Hall of Mirrors

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘I will never smoke that stuff again,’ he promised aloud. He dug an Aztec bar from his pocket and devoured it as the rain tipped down his neck.

  The street lamps in Crowshott village glowed brightly, but there was no one about. The shops were shuttered and the only house light was the one illuminating the swinging sign above the Goat & Compasses. Bryant paused beneath it, bashed the rain from his hat and entered.

  He half expected everyone to stop talking. A pair of old farmers were hunched over the great fireplace, where several partridges now hung inside the chimney breast. Two younger men in waistcoats and gumboots were playing darts. A glamorously painted woman sat at the bar nursing a large gin. The barman was, as always, slowly cleaning a glass. A clock ticked as if marking off the end of life.

  ‘I need to make a call.’ He dug into his jacket for his PCU card and showed it to the barman.

  ‘This is an entry ticket for Walthamstow Greyhound Stadium,’ said the barman, handing it back to him.

  ‘Oh. Sorry. Here.’ He found his PCU identification and held it high, uncomfortably aware that it did not look as official as a CID badge.

  The barman carried on wiping his glass. ‘There’s a pay phone down the road.’

  ‘What’s that, then?’ Bryant pointed at the heavy black Bakelite phone lurking in the shadows of the bar counter.

  ‘We had it disconnected. The line is crossed with old Mrs Trubshaw up the road. Try placing a bet and all you hear is her, on about her bowels. Best to stick to the phone box. It’s always the same when the army’s playing silly buggers. Operation Britannia, my arse. A right bunch of layabouts. Half of them are hiding in the bushes smoking that there dope. The brave ones all died in the war.’

  Bryant had had quite enough of the devious ways of country folk. ‘Oh for God’s sake,’ he snapped. ‘Let me at that damned phone or I’ll have you closed down for breaking the licensing laws and running a bar that smells of disinfectant block and cow manure.’

  The barman grudgingly unlocked the counter flap and raised it in silence. Bryant rang Gladys Forthright at Bow Street.

  ‘Arthur, I’ve been trying to reach you for hours,’ she began. ‘The line to the hall is down. Is everything all right?’

  He turned away from the barman. ‘The power’s gone out and all the cars have been sabotaged. Someone in the house means to stop Monty from testifying.’

  ‘The forensics team won’t get to you until tomorrow morning. There’s a lot of localized flooding and more rain on the way. Do you want me to check with the Kent Electricity Board?’

  ‘I’m certain someone’s cut the cables. None of the other houses in the area are affected. There have been attacks on other guests. No one’s panicked yet but it’s only a matter of time.’

  ‘Couldn’t you bring Hatton-Jones back to town?’

  ‘Even if we could get the tyres patched, someone has taken all the car keys.’ He waited, listening. Gladys knew him too well. He could almost hear her thinking it through.

  ‘If you bring him back, you won’t be able to solve the case yourself.’

  The barman was watching him with interest. He moved as far away from the counter as the cord would allow. ‘It’s more than that, Gladys. I can’t trust the local squad. If it’s left to them, Donald Burke’s killer may never be found.’

  ‘Arthur, you’re not following procedure. You don’t have enough seniority to get away with it. You could wreck the case against Chamberlain.’

  ‘You think I don’t know that?’ said Bryant, upset. ‘Our only chance is to end this before the Canterbury team moves in. If we can do that—’

  ‘But how? This isn’t what you’re good at. God, I’ve worked with you long enough to know that you need your books, your history, your – I don’t know how you do it, but it isn’t by conducting interviews. It’s why you never went into the Met, isn’t it? You couldn’t do what they do.’

  That was the trouble with Gladys, he decided, she was far too smart to be stuck at the pay level of sergeant. ‘Did you get anything else on Burke?’

  ‘Just background. He was born in 1905 and married his wife in St John’s Wood in 1936, when she was just seventeen.’

  ‘So she’s what, fifty now? And he was sixty-four.’

  ‘Some years ago he collapsed from overwork and was ordered to rest. I couldn’t find anything about it in the press, so you’ll have to ask his wife. A journalist I spoke to said that when he recovered he was less friendly, distant, not one of the lads any more, only interested in making money. Still, he was certainly good at that. He made a killing on the stock market. His investors said it was as if he could read the future.’

  ‘They call it an intimation of mortality, Gladys. It sharpens the mind no end. When did the press start putting around rumours that he was seeing Vanessa Harrow?’

  ‘Six months ago, but there’s no evidence that they were ever together, just gossip. He paid for her flat but they were never seen in public, no matter what the press tried to insinuate.’

  ‘Was this out of respect for the wife, do you think?’ Bryant wondered. ‘Why didn’t he get a divorce?’

  ‘Perhaps she wouldn’t grant him one. Where does Hatton-Jones fit in?’

  ‘He indirectly introduced Vanessa to Burke. She needed a job and he gave her the number of Burke’s lawyer, Toby Stafford.’

  ‘Why did he do that?’

  ‘The Mayfair nightclub is in Stafford’s name. She got the job and Monty lost the girl, if indeed he ever really had her. So there could have been bad blood between Monty and Donald, except that Monty needed him. None of it provides an explanation for Burke’s death.’

  ‘What about physical evidence?’ asked Gladys. ‘There must be something.’

  ‘Some inconclusive boot prints and a piece of sawn-through wood. It’s unlikely we’ll get dabs from the barn. All we have is a bag of chemically degraded flesh and some unreliable witness statements. We’re not in control of the situation.’

  ‘It sounds like all you can do is keep Monty safe until help arrives.’

  ‘Yes and no. I’ve an inkling – something somebody said to me. A strange parallel …’ His attention began to drift.

  ‘Sorry, Mr Bryant, I’m not with you.’

  ‘Gladys, I have to go.’

  Bryant rang off and bought himself a pint of murky Kentish ale. ‘How far is Knotsworth from here?’ he asked the blonde woman sitting alone at the bar. She was a few years older than him and wore a long black woollen coat, but he could see that the lining was crimson silk, rather racy for the sticks. She was voluptuous in the best sense, rounded and full. Years later Bryant found it impossible to recall her without describing good red wines. As she crossed her legs he realized she was wearing high heels.

  She turned her glass in her hand. ‘About four miles. Too far to walk at this time of night. There are hardly any street lights. Why, are you staying at the Red Lion?’

  ‘I need to visit someone there.’

  ‘Leaving it rather late, aren’t you? You’re in the wilds of Kent, darling. We keep farmers’ hours around here.’

  ‘But you don’t.’

  ‘I don’t have to get up and let the pigs out at dawn, thank God.’ She turned to him with a bangled hand outstretched. ‘I’m Celeste. I’m going that way. There’s a back route over higher ground. I can give you a lift.’

  ‘You’ve been drinking.’

  ‘Darling, the most that can happen around here is that I’ll run over a rabbit.’

  ‘Then I accept your offer,’ said Bryant.

  Celeste picked up her keys from the bar counter and led the way to her car, ignoring the sarcastic remarks from the two young men playing darts.

  ‘You’re not from around here, are you?’ she said, casting a glance at him.

  ‘Bethnal Green originally.’

  ‘I’m guessing that’s somewhere in London.’ Her Mini Cooper sat beneath a solitary street lamp. As she unlocked the door he saw that it was bright yellow and
had gaudy daisies and sunflowers painted on the roof. ‘What’s a nice boy like you doing in a dreary place like this?’

  ‘I’m staying at Tavistock Hall.’ Bryant gratefully climbed inside.

  ‘Lucky you. One of his lordship’s weekend parties? Up at the crack of ten to feast on devilled kidneys before heading off to slaughter something avian?’

  ‘His lordship is a vegetarian.’

  ‘I hear they’re all mad up there. It’s quite the talk of the village.’ She untangled her coat and threw it on to the back seat. She was wearing a low-cut blue cocktail dress.

  ‘I didn’t mean to spoil your evening.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He indicated the dress and shoes.

  ‘Oh, I wasn’t going anywhere else. A woman has to feel attractive occasionally. Otherwise I’ll follow this lot into wellingtons and knitted hats. All the women around here walk like farmers. But of course they gossip like fishwives.’

  ‘And do you believe the gossip?’

  ‘Darling, it’s mostly ancient history.’ She crunched the gears and they lurched away. Bryant reached over and turned on the headlights for her.

  ‘What do they say about Tavistock Hall?’

  ‘That the old lord was put in an asylum and the son is a drug addict who believes in free love. He talked his mother into selling the house to some reclusive millionaire.’

  Not entirely inaccurate, he decided. ‘Anything else I should know?’

  ‘The Crowshott locals are convinced they’re going to lose their tenancies. They were going to go up to the hall last week and confront his lordship, but they bottled out. They’re old Tories, easily outraged. They love disparaging members of what my father used to call the Upper Ten Thousand, but you should see how quickly they turn back into peasants and doff their caps when the horses go by. During the war the National Union of Fascists had an office in Crowshott – no surprise there.’

  ‘You’re a mine of information, Celeste.’

  ‘Have you met Edie Markham? She owns the village dairy. She adores Harry and Beatrice, although I can’t imagine they’ve ever spoken to her. The furthest Edie has ever travelled is to Canterbury on a day out. She thinks London is a spiritual sewer. She saw a shocking play on telly and promptly offered her services to Mary Whitehouse. No wonder her husband is drunk all the time. She thinks I’m a harlot because I go to the pub by myself, but why shouldn’t I? My husband is no longer with us.’

  ‘I’m sorry, did he die?’

  ‘He moved to Cardiff, which amounts to the same thing. I’m a forty-year-old divorcée, so I’m not quite past it. How old are you?’

  ‘How old do you think?’

  ‘Forty?’

  Bryant shot her a horrified look. ‘Certainly not, madam.’

  ‘I guess London ages you.’ The car bounced over a rabbit. ‘Got one,’ she laughed. ‘Light me a fag, would you? They’re in the glove compartment. Speaking of local history, do you know about the legend of the Crowshott Beast?’

  ‘I heard it was a monstrous creature that guards the hall.’

  ‘Well, there are a lot of different stories. The most common one is that it’s a Grym.’ The Mini’s headlights illuminated the canopy of trees, so that they appeared to be racing through a green tunnel. ‘It’s a sort of cross between a huge wolf and a wild pig. In the Welsh Marches it’s known as the Jack o’ Kent, but there’s many who think it originated here. The story goes that once it was an ordinary man who was tricked into helping the Devil build a bridge somewhere near Crowshott. After the stonework was finished, Satan said he would take the first living soul that crossed the bridge. Jack threw a bone across the bridge and his dog chased after the bone, forcing Satan to take the dog instead. He had been cheated, so in revenge he turned Jack into a creature that roams the fields at midnight. It roars twice as a warning, but if you hear it a third time you know it’s right behind you, about to attack.’

  ‘You do realize you’re talking to someone who has never even seen a hedgehog?’ Bryant peered out into the darkness. ‘I can’t sleep here. It’s too dark and it sounds weird at night.’

  ‘What do you mean, weird?’

  ‘I keep hearing things in bushes.’

  ‘You really are a city boy.’ She laughed. ‘Someone should have warned you. Kent is full of gruesome shades. Dead Man’s Island lies opposite the Isle of Sheppey. It was used as a burial ground for convicts who died in floating prison hulks. You can still see coffins and bones sticking out of the mud. It’s no wonder people believe in hauntings around here.’

  ‘Look, I’m jumpy enough as it is,’ said Bryant. ‘We have a murderer in the house.’ The moment the words were out he realized he had said too much. It was to be a defining feature of Bryant’s entire working life, his inability to keep his mouth shut. ‘You can’t tell anyone,’ he added, making matters worse.

  ‘What do you mean, a murderer? My God, you are a policeman, aren’t you?’ Celeste’s eyes were already large but widened further. ‘I knew it as soon as I saw the size of your feet.’

  ‘A detective, actually. I’m going to Knotsworth to conduct an interview.’

  ‘A murder investigation, eh? It won’t be the first one at the hall.’

  ‘Yes, I heard about the servant girl.’

  ‘No, they say old Lady Banks-Marion killed her husband, didn’t you know? Slowly poisoned him with weedkiller until he went mad. No case was ever brought against her. I pay no mind to it myself. So who’s been murdered? Not Lord Banks-Marion?’

  Common sense finally kicked in. ‘I’m not able to say anything else,’ Bryant replied.

  ‘I thought not. I suppose you know there are secret passages all over the house, dating back to the time of the Reformation?’

  ‘That’s not possible,’ said Bryant. ‘It was built more recently than that. Secret passages, a phantom beast – I feel like I’m in a Sherlock Holmes story.’

  ‘That’s because living in Kent is very much like being in the late nineteenth century. And of course it was full of writers producing dark tales. Woolf at Sissinghurst and Charleston, Dickens in Broadstairs, Chaucer and Marlowe and Conrad and Peake. It’s changing now, though. Even the hop pickers don’t come here like they used to. Soon the Garden of England will have vanished for ever, buried under little brick boxes.’ She slid the car into the forecourt of the Red Lion, spraying gravel, then pulled up the handbrake and turned to him. ‘Here you are. How are you going to get back?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Celeste removed the keys and handed them over. ‘Why don’t you borrow the car? You can return it tomorrow. I only live around the corner. Everybody knows me. I don’t mind helping the police with their inquiries. Do you have any idea how boring it gets here?’ She gave him a mischievous smile. ‘Besides, it’ll give me an excuse to say hello to you again.’

  Was that what I think it was? Bryant thought, entering the pub with a silly smile on his face. Wonders will never cease.

  The luxuriantly moustached landlord of the Red Lion wasn’t used to out-of-towners turning up after 10 p.m., especially ones wearing belts made of string, and looked at him as if he was a burglar.

  ‘Could you get Mr Stafford on the dog and bone for me?’ Bryant asked. ‘The phone,’ he added, remembering where he was.

  ‘I’m not allowed to give out information about our guests,’ the landlord replied.

  ‘I’m sure it wouldn’t breach the Official Secrets Act if you looked in your guest book and simply let me know if he’s staying here.’

  The landlord peered down his long nose and perused the pages. ‘We do appear to have a guest under the name of Mr Stafford.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Bryant headed for the staircase.

  ‘Wait, you can’t go up there!’ shouted the landlord, but Bryant had already taken the stairs.

  34

  * * *

  I CAN’T EXPLAIN

  ‘It’s no use, I need some fresh air,’ said Pamela Claxon, rising. When she
opened one of the doors to the patio the candles in the library blew out, and Lupin was once more plunged into darkness.

  ‘Alberman, can you keep those lit?’ asked May. ‘Can everyone call out their name please? Lady Banks-Marion?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Lord Banks-Marion?’

  ‘Here, unfortunately.’

  Trevor Patethric?’

  No reply.

  ‘Reverend?’

  ‘I haven’t seen him for a while,’ said Lady Banks-Marion.

  ‘Where could he have gone?’

  ‘Home, I imagine,’ she suggested. ‘He’s got his bicycle, and said something about needing to prepare for tomorrow’s sermon.’

  May decided to deal with the problem in due course.

  ‘Miss Harrow.’

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘Mrs Burke?’

  ‘Here.’

  He could see Pamela Claxon outside, smoking. ‘Slade Wilson?’

  ‘Present.’

  ‘Monty?’

  There was no answer.

  ‘He said his shoulder was hurting a few minutes ago,’ said Norma Burke wearily. ‘He wanted to get some tablets.’

  ‘Lady Banks-Marion, may I bring the groundsman in to keep an eye on everyone while I check on Monty?’ May asked.

  ‘We do not allow the ground staff in the house,’ the matriarch firmly reminded him.

  ‘But surely under the circumstances?’

  She sighed deeply. ‘Very well, just this once.’

  May went to the window and called Fruity Metcalf in from his post in the garden. ‘Can you keep watch here for a few minutes?’ he asked.

  Metcalf looked down at the herringbone patio and hesitated. Anyone would have thought that he’d been asked to cross the River Styx.

  ‘Just stay on watch until I get back, can you?’

  ‘I’d be happier in the hall,’ Metcalf called. ‘I have muddy boots.’ He might be a civilian now, but the military manner was clearly never far from the surface.

  ‘Very well. Stay outside the front door. But don’t leave. Did you see the vicar?’