be admitted. How much harder would it be to spot a rogue face in the crowd?
Bryant studied the water, watching the chromatic petrol ripples of a passing boat blossom on the surface in diseased ziggurats. Then there was the matter of the missing girl, lost in a city of missing people. If Jan Petrovic had been kidnapped, why had no one heard from her abductor? What was to be gained from removing someone so unimportant to the production? He thought back to Edna Wagstaff’s nervous chatter about the ghosts of the theatre, and how they walked through walls. How had someone been able to enter and leave the Palace unnoticed? When the building wasn’t locked up, the two entrances had staff posted at them. There were two pass doors between the backstage area and the front of house, and one of those was kept permanently locked. The doors to Petrovic’s flat were also locked from the inside. It was as if…
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
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?”
? Full Dark House ?
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.”
