Full Dark House (16 page)

She turned him down. It didn’t take her long either. He was gone for only two minutes.

‘She has to look after a sick relative,’ said Bryant on his return. ‘I wasn’t convinced.’ He grumpily kicked at the ground. ‘Here’s your bit of fluff.’

Betty had rouged her cheeks and changed into a fox-fur coat. Divested of her blond wig, she was revealed as a mousy brunette. She waltzed into the company office and seized May’s arm as though it was a lifebelt. ‘Are we going for a drink, then?’ she asked cheerfully, pinching May’s cheek.

May was almost pulled through the doorway. ‘I’ll see you in the morning, Arthur,’ he volunteered. ‘Stay out of the light.’

‘Yes, you go and have fun. I still have a police investigation to run.’ Bryant shoved his trilby onto his head. ‘I think I’ll go back to Bow Street and ruin Biddle’s evening.’

By the next morning, the mood of the company had become morose and belligerent. To have a member of the cast killed by a stage prop was not unheard of, but after a long night of bombing raids that frayed the nerves and lasted until dawn the idea of it panicked everyone. Performers were at the mercy of stagehands when there were a large number of scene changes to incorporate in the action. Three years earlier, two members of a Belgian dance troupe had been fatally injured at the Albert Hall when a vast steel wheel had collapsed on them. The scenery at the Covent Garden Opera House, with its newly overhauled hydraulic system, had nearly decapitated one of its principal players in front of a horrified first-night audience. Recently, a trapdoor in the Palladium stage had opened without warning, dropping a chorus girl down a dozen steps, breaking both her ankles. Players were superstitious and productions easily made bad reputations for themselves.

Helena Parole was aware of the cast’s sensibilities, but hoped they would be cheered by today’s arrival. Their Orpheus was landing, fresh from a triumphant American tour of
The Tales of Hoffmann,
the opera wrongly regarded as Offenbach’s only serious work. Miles Stone had hit the big time, but his
Orpheus
contract pre-dated his rise in stock, and he had not managed to wriggle out of the agreement in time to seize his Hollywood break. MGM was offering him a role in a screwball comedy that would help to cement his image as the smart girl’s sex symbol, but unless something went wrong with
Orpheus
and the production was cancelled, Miles knew that he would be forced to remain in bomb-strewn London throughout the winter. The film would be recast with someone else, and his window of opportunity would slam firmly shut.

Consequently, the company’s leading player found himself in an ambivalent mood when he arrived to find that Jupiter was dead. It was a tragic loss, of course, but if the cast were so demoralized that the production could not continue, he would be freed.

‘Everybody back to their positions and we’ll take it from Eurydice’s invocation to death.’ Helena Parole rubbed her eyes. The cast was nervy and out of sorts. Anton Varisich, the conductor, was particularly bad-tempered, and seemed unable to control his orchestra, who were coming in late on their cues. On stage, Eurydice lay in the cornfield as Aristaeus stood over her, feeling her pulse.

’La mort m’apparaît souriante, qui vient me frapper près de toi,’
sang Eve Noriac.

Helena threw her script over the seat in front of her. ‘For Christ’s sake!’ she shouted. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

‘I’m sorry,’ called Eve, rising on one elbow and squinting down at her. ‘I’m used to singing in French. It’s easier for me to remember my lines this way.’

‘The management has decreed we’re to use our sovereign nation’s native tongue,’ snapped Helena. ‘They want a popular hit. The only people who can speak another language in England are foreigners. Let’s go again from the top.’

’Death appears to me smiling, coming to strike me while I’m near you . . .’

Helena sat back and listened. Eurydice had a remarkable soprano range. The plot was of no consequence to a modern audience, a once-saucy parody of classicism that held little meaning for anyone now, and yet Eve invested her words with such conviction that you would listen if she sang addresses from a telephone directory.

Helena was suddenly aware that the music had stopped. ‘What now?’ she cried, sitting up.

‘Someone’s taken my fork,’ complained Aristaeus. ‘It was here a minute ago.’

‘Will somebody find his bloody fork?’ called Helena. ‘Harry, go and look for it, would you?’

‘Can he just mime it for now, Helena?’

‘Helena?’ Aristaeus had walked to the front of the stage and was shielding his eyes from the key lights. ‘Is this a practical?’

‘You know it’s not. I told you that earlier.’

‘So the trapdoor’s not going to open when I reach “Off to the realm of darkness”?’

‘No,’ she replied wearily. ‘We won’t start using the drops and lifts until the end of the week. No sense in wishing more accidents on us, is there?’

‘I can see you’re busy,’ said John May quietly. ‘I’ll wait here until you’re ready for me.’

Helena checked her watch in alarm. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it was time for our meeting, Mr May. We’re running behind this morning.’

‘That’s quite all right,’ said May. ‘I’m enjoying the rehearsal.’ He felt like sitting in the dark for a while. Betty had kept him out later than he had intended, and the AA guns stationed in Regent’s Park had been booming for most of the night. On top of this, he had now spent his entire first week’s wages on a girl, and he hadn’t been paid yet.

‘We’re still interviewing everyone who was with Miss Capistrania and Mr Senechal on the days of their deaths,’ May reminded her as they seated themselves in Helena’s arched office above the balcony. ‘I need to talk to your assistant.’

‘Harry, yes, he was there when Charles was killed.’

‘And Corinne Betts, who I’m told actually saw the globe fall.’

‘She’s not on today’s call sheet but Harry has her landlady’s telephone number.’

‘Mr Bryant reckons that casts grow into extended families during the run of a production,’ said May. ‘Is that true?’

‘For better or worse, yes.’ Helena opened the window behind her chair and lit a cigarette, waving the smoke out. The management had asked the company to reduce their daytime smoking because the new auditorium upholstery absorbed the smell. Nobody had bothered to point out to them that the whole of the city stank of burning varnish and brick dust. ‘We’ve got a cast of real troupers. Normally a deranged German sniper could burst in and machine-gun the audience, and they wouldn’t miss a line. I know many of the boys and girls from previous productions. They’ve been doing scenes in groups for a while. They’ve received musical direction and attended rehearsals with the same choreographer. Now it’s just a matter of keeping them calm.’

‘So it’s still going smoothly?’ May felt as though he should be taking notes, but wasn’t sure what to write.

‘I wouldn’t say that. The thing never fits perfectly from the outset. Steps get in the way of recitative, cues come in the wrong places and have to be rearranged. You get a lot of masking and scissoring, but nothing that can’t be worked out.’

‘Scissoring?’

‘Actors crossing each other’s paths onstage. We’re over the worst. I shout at them, but it doesn’t mean anything. By opening night we’ll be a big happy family.’

‘Then why do Mr Bryant and I feel shut out?’ asked May.

‘Because you’re outsiders, darling,’ laughed Helena. ‘You expect backstage to be a hotbed of gossip and intrigue, but this one’s not. There’s too much riding on the production for anyone to behave in an unprofessional manner.’

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ May admitted. ‘I suppose I was expecting histrionics. Highly strung actors, the usual clichés.’

‘So long as you realize that they are only clichés,’ said Helena reproachfully.

Just then the door to the artistic director’s office burst open and a tall, angular woman of about forty flew in.

‘I’m not going to work with that dreadful bitch for one more minute!’ she cried before chucking herself lengthwise onto Helena’s sofa. ‘He’s ruining my entrance. I said to him, “Darling, I wouldn’t let any man step across my entrance, let alone an old cow like you,” and he said, “I can’t see how you would know, dear, you’ve never been with a man in your life,” waving his whip at me in front of the shepherdesses. I said, “I’ve played bigger houses than this,” and he said, “Only when you were working the back passage of the Alhambra, love.” He said, “I’ve played the Duke of York’s, Her Majesty’s, the Queen’s,” and I said, “The Queen’s is an ice rink, dear, no wonder you’re so frigid.” Oh, you’re not alone, I’ll come back later.’ She threw herself back onto her feet. ‘So I’ll leave you to sort that out then, if you would.’ And she was gone in a cloud of Arpège, slamming the door behind her.

‘You were saying?’ said May gently.

‘Well, there are a few exceptions to the rule,’ Helena admitted, blanching.

‘Who was she, by the way?’

‘Valerie Marchmont. She’s playing the role of Public Opinion, God help us,’ said Helena.

Down in the foyer, Arthur Bryant knocked on the window of the box-office booth. Elspeth Wynter looked up from her booking forms and smiled vaguely. ‘Hello, Mr Bryant. A pleasure to see you again.’

‘I’m glad you feel that way,’ said Bryant, tugging his scarf straight. ‘We’re conducting interviews—’

‘Of course, I understand,’ she said hastily. ‘Can we do mine here?’

‘We’re supposed to record them at the unit.’

She looked hesitant. ‘We’re absolutely frantic, what with the schedule running behind.’

‘Perhaps I could arrange something.’ Bryant attempted a smile, liked the effect and widened it. ‘On the condition that you have a bite to eat with me.’

‘I don’t know, it’s our busiest day so far for bookings. I can’t be away from the telephone.’

‘Half an hour,’ said Bryant. ‘A bowl of soup somewhere nearby. I won’t take no for an answer.’

Elspeth was flustered. ‘All right, but it will have to be just over the road. The little Italian place in Moor Street?’

‘It’s a deal.’ He pulled on his hat and flicked the brim of it nonchalantly. May was right. Persistence paid off after all. While his partner had been out with Betty Boop, Bryant had passed a miserable evening filing reports and being covertly studied by Sidney Biddle, who appeared to have nothing better to do than watch him and surreptitiously scribble notes in a diary. Biddle’s visit to the St Martin’s Lane shoe shop had proved disappointing. Although shoes matching the prints were sold only to theatres, they went to nearly every theatre and variety hall in the country.

Bryant stepped outside the theatre foyer and back into the natural light of the morning. Across the road, workmen had barricaded the pavements and were digging holes, searching for cracked gas mains. The Pioneer Corps were salvaging furniture from a bombed office in Shaftesbury Avenue. In schools across the city, children were swapping souvenir incendiary bomb fins from the night’s raids. At this point in the war, over two hundred tons of high explosives were being dropped on London every night.

He took a deep breath. The burning smell lingered in the air even on the freshest days. He wondered whether they were mad, trying to discover how just two people had died, when all around them men, women and children were being killed violently and unexpectedly. The AFS men had been putting out oil bombs in the next street all night long.

Some theory, he knew, would have to reveal itself soon or he’d be in for it. With a sigh of resignation, he stepped back into the chill shadows of the theatre.

24

READING SIGNS

Sidney Biddle was getting angrier.

From what he had seen so far, the Peculiar Crimes Unit was aptly named. The place was a total shambles. There was no excuse for it, war or no war. Everything was just as Farley Davenport had predicted. Procedural policy appeared to be non-existent. There was no chain of command, and members of staff were allowed to do exactly as they pleased. True, Arthur Bryant was the last to leave each night, after diligently entering the day’s activities into the unit’s logbook, but he kept it locked up in his office, so it was impossible to guess whether his entries were accurate or fanciful.

More bothersome was the fact that he, Biddle, appeared to have been excluded from Bryant’s circle. He had been identified as the enemy in the camp and was shut out of all conversations, notes, briefings and interviews concerning the events at the Palace.

And the black-marketeering that was going on! All around him, all day, everyone was on the fiddle. Runcorn and Finch bartering tea, sugar and armfuls of rhubarb with the boys in the tailor’s shop, PC Atherton, Crowhurst and the Bow Street constables coming in with buckets, kettles, clocks, tin openers, gardening tools, boots, pencils and tins of furniture polish. Everyone seemed to know that a potato peeler in good nick was worth two spanners.

Once again, he was an outsider. Sidney sat in the window of the office behind Bow Street station and morosely sipped his tea, watching the clearance boys at work. The empty offices beyond the Royal Opera House appeared to have been commandeered as fire-alarm stations and first-aid posts. Perhaps he should have taken a job with the Press and Censorship Bureau. At least they were performing an essential duty. Last month, the corner of Leicester Square had been bombed flat, and holes had been blown in the District Line railway tunnel at Blackfriars; right now the bureau would be busy suppressing the truth, retouching photographs, stemming negative information, tucking away all morale-damaging reports until after the war.

With a twinge of annoyance he realized that he would rather have been accepted by the others in the unit than marked out as someone to avoid. Even Runcorn, the miserable forensic scientist, ducked back into his office whenever he saw him approaching.

Everyone associated with the unit appeared to hold Arthur Bryant in high regard, although what Bryant had done to earn their esteem was far from obvious. And the other new chap, May, was creeping around in his partner’s footsteps, clearly filled with awe.