Full Dark House (30 page)

Edna had spoken of desperation, but someone desperate to do what? The police at Bow Street and West End Central were far too busy to help the unit. Sergeant Nasty-Basket Carfax next door had laughed in his face when he had requested assistance. Suppose Minos Renalda had infiltrated the staff of the theatre? He would be forty now, which eliminated quite a few members of the orchestra, about half of the cast and all but one of the house staff. Forthright was checking the ages of the backstage crew.

Bryant let his mind roam loose. In 1922, the Palace had premiered
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
. Gilbert and Sullivan longed to trump Offenbach, and set
Thespis
among the gods of ancient Greece, but
Thespis
was now lost. The painting in the Palace Theatre’s foyer was
The Concert,
a Greek revival subject. Offenbach’s hero helped Jason to find the Golden Fleece. The brown interiors of the Palace were rubbed gold by the hands of patrons. Mythic links but also Masonic links, the compass and the globe. Orpheus’s mother was Calliope. The Maenads tore Orpheus limb from limb for preaching male love, and his head floated down the River Hebrus still singing. Which Greek goddess carried a scythe? Wasn’t a scythe like a razor?

His mind was reeling with impossible associations. But there was a more prosaic possibility. The show was already being accused of blasphemy, indecency, blatantly unwholesome sexuality. Could some guardian of moral standards really have become so incensed by its perceived perversions that they were prepared to kill? The idea didn’t sit well with him. The crimes felt passionless, almost accidental. It was as though anyone could have died in place of Capistrania and Senechal.

‘I thought I’d find you here,’ said May, laying a hand on his shoulder and passing him a silver flask. ‘This’ll warm you up.’

‘I’m trying to think, old bean. Am I to be allowed no privacy?’ Bryant grumbled, but unscrewed the cap and took a swig. ‘This business is giving me the pip. If I had to paint a picture of the person we’re looking for,’ he said, passing the flask back, ‘I’d reckon we were up against an older male, middle class, with some kind of grudge against the play itself.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Traditional theatre, by which I discount the music halls and picture palaces, is largely ignored by working-class youths. It’s not really a public place but a sealed arena. Unless you’re a paying customer or a member of the production, there’s no easy way in or out of the building. Our killer acts with the kind of confidence that comes with experience. He’s male because of the sense of distance from his victims. He’s unemotional. Statistically, women make passionate murderers. He has a grudge against the play because the players themselves are unimportant to him. There’s a plan, and we haven’t seen its culmination yet.’

‘Do you see any way of stopping it?’

‘The theatre opens its doors tonight. The time for deciphering clues is over.’

‘All we can do is be vigilant,’ May agreed. ‘Every attack points in a different direction.’

‘Do they, though? Couldn’t our killer be fulfilling a ritual? Orpheus faced the rigours of Hell before he was allowed to climb towards the light. I believe true evil is dispassionate, faceless, selfish. A game is being played out right before my eyes. Our perpetrator knows this and is unconcerned, or is so blinded by the need to take action that he’s prepared to take risks.’

May had not seen his partner in this fugue state before. ‘I think you’re wasting your time with all this mythological stuff.’

‘Oh?’ Bryant turned to look at him. ‘Do you have a better idea?’

‘I wouldn’t say it’s better, but I do have a theory.’

‘Would you care to share it with me?’ Bryant jammed an absurdly large briar pipe in his mouth and waited for May to give him a light. He had misplaced his regular pipe. May would spend the next sixty years locating lost objects for his partner.

‘Renalda’s brother is implicated in the death of the tycoon’s wife. Now he’s missing, possibly here. Who would he want to strike at most? At Andreas himself. So he attacks the theatre to destroy his brother’s empire.’

‘But then he gains nothing financially.’

‘What if it has nothing to do with financial benefit, but is simple revenge?’ May leaned on the balustrade, watching the red fireboats pumping water.

‘Why would he have waited until now to take action?’ Bryant checked his watch. ‘I have to find Andreas. He can’t be far from the theatre. Let’s have him removed directly to the unit for questioning, show him we mean business.’

‘That’s more like it.’ May looked up at the dark, scudding sky. ‘Listen.’

Bryant cocked an ear. ‘What? I can’t hear anything.’

‘Neither can I.’ May grinned. ‘Wonderful, isn’t it?’

43

MERRY HELL

‘I have no time to talk to you,’ said Helena Parole impatiently. ‘When we hit our half-hour call in around one hundred and thirty minutes, the backstage area is sealed until the performance ends. Only the audience can enter and leave. Have you ever been backstage before the start of a first public performance? It’s a nightmare, people running in every direction, and there’s barely a corridor more than two feet wide in the entire building. You saw the understage area. Imagine it filled with actors waiting for their stage-lift cues. As far as I know, nobody’s heard from Petrovic. Got a snout?’

John May dug a packet of Three Bells from his jacket and offered her one.

‘We’re not supposed to smoke back here either.’ She flicked a cigarette between crimson lips. ‘All these timber struts. But with buildings ablaze all around us these days, what’s the difference? God knows there are enough fire buckets scattered about. Geoffrey fell over one by the grave trap and nearly broke his ankle. Quite how a bucket of sand is supposed to put out a raging fire is anyone’s guess. The truth of the matter is, anyone caught understage would be fried alive. A theatre’s no place for claustrophobics.’ She rubbed smoke from her eye. ‘This tastes like it’s got vegetable shavings in it.’

‘Mr Bryant got them for me.’ He examined the strangely misregistered lettering on the packet. ‘I don’t think they’re kosher, not at a shilling for twenty. He has a theory that Petrovic’s abduction is somehow separate from the killings. You can’t think of anything that would single her out?’

‘She filled in the same employment forms as everyone else. We don’t check their backgrounds. Right now, we’re grateful to find anyone at all. I suppose it’s possible she had another identity. Have you seen her rent book?’

‘Yes, and I spoke to her landlord about her references. Nothing unusual there.’

‘You know we have a full house tonight. How are you going to keep a check on the doors?’

‘The only admittance to the auditorium is via the front of house. The ushers, bar staff and ticket tearers have to sign the book, and everyone else needs a ticket.’

‘You’ve been around the building, you realize there are a thousand places to hide, and this maniac could be in any of them.’

‘I know that,’ admitted May. ‘We can’t search them all. We’ve only been allocated two extra PCs. Andreas Renalda insists that he’s keeping the production open whatever happens.’

‘I’d better get going. He’ll be here soon.’ Parole finished the cigarette and checked her watch. ‘God, these things burn up fast. What do you make of him?’

‘Seems very determined. A bit of a cold fish.’

‘I just wish he’d keep his distance. He thinks we don’t hear him, but we do. He gives me the creeps, thumping about in his leg-irons like the captain of an ancient vessel. This isn’t just a financial enterprise for him, it’s more personal.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He’s had one of the entresol dressing rooms converted into a sort of chapel, and spends twenty minutes in it before he watches rehearsals. We’re short of space here, John—may I call you John?—there’s nowhere to put anything and there aren’t enough dressing rooms, yet he’s had one turned into a shrine. Doesn’t count as normal behaviour in my book.’

‘Is there bad feeling about that?’

‘About that and everything else, Charles’s death in particular. It was the one event witnessed by several people, and it’s got everyone disturbed. You try standing in a dark corridor with ten other performers waiting to go on, and see if the atmosphere doesn’t get to you. They fairly race out of here after rehearsals. No one wants to be the last to leave.’

‘Who’ll be last out once you start the run?’

‘Elspeth, I suppose, although she’s FOH, so actually it would be Stan Lowe at the stage door. He can’t leave until the last of the backstage staff has gone. After the evening performances the actors invite friends up to the dressing rooms, but they’re supposed to be out by eleven. Now that the run is starting, they’ll go over to the Green Room, one of the actors’ clubs off the Strand, or to Macready’s in Covent Garden. You have to be an Equity member or working in a current production to get into such places. Absolute dens of vice, but I suppose they’re a lot more convivial than staying here, drinking out of chipped mugs as the heating goes off.’

‘Well, I’ll let you get on,’ said May. He stopped at the top of the stairs and turned. ‘My colleague wanted me to ask you—the statue on top of the building, in the centre of the roof. You don’t happen to know who it is?’

‘I think she’s a Greek goddess. There’s some kind of odd story about her. She’s holding a flaming torch, but she’s not supposed to be, or something. There was an accident of some kind. I think she’s bad luck.’

‘You’re superstitious, then?’

‘Me? God, no. If you want to know about the statue you could try the archivist, although I think he’s moved out of London for the duration.’

‘Do you know where I can find him?’

‘Mr Cruickshank has a desk in the archive room, although you’ll have trouble spotting it. It’s buried under newspaper clippings and old building plans. You should speak to him before you start moving anything. Elspeth might have his new address.’

‘Thanks.’ He paused on the stair. ‘And good—’

‘Don’t say it!’ yelled Helena. ‘No whistling, no well-wishing.’

‘I thought you weren’t superstitious.’

‘I’m not,’ she said defiantly, ‘but obviously there are limits.’

‘I’m glad we were able to run you to ground. Have a look at this.’ Bryant smoothed the creases from the article Summerfield had penned for
The Times
and slid it across the table to Andreas Renalda. The tycoon was furious at being brought directly to the unit instead of being taken to his Highgate home to change for the theatre. He peered angrily out of the dusty windows as if searching for a means of escape. May called his attention to the document.

‘What is this?’ the tycoon asked, gingerly touching the edges of the pages.

‘A history of your family,’ Bryant explained. ‘You were reluctant to talk about your background, so I took the liberty of digging it out.’

Renalda flicked the sheets aside in disgust. ‘We sued over this damned article. There were dozens, and we took every one to court. They were appearing all over the world.’

‘You won this battle without going to court. The piece was never published.’

‘It was the last thing our shareholders would have needed to read about at that time, a public washing of dirty laundry. This man had no right to write about my father, but at least he was one of the few to suggest my brother’s guilt. Things were very difficult for me personally. I had lost my beloved wife, the light of my life.’

‘You still believe she was murdered by your brother?’

‘He said he took her out dancing as a gesture of reconciliation. My Elissa, out dancing, with her husband away on business! In our culture, this is not done. She did not know the island, and she had hardly ever had a drink in her life. They passed the evening in a taverna, and at midnight they walked along the harbour wall together. Ask anyone in the town and they will tell you that my wife was deliberately drowned. Every night, before I go to bed, I blame myself for being away in Athens on a trip that I could have easily delegated to one of my staff. Minos was waiting for me to leave.’

‘But you have no proof.’

‘There are some things in life you do not need proof to see.’

‘You don’t think that your wife—’

‘Mr Bryant, I hope you are not about to suggest that she was in any way attracted to my brother. That would be an insult to her memory.’

‘May I ask how your mother died?’

‘In hospital, from cancer.’

‘You’ve never feared for your own life?’

‘Of course not.’

‘I don’t understand. If you’re convinced that your brother is capable of murder, why are you so sure that you’re safe?’

‘My mother let everyone know that her religion protected me. Minos believed in the old gods enough to avoid angering them. Now I think I have answered all your questions.’

‘But you,’ persisted Bryant, ‘do you really believe in the old gods?’

‘It is how I was raised. I would sit in the cliff garden and see my ancient protectors seated all around myself and my mother.’

‘And do they still protect you?’

‘Of course. The events of my life are beyond my control, just as yours are. I must get to the theatre.’

‘I’m sorry to have kept you.’ Bryant rose to his feet. ‘I was wondering . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m fascinated by your mythological beliefs. I wonder if you’d care to take lunch with me tomorrow. The theatre has no performance, and you can tell me more about them.’

‘I don’t think that would be a good idea, Mr Bryant. I’m a little too old to fall for such obvious tricks, don’t you think?’

‘I assure you, I intended only to be sociable.’ Bryant was flustered, mortified.

‘It’s all right, I suppose in your clumsy way you mean well.’ He gave a sour laugh. ‘You have a lot to learn, I think. I can take care of myself without the help of the damned police. I worry more for my friends at the Palace. My theatre is under attack, my staff are being killed and injured.’ He struggled to his feet and swayed so violently that for a moment Bryant thought he was going to topple backwards. ‘The Palace is being assaulted by Christian moralists, your courts are trying to close me down before we even open and the press is denouncing me as a filthy foreign pervert out to corrupt the innocent, plucky islanders. This is no time to attack cherished national institutions. Well, we shall see who survives and who falls, but I know one thing: the show will go on, come hellfire, Blitz or the Lord Chamberlain. If people think I am the devil, we shall have a merry Hell.’