The Dark Palace--Murder and mystery in London, 1914

by R. N. Morris

  ‘Has he gone?’

  Kirkwood blinked behind his wire-framed glasses. His expression put Porrick in mind of an indignant rabbit. ‘Who?’

  ‘The policeman.’

  A devious smile came over Novak’s lips. ‘Yes, I saw him leave. He was talking to the charming Eloise and then he did a bunk.’

  Porrick clapped his hands together and looked around for the head of Visionary Productions. ‘Hartmann, old chap. Can’t we do something about the lights? We can’t have a decent rag with all these lights blazing, you know.’

  ‘My dear Porrick, under the circumstances, I wonder whether—’

  ‘Damn the circumstances. We have a premiere to celebrate. Besides, what happened tonight could be very good for the box office. Don’t you agree, Kirkwood?’

  ‘Let’s hope so. Porrick’s Palaces could certainly do with an upturn in revenue. Urgently.’

  The lights began to go out, one by one. There was a small cheer of approval. The only illumination that Hartmann left on were the panels leading down to the basement.

  Porrick smiled. ‘That’s more like it. Put the gramophone on, why don’t you. Let’s make this a real party.’

  ‘Do you not ’ave any pity for the poor girl who lose her eye, Monsieur Porrick?’

  High horns strained and blared in the semi-darkness, giving way to shimmering strings. Then Al Jolson’s rich baritone came in singing You made me love you, I didn’t want to do it, I didn’t want to do it.

  Porrick turned to Eloise, a dim figure now in the dark press. He raised his voice to be heard over the recording. ‘Of course, I’m very sorry for her, my dear. But us being miserable won’t put that eye back in her head now, will it? Come on now, let’s be more cheery. You’re not a bun strangler, are you?’

  Eloise frowned in incomprehension.

  ‘A teetotaller!’

  ‘Non, I am not that.’

  ‘Well then, allow me to get you a drink so we can toast your triumphant performance. You are a sensation, my dear! A veritable sensation. You make the film – and you will make all our fortunes, I’m sure of it.’

  Hartmann’s doom-laden voice cut in. ‘Perhaps it’s too soon to celebrate, Porrick. If that policeman gets his way, Waechter’s masterpiece will be withdrawn from public exhibition.’

  ‘What? He can’t do that! I have a two-week exclusive! I’m relying on this dear lady’s eyes to fill my Palaces for the next two weeks. I have nothing else to show if I can’t show that!’

  Porrick sensed the rabbit twitch of his accountant’s nose, scenting disaster. ‘The business can’t sustain a loss of revenue on that scale. Coming on top of everything else, this could spell the end.’

  Porrick shook his head. ‘You ought to be glad you don’t have Kirkwood as your accountant, Hartmann. He’s a proper Cassandra.’

  ‘I will remind you that Cassandra always prophesied the truth. It wasn’t her fault if no one ever believed her.’

  ‘I say, there’s a film scenario idea in that! Waechter, why don’t we make a film about Cassandra? We could give her Scudder as a lap dog. Eloise could play Cassandra. She’s never believed but her faithful lapdog proves that she was telling the truth. Somehow. You’ll make it work.’

  There was no comment from the Austrian director on Porrick’s impromptu outline.

  ‘I am not sure, given the difficulties you face already, that you should still be considering a move into production, Mr Porrick.’

  ‘Nonsense, Kirkwood. Fortune favours the brave, and all that. With Eloise and Scudder together in a film – no, let’s think big! In a series of films – what’s stopping us? We can’t fail, I tell you!’

  ‘I should tell you I had a letter from the City regulators this morning, Mr Porrick. They are intending to instigate an investigation. They are claiming certain irregularities concerning the raising of funds. They say that you are over-capitalized. That the dividends you have paid have not been earned. That the whole business is a sham, in other words.’

  Novak gave a low whistle. Then his odious cackle cut through over Al Jolson’s emotional pleading: Gimme gimme gimme what I cry for. You’ve got the kind of kisses that I die for. ‘I don’t know much about finance, Porrick, but it sounds to me like you’re in a bit of a pickle, old chum.’ The American put on a phony English accent that made his words even more unwelcome.

  Edna loomed up, an immense, inescapable silhouette of doom. ‘Porrick? What are they talking about?’

  ‘Nothing, my dear. Pay them no heed. It’s just Novak trying to be funny.’

  Kirkwood bristled. ‘But I wasn’t trying to be funny.’

  ‘I’m sure you weren’t.’

  ‘I will never forgive you if we lose the house, Porrick.’

  ‘There’s no danger of that, my dear.’

  ‘On the contrary, there is every danger of that, Mr Porrick.’ As well as having no sense of humour, Kirkwood was unable to tell a lie.

  ‘Enough of this … pessimism. I’ll sort the finances out tomorrow. Tonight, however, I fully intend to get blind drunk on Hartmann’s champagne!’

  ‘Typical!’ concluded Edna. ‘Well, you needn’t think I’m going to stay around watching that unedifying spectacle.’

  ‘Edna, don’t go, love! The party’s just getting going!’

  Al Jolson was at that moment coming to the end of his emotional confession with an emphatic, rousing Ritardando. You … know … you … made me … love yoooooouuuu.

  ‘You can come with me now, Porrick. Or don’ bother comin’ home at all.’

  ‘Edna!’

  But it was too late.

  ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman whose husband is about to be declared bankrupt.’ Porrick could hear the sly grin in Novak’s observation.

  ‘Mrs Porrick has been my staff and my support – my rock – over the years. I am sure she will not abandon me now.’

  ‘She sure looks like she’s abandoning you, Porrick, old chum.’

  ‘She’ll see things differently in the morning.’

  ‘And if you lose the house?’

  ‘I’m not going to lose the house! Am I, Kirkwood?’

  ‘Taking into consideration the very latest box office from all your theatres, and allowing for a highly optimistic forecast regarding the expected box office from your exclusive deal with Visionary Productions – taking all that into account, I do not see any prospect of your being able to turn around your fortunes. My honest opinion is that you will not only lose your Mayfair property; there is every chance that you can look forward to a short spell of being detained at His Majesty’s Pleasure. I’m afraid the City regulators take a dim view of fraud, Mr Porrick.’

  ‘You’re my bloody accountant, Kirkwood! Can’t you do anything?’

  ‘I am professionally bound to cooperate with the investigators in any way I can.’

  ‘Marvellous. First my wife deserts me, then my accountant.’

  ‘Haven’t seen that dog of yours recently, either,’ quipped Novak.

  In the darkness, they had kissed. Indeed, it was as if the darkness had grown lips and his mouth had latched on to them.

  And all the while Will Oakland sang about the curse of an aching heart.

  There were other things the darkness had grown too. Soft, yielding, female things. And it had become scented with a hot, intoxicating breath that left him hollowed out and weightless, as if he had been filled with helium.

  All this was to say, she had permitted him a certain licence. His hands had strayed, first tentatively, and then with more confidence when no resistance had been met.

  His hollowed out, weightless heart hammered at the wickedness of it. This was a progression from the prostitutes he usually favoured. She was an actress, a dancer. And more to the point, another man’s wife.

  He found the thought of it simply exhilarating; deliciously wicked. Especially considering that her husband was there in the same room, and had even seemed to connive in his wife’s blatant infidelity. There had been the bares
t, most minimal of nods. A granting of consent, if not approval. A strange fellow, that Novak. He seemed to take as much delight from their liaison as Dunwich himself did.

  They were a racy set, all right, these film people. No wonder his heart was pounding.

  And besides, the sound of Will Oakland’s high, vibrating counter-tenor voice disturbed him. It sounded harsh and accusatory to his ear. A bleat rather than a lament. As if the voice itself was the curse that had been visited upon the singer. If there was a warning in the lyrics, the sound repelled him so much that he could not hear it. He preferred to focus his senses on the darkness.

  The darkness had a name. Dolores. And a voice. A voice that rode on hot, scented breath and filled his tingling ear with sensation. A voice that touched him like a gentle stroke of passion on the inside of his flesh. A voice that had fingers that stirred and stiffened his cock.

  He gasped at the sharpness of his lust. And groaned at the frustration of it. He wanted her now. He would not wait to have her. The darkness would yield completely to him, or he would go mad.

  ‘No … not here. Not yet,’ the darkness murmured. And in that ‘not yet’ was a promise of fulfilment that would sustain him.

  Dunwich could relax now, though there was no relenting in the fierce ache in his trousers. He was sure now where the evening would end. The particular hotel had yet to be decided. Or perhaps they would go to one of the restaurants he knew that were discreetly furnished with private rooms.

  The details didn’t matter. What was important was that he knew now how it would end. She had said, ‘Not yet.’

  The lyrics of Oakland’s song grew darker and darker. The singer was the victim of a vicious woman who had somehow dragged him down – to Hell, it seemed. There was no wit or charm to the litany of accusations. It was a bitter, self-pitying complaint warbled out by a freakishly high voice.

  The darkness withdrew its lips. ‘I have to talk to Novak.’

  ‘Novak?’

  ‘My husband.’

  While she was gone, he sensed someone looking at him. The indirect glow from the illuminated panels picked out a diminutive form, standing on its own against the wall. It was one of those midget wogs. The one with long hair, the boy. Dunwich shuddered. There was something peculiar about that child.

  Hartmann had said the older wog was a brilliant cameraman. Waechter insisted on having him in his crew. The boy was his nephew, apparently. They were Chilean, Hartmann said. Native Indians. Dunwich accepted that Hartmann knew his business. And it was nothing to do with him really. But he didn’t like the way the wog boy was looking at him and it was a rum do having the help here at the party. These film people had a queer way of going about things, that was for sure.

  He didn’t like the Chilean connection either. He had mentioned it to Hartmann, but the German had shrugged it off. He said he could vouch for Diaz, and Diaz could vouch for his nephew, and that was good enough for Hartmann.

  Well, it wasn’t good enough for Dunwich. Not since the business with the billiard ball.

  She was back beside him in the darkness. Her voice went straight for his aching phallus. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘We can go back to my flat.’

  ‘But what about … Novak?’

  ‘He has other plans.’

  ‘If you don’t mind me saying, you have a strange marriage.’

  ‘Why should it worry you?’ The darkness soothed away his fears with a gentle pressure at the place he needed it most. ‘Novak doesn’t care what I do.’

  He groaned. ‘But do you like me a little bit, Dolores?’ He knew that he had revealed his weakness in the question. And he knew in the callous tinkling of her laughter that she would do everything she could to exploit it.

  The sound of Will Oakland’s voice grated more than ever. His song of shattered dreams was the last thing Dunwich wanted to hear.

  The gramophone played on. Harry Macdonough was singing now, ‘When Irish Eyes Are Smiling’.

  Whenever Bittlestone heard this song, he could only think of his proprietor, Harry Lennox, whose Irish eyes never smiled. They occasionally narrowed in a look of low cunning; satisfaction at a rival’s misfortune, for example, or the besting of a supplier in a deal, or any advancement in the irresistible career of Harry Lennox.

  No doubt Lennox considered himself a principled man. He was, after all, the proprietor of a principled newspaper. And there was the rub. His principles were largely commercially motivated, which is to say he was ruthless in private and righteous on paper. The one exception was the question of Home Rule, in which he not only held a conviction but also allowed his newspaper to be used as a mouthpiece for it. But the line he held was the same as that of the government of the day (and of all intelligent men, Lennox would no doubt add). It was unlikely to threaten his commercial concerns.

  Bittlestone found it unsettling to be in this social situation with his employer. He was wary; nervous of putting a foot wrong. He decided the best course of action was not to say anything unless he was directly addressed. Meanwhile, he had ample opportunity to study the interesting people around him. The most interesting of whom was Konrad Waechter.

  He recognized the telltale signs in Waechter: the familiar lightness and precision, the secret vigilance he might even say, with which such men – men of his own kind – carried themselves. And Waechter betrayed himself too by his fluttering eyelids as he presented his cheeks to be very nearly kissed by Jane Lennox. ‘Vell, dah-link, did you like my film?’

  Bittlestone smiled to himself. Yes, Waechter was most definitely one of the brotherhood.

  Jane Lennox blew out a long funnel of opium-scented smoke. ‘I loved it, darling. You’re such a clever old thing.’

  ‘You understood vot I voz sayink mit der film?’

  ‘Of course, darling. You were saying how horribly frightful it is to have one’s eyes plucked out.’ Jane Lennox gave a brittle, broken laugh. Bittlestone detected the welling of suppressed hysteria.

  Waechter must have sensed it too. He became suddenly solemn. ‘I voz werry sorry to hear about your fiancé.’

  ‘Let’s not talk about it now, sweetie.’

  Harry Lennox shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He was evidently struggling with some dilemma, sensitive to his daughter’s reluctance to dwell on the past, but nevertheless eager to get something off his chest. In the end his dominant nature prevailed. He was a man who spoke his mind, or he was nothing. ‘Did you see him? Here! Quinn?’

  ‘Don’t mention that man to me, Daddy.’

  ‘He has a lot to answer for, that’s for sure. Bittlestone, do you not agree?’

  ‘Oh, I do, Mr Lennox. I most certainly do.’ If in doubt, agree.

  ‘And will the Clarion be the paper to hold him to account?’

  ‘Of that you can rest assured, sir.’

  ‘What’s our angle on this eye attack business? Have you filed your story yet?’

  Lennox’s eyes were piercing and expectant. This was a sensational story. The Clarion had been first on the scene. If they could not capitalize on it, they did not deserve to be newspapermen. ‘I was just about to, sir. I thought I might garner a few quotes from the film people first. Herr Hartmann has kindly allowed me to use the company’s telephone to call through the story when I’m ready.’

  ‘Do you have a headline for me?’

  ‘I was thinking of …’ Bittlestone hesitated. In point of fact, he had not given a thought to the headline. Inspiration came to him suddenly: ‘Eyeless in Cecil Court. There is a strange irony about it, given that this alleyway happens to be the centre of the English film industry.’ Bittlestone broke off anxiously. It might have been too ‘clever’ for Lennox, too intellectual. Literary, even.

  ‘Can’t you give me something snappier?’

  Jane Lennox’s head assumed an angle that infuriated Bittlestone. It seemed to express the conviction of her father’s infallibility – more than that, of his genius. She certainly
took her father’s interference as a cue for her own critiquing of his work. She blew out more smoke and subjected him to a look of slow, bovine scrutiny. ‘She’s not eyeless,’ she said, at last. ‘She still has one eye left. Eyeless would be if she had lost them both.’

  ‘She has one … eye … less,’ insisted Bittlestone with slow, deliberate emphasis. His irritation was heightened by the suspicion that she might have a point.

  Jane Lennox shrugged. It didn’t matter to her in the slightest. In fact, it bored her. Her face spasmed into a grimace of a smile for Waechter’s benefit.

  Lennox was on the attack again. ‘Who’s the girl? That’s the question. For crying out loud, Bittlestone! What are you doing here, when you should be out tracking her down? You could be the first to get her story!’

  ‘But even the police don’t know who she is.’

  ‘Don’t you worry about the po-lice! Find out which hospital she was taken to. Get to see her, man. Get her story.’

  ‘I rather thought she might need some time to recuperate from her experience. Besides, the hospital won’t let me see her at this hour, I’m sure.’

  ‘Do you have no gumption, man? To be sure, when I was a cub reporter such lily-livered, weasel-minded equivocations never got in my way!’

  His daughter confirmed this with a terse nod, as if she had been there to witness her father’s early reporting triumphs.

  Bittlestone produced his notebook and pencil. ‘Very well, if that is what you wish me to do. However, if you have no objection, sir, I think it wise first to file an intermediate account based on what we know already. That way, we will have something in the morning edition. While I’m here, I will take some statements. Herr Waechter, how do you feel about this bizarre attack happening so soon after the showing of your film? Given the fact that, according to the police, she attended the screening.’

  ‘My film is proven to be ein Werk of prophecy.’

  ‘There, Bittlestone, you have your film people quote. Now find the girl. Cherchez la femme! That’s the thing!’

  Jane Lennox blinked her eyelids rapidly before turning on Bittlestone a look of focused contempt.