The Music Box Enigma

by R. N. Morris

  ‘What alibi?’

  ‘After I left the school, I went to the pub. People saw me there. I must have looked like a madman! I was exhilarated, laughing and throwing my money around. I tipped the barmaid rather extravagantly.’

  ‘Pub, you say?’

  ‘Yes, I went to the Holly Bush. You know, the Holly Bush in Hampstead. I couldn’t possibly have been in the church where the policeman was killed.’

  Inchball received this information in silence, except to knock on the roof of the Black Maria sharply three times.

  Soon after, the vehicle pulled up with a jolt.

  The cuffs were taken off Masters. The back doors opened. And he was thrust out into a darkness colder, deeper, emptier than that from which he was expelled.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Sunday, 20 December, 1914

  The drab chill of a winter morning greeted Quinn as he left the house. His stomach rumbled. He was up too early for Mrs Ibbott’s breakfast, which was anyway becoming an increasingly meagre repast as they progressed deeper into the war. But he often forgot to eat when he was at this stage of an investigation. Instead sustenance would come mainly from the mugs of strong, sweet tea that Macadam occasionally caused to appear. Inchball often joked that you could stand a spoon up in them.

  The moon was large and low in the sky.

  He wanted to get a head start on the day, to quell the creeping anxiety that dominated his mood. There was that sense he always had at the start of an investigation, the sense of much to do, without any clear idea of what it was he should be doing. A kind of impotence, in other words, combined with a restless and largely futile energy. The prospect of exhaustion was never far away.

  He was still wearing the clothes he had slept in, or more accurately lain curled up and shivering in. From time to time, he had tried closing his eyes. And perhaps some of the times when he had done that he had fallen asleep. But if so, it was not a sleep that left him refreshed in any way.

  The moon had shone through his window all night – he had not thought to draw the curtains – until eventually he had lurched from his bed like a drunk remembering he had somewhere to be. He had urinated long and heavily into the lavatory, his piss dark and smelling of gun smoke. Then rubbed his teeth and gums with a small amount of Calox tooth powder. The abrasiveness of the patented substance acted like a form of penance, a hair shirt for the mouth.

  His head ached, his shoulders ached, his back ached, his joints were stiff and, yes, aching. The slightest movement set off a chain of twinges, like a series of fireworks arranged so that each ignited the next.

  The dark, largely deserted streets of Kensington took on an unfamiliar aspect, as if he was walking through a strange quarter of a city he did not know, rather than his own neighbourhood.

  It started to rain, a fine drizzle that he felt against his face, like the light touch of a blind man feeling his features.

  As Quinn walked, he was aware of a leavening in the darkness. At the same time, the fine drizzle intensified into a more determined downpour. He was thankful for his crumpled ulster and bowler hat, off which the now heavy raindrops bounced. Other pedestrians hurried past him, their collars upturned and heads bent down, fleeting shapes forming in the murk. From time to time, he was forced to dodge the spikes of carelessly wielded umbrellas.

  The day was coming up by stealth.

  His bowler hat looked almost silver in his hand, the electric light reflecting off the tiny droplets that coated it. He gave his ulster a shake before hanging it up. A despondent puddle quickly darkened the floor at his feet.

  He crossed the office, stooping slightly to avoid banging his head on the sloping ceiling. As he did so, he glanced briefly out of the window. Patches of blue were breaking through the clouds. Typical. It waited till he got inside before bucking up.

  He had not been seated at his desk long when Inchball came in. He met Quinn’s enquiring gaze with a terse shake of the head. ‘Wasn’t him.’

  It took Quinn a moment to remember who Inchball was talking about. Ah, yes, Masters. Roderick Masters. Inchball had paid a visit on him last night. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘He’s not our man. I did what you said. Leant on him.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Pissed himself, din’ ’e. Literally. Besides, he says he has an alibi for Willoughby’s murder. Couldn’t have been in the church because he was in the pub. I’ll check it out, of course. But from the way he latched on to it, I’d lay good money it’ll stand up.’

  Quinn nodded. A loose end tied up, but no progress. ‘What about the attack on the special constable?’

  ‘Oh, that was him, all right.’

  ‘Did you charge him?’

  Inchball screwed his face up dismissively. ‘I dealt with him, let’s put it like that. Saved the courts the bother. I don’t think he’ll be knocking any more coppers’ helmets off.’

  The blaring ring of the telephone interrupted their conversation. Quinn stared questioningly at Inchball as if he believed his sergeant could tell him who was calling.

  Inchball shrugged. Quinn reluctantly lifted the receiver off the switchhook and cut the catastrophic noise off.

  ‘Quinn. Admiralty. Now.’

  Quinn held the earpiece away from his ear but it was too late. The line had gone dead. The three fiercely barked words had already assaulted his eardrum. He was given no opportunity to demur.

  He ignored Inchball’s expectant gaze and returned the receiver to the candlestick stand on his desk without comment. The room seemed to buzz in the aftermath of the intrusion.

  He had recognized the speaker as Lieutenant-Colonel Kell, the head of MO5 (g) and, since the outbreak of war, effectively Quinn’s commanding officer. Sir Edward Henry, the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Force, who had set up the Special Crimes Department in the first place, still exercised a watching brief over the department, and intervened occasionally to offer his advice. But it was ultimately to Kell that Quinn answered now, although usually via the mediation of one of Kell’s subordinates. The fact that the call had come from the top man himself was not a good omen.

  Quinn thought that he had been able to discern Kell’s asthmatic wheeze between each word. If so, it was a sign of the man’s agitation, which made the call even more inauspicious.

  Quinn rose stiffly to his feet, then turned to confront the wall of postcards that he had written out the night before.

  At the centre of the mosaic of names, Leversedge had pinned the card which bore only the large, neatly drawn question mark.

  Quinn blinked away his exhaustion, swaying as the floor seemed to shift beneath him. The cards began to swirl before his eyes. The names he had written out so carefully blurred into a grey fog. The only card that remained legible was the one bearing the question mark. And now his tiredness played another trick on him: infinitely repeating double vision multiplied that one symbol into a restless throng of question marks.

  He had to blink hard to still the spinning cards and bring the names back into focus, reaching out to touch the solidity of a desk to steady himself.

  ‘You all right, guv?’

  He drew himself up with a defiant sniff, not meeting Inchball’s solicitous gaze. ‘You’ll chase up that alibi today?’

  ‘I said I would, din’ I?’ was Inchball’s prickly reply.

  Quinn nodded decisively and crossed to the hatstand for his damp ulster. He experienced the sensation that he was still wearing his hat, which provoked a stab of panic, as he was sure he had taken it off just minutes ago. Hadn’t it shone silver like the moon in his hand?

  To his great relief, his hands confirmed his head was naked, while his bowler hung there on its hook in front of him.

  He looked up as Macadam came into the room.

  ‘What’s happening, sir?’ Macadam’s posture tensed, as if he were readying himself for action.

  ‘I have to speak to Kell. Wait for me here.’ Quinn’s glance darted towards the wall with the postcards pinned to it. It
seemed that he was charging Macadam with the urgent task of not letting it out of his sight.

  Macadam looked uncertainly at Inchball, who gave a bemused shrug, as if to say Don’t ask me.

  It was a short walk from Scotland Yard to the Admiralty building. The clouds had almost entirely cleared now, and the sky was a luminous, powdery blue. The pale disc of the moon was still in the sky, like the phantom of a dead sun.

  Commander Irons, Kell’s usual proxy, was waiting for Quinn in the lobby of the Horse Guards Parade entrance. Irons signalled to him with a brusque flick of the head and set off walking immediately.

  Quinn had to run to catch him up, his heels echoing on the black and white tiled floor. ‘What’s this about, do you know? I have an investigation to lead. One of my officers was killed yesterday.’

  ‘You think we don’t know that?’

  ‘Well, dragging me here to receive an ear-bashing from Kell is not helping my investigation, is it?’

  ‘Who said you were going to have an ear-bashing from Kell?’

  ‘Am I not?’

  ‘Kell isn’t the only one with an interest in this case.’

  This was how they talked, these secret service Johnnies. In riddles that went round and round and communicated nothing apart from the fact that they knew something you didn’t. Quinn was used to it. ‘Who else then?’

  ‘You’ll find out. Soon enough.’

  Typical.

  Irons led him along blank white corridors, past innumerable closed doors. There was little decoration to relieve the monotony. The occasional portrait or bust of a presumably distinguished seafarer, seascapes with boats, some naval battle scenes.

  At last Irons came to a halt in front of a door that had nothing to differentiate it from any of its fellows. He gave a sharp rap with his knuckles and went in without waiting for an answer, fixing Quinn with a warning glance as he held the door for him.

  The room contained a long meeting table, at which Lieutenant-Colonel Kell was seated, smoking one of his pernicious medicinal cigarettes. Kell looked up, his expression drawn.

  One other man, wearing the tunic of a senior naval officer, stood with his back to the room, his shoulders slightly slumped as he looked through the window over Horse Guards Parade. The man turned, revealing the gold braid on his cuffs, and stepped forward out of the cloud of pungent cigar smoke that surrounded him. Quinn recognized the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill.

  As he turned, Churchill seemed to transform himself, shedding the hint of gloom, of self-doubt even, that had apparently possessed him a moment before. He visibly drew himself up, as if to occupy some image of the man he believed himself to be. He set his mouth in a grim line of resolve, without which it might have been thought a weak mouth. He was clean-shaven with no facial hair to add distinction to his rather boyish features, or to hide behind, for that matter. He tilted his head upwards, with a look that appeared to have been practised in front of a mirror.

  ‘This the fellow?’ Churchill took several small puffs on the fag end of his cigar, before leaning forward to stub it out in a porcelain ashtray on the table.

  Kell nodded morosely, as if he wished he was able to offer Churchill someone better, but sadly not. ‘This is he. Detective Chief Inspector Quinn, of the Special Crimes Department.’

  ‘Quickfire Quinn, they call you? That right?’

  Quinn shook his head, not to contradict Churchill, but to signal his lack of enthusiasm for the ridiculous nickname. ‘My work invariably brings me into contact with some very dangerous individuals. Men who would not hesitate to kill those who have been charged with their arrest. And so, it is sometimes necessary to take pre-emptive measures.’

  ‘So you would prefer Pre-emptive Quinn? Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, does it?’ Churchill’s mouth curled in a mischievous smirk.

  ‘I have never sought fame of any kind.’

  ‘Fame, you call it? Notoriety, I call it. We don’t want notorious policemen, Quinn. There are some cases where that is the very last thing we want. Where, on the contrary, what is called for is a certain discretion. What you might call sensitivity. Can you be sensitive, Quinn?’

  ‘My main objective, always, is to get results.’

  Churchill narrowed his eyes as he studied Quinn. ‘Results are all very well, Quinn. As long as they are the right results.’

  Quinn nodded. He had heard variants of this speech before. ‘I take it you have called me here to talk about the Fonthill case? May I ask what your interest in it is?’

  Churchill’s eyes bulged as though Quinn had just been guilty of gross impertinence. ‘My interest in it?’

  Quinn held his ground. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I was at Harrow with Sir Aidan. Or Byron, as we used to call him.’

  ‘Byron? Was that because of his morals?’

  ‘Morals? No. It came from Hellespont. You know, Fonthill … shortened to Font, rhymed with Hellespont. And so, Byron. Naturally. Nothing to do with his morals.’

  ‘I don’t quite follow.’

  ‘Good grief, I thought you were supposed to be bright. Byron swam the Hellespont.’

  ‘Yes, I knew that. I’m sorry. I had a bad night. I lost an officer, you know.’

  Churchill looked Quinn up and down, not without sympathy. ‘Yes. I can see that. You look, not to put too fine a point on it, like you’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Churchill waved his hand as if Quinn was to think nothing of it.

  ‘So am I to understand that Sir Aidan was a friend of yours?’

  ‘We were at school together, as I said. And I was due to attend this blasted concert he was arranging. God knows why I agreed to it, but I did.’

  Quinn winced as a tremor of exhaustion passed through him. It was almost impossible to think over the creaking ache of his brain and the ringing in his ears. But something, dimly, was starting to come together. ‘And so …’

  ‘And so,’ barked Kell from the table, ‘you are to proceed carefully.’

  Quinn frowned. He had thought he had understood what this was about, but now he was not so sure. ‘Is there a connection? Do you think Fonthill’s death has something to do with … you?’

  Churchill turned his back on Quinn, to look out of the window again.

  It was left to Kell to go some way to answering Quinn’s question. ‘Naturally, we don’t know where your investigation will take you, Quinn. But I need not remind you that there is a war on.’

  ‘No, you need not.’

  ‘The office of First Lord of the Admiralty is central to the war effort.’

  ‘Yes. And?’

  ‘I think that’s all I need to say for now. You will liaise with Commander Irons as usual.’ Irons stirred at his post by the door. ‘Anything sensitive that you discover in the course of your investigations you should communicate to him, and he will instruct you on how to proceed.’

  ‘May I go?’

  Kell did not look at Quinn as he nodded his curt dismissal. Instead, his gaze was focused on the medicinal cigarette between his fingers, as if he was wondering how on earth it had got there.

  ‘What do you look like?’

  Quinn knew the answer to this question. ‘Like I’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards.’

  Miss Latterly, seated at her typewriter outside Sir Edward Henry’s office, was not impressed by the observation, not knowing that it had originated with the First Lord of the Admiralty. ‘Did you sleep in that coat?’ She screwed up her nose in distaste.

  Quinn did not consider it a question that merited, or even expected, an answer. ‘What are you doing in today? It is Sunday, you know.’

  ‘There’s a lot to do. Sir Edward needs me here. He is preparing a statement about—’ She broke off tactfully and looked down at the paper in her typewriter.

  ‘About Willoughby.’

  Miss Latterly gave a tight little smile as she met his gaze again. ‘I’m sorry.’

&nbs
p; ‘It was my fault. I sent him off without … I should have warned him. I should have stopped him. I shouldn’t have let him go.’ Quinn thrashed one arm uselessly at the empty air.

  ‘You mustn’t blame yourself.’

  ‘Who should I blame? Willoughby? He was a bloody fool.’

  ‘No. The man who shot him. You should find him and …’ Miss Latterly gave a barely perceptible nod. She did not need to say what he should do. She did not need to give any hint other than this slight movement of her head, so small that someone else might not have noticed it.

  But he had seen it and he understood its meaning fully.

  ‘Don’t worry. I will.’ He reciprocated with a firm and eloquent nod of his own.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Paul Seddon knocked urgently on the door and waited.

  He did not quite know what he was doing here, only that he had to see her. Admittedly, he felt a little guilty leaving Anna on her own with the baby, but they were both sleeping soundly when he had left. This had to be done. And he told himself it needn’t take too long.

  The door was opened by a maid with a red wine birthmark across half her face.

  ‘Is Lady Fonthill at home?’

  The maid nodded mutely, her expression fearful.

  ‘Will you tell her that Paul Seddon is here? I wish to offer my condolences. We are … friends.’ That word, dare he say it? All things considered, he believed he had the right.

  The silent maid showed him into a drawing room and closed the door on him. He paced the room, looking around distractedly, overawed by his intentions more than his surroundings.

  It was not too late to back out. He could slip away before she came, or he could simply keep to himself all the things he had it in mind to say.

  He heard the door open. His heart quickened as he turned to face her.

  Her expression was complex, wary, almost unwelcoming. It would take all his courage to go through with this.

  ‘Paul? What are you doing here?’