by R. N. Morris
‘The surveillance operation didn’t kill Edna.’
‘Can you be sure? What if the murderer got wind that he was being watched?’
Quinn felt the same stab of self-reproach that had pained him earlier. He had set up Edna, or Albertine, to be his source on the inside. The killer, or someone linked to the killer, could conceivably have overheard him talking to her. The conversation had taken place in her room. But it was not unknown for people to listen at doors. He had to accept that there was some truth in what Coddington said.
‘You’re finished, Quinn. Finished. Do you hear?’
‘I see.’ Quinn felt strangely liberated. He realized how physically tired he was after a night divided between the floor and the window. Suddenly all he wanted to do was to go home and sleep. He had felt he was getting somewhere with the case, that a solution was within his grasp. But now he was not so sure. No matter how much he twisted the kaleidoscope of fragments, he could not form them into a pattern that made sense. ‘So you will be taking over the case completely?’
Coddington’s eyes stood out in panic. His moustache was convulsed with twitches. ‘No, no . . . What I mean is, you will be finished. Just as soon as you’ve wrapped things up here.’
Quinn almost found the energy to smile. ‘I see. I’m to solve the case for you, and then I will be dispensed with.’
‘Don’t flatter yourself, Quinn. There’s any number of officers who could solve this case. It’s simply that you’ve been working it from the beginning. It doesn’t make any sense to replace you at this stage.’
‘Not quite from the beginning, sir. You were working it to begin with. I was brought in on the second day.’
‘Just get on with it, Quinn. And no more bloody mistakes, hey?’ Coddington began to turn away.
‘Is that it, sir?’
Coddington faltered and cocked his head expectantly. ‘What?’
‘Don’t you want to know what I’ve discovered, sir? So that you can direct the future progress of the case? That is your job, after all – is it not, sir? You are the officer in charge. I am merely executing your orders. That’s been the case since yesterday morning.’
‘You won’t bring me down with you, Quinn. If that’s what you’re trying to do.’
‘I’m not trying to do that, sir. All I’m trying to do is find out who killed Amélie Dupin and Edna Corbett.’
A vindictive twist of the mouth animated Coddington’s drooping moustache. ‘Got you stumped, has it?’
‘There’s something vital that I’m missing, I will give you that. As yet, I only seem to hold a tangle of loose ends. I can’t quite seem to tie them together.’
‘And you the great detective.’
‘I never claimed to be a great detective. If you remember, sir, you foisted that accolade on me.’ It was perhaps a mistake to remind Coddington of the admiration he once professed towards Quinn.
‘Go on then. Tell me. What marvellous breakthrough have you made?’
Quinn gestured to the gap in the fence. Coddington frowned. His moustache twitched impatiently. ‘And what’s the significance of that, pray?’
‘It means that on Tuesday night, when Blackley said that he was not observed going out through the front of the store, he could easily have slipped out the back unnoticed and gained access to the mannequin house through this aperture. And last night, granted we didn’t see Blackley, or anyone, enter the mannequin house by the front door. He could easily have got in this way.’
‘But if you didn’t see him, it’s immaterial. You have no proof. He could have got in. So could anyone else. You’ll need more than that, Inspector Quinn.’
‘Yes, I know. And I intend to discover more.’
Inchball joined them in the yard, firing the barest, tersest of nods in Quinn’s direction. It was a minimal gesture, but eloquent of so much. ‘Has he told you?’
Quinn looked inquiringly at Coddington.
DCI Coddington shifted in embarrassment. ‘I was just about to.’
Inchball rolled his eyes for Quinn’s benefit. ‘Two things. She was a virgin. Edna. Prendergast has just confirmed it. He asked DCI Coddington to pass on the news.’
Coddington’s moustache gave a defiant jump. ‘There were other important matters to be dealt with first. I would have got round to it.’
But Quinn remembered that Coddington had turned away.
Inchball sniffed noisily in contempt. ‘Second thing: we heard back from the forensic boys.’
Macadam pressed forward eagerly. ‘Good old Charlie. Come up with something, did he?’
Inchball’s face was set in a resentful glower. ‘I don’t know. ’E wouldn’t show me what it said.’ Whenever Inchball was in a temper, his aitches fell by the wayside more than usual.
‘It was not necessary for you to see it. I passed on to you everything that you needed to know.’ Coddington stuck out his moustache self-righteously. ‘The wooden hairpin we recovered from beneath the bed . . . He found traces of silk fibres on it. Red silk, matching the scarf around her neck.’
Quinn nodded to Macadam with satisfaction. ‘Our kaleidoscope, Sergeant. I believe one fragment has just been shaken into place.’ He turned to Coddington. ‘And the key? Did he have anything to say about the key?’
‘Nothing significant there,’ said Coddington, though his eyes avoided Quinn’s. ‘Nothing very remarkable at all. It was just a key. An ordinary key. No hidden trickery.’
‘It would be helpful to see Cale’s report.’
‘I don’t have it on my person, naturally. But you may take it that I have communicated all the salient details.’
‘In that case, I think I can say with some confidence how Amélie Dupin met her death.’ But Quinn felt far from confident; he felt tremulous and queasy. His exhaustion had reached the point that he felt at odds with the solidity of his surroundings. He wanted to sleep so much that it would have been easy to persuade him that he was walking through a dream.
Ascending the Dome
‘If you don’t mind me saying, guv, with respect and all that.’ Inchball’s brow was cross-hatched with lines of concern. ‘You look like shit.’
Quinn gazed distractedly back. There seemed to be something of a lover’s awe in his fascination for his sergeant’s eyes. ‘She wasn’t murdered, after all. The wooden hairpin was a tourniquet. Remember the bruise; the elongated bruise near her jawbone. That was caused by the pressure of the pin as it held the scarf in place. She had twisted it tight herself, giving one last turn that she was unable to undo. Suicide by strangulation is very rare. But it is not impossible. All that’s required is for the victim to create a fatal situation which the organism’s natural instincts for self-preservation are unable to undo. She was weak – half-starved, according Prendergast. She suffered from a debilitating nervous condition. She had used up all her strength to fasten the tourniquet, jamming the pin tight against her jawbone. She had none left to undo it.’
Coddington made a disparaging yelp. ‘Is that it? Is that the great mystery unravelled? She killed herself? Is that the best you can come up with? That’s your answer to the locked door mystery? I must say, I’m disappointed, Inspector. You didn’t even solve it yourself! Doctor Prendergast first raised the possibility in his report. And now the forensics lab has provided you with confirmation. You’ve done nothing.’
Quinn frowned at Coddington, unable to understand his petulance. Coddington’s strange mood was a kind of angry, jealous antagonism, mixed with a sense of vindicated disdain. It wearied and depressed Quinn unspeakably; there was simply no time for it. ‘My job isn’t to come up with a startling solution. It is to examine the evidence and draw the most likely conclusion from that. And besides, the mystery isn’t solved yet, sir. For now there is a greater mystery. Why? Why did she do it? And why this particular method? Is it not a strangely technical means of self-dispatch for a young girl to choose? A tourniquet around the neck? Someone must have put the idea in her head, surely. And if she was aided and ab
etted in her suicide, that makes whoever is responsible for that at the very least an accessory in the commission of a crime. Someone, I believe, put the pin in her hand, as well as the idea in her head. That individual is to all intents and purposes her murderer.’
Coddington shook his head impatiently. ‘Nonsense! You cannot persuade another person to kill themselves against their will.’
‘Perhaps not,’ conceded Quinn. ‘But aren’t we all, from time to time, enticed by the idea of self-annihilation?’ Quinn searched Coddington’s face for a hint of understanding. Perhaps it was the fact that he didn’t find any – not the least trace of human sympathy – that provoked him to go still further. ‘I know I am.’ He made the admission in a husky whisper, his voice in awe of the words it uttered. He cleared his throat, to say more definitely: ‘And certainly, my father was.’
Coddington shook his head despairingly. It seemed that he was beginning to pity Quinn, which was perhaps the surest sign possible that it was all over for him. ‘I hate to ask, but what has your father got to do with this?’
It was a reasonable question, perhaps. Quinn found it difficult to articulate the connections between the case and his own personal history, but he sensed them nonetheless. The dark, groping tentacles of the past were pulling him back down to an unfathomed abyss. As a child he had been terrified by talk of a ‘bottomless pool’ which was rumoured to exist in a scrap of wasteland near his school. He had taken the figure of speech literally, and imagined a body of water extending downwards infinitely. A number of local children had apparently fallen into it over the years, their bodies never recovered. According to the popular account, the police, with their nets and dragging chains, had never been able to plumb the depths of the pool. He had imagined himself diving into it and plummeting down to explore its infinite mystery. He had no doubt that he would encounter the other children who had dared to plunge beneath its surface. Perhaps this was how it claimed its victims, by exercising a fatal fascination over their childish minds? They did not fall in; they threw themselves in willingly.
One summer he set out alone to find the pool. It was perhaps as well for him that he failed. But the idea of it stayed with him over the years. Every time he began a new case, it felt in some way as though he was diving into a similarly bottomless pool, its depths swirling with the pallid bloated corpses that his investigations disturbed. One of those corpses was invariably his father’s.
‘My father killed himself. I think I speak with some authority, then, on the subject of suicide. Most of the time we fight against it. The death-wish. And our friends, our true friends, will strengthen us in that fight. So that the part of our will that wants to live wins out over the part that wants to die. But what if there is a man capable of exploiting and magnifying the negative, self-destructive part of our will? He does not have to be in the room at the time the victim dies to be guilty of causing her death. He could have planted the seed earlier. And if that man, in perpetrating such an event, is executing the wishes – the orders, we might even say – of another individual, are they both not guilty of a conspiracy to murder?’
‘This is all very well,’ said Coddington. ‘But you’ll have a hell of a job proving it.’
‘Another thing, guv.’ Inchball’s tone was surprisingly gentle. He showed himself capable of tact and compassion, as well as the casual brutality for which he was better known. ‘Something that’s botherin’ me. How did the hairpin find itself on the floor under the bed?’ Inchball grimaced regretfully, as if it pained him to point these things out. ‘If she killed herself, the tourniquet should still have been in place when she was found.’
‘We don’t have all the answers, I admit. But we do have a few more questions to put to certain individuals. Blackley, for instance. I want to talk to Mr Blackley one more time. Also, I want you to find that man Yeovil.’
‘Yeovil?’ Coddington’s moustache rippled with distrust.
‘Mr Yeovil is Blackley’s creature. I believe he has certain exceptional talents which he is prepared to put to use unscrupulously on Blackley’s behalf.’
‘What about Blackley’s son, sir?’ wondered Macadam. ‘What do we do with him?’
‘Leave him to sweat a little longer. If we can at least get him to confirm that he saw his father in the mannequin house on Tuesday night that would be something. The main thing is, find Yeovil. That’s what I want you men to do.’
Inchball, Macadam and Quinn nodded once in perfect unison. A moment later DCI Coddington attempted a nod of his own. He evidently felt it somewhat lacking, to judge by the anguished wince that came immediately after.
Coming back through the Menagerie, Quinn caught sight of the older salesman, Kenning. ‘Have you seen Mr Blackley?’
Kenning seemed to have aged since Quinn had last seen him, just two days ago. But that had been at the time of the panic over the false fire alarm. His face had slumped into an expression of permanent defeat, his gaze blank and unfocused. ‘He made me kill her.’
Quinn felt the hammering of his pulse in places where he had never experienced it before. It was a throb inside his right bicep, a ripple through his thigh, a tensing in his throat. ‘What did you say?’
‘He made me kill her,’ repeated Kenning. The man was half in a trance.
‘Who are you talking about? Who made you kill whom?’
‘Blackley.’
‘Mr Blackley made you kill . . . Amélie? Albertine? Which one?’
Kenning frowned in confusion. ‘No. Miranda. He made me kill Miranda. He said it was all her fault.’
Quinn sighed. Then frowned. One aspect of this trivial revelation intrigued him. ‘How do you kill a parrot?’
‘The same way you kill a chicken.’ Kenning made a sharp twisting movement with his hands. ‘You break its neck.’
‘I see.’ Quinn could not say that he was upset by the parrot’s death. However, he wondered facetiously if this would be another fatality counted against him when the reckoning was done. ‘Do you know where he is now?’
But Quinn did not need Kenning to answer. An explosion of angry shouting in Blackley’s distinctive Yorkshire accent had him running through the police cordon back into the Costumes Salon.
Quinn scanned the floor but Blackley was nowhere to be seen. ‘Where is he?’
Monsieur Hugo gestured upwards, a queasy expression on his face.
Quinn looked up to the first-floor gallery. His eye was drawn to a flurry of activity. Blackley was beating one of his staff with a furled umbrella. The man brought his arms up to cover his face and hunched himself over protectively. But otherwise he took his beating without resistance.
The gated lift was decorated ornately in a distinctly French style: all art nouveau cast-iron curlicues and elaborate gilded mouldings. These features did little to mitigate the brutal functionality of the caged shaft. If Quinn hadn’t felt himself once again overwhelmed by exhaustion, he would have taken the stairs. But the lift car was waiting.
As soon as he stepped on board, he regretted it. The lift attendant in a green top hat and tailcoat had something of the manner of a spider welcoming a fly. The car shook precariously under Quinn’s weight. A warning screech echoed ominously as the attendant slammed the latticed gate shut behind him. The exertion caused further tremors. The tang of oiled machinery was the only comfort afforded.
‘Floor?’ The attendant’s haughty demeanour was to be expected. It was his mission to pilot the craft that ferried customers to the various floors of the House of Blackley. His was a noble calling; his skills arcane. It was understandable if he wished to impress his passengers with the importance of his office, and to remind them with a raised eyebrow that their lives were in his hands.
‘First.’
The attendant pursed his lips as if he were a connoisseur of floors; it seemed that his willingness to take Quinn where he wanted to go would depend on whether, in his considered opinion, the floor in question passed muster.
He pressed the appropriate butt
on. A moment later the suspended car juddered into motion with a chthonic rumble.
Quinn felt a mixture of apprehension and impatience; the typical emotions of a lift passenger, perhaps, but they were compounded by a definite sense of impending crisis. Until now, in public at least, Blackley had managed to maintain his act of imperturbable calm. But now he had allowed himself to be witnessed violently assaulting a member of his staff. It was a sign that he was beginning to feel the pressure Quinn had been applying.
That made him unpredictable. And therefore dangerous.
The lift car quaked to a halt. The attendant slid open the latticed gate, fixing Quinn with a regretful look. ‘First floor. Umbrellas, parasols, canopies, tents, pagodas. Walking canes, shooting sticks, sword sticks. Diverse concealed weaponry.’
In response to Quinn’s incredulous stare, the man added: ‘Articles of protection and defence.’
Quinn hurried along the gallery to the umbrella and parasol area. Blackley was no longer there. The man who had endured a beating from him was flexing his back tentatively. The bent wreck of an umbrella lay discarded on the floor. ‘Where is he? Blackley?’ demanded Quinn.
The man’s eyes oscillated nervously, avoiding Quinn’s. ‘H-he’s gone.’
‘I can see that. Why was he beating you?’
‘I think you must be mistaken.’
Quinn picked up the broken umbrella.
‘There was an accident.’
‘Listen, man, I’m a policeman. I can help you. I saw it. He has no right to treat you like that. It was common assault.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Quinn threw the umbrella back on the floor in frustration. ‘Where did he go? Up? Or down?’
The salesman shrugged.
Quinn’s gaze was drawn upwards by the great luminous floating disc of the dome’s stained-glass roof. He was reminded of the visual analogy of the mystery that he had discussed with Macadam: the small coloured panes were arranged in a pattern of multiple symmetry, suggesting the haphazard designs thrown up by shaking and twisting a kaleidoscope. He imagined some unseen giant hand rotating the Grand Dome of Blackley’s so that the countless tesserae of the roof shifted to form new patterns, firing and flaring as they performed their complex choreographies in the sunlight. He willed them towards meaning. Like the patterns in a kaleidoscope, they always seemed to be on the verge of a figurative representation. Yet, however pleasing the patterns were, there was always something elusive about them.
