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

by R. N. Morris

Whether it was the smell from the film can or the information he had just been told, Quinn felt his heart kick viciously as if his system had just been infiltrated by an intoxicating stimulant.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Macadam drove them north to Clerkenwell. Quinn still had the card that Grant-Sissons had given him. He remembered the man’s bandaged hand and the wince he had been unable to conceal.

  ‘An old wound, that’s what he had said.’

  ‘What’s that, guv?’

  ‘Grant-Sissons.’

  ‘This feller you fancy for the bomb outrage?’

  ‘His hand was bandaged when I saw him at the hospital. He said it was an old wound. But what if it was fresh? What if he had sustained it while attacking Dolores Novak? It’s perfectly possible that she would have tried to defend herself.’

  ‘So you fancy him for that too?’

  ‘Let us moot the hypothesis that he is waging some kind of vendetta against the film industry. He is a failed inventor who nurses a great grudge. He claims he invented the motion picture camera and believes that he has been robbed of his share of the profits of every film made.’

  ‘But why attack that newspaper?’

  ‘Harry Lennox, the proprietor of the Clarion, is an investor in Hartmann’s production company.’

  ‘There’s more to it than that, sir,’ put in Macadam from the front. ‘You know that I am a subscriber to the Kinematograph Enthusiast’s Weekly. The editorial address of that publication is the same as the Daily Clarion. It is printed on the same presses and is owned by Lennox too.’

  ‘So he is not just an investor in the film industry; he is an active promoter of it,’ concluded Quinn.

  The Model T’s headlamps picked out a crenellated arch suspended over the road: the grey nocturnal ghost of St John’s Gate. The car slowed as it passed under, a shadow slipping through a shadow.

  Macadam pulled up in St John’s Square. All three policemen got out of the car.

  ‘I think it’s better if I speak to him alone,’ said Quinn. ‘He knows me.’ Quinn was thinking of his own unfinished business with Grant-Sissons. He had no desire for his sergeants to hear whatever Grant-Sissons had to say about his father. Quinn felt his left breast, touching the hard metal where his pistol was holstered. ‘You need not fear for my safety. I am armed.’

  He sensed Macadam and Inchball exchange an uneasy look.

  ‘With respect, sir …’ Macadam did not press his point.

  Inchball was less tactful: ‘It ain’t your safety we’re worried about.’

  ‘I understand perfectly. And it is precisely for that reason that I should go in alone. If he sees the three of us, he may well panic and therefore do something stupid, in the face of which I may be forced to take self-defensive action. Besides, we have no concrete evidence to place him at either scene. At the moment, we are acting on nothing other than conjecture.’

  ‘Is there something you’re not telling us, guv?’

  ‘He knew my father. I hope to use that to our advantage. It will be easier to do so if I am alone. I want you two to position yourselves at either end of St John’s Passage, in case he tries to make a run for it.’

  ‘What if he’s not there, guv?’

  ‘Then I shall wait for him. If he returns, don’t try to apprehend him. Leave him to me.’

  Quinn turned abruptly from his sergeants, and from further discussion.

  He entered a tight passageway with high brick walls on either side, a channel of night cut into the city. The stench of urine marked it as a stopping place for drunks. Quinn stood for a moment, allowing his eyes to adapt to the gloom. A spill of light from the square seeped along the walls, and there was a light in a window at the end of the passage. It was enough for Quinn to make out two doors set side by side into the wall. The second door was the one he was looking for.

  He balled his fist and pounded the door. Somewhere, a dog barked in response.

  A dark figure approached from the square. From the body shape, he guessed it was Inchball. The two men did not exchange a word as they squeezed past one another. Inchball’s footsteps receded as he took up position at the far end of the passage.

  For a moment, Quinn felt as though this bleak forgotten place was all that was left in the universe. He did not believe in the square beyond Macadam, or the workshop behind the door, or whatever now lay at Inchball’s back. He felt as if all that was good and all that was evil in the world, all the hope and all the fear, was being channelled through that narrow alleyway with a policeman at either end and one in the middle. He knew from experience that things could go either way now. He might get what he wanted from Grant-Sissons, a confession, resolution of the crimes he was investigating, and perhaps of even more. The truth about his father. Another outcome was conceivable: that the night would end in death, either his own or Grant-Sissons’s. Possibly both.

  But it was too late to back out. That had never been an option.

  He was about to resume his pounding, when a crack of light appeared at one side of the door. The crack widened to reveal the face of a man peering out. It was not the face of Grant-Sissons but there was something familiar about it, a resemblance to someone whom Quinn could not for the moment place. It was the face of a young man who must have been about the age Quinn was when his father died. Perhaps it was a strange way to frame the matter, but after all he had come to see a man who had promised to tell him about his father’s death. And so, it was not so eccentric that his mind should run in this direction. He even wondered if the resemblance he detected was to himself as a younger man.

  The other man said nothing, but stared at Quinn with a distracted hostility.

  ‘I am looking for Grant-Sissons. I am Detective Inspector Quinn of the Special Crimes Department.’

  ‘I am Grant-Sissons.’

  ‘I was looking for an older man.’

  ‘You want my father.’

  ‘Is he here?’

  ‘Yes. But he’s resting.’

  ‘It’s very important.’

  ‘Who did you say it was?’

  ‘Quinn. Inspector Quinn. He will be expecting me, I’m sure.’

  The door was shut in Quinn’s face.

  An enquiry came from Macadam’s end of the passage. ‘Is everything all right, sir?’

  ‘He’s here,’ said Quinn.

  The door began to open once more.

  The workshop was lit by an oil lamp that hung from a hook in the ceiling. It cast a feeble yellow wash over what appeared to be a cave hollowed out inside a mountain of scrap metal and general refuse. Grant-Sissons lay on a camp bed, a coarse, grubby blanket pulled up to his chin, his hands hidden from view beneath it. His bed was like a raft floating on a sea filled with the least buoyant flotsam and jetsam imaginable: rusting cogs, the skeletons of obscure machines, industrial coils of copper wire and other electronic components, a detritus of useless parts and tools. The inventor’s face had a sickly tinge to it that Quinn had not noticed before. He felt instinctively that he was in the presence of a dying man. Perhaps now at last that unusually persistent bitterness made sense.

  With every step, Quinn’s foot either came up against a new obstacle or came down on something that crunched or scraped or buckled under his weight.

  ‘So.’ Grant-Sissons’s voice was weak and worn-out. ‘You have come to find out the truth about your father.’

  ‘I am more concerned, at this present moment, with a current investigation.’

  ‘If this is about that girl, I’ve told you, Waechter is behind it …’

  ‘It is likely that that attack was a hoax. However, another woman has been attacked and killed, and unless you know of a way to bring corpses back to life, I fear that this will not prove to be a hoax.’

  ‘Why do you want to talk to me about this? I know nothing about it.’

  ‘The victim was a film actress of sorts. She had been employed by Visionary Productions. You were seen in Leicester Square outside the theatre which was presenting a
film in which she appeared. You were seen to behave in a manner that may be described as erratic and aggressive, as well as suspicious. The next time I saw you, you were outside the Middlesex Hospital where you had gone to make enquiries about the girl who had apparently been attacked. The incident had obviously made some impression on you. Perhaps it had inspired you to carry out your own attack, only you went further.’

  ‘I told you, I was at the hospital on my own account. As you can see, I am not a well man.’

  ‘Today a bomb was placed outside the office of the Daily Clarion. We are currently pursuing the theory that both the murder of the actress, Dolores Novak, and the bomb outrage were motivated by a desire to damage the interests of the film industry. The proprietor of the Clarion is an investor in Visionary Productions. He also publishes a weekly organ promoting film production and exhibition. The home-made bomb was placed inside a film canister. This seems consistent with our theory, as an embittered perpetrator with a grudge against film people might consider it ironic to use one of the tools of their trade against them. Do you not think?’

  ‘It’s an interesting theory.’

  ‘It would require someone with a certain degree of technical and scientific proficiency to construct, prime and detonate an explosive device, do you not agree?’

  ‘And you think that I am this person? But that is a conclusion of startling ineptitude and stupidity, Inspector. It is a travesty of logical deduction. Do you think I am the only man capable of constructing such a device?’

  ‘Ah, but you are the only one who also has a viable motive, so far as I am aware.’

  ‘And there the whole absurdity of your position is revealed, in that “so far as I am aware”. Surely even you must be able to grasp the possibility that your perpetrator may simply be someone who is not yet known to you? Inspector Quinn, after I saw you outside the hospital, I came here and took to my bed. I have not stirred from it since, except to discharge the necessary functions of my body. My son has been here with me the whole time, tending to my needs.’

  ‘Your son could well have placed the device on your behalf.’

  ‘But he has been here the whole time, I tell you. By all means, ask him.’

  ‘It’s true, my father hasn’t moved from his bed the whole time. And I haven’t set foot outside this … place.’

  From a legal standpoint, a father and son each providing the alibi for the other rather left something to be desired. However, there was something about the bitter, resentful despair in the son’s voice that inclined Quinn to believe he was telling the truth. ‘Someone else may have put it there for you.’

  ‘I’m dying, Inspector Quinn. I have no wish to hurt anyone. My only remaining desire is for my part in the development of the motion picture camera to be acknowledged, and for my son to receive the financial rewards that should have been mine. The only weapons I have ever used in my fight are peaceful ones. I have stood up and spoken out. I have picketed. I have written letters. I have canvassed support. But always, I have been ignored. I am resigned now. I have no energy left to continue the fight. And I am not sure that Malcolm has the will to carry it on after my death. It will all have been for nothing.’

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘I have cancer.’

  Quinn remembered the bandage he had seen on Grant-Sissons’s hand. ‘In your hand?’

  ‘It started there, but it has spread. I was fortunate. I had some weeks of remission. I tried to use that time to make one last protest. And to see you, of course. But the disease is racing through me now. I have seen the end. The horrible end. There is no way to stop it. Do you really think a man in my position would run around planting bombs?’

  ‘Why did you want to see me?’

  ‘I have already told you, I knew your father.’

  ‘How well did you know him?’

  ‘We worked together as business associates. He came to me with an idea for an invention. He hoped to combine the techniques of photography with the properties of X-rays, thereby developing a machine that could capture images of the internal arrangements of the human body, which he believed could be used to facilitate diagnostic practice in medicine.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘We were forced to abandon our work.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘My research assistant became ill. She – my assistant was a young woman – Louisa … Louisa Grant-Sissons. She was my wife. Louisa volunteered to be the subject. She was captivated by the magic of it. By the idea of having the inside of her hand made manifest. Of seeing the delicate interconnections of countless little bones. We took many hundreds – thousands even – of photographs of her right hand, exposing her to radiation over and over again. We now know the harmful effects of such rays, but at the time, no one … no one anywhere knew. We were not the only ignorant fools. Of course, I should never have permitted it. I should have insisted that I was used as the subject. But she was so charmed by the wonder of what we were doing, she begged us to conduct our experiments on her. And we were swayed, both I and your father, for we were both in love with her, you see, and neither of us had it in us to deny her what she wanted. She developed the cancer in the bones and tissues of her right hand, precisely as I have. Only in her case it took hold immediately. Whereas it has lain in wait for me, biding its time over the decades, waiting to find me at my weakest and most disappointed.’ Grant-Sissons fell silent.

  ‘She died? Your wife died, I presume?’

  ‘Louisa had such pretty, delicate hands. The doctors tried to prevent the spread by amputation. First the hand was removed, but the cancer revealed itself in the radius bone. So then her forearm was amputated, all the way up to the elbow. But it was not a success. The cancer was found to have entered the humerus already. They next amputated at the shoulder, though by now without much hope. And so when I say that I have seen the end, I mean it literally. I have seen what fate awaits me. I have declined the proffered amputations.’

  ‘Why has it affected you, if your experiments were conducted on your wife?’

  ‘Your father and I both blamed ourselves for Louisa’s death. His response, we know. There. You have the explanation of his suicide. Your mother thought that he had squandered the family fortune on gambling and God knows what other depravities, but in truth, he had used it to fund our experiments. And to kill Louisa. It was then that I realized how deeply he had been in love with her. I looked back at their dealings with each other, and it became clear to me that they had conducted an affair right under my nose. But I forgave him, because he had loved her. And I forgave her, because – well, had she not suffered enough? Had she not been punished far more severely than her crime warranted? And what crime had she committed, really? She had followed her heart, that was all. I never truly believed that I deserved her, you know. I always thought that our time together was temporary, fortuitous, provisional – and therefore all the more precious. That does not mean that I was ready to give her up. But even though she was unfaithful to me, I remain grateful to her for our time together. I have never loved anyone else. I still love her.’

  Grant-Sissons’s hands stirred under the blanket. The bandaged right hand emerged. ‘And this … I inflicted this on her.’ With his other hand, he worked away at the bandage and began to unwind.

  ‘Father, no.’

  But Grant-Sissons was deaf to his son’s entreaties. ‘To punish myself, for not loving her enough, for allowing her to take part in our work, I exposed my own hand to the same levels of radiation that she had received. It should have been me in the first place, after all.’

  He continued to peel away the bandage, which was now discoloured with the seepages from his wounds. And now the bandage fell away together. A horrible discoloured dressing was revealed, clinging to his flesh. Grant-Sissons winced and teased the dressing away, discarding it on the floor.

  He held up his hand as if it was a trophy, or a prize vegetable in the county fair. In the glimmering of the oil lamp, Quinn could
see a glistening, misshapen mess of raw flesh. The skin was entirely missing. A number of angry, ugly tumours erupted from the surface, moist, suppurating yellowish clumps of mutated cells.

  ‘Look at it! Look at it, Inspector! Do you really believe that I could do what you accuse me of with this hand?’

  The hand in question dropped. Grant-Sissons fell back on to his camp bed and closed his eyes. But he was still conscious, and he had more to say to Quinn. ‘If I were not determined to suffer everything that she suffered, I would ask you one remaining favour, Inspector.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I would ask you to kill me. I know you have a reputation for being somewhat trigger-happy. I might have used your suspicions against me to provoke you to shoot me. But I have decided against that. It is a recourse that is not available to me. It would be an evasion on my part. A terrible act of cowardice and weakness. I must see this through to the end.’

  ‘I would do it, if you wish.’

  ‘I know you would. But I do not wish it. I do not deserve it. I do not deserve release. It would only serve to complicate your investigation, I fear. And I could not lay another death on your conscience. So I will ask you a different favour.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘After I am gone, will you look out for Malcolm? Keep an eye on him, for me. A brotherly eye, I might almost say.’

  ‘What do you mean? What is he to me?’

  But Grant-Sissons’s face was twisted into a sharp grimace. He was lost in his pain. And nothing other than his pain reached him or had any meaning for him.

  Quinn turned to regard the young man whose care Grant-Sissons had apparently entrusted to him. They both seemed aware of the complications of the relationship that existed between them. At the very least, if what Grant-Sissons had said was true, Quinn’s father had been in love with the younger man’s mother. But with that ‘brotherly’, Grant-Sissons seemed to be hinting at even more.

  ‘If you have any compassion in you, you would kill him now, while he sleeps.’

  ‘He asked me not to do it.’

  ‘But what about me? He wasn’t thinking of me. Of what I will have to go through, seeing him suffer the torments of a horrible death.’