“Todd, we don’t mean you any harm, we want to help you, but you’ll have to come with us.” Bryant took a step closer.
“She intends to leave me here, all alone here.” The boy backed away with his arms still raised.
“No, she doesn’t, your mother is going to take you with her,” Bryant promised.
“I’ve seen you, both of you. I did it for her, so we can get out. But I know she’s not taking me.”
“Where did he get this idea from?” whispered May.
“I hear everything through the grilles and traps. I heard her telling you.” Todd thrust an accusing finger. “You, the short one.”
“I’m not short,” said Bryant indignantly.
Todd suddenly broke free from the light and dropped down the wooden staircase leading to the lowest level of the theatre. The detectives were forced to move forward over the narrow footbridge, one behind the other. Far above them, thirty dancers bared their thighs and hammered out the steps of the cancan.
Beneath the three great turbine engines, the steam pipes and oiled cables that led to the flies, Todd darted along the open corridors, loping from side to side like an ape, dislodging props and items of clothing that hung along the walls, a half-wild creature at home in a penumbral world of brick and iron.
“Keep away from me.” They heard him before May could shift the torchlight onto his face. He was on the far side of the understage. The ground beneath the detectives’ feet had turned from planks to stone and earth.
“Keep the torch trained on him, John.”
May picked out the boy’s twisted features with his beam. Todd released a despairing bellow of pain as the light seared his eyes.
“All right, wait.” May moved the circle of light lower, over the boy’s chest, until he had grown calmer.
“I didn’t want to hurt her,” he called back, “the dancer, she was so beautiful, but Mother poisoned her. Then she started the lift and it ruined everything. She wanted to shock the outsiders. Poor precious feet, I threw them from the window of the smoking salon, hoping someone would see. But outside was all black, there was no one about.”
“The air raid,” murmured Bryant. “You weren’t to know.”
“My mother says it is too dangerous to go outside, there are bombs falling from the sky. But I’ve been out. I know how to drive a bike.”
Todd reached down and picked up something that looked like a length of oak. May lowered the torch and saw that it was a sledgehammer.
“She’ll leave me, and I will have to stay here alone in Hell, with Eurydice.” He shifted his weight until he was standing astride something grey and heavy, and raised the sledgehammer in his broad fists.
“Don’t go any closer, Arthur.” May’s torch picked out the object at Todd’s feet, an absurdly bomb-like thing with tail fins, spattered in white dust, in a round steel case as tall as a man, tapering to a point. How it had reached the basement was a mystery; the ceiling above it was intact.
May had seen enough photographs of unexploded bombs in the
“We’ll all go together, to the real Hell, not one made of paint and plaster,” said Todd sadly. “It’s for the best.” He raised the sledgehammer higher over his head.
“No” – Bryant threw up his hands – “don’t do it, Todd. Remember all the girls above us, the young dancers, like the one you didn’t want to hurt.”
“None of them will have me. Who would want me? I’m a man, not a child. I have no face. I have no life. Can’t go. Can’t stay. And now I am a murderer.”
“Todd, please.” A sense of dread flooded over Bryant. He was horribly aware of Maggie’s warning, that death would come from an unexploded bomb. He held out his hands. “Please,” he begged the boy again. May was standing right in its path.
The muscles in Todd’s arms flexed, and he swung the sledgehammer down into the bomb with all his might. Bryant and May threw themselves down onto the floor.
The only sound that followed was a violent splintering of wood. May groped for the fallen torch and twisted its beam back towards the boy. The head of the sledgehammer was lodged firmly inside the bomb case.
“It’s a prop, a bloody balsa-wood stage prop,” cried May.
“Blimey.” Bryant rose clumsily to his feet as May ran past him. He saw his partner wrestling with the boy, then watched as they fell with a crash that jolted aside the torch beam. Grunts and shouts filled the enveloping darkness. A few moments later came a terrible cry. Bryant thought of Maggie’s death warning again.
“John!” he shouted, but there was no reply. Nothing but silence in the turgid claustrophobia of the darkened underworld.
? Full Dark House ?
60
THE MOON IN A BOX
Biddle pulled a Woodbine from behind his ear and kept his eyes on Elspeth Wynter as he dug around for a light. He didn’t like the look of her. Panic was flickering in her eyes. She was searching for a way out. From the street outside came the familiar whine of the siren mounted on the roof of St Anne’s Church. For a moment he thought she was going to drop in her tracks.
“It’s all right, Mrs Wynter, our lads will find your son. Everything’s going to be fine.” It was the reassurance everyone gave each other throughout the war.
“He’s very strong,” she warned. “I feel a little faint. Do you mind if I sit down over there, where it’s cooler?”
“Here.” He took her arm and helped her to the stool in the boxoffice booth. “They timed the raid well tonight. The show’s just turning out.”
Behind them, the ushers opened the auditorium doors as the sound of applause billowed into the foyer. Moments later, they were engulfed by members of the audience, leaving quickly to obey the warning of the air-raid siren. Biddle took his eyes off her for only a second. When he looked back at the booth, Elspeth Wynter had gone.
¦
“John, where are you?” called Bryant. “Shine your torch.” He heard a strangled grunt in the dark. Water was dripping somewhere.
“Over here.” May was coughing, trying to catch his breath. He grappled for the Valiant and pointed its beam up once more. Bryant saw that he was sitting beside the mouth of the artesian well. He limped over and joined May at the glistening ring of stone.
“Down there.” May shone the torch over the side and saw Todd hanging by one claw-like hand from the slippery green brickwork.
“Good Lord, look how deep it is.” Bryant got onto his knees and leaned as far over the well mouth as he dared. “Todd, give us your hand. We can get you out of there.” He turned to May. “You’re taller than me, you can reach further.”
The boy was shaking his head rhythmically, scraping the damaged skin of his forehead along the brickwork until a dark caul of blood veiled his eyes. “No,” he called up. “I come from deep inside the Palace. This is where I belong. I see the stars from the skylight, lying up on the grid, just under the roof. The moon is always in a box, and the box is only full of tricks. I want something to be real. Death is real.”
As the detectives cried out in unison, Todd opened the fingers of his left hand and dropped down the centre of the well, a fall of almost seventy feet before he hit the black water below. There was nothing either of them could do. For a moment they lost him from view. Then they turned the torch on the distant oily surface until it settled once more into an unbroken mirror, the remaining effect of a vanishing act.
¦
Biddle pushed through the crowds, shoving his way out of the congested theatre foyer. His one chance to make good, to do something positive, and he had messed up. He threw his cigarette aside and looked around
