by R. N. Morris
Despite the fact that she had not turned to look at him, in fact, perhaps because of that reticence on her part, Quinn felt that she was the only friend he had in the room. A part of him still feared the awakening of her emotional interest in him. He knew from that glimpse of her eyes the depth of feeling of which she was capable. It was simply not something that he could afford to encourage.
And yet, as he took his seat, he found he craved a glance from her. He sensed her nervous fidgeting and sought to ease it with a reassuring smile. Her cheeks seemed to have slackened perceptibly in the few days since he had last looked closely at her face. Her mouth sagged weakly. But her eyes shone with that same lustrous colour that he remembered, an almost mercurial luminosity.
Mrs Ibbott ladled mock turtle soup from a tureen. It was white china, decorated with the same blue pattern that was on the bowls and plates. ‘This dinner service came from Blackley’s,’ she was saying. ‘As did the table we’re eating off . . . And the chairs you’re sitting on . . .’ With each bowl of soup she handed out, she enumerated another item bought from Blackley’s. ‘The rug in the front parlour . . . The wallpaper in the hall . . . The armchairs in the back parlour . . .’
‘The antimacassars?’ enquired Mr Appleby as he took his bowl.
Miss Ibbott stifled a snigger.
Mr Timberley gave a warning shake of his head, in all likelihood as satirical as Appleby’s original question had been.
Mrs Ibbott paused to give the question the serious consideration she believed it merited. ‘Yes, I do believe so. The antimacassars. And all our doilies . . . I always get my doilies from Blackley’s.’ She continued ladling. ‘And the curtains . . . Most of the lampshades in the house are Blackley’s.’ Her tone became almost indignant here, as if she believed that this alone should have acted as a restraint on the crowds. ‘Really, I don’t know what the world is coming to!’
This provoked an outburst from a retired army colonel called Berwick. ‘Where were the police? They should have come down on them like a ton of bricks. Round up the ringleaders and hang them. Thrash the rest. That’s how we dealt with riots in my day. Country’s gone to the dogs.’ But it was not clear that Colonel Berwick knew which country he was in.
Quinn sensed a meek flicker of concern from Miss Dillard. For a long time he had believed that no one in the house knew what he did for a living. He certainly had never told anyone. But recently he had realized that his occupation was an open secret. Miss Dillard’s sensitivity on his behalf suggested that she was in on it.
‘I blame Blackley and his ilk,’ said Mr Finch, a lean and rather austere school teacher with a copious beard and socialist leanings. ‘He’s spent his whole life whipping up a frenzy of consumerism. He can hardly complain if he now falls victim to it. He has created a Frankenstein’s monster.’
‘Has he really?’ said Mr Timberley. ‘I would very much like one of those. Which department is it sold in, I wonder? Freakish Experimental Creatures? Or Allegories of Human Arrogance?’
It was Mr Appleby’s turn to shake his head. He added something in Latin – or at least Quinn presumed that was the language. The two young men had a habit of communicating asides to one another in Latin.
The other diners concentrated on their soup, the furious clink of spoons registering their irritation. There was silence as the bowls were taken away by Betsy, the maid.
‘If you had been there, you wouldn’t make jokes about it.’ Quinn looked at no one as he made the remark, his voice a barely audible murmur. He saw Miss Dillard’s hand dart out towards his arm, only to be retracted at the last moment.
Betsy began to bring out the main course, liver and bacon with mashed potatoes.
‘Were you there, Mr Quinn? You speak as if you were,’ said Mrs Ibbott.
‘Are you investigating the murder?’ wondered Mr Timberley.
‘That poor girl!’ cried Miss Dillard.
‘An extremely interesting case, Quinn,’ continued Timberley. ‘I envy you.’
‘I have not said that I am on the case.’ He had not said that he was a policeman. The mashed potato was both watery and lumpy in his mouth.
‘Oh, but you don’t need to. One only has to look at you. Ashen-faced.’ Timberley waved a fork in Quinn’s direction. ‘Shock, that is. That’s the face of a man who’s just seen his murder investigation turn into a public catastrophe. What do you think, Mr Quinn? Would I make a consulting detective? Perhaps you would like to make use of my services?’
‘Perhaps Mr Quinn has had some bad news of his own – of a personal nature,’ suggested Miss Dillard. ‘Into which it is not our business to enquire,’ she added quickly.
Quinn remembered Miss Latterly’s last words to him. I can’t ever, ever love you! He chewed a piece of liver. The texture was dry. It became almost impossible to swallow.
‘Of course, my expertise is not in simian behaviour,’ continued Timberley. ‘I have no experience in that area other than a long acquaintance with Mr Appleby. However, in all modesty I would venture to suggest that a scientifically trained mind such as my own could be of use to the police.’
Quinn gulped down the liver with a mouthful of water. A rubbery sinew had lodged in the gap between an upper canine and incisor. ‘Are you serious?’
‘I believe I am,’ said Timberley, his eyes popping slightly as if this realization came as a surprise to him. He gave a high nervous laugh that struck Quinn as feverish.
‘And what of Mr Appleby? Will he be your partner in crime-solving? The Doctor Watson, perhaps, to your Sherlock Holmes?’ Quinn felt a stab of shame, remembering that Blackley had made almost precisely the same joke at his expense.
‘I’m more the Moriarty of the piece,’ said Appleby, twirling a non-existent moustache.
Timberley’s hilarity in reaction to his friend’s quip was strangely overdone. A fit of silent sniggers shook his body. Tears began to trickle from his eyes. His face flushed an unhealthy purple. A sudden explosion of noise from him seemed to leave him gasping for life more than laughing. He slumped in his seat, banging the table so hard that all their plates jumped, provoking the mildest of reprimands from Mrs Ibbott. ‘Mr Timberley!’
‘Timberley, you idiot,’ said Appleby, but his smirk betrayed his pleasure.
‘It wasn’t that funny,’ remarked Miss Ibbott, who at times could be the severest of critics.
But Timberley had gone past the point of registering amusement. His emotions seemed genuinely beyond his control. The tears of laughter were now simply tears. His chair toppled over as he rushed from the room.
‘What’s the matter with him?’ asked Mr Finch bluntly.
‘Highly strung,’ said Colonel Berwick.
Quinn didn’t question the instinct that made him turn to his right, towards Miss Dillard. He wanted to see her eyes, to understand through them what she had made of the scene. And therefore, what he ought to make of it himself.
‘Poor boy,’ she said, and her eyes reinforced the sincerity of her compassion. He knew immediately from her reaction that there was something difficult and serious going on with Timberley. He remembered a time recently when he had crossed the young man on the stairs and thought he had been crying. He had put it down to a decline in his fortunes with Miss Ibbott, or a quarrel with his friend, Appleby. He now saw – or rather Miss Dillard enabled him to see – that there was more to it than that. Whatever had disturbed Mr Timberley was more savage and more destructive than simple unhappiness.
It was only afterwards that it struck him as odd: that she was the one he turned to. And that the act of turning had felt as natural as that of breathing.
That night, he dreamt of the House of Blackley. To be more accurate, he dreamt of Mr Blackley. At first he didn’t recognize the great man of commerce, who was dressed in the red and white costume of Father Christmas, complete with a large white false beard. He was dispensing gifts to children. The children waited their turn in a long queue with unnatural patience. They were disturbingly impassive,
faces without any expression of excitement or joy, bodies listless and enervated.
Although he was not a child, Quinn found himself standing in line waiting for his gift.
The line moved forward with infinite slowness. Quinn saw that the Father Christmas figure, as yet unrecognized, was handing out tiny automata in the shape of animals. The toys were extremely lifelike in their rendering and the movement of their parts. In fact, they did not seem like toys at all, but miniature versions of living creatures. He realized too that the animals were limited to the larger species of pachyderms – that is to say, elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses. Every now and then – presumably for a child who had been especially good – Father Christmas would produce a tiny woolly mammoth from his sack.
Quinn began to feel extremely anxious that Father Christmas would run out of pachyderm dolls before he reached the front of the line. There were children behind him now, waiting just as patiently, and silently, as those ahead of him. Quinn was the only one showing signs of agitation, which were exacerbated by the growing awareness that he needed to urinate. What if he had to rush off to the lavatory and by the time he came back Father Christmas had finished giving out the toys?
His sense of urgency rapidly grew into panic. He felt a kind of repugnance at the mute impassivity of the children. He realized, with a sudden dawning horror, that they were dead. He was terrified of looking down at himself, in case he saw that he, too, was a child. If that were the case, he would have to accept that he was dead also.
For some reason, his dreaming mind decided that the only way out of this situation was for him to shout: ‘The animals are escaping!’
The dead children began to scream and run about. Quinn knew that he was secretly pleased by their new-found liveliness. He felt that it justified his cry of false alarm. He had brought them back to life. Surely that entitled him to move to the front of the queue?
It was only now that he recognized the man in the Father Christmas costume as Benjamin Blackley. Now, too, that he saw the pool of red liquid at Blackley’s feet, and realized that the red colour of Blackley’s costume was due to it being drenched in blood.
Blackley’s hand reached into the writhing sack of automata. His eyes were fixed on Quinn’s. It was at this precise moment that Quinn became aware that he was in a dream, a dream from which he desperately wanted to wake. But at the same time his fascination at what Blackley would produce from the sack held him. He had the premonition of an even greater horror than any that the dream had presented to him so far.
Blackley’s hand came up slowly. Until the moment it emerged from the sack, Quinn had no idea what it would be holding, though somehow he knew it would not be a miniature pachyderm.
All horror fell away. Quinn felt a wave of joy wash over him. He felt at peace, redeemed.
There, balanced on Blackley’s blood-soaked forearm, its head nestled into the crook of his elbow, was a perfect living baby, kicking its legs and clenching for life with its tiny fists.
Quinn was weeping as he woke from the dream.
A New Broom
Inchball and Macadam looked up apprehensively from their desks. Relief swept over their faces at the sight of Quinn. He was not sure who they were expecting. Situated in a cramped attic in a forgotten part of New Scotland Yard, the Special Crimes Department received few casual visitors and no passing trade.
Then it struck Quinn. The last time he had seen his two sergeants was after the debacle at Blackley’s but before his meeting with Sir Edward. They had fully expected him to be suspended from duty.
Quinn shook the rain off his herringbone Ulster and hung it on the coat stand just inside the door, placing his bowler on the longer hook above. He negotiated his way along the highest part of the room, the only area where he was able to stand upright, to approach the one full-length wall. It was blank now. The photographs from their last case had been pulled down and filed away. But some haunting vestige of their presence remained; a projection of his memory. Unlike the monochrome images that had in reality been fixed there, his mind supplied the colours of the crimes, the blood, the naked flesh and what lay beneath that flesh, the glistening secrets of the dissecting table.
The only way he could block these images out was to begin to cover the wall with new evidence. Old crimes obliterated with new. ‘So, what do we have?’
‘Are we carrying on with the case?’ asked Macadam.
‘Of course. What happened at Blackley’s store had nothing to do with our investigation.’
‘It was on our watch,’ said Inchball flatly. ‘That’s how it works. Don’t matter if it ain’ your fault; if it happens on your watch, you carry the can.’
‘Sir Edward doesn’t operate like that.’
‘So that’s it? We’re in the clear?’
‘Not quite. He’s bringing in another officer.’
‘Over us?’
‘Over me. So, yes, therefore over all of us.’
‘A new Head of Special Crimes?’ said Macadam. His voice trembled. ‘Who?’
‘I don’t know. We’ll find out this morning.’
‘But if he accepts you ain’ done nothin’ wrong, why shaft you like this?’ wondered Inchball.
‘I hardly think of it as being shafted,’ said Quinn. ‘In fact, I’m grateful. Ever since this department was set up I have been lobbying Sir Edward for more men. Today, finally, I have my wish.’
Inchball eyed him sceptically.
‘In the meantime, I suggest we carry on as normal. That is to say, we review the evidence we have discovered so far. Inchball, how did you get on with Spiggott’s friend, Davies?’
But before Inchball could answer, they heard the approach of steel-capped footsteps. The door opened to reveal a familiar figure in a herringbone Ulster, his mouth hidden by a drooping moustache.
‘DCI Coddington?’ said Quinn. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I . . . well . . . the truth is, Quinn . . .’ Coddington had the decency to appear abashed, but only for a moment. He drew himself up and met Quinn’s incredulity with a defiant gaze. ‘I’m your new commanding officer.’
‘You? But . . .’ Quinn cast his mind back to Sir Edward’s first briefing on the case. The commissioner had been frankly derisive of the local CID’s conduct so far. Was it really possible that he had now placed the man responsible for that farce over him?
There could only be one explanation. The choice of Coddington for the job was Sir Edward’s way of ensuring that Quinn would retain effective control of the department. Quinn tried to suppress a smile.
Coddington took a few strides forward, possessing the room. The cramped attic could barely accommodate three men at the best of times, but with this new addition, Quinn felt the walls closing in on him. The swoop of the angled ceiling was like a guillotine blade. He almost ducked away from it.
‘Sir Edward called me himself this morning and told me to make my way directly over here.’ Coddington’s tone was complacent, as if all this was perfectly natural. ‘I have just come from his office now. He asked me to give you this.’
The envelope bore Quinn’s name. The letter inside was typewritten. So, she had seen his humiliation, had played her part in drafting it.
He scanned the lines, hunting for confirmation of his theory about Coddington’s appointment. He found some comfort. ‘I see that it is to be a temporary secondment. For the duration of the case.’
Coddington waved this aside. ‘What happens to the department afterwards will be reviewed at a later date.’ It seemed that as far as he was concerned, this allowed the possibility of his command being made permanent. Quinn could find nothing to corroborate that in Sir Edward’s letter. ‘It all depends on how the case turns out,’ continued Coddington. ‘If we are successful in bringing the killer to justice, then all well and good.’
‘And if we’re not?’ demanded Inchball.
‘This morning, in his meeting with me, Sir Edward raised the possibility of closing the department down.’
‘He can’t do that!’ cried Inchball.
‘Oh, you men needn’t worry,’ said Coddington to the two sergeants. ‘You will be absorbed back into the Met – the regular Met, I mean. You’ll be found posts at some station or other.’
‘What about Inspector Quinn?’ Macadam bridled defensively.
‘Sir Edward didn’t go into all the details.’ Coddington’s answer was ominously vague; he avoided looking at Quinn when he gave it. ‘None of that matters now. And none of it should be allowed to distract us from the task in hand, which is to track down Amélie’s murderer. That is our first priority.’
Quinn was not sure he liked the new tone of authority that Coddington was adopting. He seemed to have no awareness that he had been brought in as a straw man. Or, at the very worst, that he was being used as a stick to beat Quinn, in punishment for past misdemeanours.
‘Of course,’ continued Coddington, ‘Sir Edward was also explicit in his instructions to me that for the case to be considered successfully resolved we must ensure that no one else dies. And that includes whoever we finally apprehend for the crime. We must endeavour to bring him in alive. This time.’
‘And what if the killer strikes again?’ asked Quinn.
‘What makes you think he will?’
‘It has been known to happen. In my last case . . .’
‘If I were you, Inspector Quinn,’ DCI Coddington cut in sharply. There was a new steeliness to his tone; the esteem, or rather fawning admiration, that he had displayed towards Quinn the previous day was gone entirely. ‘I wouldn’t be so quick to bring up your last case. Sir Edward held it up to me as precisely the kind of disaster we must avoid.’ Coddington even allowed himself a vindictive smirk, or at least that’s what Quinn assumed the strange writhing of his moustache to be.
So that’s how it is, thought Quinn.
‘Clearly it is vital that we apprehend the killer before he has a chance to strike again.’ Coddington took off his Ulster and hung it over Quinn’s almost identical garment, before finding a hook for his own bowler.
