The Dark Palace--Murder and mystery in London, 1914 (15 page)

Like every other mortal lumbering to his feet, Quinn felt the leaden tug of returning anxieties. For the first time since the lights had gone down, he remembered why he was there.

The audience was streaming out through two exits. He had them both covered, so he should not have been overly concerned. But he had just seen a film in which a man managed to pass himself off as a series of different individuals. Admittedly, that was fiction. But still it mooted a possibility. If Hartmann changed his appearance in some way, it might be enough for him to get past Macadam at least, who had only had one brief look at him.

No, it was preposterous. Hartmann had no reason to believe himself under observation. He was there at a social occasion, and from what Inchball had said, he was mixing with the film people. If there was a celebration afterwards, there was every chance that he would be part of it. He would be leaving through the front entrance, in the full glare of the newspaper photographers' flash guns.

Quinn began to relax as he drifted with the crowd. He allowed himself to take in his surroundings. The interior was done out like someone's idea of the tea salon of a fashionable hotel, with potted palms trees, reproduction statues on pedestals, and burgundy drapes and plush on the walls. Moulded details, no doubt bulk purchased at an architectural wholesalers, were stuck on to add decorative interest. None of it bore up to close examination, but Porrick's customers did not go there to look at the walls.

As Quinn came out on to Leicester Square, he caught Inchball's eye but kept his distance.

Inchball was an experienced officer. He contrived to acknowledge Quinn's presence without signalling any obvious connection between them. To a casual observer, they might have appeared as two strangers warily sizing one another up before going their separate ways. But such was the excitement after the picture show that it was unlikely that anyone would have registered the two men at all.

The crowd was still voluble, communicating largely in shouts. No doubt this was due in large part to the emotional agitation caused by the film. But perhaps, also, it was a reaction to their enforced silence of the last hour or so.

As a police officer, Quinn could not help considering the dangers of the new medium from the standpoint of public order. Its capacity to incite as well as excite was evident all around him.

Even more worrying for Quinn, given his unique insight into a certain kind of criminal mind, he believed the graphic depiction of violent crime provided an example that some individuals might wish to emulate. It opened a door in more ways than one. The general public was exposed to horrors that would cause them needless anxieties. Whereas the admittedly much smaller but nonetheless significant constituency of the depraved would take from it a licence.

Perhaps it was because his mind was alert to these potential risks that Quinn was so quick to sense a different category of agitation impinge on the mood of the crowd. He became aware of one man shouting, not in pleasurable enthusiasm, but in what seemed like genuine panic. Terror, even. Turning to the source of the noise, he saw the man running towards them at full pelt.

‘Police! Quick! For God's sake, someone fetch a doctor! There has been an horrific crime committed!'

Q
uinn gave a brief, commanding nod to Inchball for him to remain at his post, and went with the fellow.

He was led at a half-run – ‘Please, hurry!' – out of Leicester Square, across Charing Cross Road and into a dimly lit alleyway, one of the two passages through to St Martin's Lane. Quinn glanced at the street sign, which told him it was Cecil Court.

There were voices ahead of him, and a horrible, high-pitched wailing. It was the sound of shredded flesh. The cries of a tortured animal. Although there was something in it that enabled him to identify its source as human, and probably female.

Quinn made out a huddle of crouching men. A light went on in one of the shop windows, which was filled with kinematographic cameras and lighting equipment. It seemed that some of these lights had been activated, and their beams directed towards the scene unfolding in front of the premises. Whether this was to aid the actions of the men in the alley, or to provide illumination for filming, Quinn could not be sure.

His escort cried out for them to be let through. The handful of men rose and parted as one, turning towards Quinn as though they had been waiting for him. There was a peculiar solemnity to their movements that seemed almost choreographed. Perhaps in these circumstances some instinct takes over, and affects all men in the same way. It seemed that everyone knew what to do.

A young woman lay on the ground, writhing and gasping for air so that she could keep up her savage keening. She held both hands to her right eye. Blood seeped out through her fingers and was smeared across her face. Her hair appeared to be matted with it too and there were bloodstains on the pavement.

Drawn by an irresistible urge to know what lay behind her hands, Quinn swept forward and stooped over her. The lights from the shop window were directed unflinchingly on her face. Quinn gazed on her gaping lips as a lover might on his beloved. He reached out a hand and gently touched hers. The shrillness of her screams intensified.

‘Please, it's all right. I'll not hurt you. I'm a policeman. I'm here to help.'

The woman seemed not to understand him. Certainly she showed no sign of being reassured by his words. The one eye that was visible bulged with renewed fear.

‘What happened here?' Quinn addressed his words to the men at his back. But when he turned, he saw that they had all gone. No doubt it was the word
policeman
that had seen them off.

The only one who remained was the man who had raised the alarm.

‘She needs a doctor,' said Quinn.

He heard the clatter of a horse-drawn cab pulling up. A moment later, as if responding to a cue, a tall clean-shaven gentleman in evening dress presented himself. The man was probably in his late thirties. He walked with the brisk upright confidence born of authority. ‘I am a doctor.' His accent was foreign, but its precise origin was unidentifiable, at least to Quinn.

Quinn moved to one side and allowed the doctor to attend to the injured woman.

Perhaps sensing his professional authority, she allowed her hands to be teased slowly from her face.

There, where her right eye should have been, there was a rusting circle of gore around a black chasm that not even the lights from the kinematographic supply shop could illuminate.

Quinn stared for a long time into that hole. Its darkness was like nothing that he had ever seen, or wanted to see again. It seemed to go on forever, to extend far beyond the dimensions of the young woman's eye socket, further even than the extent of her head.

‘I must staunch the bleeding,' said the doctor. He removed a handkerchief from his pocket and placed it over the empty eye socket. The woman whimpered at his touch but allowed it.

The doctor turned to Quinn. ‘I have a cab waiting. I can take her to the nearest hospital.'

‘She has been attacked. I am a police detective. I will need to take a statement from her.'

‘First we need to get her to a hospital. We must stabilize her condition. She is in severe shock, of course. You will get nothing out of her now. She will need sedation and medication for the pain. When she has had a chance to rest, you will be able to talk to her.'

Quinn ignored the doctor's opinion, which he had not solicited. ‘Who did this to you?'

The woman became agitated, turning her head rapidly from side to side in fearful denial.

The doctor placed a hand behind her head to protect her from the effects of her own agitation. ‘I must protest!'

The victim's teeth locked together, as if in spasm. A stifled gargling sounded in her throat. Quinn leaned forward, edging the doctor out of the way. He lowered his head to place his ear close to her mouth.

‘You would do better to help me get her into my cab! Our first duty is to preserve her life. Then, there will be time to go after the perpetrator.'

But Quinn was insistent. ‘Did you see him? The man who did this to you?'

A strangled stuttering eked itself out between her clenched teeth. ‘T-t-t-t-d-d-d …'

‘Yes?' Quinn nodded encouragement.

He sensed her body tense. She seemed to be gathering her powers for a supreme effort.

‘My dear! You must not exert yourself.' The doctor cast a disapproving scowl at Quinn. In an undertone he hissed: ‘Stop this now! You are putting her life at risk!'

‘You saw the man! You saw him!' It was no longer a question, but an urgent insistence.

The woman raised herself in the doctor's arms. ‘
Tayyy-vvvvl!
'

‘What did she say?' Quinn turned to the doctor.

‘I don't know. I didn't hear.' But there was something suspect about his demurral.

She repeated the sound, more quietly, but also more calmly. ‘Tayvl.'

‘Table? Is she saying something about a table?' wondered Quinn.

‘No, I don't think so. I think …'

‘Is it German? Is she German? Are
you
German?'

‘I am not German. My name is Casaubon. I am French.'

‘But you understand what she is saying?'

‘I know that she is not speaking German.'

‘Tell me, what language is she speaking?'

‘I believe it may be Yiddish. Tayvl is the Yiddish word for—'

But the woman herself cut in: ‘Day-vil! The day-vil did this!'

Quinn was aware of a stir behind him, footsteps running, a flash of light. He looked around and saw Bittlestone of the
Clarion
with his photographer. ‘Sensational!'

Sergeant Macadam was on their heels.

Quinn turned back to the woman in time to see her one remaining eye swivel and judder as it lost focus before closing. She fell back limply.

‘We must get her to a hospital!'

Quinn stood up and turned on the journalist angrily. ‘You will not publish that photograph. You will not release any details of this crime, not without my authorization. Do you understand?'

The photographer scuttled away under the force of Quinn's ire, though Bittlestone stood his ground: ‘You cannot stifle a free press, Inspector.'

Quinn relented a little. ‘There may be an aspect of national security here. Even
your
proprietor must have some sensitivity to that. I must consult with my superiors. I suggest you do the same. In the meantime, you can make yourself useful. Help Doctor Casaubon.' He turned to the man who had led him there. ‘You too.'

Bittlestone and the other man took a step closer to the wounded woman but, for the moment at least, would go no further than that. It was as if they had walked into an invisible fence. A vacant inertia came over them both. They showed no sign of horror, but rather watched her writhing with fascinated frowns. They seemed to have become disassociated from the moment.

‘Macadam, you and I will search the area for evidence.'

‘What are we looking for exactly, sir?'

Quinn angled his head sharply. He looked down at the woman. Dr Casaubon still held the folded handkerchief in place over her wound. Quinn felt a strong urge to ask to see the empty socket again, and was trying to work out a way he might justify such a request on the grounds of the investigation.

The woman's groans increased in volume and frequency. Casaubon glanced up uneasily. ‘I fear the worst if we do not get her to a hospital soon. She has suffered a tremendous shock. The effect on her nervous system, not to mention her heart, we cannot conjecture. She is only a woman, after all.'

‘Help him,' Quinn ordered Bittlestone and the other man. They sprang forward and crouched down to hold her under her armpits. Quinn watched as they struggled to lift the lifeless woman to her feet, the doctor still trying to cover the wound with his handkerchief, which had somehow managed to retain its pristine, white crispness.

‘Won't you help us?' demanded Bittlestone.

‘I have work to do.' Quinn narrowed his eyes as if it pained him to say this. But really he did not see why it should take more than three men to get the young woman into the hansom. She was of slight build, and the walk to the cab on Charing Cross Road was only about fifteen yards.

At that moment, the lights in the shop window went out, plunging the narrow passage into semi-darkness. ‘Damnation. Get them to switch the lights back on, will you, Macadam. And talk to all the businesses along here to see if there were any witnesses to the attack. Someone must have seen something.'

As always, Macadam was quick to obey.

The woman had partially revived and was able to take faltering steps with the help of the three men attending to her. Quinn noticed that one of her hands was tightly clenched. The other one splayed tensely, as if to push against her assailant.

‘One moment. I
will
help you.' Quinn took the clenched hand in one of his, while stroking her knuckles soothingly. Her single eye looked into his face uncomprehendingly. He felt her fist tighten in his hand.

They walked her slowly towards the cab. Quinn had his back to the direction of travel, keeping his gaze fixed on her eye. As they neared the Charing Cross Road end of the alley, he cast a glance back over his shoulder, just at the moment a boisterous crowd was rounding the corner. At their head was Porrick, still carrying the Yorkshire terrier. The dog was perched in his arms, its head cocked in an angle of entitlement, the gleam of latent aggression in its nasty little black eyes. As soon as it saw Quinn, it started yapping.

The rest of the party was made up of the other film people and their entourage. Waechter appeared to be in jubilant mood; he had his arms around his two principal actors and was singing in German at the top of his lungs. All seemed to be affected by nervous stimulation of some kind. They might not have been blotto – yet – but they had the air of those who were determined to become so, and as quickly as possible.