Smoke and Mirrors (11 page)

He took another sip of tea. Max thought he knew the sort of thing exactly. Bertie Bridges was Alastair’s horrendous gun-toting, bridge-playing friend, a red-faced monster of a man, given to terrifying barks of laughter and to groping maids during meals.

‘There’s always entertainment of some kind,’ Alastair continued. ‘One year there was a fellow who could swallow razor blades. This year there was this magic chappie called The Great Raymondo.’

‘Ah.’ Max began to see the light.

‘He wasn’t much cop, to be honest, but he did a fairly good trick with some golf balls and a glass of port. Afterwards he came over to our table. I complimented his act, just to be friendly, y’know, and he said, “It’s better with a girl. I used to have this gorgeous girl assistant.” And I said – again, just being friendly – “Wish I’d seen her,” or something of the sort. And this fellow Raymondo said, “I’m sure you will see her one day. After all, she’s your granddaughter.”

Bloody Raymondo, thought Max, he could never resist a cheap reveal. Raymondo had worked with Ruby once; he must have ferreted out this story and waited for his moment. Aloud he said, ‘What did you say?’

‘I said, “You mean she’s Max’s daughter?” After all, who else could she be?’

‘First rule of magic,’ said Max. ‘Never ask a question if you don’t already know the answer.’

‘Well, I did know the answer,’ said his father, with some asperity. ‘Or I thought I did. So, is this girl your daughter?’

‘Yes,’ said Max.

‘When were you going to tell me about her?’

Just for a moment, Max felt slightly guilty. He should have told his father. After all, as Raymondo had kindly pointed out, Ruby was his granddaughter. Was it because he couldn’t bear to acknowledge their relationship? He had often thought that Ruby, with her dark eyes and hair, might resemble his mother. Was it just that he couldn’t stand the thought that she also had a genetic link to Alastair, a man who pronounced golf ‘goff’ and talked about ‘ghastly people’?

‘I’m sorry,’ he said at last. ‘I should have told you.’

The apology seemed to blow away the last vestiges of Alastair’s bluster. He sat back in Mrs M’s overstuffed armchair, as if awaiting further revelations.

‘She’s called Ruby,’ said Max. ‘She’s clever, she’s determined and she’s very pretty. She came to work for me as an assistant last year. I had no idea then that she was my daughter.’

‘I suppose you could have any number of illegitimate children scattered around the country,’ said Alastair.

‘It’s possible,’ said Max. ‘Ruby’s mother was a snake charmer called Emerald.’

He thought that his father let out a faint groan.

‘Anyway, Ruby was my assistant for a week, the summer before last, here in Brighton. It’s her ambition to be a magician, by the way.’

This time there was a definite groan.

‘The summer before last,’ said Alastair. ‘Wasn’t that when there was that ghastly case of the girl who’d been chopped into three? Weren’t you involved with that too?’

‘I didn’t do the chopping,’ said Max. ‘But I was involved, yes.’

Alastair put his head in his hands. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I did my best. It was hard after your mother died but I sent you to a good school. Money was no object. They all said you were clever. How . . . how has this happened?’ His sweeping gesture seemed to encompass Max, the boarding house, the illegitimate daughter and a world where women could be chopped into three.

‘I hated that school,’ said Max. ‘As you know very well. And I haven’t done too badly for myself.’

‘Oh, I know you’re
famous
,’ said Alastair, managing to make the word sound somehow disgusting. ‘I know you’re the great Max Mephisto. But you’re my son, you’re my heir, you’ll be Lord Massingham one day. You shouldn’t be wasting your time appearing in end-of-the-pier shows, sawing women in half or whatever you do. You should be at home, managing the estate. You’re forty-one years old. You should be married to some nice girl, not having children with snake charmers. And my granddaughter wants to be a magician too! I despair, I really do.’

And he did sound despairing. Max felt almost sorry for him. His father had aged, he thought. His hands had shaken when he’d poured the tea and his hair was more white than grey. Max was touched, despite himself, that Alastair had got his age right.

‘I’ll introduce you to Ruby,’ he said. ‘You’ll like her, I promise.’

Alastair took out a handkerchief and blew his nose loudly. ‘Have you got a photograph?’ he asked.

Only yesterday Ruby had sent Max a photograph of herself in full showgirl mode. ‘When are you coming to the show?’ she’d written across the picture. Something told Max that this was not the image to show his father. Instead he got a snapshot out of his wallet. It showed Ruby on Brighton pier, laughing as the wind blew back her hair.

Alastair got out a pair of glasses and looked at it intently. ‘Pretty gel,’ he said at last.

‘Yes, very.’

‘Clever too, you said.’

‘Very clever.’

‘She has a look of my mother,’ said Alastair. ‘She was said to be the prettiest girl in five counties.’

From what Max remembered of his paternal grandmother this was hard to believe, but he took the remark in the conciliatory spirit with which it was offered.

‘I’ll bring her to see you,’ he said. ‘Perhaps after Christmas.’

‘I’d like that,’ said Alastair. ‘I’d better be off now. Matthews is waiting outside.’

‘Aren’t you staying to see the show tonight?’ asked Max, not entirely joking.

‘I don’t think so, no,’ said Alastair. ‘My compliments to the lady of the house and thank her for the tea.’

*

Edgar had almost collided with Lord Massingham on the doorstep.

‘He’d found out about Ruby,’ said Max. ‘He wanted a confrontation.’

‘Did he get one?’

‘Not really. He did rant on a bit about how I was wasting my life, having children with snake charmers and the rest of it.’

‘I see you didn’t spare him the detail.’

‘No. I could tell the snake charmer went down well.’

‘Is she the first snake charmer in the Massingham family?’

‘Yes. Most of them have never done an honest day’s work in their lives.’

Joyce brought in some more tea. She hovered, as if unsure whether to stay or not.

‘Thank you,’ said Edgar. ‘And thank you for the other night. I hope you got the flowers.’

‘Oh, were they from you? Lily just said they were from a strange man.’

‘That’s Ed to a T,’ said Max.

‘It’s not the first time I’ve had flowers from a strange man,’ said Joyce. ‘I’ll leave you two to have a chat.’

She was, in some ways, the most tactful woman that Max had ever met.

Edgar looked exhausted. He’d been tramping the streets all day, looking for clues. Max had seen the evening paper: ‘Child killer still at large’. He didn’t think that Edgar and his team had got the slightest idea who had killed Annie Francis and Mark Webster. ‘They’ll kill again,’ Diablo had said yesterday, ‘mark my words.’ Max hoped not, for everyone’s sake. Diablo seemed very upset by this case. Well, everyone in Brighton was upset. There was a pall of fear and unhappiness over the town that all the pantomimes in the world couldn’t dispel. But Diablo was also thinking about that other pantomime murder, all those years ago. How strange that Denton had been there too.

‘Did you hear any more from the great Dame?’ he asked.

‘He sent me a photograph of Betsy, the girl who was killed. Poor little thing, she was all dolled up with ringlets and a ridiculous costume. She can’t have had much of a life. Then she was murdered by a madman at fifteen.’

‘There were a lot of those acts before the war,’ said Max. ‘Little girls all dressed up singing “My Heart Belongs to Daddy”. There was something very strange and disturbing about them.’

‘Ezra Nightingale was certainly a strange and disturbed man.’

‘And there’s no madman on the scene this time?’

‘It doesn’t seem so,’ said Edgar. ‘Some strange characters around but no one with any real motive. Annie, the girl who died, she was interested in the stage. She wrote plays and got her friends to perform them. I keep thinking that the murder is connected to the theatre in some way. You should read some of the things she wrote. Talk about disturbing. I keep thinking that there’s a clue there that I’m missing.’

‘Beware of misdirection,’ said Max. ‘If something looks impossible, that’s because it is.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘The audience thinks that the girl can’t possibly be sawn in two,’ said Max, ‘and they’re right. It’s the magician’s job to try to blur those lines between the possible and impossible. It’s probably a killer’s job too.’

‘ “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth”.’

‘Who said that?’

‘Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes.’

‘There you are. He was a magician, if you like.’

Edgar was back at Freshfield Road. He wished, more than anything, that he was calling to tell the families that he’d make a breakthrough in the case. But, instead, he was sitting in the Francises’ tiny front room, telling them about the autopsy report on their daughter. In a few minutes he would have to go seven doors down and have the same conversation with the Websters.

Sandra and Jim sat close together on the sofa. The twins were at school and the baby was in a playpen in the corner. Outside they could hear the dustcart groaning up the hill. The snow had cleared and service was getting back to normal.

But the Francises’ life was never going to get back to normal. Edgar told them, as simply and as gently as he could, that the coroner had found that death was by manual strangulation. The children’s bodies had probably been stored somewhere warm and dry before being left out on Devil’s Dyke. There were fibres in their hair that looked as if they had come from a blanket. The cold made it hard to tell time of death but it had probably occurred two or three days before the bodies were discovered.

‘Two or three days,’ said Jim. ‘That means on Monday. On the day they went missing.’

‘That’s what we think,’ said Edgar. ‘We think the bodies must have been put there before the snow started on Tuesday night.’

Sandra crossed herself. Her face was greenish-white and she had her arms wrapped round her body as if she were literally trying to hold herself together. Jim, on the other hand, was becoming more belligerent.

‘Have you got any leads? Any clues? Seems to me that you lot are doing nothing. Sandra says you were tramping up and down the street yesterday but you’re no further forward than you were before. What about Sam Gee? Have you spoken to him? They were on their way to his shop, weren’t they?’

‘I have spoken to Mr Gee,’ said Edgar. ‘He says that he didn’t see the children on Monday and we’ve no reason to disbelieve him.’

‘Have you searched his flat? Questioned his wife? You said there were – what was the word – fibres on the children’s bodies. Can’t you find out where they came from?’

‘I have questioned Mr and Mrs Gee,’ said Edgar. ‘I’d need a search warrant to search their house and at the moment I haven’t got the grounds to ask for one. We will try to trace the fibres but they’re very small, almost microscopic.’ He looked at the two faces opposite him, one resigned, one angry. ‘Believe me, Mrs and Mrs Francis, we are doing our best. I’ve got my whole team working on this case, day and night. We’ll find the person who did this, I promise.’

There was a silence, broken only by the baby banging a wooden brick against the bars of his playpen. Eventually Sandra said, ‘The funeral’s tomorrow. At St George’s. We arranged it as soon as we heard from the coroner.’

‘I’d like to come,’ said Edgar, ‘and so would my team. Is that all right with you?’

‘We’d like you to be there,’ said Sandra. ‘Are you a Christian?’

The question took Edgar by surprise. He remembered Brian Baxter saying that the Francises were religious. Sandra had made the sign of the cross too. Was it only Catholics who did that? But St George’s wasn’t a Catholic church. He tried to answer honestly.

‘I was brought up in the Church of England,’ he said. ‘I was confirmed. I certainly believed as a child. But, when the war came, I suppose it made me question everything. My brother died . . . I suppose I’m trying to say that I don’t know. I wish I did.’

To his surprise, Sandra smiled. It was the first time he had seen her smile and it completely transformed her face.

‘If you want to believe,’ she said, ‘that’s half the battle. God will see to the rest.’

‘Sandra believes,’ said Jim. ‘It’s a comfort to her. Me, I’m like you. I can’t see why a God would let these things happen.’

‘Would you do a reading at the funeral?’ asked Sandra. ‘It would mean a lot to us.’

Edgar was touched but he wished they hadn’t asked. He hadn’t read aloud since university and the thought of standing up in church, in front of the bereaved families and all his colleagues, made him feel hot and cold all over.

‘I’d be honoured,’ he said. ‘Thank you for asking me.’

‘I’ve asked Miss Young too,’ said Sandra, ‘Have you met her? She was Annie’s primary-school teacher. She’s a lovely lady, always so kind to Annie.’

‘I have met her, yes.’

He was surprised they’d asked Daphne Young. For some reason he had thought the family might resent the teacher’s interest in their daughter. But it seemed that they too had fallen under Miss Young’s spell. He wondered why neither parent wanted to read at the funeral. Perhaps they just couldn’t face it. He thanked them again for asking him and assured them that he’d see them at the church at noon tomorrow.

‘I’m sorry about your brother,’ said Sandra as she showed him out. ‘What was his name?’

‘Jonathan.’

‘I’ll pray for him.’

‘Thank you,’ said Edgar.

*

‘The Francises are arranging everything,’ said Reg Webster. ‘We don’t really have anything to do with the church.’ He made it sound as if ‘the church’ was a sinister international organisation. Which perhaps it is, thought Edgar.

Reg didn’t sound as if he minded his neighbours taking over. Edgar had not quite worked out the relationship between the families. When he’d first interviewed Edna Webster, he’d thought that she considered her husband superior to Jim Francis, because Jim was a labourer whilst Reg worked for the bus company. But she’d also sounded slightly disparaging about Sandra Francis, who was well spoken and clearly well educated. Both houses were neat and tidy but the Websters possessed ornaments and net curtains, which hinted at a desire for gentility. Maybe it was just that the Websters didn’t have young children who would knock over china Alsatians and miniature cottages inscribed ‘A present from the Lake District’. Perhaps the Websters just weren’t the neighbourly sort. ‘We keep ourselves to ourselves,’ that’s what Edna had said. It could be that this attitude also extended to God.

Edna didn’t seem to have the energy to be disparaging about anybody today. She sat next to her husband, a thin wisp of a woman who seemed to have got thinner and wispier since the news of her son’s death. Edgar had given the Websters the same information from the autopsy but, unlike the Francises, they hadn’t queried anything. They hadn’t told Edgar that he wasn’t doing his job properly. They just stared at him with a kind of dumb resignation that made him feel even worse.

‘Mrs Francis asked me to read at the funeral tomorrow,’ he told them. ‘Is that all right with you?’

Please say it isn’t, he begged them silently. Say that one of you is desperate to do the reading.

‘That’ll be very nice,’ said Edna, as if he had offered to bake a cake for the Mother’s Union Christmas tea party. There was an invitation to this event on the mantelpiece, next to Mark’s photograph. Would Edna still go, now that she wasn’t a mother?

*

Walking back down the hill, Edgar thought about Friday. Ruby had asked him to come to Worthing that day. Would it be unseemly to think of pleasure so soon after such a funeral? He imagined the newspaper report. ‘Heartless policeman DI Edgar Stephens was seen in Worthing with his showgirl girlfriend on the very day that the tragic children were buried.’ But, even as he imagined the headlines, he thought: Showgirl girlfriend?

He still wasn’t sure if Ruby was his girlfriend. But she’d sent him the photograph and she’d asked him to come and see the show. He imagined taking Ruby home to see his mother. Surely even Rose would be won over by Ruby’s beauty and charm? Actually he had a nasty feeling that his mother was immune to beauty and charm. At any rate she would think them unnecessary qualities in a girlfriend, not like respectability and a light hand with pastry. She would consider Ruby somehow ‘flashy’, like Max’s Bentley or the check suits worn by his Uncle Charlie. ‘You’re over thirty now,’ his mother had said on his last visit to Esher. ‘About time you settled down with some nice girl.’

He should go and see his mother. He couldn’t go now, in the middle of a case, but he knew that a visit was long overdue. It had been early autumn went he last went to Esher, a mild day because they’d gone for a walk on Ditton Common and Rose had remembered how he and Jonathan used to cycle there as children. ‘You were always close. You left poor Lucy out sometimes.’ At the time he’d thought that this was a typical Rose remark, wistful but at the same time wounding, but afterwards he had wondered if there was some truth in it. He had been close to his younger brother, who had the sort of sunny personality that was easy to love. Lucy had been altogether more difficult: the middle child, strident and combative. One of the first sounds Edgar could remember was Lucy’s voice raised in protest, declaring that it just wasn’t
fair
. Well, it probably hadn’t been; he could imagine that his parents, neither of them exactly fans of female emancipation, might have expected Lucy to do more than her fair share of household chores. She had probably been helping their mother wash up while he daydreamed over his Latin. Even so, Lucy had done well at school, passing her exams with honours and going on to do a secretarial course, which had eventually led to a job as a doctor’s receptionist and marriage to a GP. But Edgar had studied Modern Greats at Oxford.

He must go and see his mother at Christmas. The thought made his heart sink but he knew that it was his duty. And besides, what was the alternative? Sitting alone in Brighton with a bottle of whisky dreaming about Ruby? Lucy, Rupert and the boys would probably be at his mother’s too and he’d make a special effort with them. He liked his three nephews, George, Edward and baby David, but he couldn’t remember ever doing anything fun with them. He must try to be a jolly uncle, like Uncle Charlie had been to him, and not a miserable figure in the corner always moaning about work.

Without knowing it, he was back at the station. He had made his decision. He was going to see Ruby on Friday. The funeral was at noon; he’d work all afternoon and then set off to Worthing at five. It would give him something to look forward to at any rate. He was already dreading the service.

*

Friday was an appropriately overcast day, cold and grey with flakes of snow in the air. More snow was forecast and Edgar just prayed that it held off until he got to Worthing. Then he could be snowed in with Ruby. He worked all morning, putting off the moment when he had to set off for the church. Emma and Bob left at eleven-fifteen. ‘We’ll save you a seat,’ said Emma, looking anxious. It was twenty to twelve by the time that Edgar left Bartholomew Square. Outside he saw Frank Hodges getting into his chauffeur-driven car. He didn’t offer Edgar a lift.

Edgar walked as fast as he could, his old army pace. It was further than he thought. He saw the tower of St George’s from a long way off; it was a curiously Italianate affair, out of place against the December sky. Inside it was exotic too, dark and candlelit, with lots of gilt and statues of the saints. Sandra Francis, who was a regular worshipper here, must be quite High Church. Edgar thought of her crossing herself, of her offering to pray for Jonathan. Well, he hoped that her faith was comforting her now.

There were two solid-looking rows of policemen, most of them in uniform. Emma was sitting at the end of the second row. She moved up for him. ‘Cutting it a bit fine, sir.’ Frank Hodges, who was in the row in front, didn’t look round but Edgar saw his moustache twitch.

The church was packed and the atmosphere sombre yet somehow expectant, almost like the moments before a wedding when you crane around to see a glimpse of the bride’s white dress in the porch. But when the music started, and the vicar began to walk slowly up the aisle, intoning, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life,’ Edgar thought that it was as far from a wedding as anything he had experienced. A pall of complete and utter grief fell upon the church. The two small coffins, each bearing a wreath of white roses; the families following behind; the stifled sobbing in the congregation: it all seemed combined to test the human heart beyond bearing.

Sandra Francis, all in black, looked pale and dignified. Jim followed, looking surprisingly impressive in a dark suit. The Websters walked behind, smaller and less striking, Edna in a grey coat with a dipping hem, Reg in a greenish-black suit. The children were there too. Edgar could see Betty’s red head in the front row beside her grandparents. The Websters, of course, had no other children.

The vicar, an effete-looking man in a snowy cassock, made some general remarks about life, death and resurrection and then it was Edgar’s turn. He walked up to the pulpit, hearing his shoes echoing on the stone floor. He tried not to look at the congregation as he found his place in the open Bible but he did see Max and Diablo sitting in one of the back pews and was touched that they had come.

The reading was from the gospel of St Luke. People bring their children to Jesus to be blessed and the disciples protest. But Jesus says, ‘Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.’ Reading those words ‘suffer little children’ in this place and with the two small coffins in front of him seemed, to Edgar, a new and exquisite torture. He read too quickly, hardly daring to look up, conscious of his voice dying away at the end of each line.

When he had sat down, Daphne Young made her way to the front of the church for the second reading. Edgar had noted that there were quite a few teachers present – including the three heads, Patricia Paxton, Martin Hammond and Duncan Pettigrew – but Daphne hadn’t been sitting with them. It was if she had materialised from the candles and the incense. She walked slowly, not looking to left or right, poised and elegant in a tight-fitting black velvet suit with her Titian hair piled up on top of her head. She scanned the congregation coolly before starting to read and, as soon as she opened her mouth, Edgar realised that she put him to shame. Her voice was low but clear enough to reach to the gilded ceiling. She spoke as if the words had just been revealed to her in a cloud of holy smoke. This reading was from John, the raising of Lazarus. Edgar wondered who had chosen it. It seemed tactless, somehow, to tell the story about Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead when nothing on earth or in heaven was ever going to bring Annie and Mark to life again. Lazarus is sick but Jesus takes His time coming to visit. When He arrives, Mary and Martha (Edgar had forgotten that they were in this story) tell him that their brother is dead. ‘If you had been here,’ says Mary, in what Edgar can’t help but hear as an accusing tone, ‘our brother would not have died.’ Jesus answers: ‘I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die.’ Then Jesus goes to the tomb, asks for the stone to be rolled away and calls, ‘Lazarus, come out.’ The dead man appears, still in his grave-clothes. Lazarus is recalled to life.