Full Dark House (39 page)

‘But why would you do that?’ asked Bryant. ‘Why would you give the police even more cause for concern?’ He held her gaze steadily, and in that moment, she knew that he knew. ‘I’ve never made an arrest before, Elspeth. I’m afraid you’re going to be my first. You see, this time, I know I’ve got the right person. I know it’s you.’

‘Arthur, please—’

‘I know you’ve spent your whole life in the theatre,’ said Bryant quietly. ‘Raising him and looking after yourself. I can’t blame you for wanting to be free. But you chose the wrong way to do it.’

She unlocked the box-office door and closed it behind her with infinite care. ‘So you really do know.’

‘The other pass door,’ he explained. ‘There are no coats of paint holding it shut, just a lock. Nobody ever thought to check it. You told Stan it was sealed, and he told everyone else. I knew that if it could be opened, somebody must have a key. I found it in your tortoise box.’

‘So you unlocked the door and discovered the room. I wonder if we could sit down.’ She looked around, her hands knotted together.

‘Of course.’ Bryant ushered her to a small alcove with a velvet-covered bench seat.

‘I thought we were fine,’ Elspeth explained. ‘It was such a big building, that was the thing. Nobody even knew he was there. Oh, one or two of the girls sat with him when he was small, but they all moved on. I hadn’t even realized I was pregnant, Arthur. I was fifteen years old. Nobody told me the facts of life. A painful two-minute act in the dark of a dressing room with a man I had never seen out of villainous stage make-up. I was frightened out of my wits. The show closed and he left with it. I gave birth just as my grandmother had, here in the theatre. The difference was I was unmarried. There was no one I could go to for help.’

A look of overwhelming misery settled on her. ‘I knew I would have to raise the boy alone. They wouldn’t let me stay in my lodgings, not in my condition. It was a respectable boarding house. So I moved in here with him. Nobody knew—why would they? There are whole floors barely used. That’s when I found the other storeroom behind the pass door. We slept there and were happy enough. My boy stayed quiet. He was as good as gold. There were members of staff in whom I confided. They all moved on. The shows came and went, just as they always had. We would still have been in lodgings, sharing a room. There was so much homelessness. You started to see people sleeping in the parks. We were better off here. Then my boy began to grow restive. He spent too much time alone. Something went wrong in his head.’

‘What did you expect?’ asked Bryant. ‘You can’t lock a child up, away from the real world, away from light and friends, no matter how much love you give him.’

Elspeth appeared not to have heard. ‘He was always playing with the costumes and props, you see. Trying on the masks. He especially loved the Greek ones, but the comedy face got broken and he was left with the mask of tragedy. It got so I couldn’t get him to take it off. He seemed happier behind it. We would eat together, and I would leave him playing or asleep while I went to work, just as always. But he kept the mask on more and more. I tried to pretend that things were normal. Then he became ill and started acting oddly, and I finally took the mask off.’ She bit her knuckle, tears welling in her eyes. ‘At first I couldn’t remove it. He’d cut himself, you see, and the cut was infected. The mask was papier mâché. It was damp from his face all the time. It went rotten. It did something awful to his flesh. I treated it as best I could, but there were terrible scars. It was too late for a doctor. I knew they would send me to gaol. My poor boy. The skin dried all shiny and stretched. He started to remind me of men who’d been in the Great War, the ones who’d been burned, who stand on street corners selling matches. I didn’t know what to do. I decided it was time to leave. This place had become our prison. But when I went to go—’

‘You found you couldn’t leave.’

‘I couldn’t even set a foot outside the door.’ She shook the memory from her head. ‘I looked up at the sky and felt sick. Had to sit on the step to stop myself from vomiting. The sun burned my eyes. The cars, the traffic, the noise. I didn’t know there was a word for it.’

‘Agoraphobia. It’s hardly surprising, the amount of time you spent in this dimly lit building.’

‘Then the war started. The blackouts. Everything went quiet. Everything was dark. I felt it more with each passing performance, the pressure to leave, it stalked me through the building like a living thing, daring me to go outside. I took my first steps out of the Palace in seventeen years, and was violently sick. Everyone else was in the shelters. The bombers passed overhead but they kept on going. You’ll think this is strange, but it was so peaceful.’ She exhaled sadly. ‘Then they sounded the all-clear and people came out onto the streets again. But the lights stayed off. I knew that if I was ever going to get out of the Palace and back into the world, I would have to leave soon, before the war ended and all the lights came back on.’

She looked at Bryant pleadingly. ‘But I couldn’t go. How could I go? A new show starting, I’d never missed a performance, never let anyone down in my life. The rehearsals were beginning, they were relying on me. There was no one to take my place. I’m the only one who knows where everything is. There’s Stan Lowe, of course, he’s been here as long as me, but he’s fond of a drink, the place could burn down and he wouldn’t notice. So long as the show stays open, I have to be here.’

‘So you decided to close the show.’

‘It was my boy, Todd. I called him that after Todd Slaughter, the star of
Maria Marten—The Murders in the Red Barn
. That was the show his father had been in. Todd was growing up fast. He took a shine to Tanya Capistrania, watching her from the wings while she practised. I thought he might try to do something cruel, something bad. I thought, history’s going to repeat itself if I don’t do something, he’ll become like his father, and I won’t be able to control him. He’s too big for me now. He’s seventeen. He’s already started to slip out during the air-raid warnings, moving under cover of the dark, while everyone’s off the streets. I didn’t want to see Tanya raped and left pregnant with some awful— I thought, if she dies, there’ll be a scandal. They’ll shut the place down and I’ll have to go. I’ll be forced out. It was the only way I’d ever be able to leave.

‘No one liked her, no one was close. I didn’t want her to suffer, so I poisoned her. I thought it would just put her to sleep. The hemlock was the easiest thing to get hold of. It grows on the bomb sites, you see. I put it in a sandwich and gave it to her. I thought she’d be able to tell if there was something funny about the flavour, so I got quail, something she’d never eaten before. She trusted me. Everyone trusts me. The hemlock made her fall down, but she wouldn’t die. Todd saw she was sick and got very angry. He tried to pull her out of the lift, and, God forgive me, in my panic I pressed the call button.

‘He went crazy when he saw what the lift did to her. He threw the severed parts out of the window in a rage. He wanted me to be caught. They rolled off the canopy and landed somewhere below. When I went to look for them they were gone. Tanya’s body was discovered, and I thought the show would be shut down at once. But no, Mr Renalda kept it going. I’d met Mr Renalda at the start of rehearsals, and instantly disliked him. I read about his family in the papers, all that stuff about him being raised to believe in Greek myths, and I thought, this is perfect.

‘A theatrical mind, you see. Plot mechanics. I see them every day of my life. Plots and puzzles and murder mysteries. Faking the way things look, it was second nature to me. I thought, I’ll just keep going until they close us down and someone puts the blame on him. Todd had helped me once, so I got him to help me again. I’m his world, Arthur, he’d do anything for me. I told him to watch certain people and to look for opportunities, things he could do that would make everyone get out of our house.

‘I made him wear gloves, the same gloves his father had worn on the stage in his role as a murderer. He knows the theatre better than anyone. He cut through the cable holding the globe, and he pushed the boy over the balcony, and he jammed the stage revolve so that Valerie Marchmont died. I knew if he acted during the raids, no outsiders could come into the theatre and discover him. But whatever he did, it seemed that everyone just became more determined to stay. The Blitz mentality, it’s infected everything.’

‘It was you who locked me in the archive room,’ exclaimed Bryant. ‘Why, because you wanted to keep me away from the site of Valerie Marchmont’s murder?’

‘No, I was just really annoyed with you.’

‘Oh.’

‘I thought I was leaving such an obvious pattern, using symbols of the Muses. You were supposed to go and arrest Mr Renalda. The show couldn’t continue without him. But you made it so much more complicated. He slipped out of your hands, the show went on, and I was still
stuck
here, with Todd upstairs, threatening to expose us, becoming more disturbed with every passing hour.’ She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her cardigan. ‘Now you’ll have to take me out of here, won’t you?’

‘Yes,’ Bryant admitted, ‘but you’ll be swapping one claustrophobic building for another, I’m afraid.’ He looked at his watch. Half past eight. Biddle was supposed to have brought May here by now.

‘Where is Todd?’ he asked. ‘What’s planned for tonight?’

‘He’s under the stage right now,’ said Wynter. ‘You may already be too late.’

‘Bryant! You’re back! So Biddle wasn’t pulling a fast one!’ May rushed forward across the foyer, followed by Sidney. He clapped his partner on the shoulder, then looked at Elspeth Wynter and saw that she had been crying. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Come with me,’ said Bryant. ‘There’s not a moment to lose. Sidney, whatever you do, don’t let Miss Wynter out of your sight.’

May fell into step as they headed off along the corridor. ‘Where are we going?’

‘Do you have a torch?’

‘Yes, I always carry my Valiant.’

‘Good,’ said Bryant, pulling his scarf tighter. ‘Where we’re going, we’ll need it.’

58

LIVING LEGEND

‘What’s going on?’ asked Janice Longbright, trying to catch her breath. An absurdly long McDonald’s truck had nearly run them down on the Strand. ‘Where are we heading?’

‘There’s not a moment to lose,’ May warned. Longbright strode beside him as they raced off along the pavement. May was forced to push his way through a slow-moving crowd of backpacked tourists, and for a moment the detective sergeant was worried that she would lose him.

‘What have you got there?’ She pointed at the bulky plastic Sony bag slung over May’s shoulder.

‘Something I thought we might need. Keep up with me, the sun’s nearly set,’ May called back. Lorries and vans chugged sluggishly onto the bridge, their exhaust fumes obscuring the kerbs with grey waste. Longbright caught up with her former boss as he waited for the pedestrian signal to change.

She pushed her hair out of her eyes, turning to face the stale breeze from the river. ‘Tell me what happened. Did you have any luck with the dentist?’

‘He’s in Sydney, Australia. I woke him in the middle of the night. Arthur had an appointment with him just before he left. He’d cracked the top plate of his false teeth and wanted them replaced. The dentist didn’t have time to cast new moulds before he left, and typically Arthur had lost the old mould he was supposed to keep safely stored away for just such an event, so he had to make do with a pair that didn’t fit. They were far too big.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Longbright. ‘Why does it matter how big his teeth were?’

‘According to my next-door neighbour, the intruder who she thought was trying to break into my apartment had beady eyes and abnormally large teeth. Do you know anyone with beadier eyes than Arthur? Alma Sorrowbridge said that someone had been in Arthur’s room, but the front-door lock hadn’t been forced. There are few things more personal than your dental records. Who else would take them?’

‘Wait a minute. You’re telling me Arthur’s alive?’ shouted Longbright.

‘Oh, he’s alive all right, but I think he’s suffering from amnesia. Over sixty years ago, Elspeth Wynter’s deranged son climbed out of the well at the Palace via its drainage tunnel. Bryant recently tracked him down to the Wetherby clinic. He disturbed a forgotten history, even added a footnote to his memoir before changing his mind and hiding it. Todd followed him back to the unit with the intention of attacking him.

‘I think Todd took some kind of explosive device along, but it went off at the wrong time, and Todd was killed. He was only five years younger than Bryant. We found the remains of Todd’s body, and Bryant’s old teeth. Bryant had been placed at the site, and we weren’t looking for anyone else. I think he survived, but he’s confused, or concussed or something. He went home, but didn’t stay. He came to me, but couldn’t get in. I’ve been stalked by Arthur, not Todd. And if there’s anywhere in the world that he does still remember, it’s here, on Waterloo Bridge at sunset, where he’s walked every night for most of his life.’ He pointed across the dual carriageway. A blood-red sun shimmered through exhaust fumes behind the Houses of Parliament. ‘You take one side, I’ll take the other.’

It was May who saw him first.

Bryant was standing at the spot where his fiancée had died, peering over the edge of the balustrade into the opalescent brown water. He was wearing his favourite gaberdine coat, several filthy scarves and a torn hat. He looked—and, as May got closer, smelled—like a very tired tramp.

‘Arthur, it’s you. It’s really you. I thought you were dead.’

May grabbed his arm and twirled him round for a better look. Bryant had a raw-looking gash on his head which he had tried to bandage with an old tie. He was sporting a set of ridiculous ill-fitting teeth that looked as though they had been made for someone with a much bigger head.

‘Look at me.’ May grabbed his empty face and tilted it up. ‘It’s me, John May. You’re here on the bridge, on Waterloo Bridge where we always go, where Nathalie died. You’re Arthur Bryant of the Peculiar Crimes Unit and you’re my best friend. Look at me.’ He held Bryant’s face steady in his strong hands, but the old detective’s eyes remained impassive.