Bryant had been placed at the site, and we weren’t looking for anyone else. I think he survived, but he’s confused, or concussed or something. He went home, but didn’t stay. He came to me, but couldn’t get in. I’ve been stalked by Arthur, not Todd. And if there’s anywhere in the world that he does still remember, it’s here, on Waterloo Bridge at sunset, where he’s walked every night for most of his life.” He pointed across the dual carriageway. A blood-red sun shimmered through exhaust fumes behind the Houses of Parliament. “You take one side, I’ll take the other.”
It was May who saw him first.
Bryant was standing at the spot where his fiancee had died, peering over the edge of the balustrade into the opalescent brown water. He was wearing his favourite gaberdine coat, several filthy scarves and a torn hat. He looked – and, as May got closer, smelled – like a very tired tramp.
“Arthur, it’s you. It’s really you. I thought you were dead.”
May grabbed his arm and twirled him round for a better look. Bryant had a raw-looking gash on his head which he had tried to bandage with an old tie. He was sporting a set of ridiculous illfitting teeth that looked as though they had been made for someone with a much bigger head.
“Look at me.” May grabbed his empty face and tilted it up. “It’s me, John May. You’re here on the bridge, on Waterloo Bridge where we always go, where Nathalie died. You’re Arthur Bryant of the Peculiar Crimes Unit and you’re my best friend. Look at me.” He held Bryant’s face steady in his strong hands, but the old detective’s eyes remained impassive.
“For God’s sake, Arthur,” May shouted, “you’d remember Edna bloody Wagstaff well enough if she was still alive. Well, take a look at this.” He dumped the carrier bag on the pavement and pulled the stuffed cat from it. Time had not been kind to the Abyssinian. Most of its fur had been eaten away with mange, its remaining eye had fallen out and one of its back legs was missing.
“You remember Rothschild?” May thrust the deformed cat carcass in his partner’s face. “It was her familiar. Squadron Leader Smethwick used to send messages through it. Edna left it to Maggie Armitage in her will.”
It was the only thing he had been able to lay his hands on that Bryant might recognize. Rothschild had sat on his desk like a moulting familiar for over twenty years. Slowly, very slowly, the light of recognition began to return to the elderly detective’s eyes. Finally, he opened his dry, cracked lips.
“John, what are you doing here?”
“It lives! It speaks!” He turned excitedly to Longbright, who had reached them. “Look who this is – Janice is here!”
“Why are you talking to me as if I’m a child?” Bryant complained. “Is there something wrong with you? Hello, Janice. Have you got anything to eat?”
Then he fainted.
May caught him and sat him against the balustrade while Longbright rang for an ambulance.
? Full Dark House ?
59
THE CRUELTY OF THE MOON
“Sergeant Forthright has got your landlady stationed across the stairs,” May explained.
“What on earth for?”
“She thought we might need reinforcements. We’ve only got Crowhurst and Atherton in the auditorium.”
“The White Witch of Camden gave me a warning about tonight,” Bryant cautioned. “The killer can’t go back to his lair because I took the key to his room out of the tortoise box.”
“I think it’s this one.” May pointed out the brown door that led to the first of the understage areas. “What’s been going on?”
“Well, it struck me that if you removed Jan Petrovic from the victim list, all of the deaths took place in the theatre. Why? I asked myself, knowing there could only be one answer. They happened here because the murderer hardly ever leaves the building. Elspeth Wynter has been trying to close down the show because she needs to be free of this house. But she’s become agoraphobic. I remember her sweating in the restaurant when we went out to lunch. She can’t bear to be trapped in here any longer, but on that day she couldn’t wait to get back. Hiding her boy all these years was easier than hiding her own feelings, but she managed that as well. Hardly surprising, seeing as she’s spent her life in the theatre watching people fake emotions. In a way, she’s more talented than any of them.”
Bryant pulled the door shut behind them and flicked on his torch. Ahead lay a maze of bare wooden walls. Makeshift timber railings prevented them from falling to the lower levels.
“She couldn’t have killed anyone,” May pointed out. “You only have to look at her, she’s tiny.”
“She staged the murders for her son to carry out. He’s getting too big for her to take care of any longer, creeping around the theatre frightening the ladies in their dressing rooms. He’s down here somewhere. Elspeth can never have a life, never be close to anyone, never ever leave so long as a production continues. She needs the show to close so she can finally escape. And now it’s all too late.”
He led the way along the wooden bridge that ran round the central dark square. “We’re nearly under the orchestra. Look up.” Above them was the dust-caked wire mesh that indicated the start of the orchestra pit.
“So you were right, in a way. It was about the assassination of theatre gods – just not the ones you thought. Mind your head.” The corridor was lower now. They passed several rusted iron-rung ladders leading to the star traps, segmented doors through which an actor could be catapulted onto the stage under cover of smoke. At the downstage centre point stood the grave trap. Light from the spots above the dancers shone down through the grille.
“I don’t like this, Arthur. He could be hiding anywhere.”
Bryant pulled something metallic from his pocket. The click of a ratchet sounded.
“Are you armed?” asked May.
“It’s a service revolver that belonged to my brother.”
“I didn’t know you had a brother. Do you know how to use it?”
“The principle’s not hard to grasp. Trigger here, bullets come out of the end. It’s my understanding that he kept it loaded. I don’t think the boy is on this level.” Bryant peered over the side of the rickety balustrade and shone his torch into the darkness below. “We’re going to have to go further down.”
“I don’t like this at all,” May complained, feeling for the steps ahead. From the stage above their heads came the sound of the orchestra launching into the show’s grand finale set piece, the cancan.
The stamping of the dancers dislodged showers of dirt. Sawdust sifted past their faces. Bryant pulled out a handkerchief and discreetly coughed into it.
“Are you sure he’s down here?” May shifted uncomfortably. He was starting to feel shut in.
“Listen.” They stopped as they reached the middle of the three floors constructed beneath the theatre. The music was distorted by the gurgling steam pipes that ran all around them. Bryant shone his torch beam over the walls. The shadows of the stage props, a dozen twisted demon heads, stretched and fell away. The giant eyes of Cerberus, the watchdog of Hell, gleamed wetly at them from a corner. Spiders and mice scuttled from the light. Ahead, just out of the beam, something moved.
“I think that’s him.” Bryant’s eyes widened. “Stone the crows.”
The boy caught in the torchlight seemed more frightened than angry. His pale, fleshy face was cicatrized with the marks of a badly healed infection, the skin pulled taut and shiny across his skull, his right eye milky with cataracts. His chin was sunk into the bulky mass of his chest, so that he appeared to have no neck at all. Having never left the confines of the theatre, he had the typical deficiencies of a human deprived of sunlight and nutrition. His bones were twisted with the effects of rickets.
“The light’s hurting his eyes, keep the torch trained on him,” Bryant called over his shoulder as they advanced.
“Go away from me. I know she sent you,” cried Todd suddenly, throwing his hands across his eyes and edging from the circle of brilliance cast by May’s torch. The voice was as dry and dead as the air in the theatre, no louder than the rasp of a scrim sliding in its oiled wooden groove, and yet its tone was clear and cultured. He had spent his life listening to actors’ declamations.
