb damage. The rest were bought up by a single consortium. The old theatrical families and their peculiar way of life, the life we briefly experienced, vanished almost overnight.’ The interviewer had pretended to take notes, but he had only been interested in hearing about the murders . . .

‘How many companies do these Three Hundred people own altogether?’ asked May.

‘I haven’t counted them all. I was endeavouring to do so when you tipped up. It’s rather hard to keep track of.’

‘Here, let me give you a hand.’ May pulled up a stool and began glancing through the text.

‘Fine,’ said Bryant, fishing in a top pocket for his spectacles. ‘My eyes aren’t too good this morning. We arrived late at the Gaumont last night and had to sit right at the front; it nearly blinded me. Stay and help.’ He grinned. ‘We can send Biddle on all the horrible running-about jobs.’

The checking process took over an hour. After a while, Bryant grew irrationally annoyed that May was more proficient with the new teleprinter keyboard than he would ever be, and went off to scrounge a packet of tea from the station next door.

‘So, how many have you found?’ he asked when he returned.

‘I should have guessed.’ May gave him a meaningful look. ‘Exactly three hundred.’

‘They own
three hundred
companies? Are you sure?’

‘Some of them are very small. There’s one listed here in Scarborough, a theatrical talent agency called Curtain Call Productions. I just rang them and spoke to the managing director. He was delighted to talk to me.’

‘Could he tell you anything?’

‘Only that Andreas Renalda, the big boss, lives here in London.’

‘Handy. Ever hear of the Club of Rome? It’s supposed to be an Anglo-American cabal of business managers and planners. It was first secretly assembled in the late nineteen twenties to form some kind of one-world government. That was based on something called the Three Hundred Club, which gets its title from a biblical passage, Romans, chapter three. Just before the Great War, Germany’s Jewish foreign minister announced that the economic future of the continent was in the hands of three hundred men who all knew each other. They’re also called the Olympians, following on from the Illuminati and the Cathars. It’s one of those paranoid theories that suggests a small elite group runs the financial empires of the world.’

‘I wouldn’t go looking for conspiracies where there are none,’ May advised, reading through the printed addresses.

‘You’ve got to agree it’s a bit of a coincidence that the group controlling the theatre company should be named after them.’

‘It’s a coincidence that doesn’t make any sense,’ said May heatedly. He was beginning to see where Bryant was going with the idea. ‘Why would the owner of such a company wish to kill the cast of a play that’s costing him a fortune to stage?’

‘That’s the question, isn’t it?’ Bryant smiled annoyingly.

‘Don’t you think there are enough crazy rumours about Nazi infiltration in British business without us adding to them?’

‘If any lesson from war is to be learned, John, it must be always to prepare for the unexpected and face the unthinkable. There is no orthodoxy to follow now. Everything is in a state of flux.’

As if to emphasize Bryant’s warning, a pebble knocked sharply against the windowpane. When May peered down into the street he saw Betty Trammel looking up at him imploringly. ‘Your lady sergeant won’t let me in,’ she explained. ‘I told her I simply had to see you.’

One look at her darkly swollen eyes warned him that the stifling dream world of the Palace was taking its toll on those who depended on it.

31

THE STRENGTH OF DAMAGED SOULS

Arthur Bryant sat in the flesh-chilling gloom of the marble foyer and wondered whether he should tackle the receptionist again. He had been waiting to see Andreas Renalda for forty minutes, and no one had appeared. The reception room of Three Hundred International, Horseferry Road, Victoria, was a dingy mausoleum filled with paintings of continental lakes, their frames criss-crossed with strips of tape to prevent injury from flying glass. Filling the entire wall opposite was an immense Victorian bookcase, the contents of which appeared to have been chosen by the yard. He had heard about companies buying up the stock of bombed-out booksellers. It irritated him that they were being used merely to suggest erudition. Bryant was considering the problem when the receptionist received a call and beckoned to him.

‘Please go to the fourth floor, Mr Bryant, and someone will meet you.’

The young detective straightened the knot of his tie in the lift mirror. It had been his partner’s idea to interview the head of the theatre company. May made a good impression on strangers, whereas Bryant’s interview technique managed to be both obtuse and hectoring. In an attempt to learn from his affable partner, Bryant had insisted on handling the appointment, and had scribbled out a scrappy list of questions a few minutes before setting out from Bow Street. He wasn’t sure what he expected to find, but something told him it was best to start at the top.

John May had his hands full comforting his chorus girl, who had not yet recovered from her encounter in the theatre. Her lurid description of her assailant was exaggerated, no doubt, by an attack of blackout nerves and too much to drink. Bryant had suggested as much to May. He had not meant to sound callous; it was all too easy to joke about being scared nowadays. Everyone was scared. Nobody was given enough information. The newspapers were short of paper and short of news. Too many heart-warming stories about horses being dug out of collapsed stables and not enough analysis of the nation’s long-term prospects. Perhaps that was the idea, Bryant decided; if people suspected the cold truth, they would give up right now.

Andreas Renalda’s assistant was encased in a black wool dress and black stockings, and looked more like a theatrical performer than anyone he had met at the Palace. He was shown into a plush cream-shaded office overlooking a block of Edwardian apartments. It must seem odd, he thought, that pyjama-clad couples could find themselves separated from company executives by ten yards and two panes of glass.

‘Peculiar, is it not?’ came a strongly accented voice behind him. ‘On my first day I arrived early and walked to the window to find a startled woman with no clothes on just a few feet away. Such a thing would never happen in my country. People have more respect for themselves.’

Bryant turned to face a stocky man in his mid-thirties with shoulder-length black hair and fierce dark eyes. As he set a lurching pace across the room, the detective realized that the man facing him was wearing steel calipers on both legs.

‘I am Andreas Renalda.’ The tycoon held out his hand. ‘You must be Mr Bryant. Please take a seat. You will forgive me if I stand.’

Bryant tried to explain his look of surprise. ‘I’m sorry to see you’ve been injured.’

‘No, I was born this way. My legs are useless, but my brain is in perfect working order. So, you were expecting someone in good health and I was expecting someone older. Well, nothing lives up to expectations.’

‘I assure you I meant no offence.’

‘Of course you did not, and none has been taken.’ Renalda waved aside the apology. ‘I am at a loss to understand how I can help you, though.’

‘I just wanted to learn a little about you,’ said Bryant, shrugging with what he hoped was a look of healthy curiosity.

‘There is nothing here to interest a policeman. The company belonged to my father, and he left a long shadow.’ He gave a crooked smile, wagging his finger at Bryant. ‘I have seen you before.’

‘Oh? Where?’

‘At the theatre. I am often there, watching the rehearsals.’

‘Nobody told me.’

‘That is because no one else knows. I do not want them to feel they should be on their best behaviour just because the man to whom they all owe their jobs is in the building.’

‘Are you financing the entire production?’ asked Bryant.

‘One hundred per cent,’ Renalda answered, leaning against the rear wall of the office in a position he presumably found comfortable. ‘You have a particular question in mind?’

‘What can you tell me about the Club of Rome?’

Renalda’s smile cooled a little. ‘Ah, that. Rather an embarrassment to us all. The Three Hundred.’ He made a little gesture with his hand, as if to say, you understand. ‘My father was not the most tolerant of men. For a while he kept an office in Berlin, and he created the name while it was there. We closed that branch in nineteen thirty-six. The company’s history is rarely recounted with any accuracy.’

‘Well, I’m a pretty attentive listener,’ lied Bryant.

‘We are Greeks, Mr Bryant. To be a success in Greece, you are connected with the sea. My father, Sirius, made his money in shipping. He understood the sea, and trusted no one but his immediate family. He had a son whom he considered worthless, and then his beloved wife gave birth to me. From the day I was born, I was chosen to run the business. Sirius was half blinded in the Boer War, but his handicap only made him fight harder. When he saw my withered legs, he took it as a sign that I would grow up to be a fighter too. He believed in the strength of those who were damaged, saw it as a test of man’s nature. My father was very superstitious. Sirius never understood women, but he valued his wife enough to take her advice. I remember a conversation he once had with William Randolph Hearst. “Grant the women some of your power,” Hearst said, “they will always surprise you.” He did not say whether he regarded it as a good thing.’

‘And your mother took over the running of the company when your father died?’

‘She held the reins of power in his lifetime, and maintained them until I was strong enough to make decisions.’ Renalda winced, shifting his balance from one steel scaffold to the other. The device that granted him mobility was also the source of great pain.

‘Why did he not consider your older brother worthy of taking control?’

‘Perhaps he saw too much of his younger self in him.’

‘But after your father died, your mother presumably could have shared his empire with her other son?’

‘I really do not see that this can have relevance to your problems, Mr Bryant.’

‘They’re your problems, too. Two people died in your theatre this week. I’m sure you appreciate that where the loss of human life is concerned, we have to expand our investigations into areas we would not normally enter.’

‘Indeed. And on a personal level, I must insist that you include me in your list of suspects. After all, I was in the building when Mr Senechal was killed.’

‘You weren’t on my list.’ Bryant hated being caught out. ‘Nobody told me you were there.’

‘I have my own key to the royal entrance. It’s more private. If I attempt the stairs with these things,’ he banged the side of his leg, ‘I clank like a steam train. People can always hear me coming.’

Bryant picked up his hat and rose to leave. ‘You realize I’ll have to ask you to close down the theatre if anything else happens.’

‘You must understand the scale of our undertaking, Mr Bryant. This is not some little play that can weather bad reviews and closure after a week. Global capital is invested in this production.
Orpheus
has been designed to run for years around the world, changing the financial stakes for future productions everywhere. It is a golden goose that will lay eggs for years, in spite of your archaic censorship laws. Shutting down the production is not an action I would be well disposed towards.’

‘Perhaps not, but if I thought it would protect lives, I’d order it.’

‘I think you will find yourself with an interesting battle on your hands.’ Renalda displayed an alarming array of teeth. ‘The days of the British owning everything on their terms is coming to an end. Future fortunes will be made with the involvement of international cartels such as ours.’

‘I understand very little about the workings of the business world,’ Bryant admitted, remembering his father in Petticoat Lane. ‘What do you intend to do about Charles Senechal? You’ve lost a first-class baritone.’

‘I am sorry for his family, but there are plenty of other good voices. I understand you wish to place an order restricting access to the theatre’s backstage areas.’

‘That’s correct. From now on nobody comes in or leaves without signing with my men. You’ll appreciate that we need to know who is in the building at any time.’

‘We have many people who need to hold meetings with Helena Parole and the production staff.’ Renalda swung out his left leg and moved forward, standing free in the middle of the floor. The callipers gave his body a fragile sense of stability.

‘Then they’ll have to sign in with the front-of-house manager or be arrested.’ Bryant stuck his hat on his head and tipped it back at a rakish angle. ‘I’ve taken up too much of your time already.’

‘If there is anything more that I can tell you, perhaps you will let me know?’ Renalda’s courteous smile closed over his teeth.

Bryant turned at the door and looked back across the room. This was Renalda’s inner sanctum. Bare walls, glass coffee table, mahogany desk, cream blinds. No photographs, no plaques, no papers. Not a scrap of personality showed. There was damage in the family’s history, enough to make a man hide his feelings. ‘I’ll make sure you’re kept in the picture once our information has been verified.’ He paused, thinking. ‘Are you close to your mother, Mr Renalda?’

‘My mother is dead, but yes, we were very close.’

‘And I suppose your relationship with your brother—’

Renalda cut him off. ‘I see no reason to provide you with further personal details unless you intend to charge me with an offence.’

‘I’m sorry, I was thinking aloud, it’s a bad habit.’ He smiled, brushing his fringe back from his high forehead. ‘I’ll see myself out.’

‘Mr Bryant.’ Andreas Renalda swivelled to face him. ‘I would prefer it if you would obtain all the information you need about my company directly from me in the future. It will save you telegraphing Zurich.’

Renalda was still smiling when he made the offer, but as he left the building Bryant couldn’t help feeling that it had been a threat.

32

INFERNAL MORTALITY

For the next five decades, the two detectives made it their habit to walk along the south bank of the Thames around sunset, from the Houses of Parliament to Blackfriars, and if the weather was especially fine, all the way to Tower Bridge. After this the river grew too wide to cross as it made its way to the sea.

They argued about criminal psychology, endlessly revising their conclusions, but sometimes, when the sky was lower and the colours were drained from the Embankment buildings, they talked of women they had loved and lost, of plans made and abandoned, of outlandish ideas and unrealized dreams; often they just walked in comfortable silence, enjoying the lightness of air across the water, letting the sunlight fall on their faces.

On days like these they set each other questions about the city that, for all its faults—and there were an increasing number—they still liked best. Their second visit to the river took place on Thursday, 14 November 1940, and it was John May who came up with the first question, setting a course for years to come.

‘Look at that.’ May pointed to the damaged dome of St Paul’s, fires smouldering behind it like the distant horizon of a forest. ‘Still standing.’

‘Only just,’ said Bryant sadly. ‘Most of the bookshops in Paternoster Row have been burned out. I spent many happy hours browsing there as a child.’

‘I bet you don’t know where you can see a second St Paul’s Cathedral, a replica in miniature.’

‘I do, as a matter of fact,’ replied Bryant, who had dandified himself today with a silver-topped umbrella, a gift from his landlady. ‘There’s a big architectural model made of wood in St Paul’s crypt.’

‘I was thinking of another one,’ said May with a grin. ‘We’ve walked past it. Give up?’

‘You’ve got me there, old bean.’

‘It’s held in the arms of one of the bronze female statues on Vauxhall Bridge.’

‘Well, I never knew that.’

‘I’ll point it out to you next time.’

Bryant paused and looked out over the water, pretending to watch a boat, but May knew he had stopped to catch his breath. He had first noticed the problem when they had climbed the stairs together at the theatre. His partner had been panting with exertion by the time they reached the landing, and had made an effort to hide the fact. He charged about in a mad rush, refusing to give in to his heart.

‘Two flamboyant deaths, the first without an audience, the second on stage before several people. Murders are prefaced by violence, John. They don’t just come out of the blue. It makes no sense.’

‘Does it have to make sense?’ asked May kindly. ‘Take Miss Capistrania. Whoever killed her must have wanted to humiliate her, carting off the feet like that. With Senechal, perhaps the killer just saw his chance and seized it.’

‘Without a motive we have nothing. There can be no witness appeals, no knocking on doors, no one to pull in for questioning apart from the theatre staff and cast. The interviews I’ve dumped in Biddle’s lap so far are among the most unedifying I’ve ever heard. We have a murderer acting in freefall, panicking, not caring who he strikes. I hate not finding a pattern.’

‘There is a bit of one, though,’ said May.

‘Well, I’m damned if I can spot it.’

‘Have you not noticed? He has only attacked during air raids. There was one around the time of Capistrania’s death, another just before the globe fell, and another last night, when Miss Trammel frightened him away. Crowhurst took a look around on the roof this morning while you were in Victoria, and found absolutely nothing. Perhaps he can get into the theatre only during blackouts, or when everyone is off the street. Judging from Betty’s description, people would certainly notice him if he was walking about in broad daylight.’