Bryant & May 01; Full Dark House

“It’s impossible to find out. The stations are still full of evacuees and servicemen, people moving around all over the place.”

Forthright looked in. “Arthur, the article you requested from your journalist pal, Peregrine Summerfield. He’s managed to find you a copy. He’s sending a lad over with it right now.” Several minutes later, a boy arrived with a brown envelope under his arm. May gave him sixpence from the petty-cash tin and tore open the accompanying letter.

“What appalling handwriting.”

“Give it to me, I’m used to reading his scrawl,” said Bryant, snatching away the letter.

Dear Arthur,

There was a lot of interest in this at the time, but the paper wouldn’t run my article because Andreas Renalda got wind of it and threatened The Thunderer with a lawsuit. The family was based in Calliste (“Most Beautiful”), also known as Santorini. I managed to locate his former home on the outskirts of Thira, but couldn’t gain admittance to the estate. Everyone on the island knows the family, but nobody was very happy talking about them. I tried mentioning them in one of the local bars and the locals all clammed up, it was like one of those scenes in a cowboy film where the stranger comes into town. However…

“Is there another page to this?”

“Sorry.” May handed the sheet to Bryant.

…I wrote a profile and was even paid, but the damned thing never appeared in print. Andreas Renalda has made my life a living hell ever since, ringing up publishers and complaining about me. His old man employed half the island, and a lot of loyalties still survive. I suggest you read the article and form your own conclusions.

For the next few minutes no sound was heard in the office, save for the familiar double clang of a distant tram.

“You wanted a motive,” Bryant said finally. “It looks like we’ve got one. Listen to this.” He balanced his legs along the edge of the desk. “Peregrine called his piece ‘Orpheus Ascending’. Sirius, Renalda’s father, lost an eye at the battle of Modder River, and was employed as a mercenary under General ‘Backbreaker’ Gatacre during the Boer War.”

“That’s not what I’d call a motive,” said May.

“Don’t be so impatient. His wife, Diana, bore him two sons. Andreas came along in 1905, when his brother Minos was five. His legs were too brittle to support him, so Sirius had his workers build steel calipers that would enable him to walk. He had lost an eye before finding his own strength, so thought Andreas would also turn disability to his advantage. He gave Minos, his other son, an allowance, but reserved his empire for Andreas. He dismissed the missus to a wing of the house and took a series of mistresses. Diana stopped attending church and raised her son in pagan ways in order to afford him protection from enemies. Superstitious lot, eh? Andreas became the keyholder to a shipping fortune and Minos turned into an embittered drunk who couldn’t touch his brother for fear of reprisals.

“Andreas married a young English girl called Elissa. He inherited the Renalda estate on his father’s death, and it will be given to Minos only if his entire family dies.” Bryant swiped the papers with the back of his hand. “Now this is where it gets interesting. A week after the old man’s funeral, while Andreas was attending to business on the mainland, bad brother Minos told Elissa that he wanted to make amends for his behaviour. He took her out to a taverna, but only the brother came back. Nobody knows what happened. Elissa was seen with Minos on the jetty late that night. She supposedly slipped and fell into the water. It took a month for her body to wash up on the beach. Andreas took the case to the local magistrate, but no evidence of murder was found. The tycoon was convinced that his brother had killed his wife, but had no proof. Andreas moved to England, and Minos’s whereabouts are unknown. Well, we wanted a suspect.”

“Andreas’s brother. You think he could be here?”

“I suppose he could be using any name.” Bryant called in Forthright. “We’re going to need a recent photograph of Minos Renalda,” he explained. “We have to talk to Andreas again. Have you got any tea rations left? We’ve used ours up.”

“Certainly.” Forthright paused in the doorway. “Did you hear? The other army bike has turned up. No prints on it, though. I heard about Mr May’s little adventure.”

“Where did they find it?” asked Bryant.

“Right outside the theatre, back with all the others.”

“I can’t believe it. The audacity – he went right back. Gladys, what are you hovering about for?”

“May I just say that it’s a pleasure to be working with you again?”

“No, you may not. Get on with your work.” Bryant smiled poisonously at his partner. “I knew those two would never last,” he said.

? Full Dark House ?

42

MR MAY PRESENTS HIS THEORY

The follow-up to Coventry’s night of terror was a bombing raid on London that proved almost as devastating as the attack of 15 October, when the city seemed to combust with over nine hundred fires. On that occasion all railway traffic had been halted, and the shattered Fleet sewer emptied its poisoned waters into the train tunnels at King’s Cross.

On Saturday, those who survived the night arose to find great chunks of the city alight or simply gone. Hospitals, schools and stations had been hit, and doctors cut their way into unsafe buildings to administer morphine to the injured. Pumps and water towers were drained to fight the raging blazes spread by incendiary bombs. Because the city’s water was routinely turned off at the weekend, the fire hoses had run dry, so riverside cranes were used to drop trailer pumps into the Thames from offshore barges.

Looters struck, risking their lives to pillage from the ruins of shops and houses while residents took cover, but most of the cases went unreported for fear of harming morale. A deep crater had been blown in the centre of Charing Cross Road, exposing the underground trains to daylight. In Farringdon, a fish shop was hit by a bomb that loosened a great girder, causing it to fall on a queue of housewives. Not even gangs of men could move the beam, and the women had to wait and die while a crane was sought.

Brick dust settled across the roads and buildings as thickly as falling snow, a pale cloak of mourning. All sounds were deadened. People moved quietly through the ashes like determined ghosts.

John May had spent the night under the stairs at his aunt’s house in Camden. The noise had been deafening and almost constant, the explosions preceded by the droning of aircraft, the thunder of antiaircraft guns and the ghostly wail of the sirens, one of which was mounted on the roof of the primary school opposite. The early fog was so dense, and the blackout still so effective, that May could see no more than a few feet ahead as he walked into Covent Garden, listening to the fall of masonry, accompanied by the chinking tumble of London bricks. The rescue squads were pulling down cracked chimney stacks and walls.

In Long Acre the atmosphere changed; the costermongers were still in fine voluble form, singing and bellowing jokes across their wicker stacks. Many offices asked their exhausted workers to handle extra shifts. With so many lines of communication cut, the daily push and pull of commerce slowed. But the size of London worked in favour of its population. No matter how much havoc had occurred in the night, it always seemed there was another way to get things done.

Bryant had spent the night in the office and needed to clear his head with a walk beside the river. He felt close to the truth and wanted to talk to Andreas Renalda, but nobody knew his whereabouts. There was no answer from the telephone at the tycoon’s Highgate home, and his office was shut for the weekend.

The premiere of Orpheus was still planned for tonight, come incendiary bombs, hellfire murders or the Lord Chamberlain himself. The day was grey and dull, the skies louring with the threat of rain. Everyone was praying for a deluge to dampen the fires, and for clouds to hide the city.

An Orpheus lyric rattled around in Bryant’s brain. ‘The Metamorphoses Rondo’, in which Cupid sings, “What do these disguises prove? Only that you find yourself so ugly that whenever you want to be loved, you daren’t show yourself as you really are.” If Andreas Renalda’s brother was here, he could have adopted the identity of anyone. Tonight the theatre would open for the grand premiere, and the invited public would