“You mean have drink and drugs addled my brain, causing it to slip into the febrile desuetude of Alzheimer’s? No, they have not and it has not, thank you so much.”
“Then let’s go back to the unit and see what else we can uncover.”
¦
At the PCU, John May’s granddaughter came in and set several pages before them. “There are eight public houses named after Queen Victoria in London,” she explained, “plus The Victoria Park in Hackney, the Victoria & Albert in Marylebone and the Victoria Stakes in Muswell Hill. The nearest Victoria to Bloomsbury is just over the road, off Mornington Crescent. Actually, I think I’ve been there with you.”
“There you are, you see? You’ve muddled the memory of another pub with the one you passed,” said May soothingly.
“I did not muddle them!” Bryant all but shouted. “Good God, do you think I can’t tell the difference between Mornington Crescent and Bloomsbury? She went into the pub on that corner, and then left and died or was killed on the street outside.”
“We could settle this if you knew the exact time you passed each other,” said May. “We know she was alive when you saw her, so if Kershaw can pinpoint the time of death we’ll be able to see if there’s a discrepancy.”
“I want an artist,” said Bryant stubbornly. “I need someone who can draw what I saw.”
“I can draw,” April volunteered. It had been one of the many talents she had perfected during the flare-up of her agoraphobia, during which time she had rarely left her shuttered apartment in Stoke Newington.
“There are sketch pads and some pens in the evidence room,” said May. “You’ll have to get Renfield to unlock it for you. What else have we got on Carol Wynley’s movements last night?”
“I was about to give you this,” said April. “I’ve put together a timeline from statements volunteered by her partner and work colleagues. Wynley worked at the Swedenborg Society in Bloomsbury, but was meeting up with friends from a former workplace, a charity organisation working with Medecins Sans Frontieres. They had drinks in a pub called The Queen’s Larder – ”
Bryant perked up. “I know that watering hole. It was named after Queen Charlotte, the wife of King George the Third. He was being treated for insanity at a doctor’s house in Queen Square. The queen leased the cellar beneath the pub to keep the king’s special foods there.”
“Wynley left The Queen’s Larder sometime after ten – no-one’s been able to pinpoint the exact time – and made her way up to Euston Road, but then she doubled back into Bloomsbury, which suggests a deviation from simply returning home.”
“I told you so,” insisted Bryant. “She had another destination in mind.”
“Then perhaps you made a mistake about the name of the pub,” May suggested.
“We’ll soon see.” Bryant climbed the small stool behind his desk and reached up among his books, pulling down a green linen volume with untrimmed pages. “Here we are,
“Wait, when was that printed?”
Bryant checked the publisher’s page. “1954. Not one of my more recent acquisitions.” He flicked to the index. “Here you are. Going mad, am I? Look at this.” He turned the book around and held it up with the pages open.
The others found themselves looking at a photograph of a public house built on the corner of Whidbourne Street, Bloomsbury, but they did not seem pleased.
“What’s the matter?” asked Bryant. “I was right after all, wasn’t I? We just overlooked it. Let’s go back and – ”
“Arthur, this can’t be the place,” said May. “This picture was taken two years before the pub was demolished, in 1925. It’s been gone for over three quarters of a century.”
? The Victoria Vanishes ?
12
Ecdysiast
“What do you think you’re doing?” asked DC Colin Bimsley. “That belongs to Mr Bryant.”
“It’s a marijuana plant,” said Renfield, dragging the great ceramic pot along the corridor toward the top of the stairs.
“It’s for his rheumatism.”
“And it’s illegal, or did nobody bother to point that out to him?” asked Renfield.
“Give him a break, Jack, he gets pains in his legs.”
“Then he should be retired and relaxing at home. He could be working as a consultant.”
“It’s not your job to decide what he does.”
“It is if he can’t do his job without the aid of psychoactive narcotics.”
“Wait, what else have you got there?” Bimsley pointed to the battered cardboard box Renfield had also dragged out of the office.
“Old books. They’re everywhere, even blocking the fire exits. I’m stacking them by the rubbish. They can go to charity shops.”
“You can’t do that; he’s taken a lifetime to collect them.”
“Land has asked him to take them home dozens of times, but they’re still here, so out they go.”
“But he needs them for research.”
“Really?” Renfield bent down and retrieved a stack of slender volumes. “Let’s see what he’s been researching, shall we?
“You’d be surprised,” said Bimsley, “how an intimate knowledge of the workings of the trouser press might aid in the capture of a determined rapist.”
“Are you making fun of me?” asked Renfield suspiciously.
“You’ll never know, will you?” Bimsley stood his ground.
“I say, what are you doing with Mr Bryant’s books?” asked Giles Kershaw, who had found his path blocked upon entering the hall. “He’ll go bananas if he sees you’ve moved them. They’re very useful.”
“Not you as well.” Renfield was starting to wonder if the senior detectives had brainwashed the unit staff. Kershaw raised his long legs in a spidery fashion to climb around the obstruction, and admitted himself into the detectives’ office.
“I’m thinking the bash was incidental,” he began, throwing himself into the guest’s armchair.
“I’m sorry, what are we talking about?” asked May.
“Mrs Wynley. There’s an abnormality in the base of her skull. The bone is extremely thin. It wouldn’t have taken much of a knock to damage it, but even so, I think it occurred as the result of something else.”
“Like what?” asked May.
Kershaw sucked his teeth pensively. “Not entirely sure yet. Gut feeling. People don’t usually keel over like fallen trees, with their arms at their sides. Not very scientific, I know, but there’s something else. Midazolam – it’s a fast-acting benzodiazepine with a short elimination half-life. A pretty potent water-soluble sedative, but the imbiber doesn’t actually lose consciousness unless it’s taken in overdose. I found a tiny trace of it inside her mouth. If you were to inject it between the gums and the inside of the cheek, it could enter the bloodstream immediately. She would have dropped like a log.”
Bryant wrinkled his face, thinking. He looked like a tortoise chewing a nettle. “This is making less sense by the second,” he said. “A woman walks into a pub – which, by the way, hasn’t existed for the best part of a hundred years – gets injected in the face and leaves without complaint. She falls down outside, bashes her head and is left for dead by everyone else who leaves the pub, including the staff. I don’t suppose we have any suspects, either.”
“Her partner was just a couple of miles away, home alone watching TV, no witnesses, says he had several phone calls, but all on his cell phone, none to their flat.”
