? Full Dark House ?
53
TOUCHING THE TORTOISE
Mementos and conundrums, all the cases we solved together, thought May. It was always Bryant who had set the puzzles. He himself had just been the faithful sidekick, an anchor of reason to his partner’s flights of fancy. We solved our first case together. I’ll solve our last one if it kills me.
His bandaged leg was swollen and sore. He looked along the crowded platform of the tube station, unpleasantly sweaty even though the day was cold, and waited for the approaching train. He felt his coat pockets. The tortoise; he had left the damned shell in Maggie’s flat, but he wasn’t going back for it now. I’m old, I’m tired and I’ve been stabbed by a ghost, he thought angrily.
Not that he remotely believed in such things. The breadboard had fallen, hitting the handle of the knife. More accidents happened at home than anywhere else. Besides, even if he was a believer it would have made no sense. Why would his best friend return from the grave to hurt him? The only person who could do that now was very much alive.
Except that it wasn’t him…unless he had grown fangs…And then he saw the error he had made. He saw how badly he had misread the situation, just as Arthur had all those years before. How guilty he had been of jumping to the same mistaken conclusion.
May pushed his way back up the stairs of Camden Town tube station, fighting the onrushing flow of travellers. He needed to obtain a signal for his mobile. Outside, wedged into a litter-strewn corner, he punched out Alma Sorrowbridge’s number. He waited for fourteen rings, but there was no answer. The shadow of the buildings opposite had begun to reach this side of the street. He looked at the keypad of his mobile, and was about to try her again when it rang.
“Grandad, is that you?”
“April?”
His granddaughter couldn’t have picked a worse time to call, but it was good to hear her voice.
“I’ve been meaning to ring you for days. I was so sorry to hear about Mr Bryant. He was always nice to me. You must be – ”
“Listen,” May cut across her, “I’m more sorry than you could ever be. Arthur asked me to call you and I didn’t. I’ve been too wrapped up in my own problems. How are you? Have you been able to get out at all?”
“A little. It’s tough. Open spaces still do my head in, but I’m handling it.”
“Remember what the doctor said, one step at a time.”
“I know, but I want to go back to work,” April complained. “I’ve seen enough of these walls to last a lifetime. I could do with some advice.”
“Sure. I’ll come and see you.”
He wanted to tell her he was ashamed, that he would make up the time they had lost. Instead he could only promise to ring her again in a day or so. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.
“It’s funny speaking to you at this hour. It’s the time I always think of you.”
May was puzzled. “Why?” he asked.
“Oh, you know. You always took a walk with Mr Bryant at sunset. It was the only real ritual you had.”
“I suppose it was a ritual, wasn’t it?” May was amazed he hadn’t thought of it earlier. “I’ll call you tomorrow, sweetheart. There’s something I have to put right.”
And he was off along the pavement, moving around the crowds and into the road, the pain in his leg forgotten, breaking into a run as he speed-dialled Janice Longbright’s number, praying that she would pick up the phone.
? Full Dark House ?
54
FULL DARK HOUSE
“There’s nothing to report that a layman can’t see with a cursory examination of the body,” said young Oswald Finch, rinsing his hands at the deep ceramic sink. The remains of Valerie Marchmont, Public Opinion, lay under an ordinary bedsheet; the army had requisitioned the pathology unit’s entire supply of rubberized covers.
“It’s the same as the others. There are no second-agent marks on the skin or clothing, just a few fragments of corroded metal at the contact point. I presume the iron rod that passed through her head was slightly rusted. Some of the rust was scraped off by the edges of the skull. Not much point in making a toxicological examination, but I’ll do one if you want. The damage is consistent with what you’d expect to find in an accident of this kind. You see wounds like this all over London these days.”
“Dr Runcorn has been over the stage equipment but he’s come up with nothing,” said May, leaning against the sink with his hands thrust into his pockets. “The skycloth came down a fraction later and slightly further over to centre stage than it was supposed to, and the revolve stuck for a moment. The stagehands reckon they oiled the revolve before the performance but say it still judders occasionally.”
“An unfortunate combination of factors. Although I daresay young Mr Bryant would have us believe something different if he was here.” Finch rubbed a lotion into his fingers that was supposed to remove the smell of chemicals. “To be honest, it surprises me that Bryant could be so
“I don’t think any of us could stand it,” said May despondently. “His landlady hasn’t seen him, only his boxes. He’s not been home for a change of clothes. It’s been two days now. I wondered if he might have gone to stay with relatives.”
“He could be at his mother’s in Bethnal Green Road. Forthright tells me the house next door to Mrs Bryant’s got bombed out and she’s worried about her walls falling in. I know he wanted to help her move somewhere safer. She’s not on the telephone but I daresay someone in the local nick could run round.” Finch leaned back on a stool and administered drops to his right pupil. The atmosphere of formaldehyde left him with perpetually red-rimmed eyelids.
“Do you think Davenport will keep us open with Bryant gone?” asked May.
“That’s a tough one, seeing as he set you chaps up in the first place. It could be construed as failure on his part. He’ll probably merge you with one of the other divisions: fraud or this special squad that’s been set up to deal with looters. At least it’ll keep you afloat. Did Forthright mention that your Mr Biddle has had a change of heart? He’s decided to stay on after all.”
“That’s good,” May said. “Arthur thought he might come round. What happened to the tree he gave you?”
“Bit of a sore point, that. It was too big for the bureau so I took it home, and now the wife won’t talk to me.”
“Why?”
“Her cat ate one of the leaves and died. She tried to chop it down with a kitchen knife and it leaked some kind of poisonous sap on her. The doctor reckons her arm should stay bandaged for at least a week, which is inconvenient because she plays the organ. I have a suspicion,” he said, blinking the drops from his left eye, “that it was one of Bryant’s pranks. He really was the most impossible man.”
“He’s not dead,” said May.
“Well, he is missing,” responded Finch, dabbing his eyes on a flannel and blinking.
May was surprised by the way his partner had responded to failure, but his first duty was to the case. “He’ll turn up,” he said unsurely. “You might try liaising a little more with Dr Runcorn rather than telling me you can’t find anything. Four dead, one vanished, a few near misses. I need physical proof fast, or we’ll all be out of a job. A couple of heel marks, no fingerprints, no real murder weapons to speak of, it’s not much to go on. You’d think we were dealing with someone who doesn’t exist in the real world.”
