things out of my head, things that were already there but unformed. It’s because you’re so sensible, you’re like the control part of an experiment.”
“All right, let’s confront Andreas Renalda and you’ll see how crazy this – delusion of yours is.”
At the top of the drive, the magnate’s housekeeper had heard the car doors slamming and now stood in the doorway to the entrance hall. “Mr Renalda is getting ready for bed,” she warned as they approached. “He won’t want to see anyone.”
“We’ll wait downstairs while he dresses,” said Bryant, loosening his scarf and walking into the hall. “Can we get some strong tea? It’s been a long night.”
After a few minutes Andreas Renalda entered the lounge. He was dressed in a blue silk dressing gown, and was drying his neck with a towel. The steel calipers were still fitted to his legs, and May saw now that they were bolted through the flesh of his shins, deep into the twisted bones.
“It’s late and I’m very tired,” he warned. “I thought we had finished speaking.” Renalda’s housekeeper helped him into a seat opposite the detectives. He looked thunderously from one face to the other. “Good Jesus in Hell. What has happened now?”
“Public Opinion. The stage revolve jammed and she was hit in the head.”
“Is she hurt?”
“Um, actually she’s dead.”
Renalda swore in Greek. It sounded as though he said ‘God in a gondola’.
“Did anybody see her die?”
“Quite a few people. The stage was full – ”
“I mean in the audience. Did the audience see anything wrong?”
“No, the cancan number covered it.”
He thought for a moment. “I am not without heart, you understand, but I must think of the show.”
“I think I understand very well,” said Bryant.
“There have been mechanical problems with the traps and flies ever since my company moved into the theatre. The equipment had not been touched in half a century. We cannot get any new parts. The company that made them is now making armaments. Every spare scrap of metal is going to the war effort.”
“Whatever caused Miss Marchmont’s death, the theatre is closed as of this moment,” Bryant warned.
Renalda’s face set. “I think not.” He hurled his towel aside. “Until you come up with proof that these misfortunes are the result of negligence, I can promise you that I have the necessary paperwork to keep the show open.”
“You’re insured, so what difference does it make?” asked Bryant. “I’ll let the press in and turn the case over to Westminster Council. At that point, your personal involvement in this will surface.”
“What do you mean?” asked Renalda, his anger growing. “You know I have nothing to do with these tragedies.”
“Arthur, are you sure you want to do this?” asked May, wincing.
“I’m fine, John.” Bryant drew a deep breath. “Andreas Ares Renalda, I am arresting you for the murders of Tanya Capistrania, Charles Senechal, Zachary Darvell and Valerie Marchmont, and for the abduction of Jan Petrovic.”
Renalda’s face transformed from anger to amazement. A nerve in his neck blew some kind of synaptic fuse and started making his mouth twitch.
Breathing ever more deeply, Bryant explained his hypothesis. It took him a quarter of an hour to do so, and when he finished he sat back, exhausted from the effort. He waited for Renalda to explode.
“All right,” said the tycoon, in a suspiciously affable tone. “This is most amusing.” He wagged tanned fingers at Bryant as though he was pointing a loaded revolver. “The true part of your – what shall we call it? – fable is how my mother protected me from my brother. He was not a bright man, Mr Bryant, no sharper than the average police detective. He believed he could not touch me for fear of something terrible happening to him.”
“And that’s why you’re taking revenge on him now.” Bryant was sticking to his guns, May had to give him that. It took guts for a twenty-two-year-old detective to accuse a middle-aged millionaire of multiple murder and abduction.
“No.” Renalda laughed politely. “Of course not.”
“Can you prove that?”
“I do not have to prove it.” He stared defiantly at Bryant, and a slow, terrible smile spread across his gaunt face. “Even if I wanted to take revenge on Minos, I have no way of carrying it out.”
“Oh, why not?” asked Bryant.
“It is common knowledge. Even the most stupid Greek policeman knows about it.” Andreas Renalda shrugged theatrically. “Minos, my brother, is dead. I buried him myself.”
? Full Dark House ?
51
THE END OF THE ROAD
“You honestly thought I would destroy the
Bryant wasn’t about to give up without a fight. “Can you tell me how you know that Minos is dead?”
“Well, I saw his eyelids and mouth stitched shut with catgut, and I saw him nailed into a coffin and placed in the ground, then the earth put over the top of him, and the shovels flattening down the earth, if you think that’s proof enough.”
“How did he die?”
“He was killed in a car accident near Athens two months before the war started. He had been drinking all day. He lost control of the car and went off the road into a canal. He drowned, and so my wife, in some strange way, is avenged. I saw his body pulled from the wreck and buried in the family cemetery.”
“It doesn’t make sense that Minos is dead,” said Bryant, staring down at the floor in confusion.
“I’m sorry it doesn’t fit your theories. I suppose you can arrange to have his grave reopened if you like – you wouldn’t be able to make yourself any more foolish. My brother’s death is well documented.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why should I? If you had any connection with your police friends in Europe instead of keeping to yourselves on your funny little island, you would know how many times the press has told the story.”
“I thought you said you sued them all.”
“All the ones I knew about, but there were plenty of others. ‘The cursed family, the child protected by ancient gods.’ Journalists scaled the walls of the house to take my picture, they tried to bribe me, harassed me so much that I moved here, where I thought things would be different. The English, so private, so aloof, so secretive. They would leave the memory of my family alone. But no, along come you two, the music-hall comedians. Yes, I am sure that Minos killed my wife, but I am not glad that he suffocated in the filthy waters of a drainage ditch. He was blood of my blood. And I will not allow his memory to be defiled by young men who think too much about the wrong things.”
“I didn’t mean to imply – ”
“I know exactly what you meant. In your own clumsy way you suggest we are nothing but ignorant pagans. Our private beliefs have been raked over in your
¦
“Well, that went well,” said May, stepping out into the pouring rain. “I thought I’d discovered something new. I was sure Renalda was setting himself free from his past.”
