“I think he was a bit embarrassed about that. You should have seen his face when Biddle stood up for you. He looked as if he’d been stabbed in the back.”
“I don’t suppose Davenport’s good mood will last. The Lord Chamberlain has changed his mind about the show. Says it’s indecent and has to come off. I think somebody higher up must have had a word with him.”
“So all of Elspeth Wynter’s efforts were wasted. The production would have closed anyway. How sad. God, we’re such a lot of hypocritical prudes.”
“You didn’t sleep with her, did you?” asked Maggie. “You didn’t get your conkers polished by a murderess?”
Bryant looked horrified. “No I did not, thank you,” he said, as though the thought had never even occurred to him. “For a spiritualist, you can be very crude.” He suddenly brightened. “Mind you,
“Unproven,” said May hastily. “I mean Betty’s involvement in the death of Minos Renalda. There’s nothing on record, only the conversation I had with Andreas.”
“I thought her real name was Elissa.”
“That’s right, abbreviated to Betty. She has a sister in the Wrens. I should introduce you.”
“I don’t think so. Once bitten and so on.” Bryant raised his trilby and shook out his floppy auburn fringe.
“I should be going.” Maggie Armitage set down her tea glass. “I’ll be late.”
“What have you got tonight?” asked May. “Druid ceremony? Seance? Psychic materialization?”
“No, Tommy Handley on the radio at eight thirty. I never miss him.” She thrust a lethal-looking pin through her hat. “I was listening when Bruce Belfrage got bombed. We hadn’t laughed so much in ages.” Belfrage was a BBC news announcer who became a national hero after carrying on his live radio broadcast even though the studio had received a direct hit and several people were killed. “I actually think I’m going to miss the war when it’s over.”
“Don’t be obscene, Margaret,” said Bryant hotly, swinging his legs down from the weed-riven embankment wall. “Death is stalking the streets, death made terrifying by its utter lack of meaning.”
“The closer you are to death, the more attached you become to life,” the coven leader reminded him. “The city is filled with strengthening spirits.”
“The city is filled with brave people, that’s all,” said May, and took a long drink of his beer.
“If people ever stop thinking about the ones they leave behind, Mr May, your job will cease to exist. All that you see – all this,” she gestured around her, “is about generations yet to be born.”
“Don’t take her too seriously,” Bryant warned his partner. “You were wrong about one of us dying in an explosion, Maggie.”
“It’s never a dead cert, otherwise I’d make my fortune on the geegees instead of helping the police with their inquiries,” she snapped at him, stung.
“You told me you once copped a monkey on a nag called Suffragette racing at Kempton Park because he was possessed by the spirit of Emmeline Pankhurst,” complained Bryant.
Maggie saw more than she ever dared to tell anyone. Time compressing, days blurring into nights, speeding skies, great buildings whirling into life, wheels of steel and circles of glass. She saw a girl her age but half a century away, a girl too afraid of life to leave her house.
She saw the future of John May’s grandchild.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized suddenly. “I have to go. Don’t be downhearted, Mr May. And don’t worry about the future. Things have a way of working out. The song of the city will live on, so long as there is someone to sing it.”
“Well, I wonder what got into her?” exclaimed Bryant. The detectives watched as she walked off down the street, pausing to stroke a tortoiseshell cat on a doorstep, listening to it for a moment, then moving on.
“You know some very peculiar people, Arthur,” May pointed out.
“Oh, you haven’t seen the half of it. I intend to bring many more of them into the unit. I have a friend who can read people’s minds by observing insects. He’d be useful. And I know a girl who’s a ventophonist.”
“What’s that?”
“She can throw her voice down the phone.”
“Now you’re teasing me.”
“Our work is far from finished. I think I’ve finally found a purpose to my life. Something I can dedicate myself to. Thanks to you.”
Bryant looked over at his partner and grinned as the sun came out above them, transforming the river into a shining ribbon of light. He rubbed his hands together briskly.
“But where to start? We have yet to discover the lair of the Leicester Square Vampire. He’s still got my shoes, you know. And that poor girl he snatched, buried alive with all those rabid bats and someone else’s head. There are other cases starting to come in. We’ve got a twenty-one-year-old Hurricane pilot accused of a brutal stabbing in Argyll Street, several witnesses, his bloody fingerprints on the body, and a cast-iron alibi that places him in the middle of Regent’s Park, tied to the back of a cow. He’s one of the Channel heroes, so it’s in everyone’s interests to exonerate him, but how? No, our labours here are only just beginning. This city is a veritable repository of the wonderful and the extraordinary. Isn’t that right, Mr May?”
“I couldn’t agree with you more, Mr Bryant,” replied May with a lift of his glass, and this time he really meant it.
Bryant looked over his friend’s shoulder, in the direction of Waterloo Bridge. Something drew his eye to the centre of the bridge. There was a coruscating flash of dark sunlight, a spear of greenish yellow, and for the briefest moment two elderly men could be seen leaning on the white stone parapet. Then the light settled, and they were gone.
Far above them, the silver-grey barrage balloons that protected the city turned lazily in the early evening air, like old whales searching for the spawning grounds of their youth.
? Full Dark House ?
62
SLEIGHT OF HAND
“What time is it?”
“Almost sunset.” May came away from the hospital window.
“You can see the river from here.”
“Look, John, I’ve still got the mobile phone you bought me.” Arthur Bryant pulled the silver Nokia out from under the bedclothes and waved it at his visitor, waiting for a compliment. The hospital room was awash with garish flowers and get-well cards.
“I thought you’d lost it,” said May, tearing off a grape and eating it.
“No, I’d accidentally switched it with the television remote. Every time Alma changed channels to watch QVC she speed-dialled the Berlin headquarters of Interpol.”
“Well, why didn’t you use the speed-dial to call me?”
“I wasn’t thinking very clearly. I’d been hit on the head,” Bryant complained.
“How is the old noggin?” May peered at the top of his partner’s skull. A row of neat stitches extended from his right ear to the middle of his left eyebrow. “You’re going to have a scar there. Can you remember what happened that night after I left you?”
“Only bits,” Bryant admitted. “I went downstairs to get my paperweight back.”
“What paperweight?”
“The one I threw at the lads from Holmes Road when they came by to make fun of me. It must have been around six in the morning when I went out. I thought I’d better get the thing back because it was a souvenir from the war. I was just coming up the stairs when I saw him. The top door was wide open, and Elspeth Wynter’s son was standing there. He had a green metal cylinder in his fist. He started accusing me of persecuting him, and said he was going to kill me. I should never have sought him out at the Wetherby. I’d upset him when I reminded him how his mother had died. It’s funny the way little things can trigger memories. Give me those, for God’s sake.” He reached forward and emptied grape pips from May’s cupped palm. “Ow.” He clutched at the top of his head and fell
