Smoke and Mirrors (5 page)

He had planned to avoid supper with the other pros. They were a mixed bag at Mrs M’s this year. Thank God there was no one else from the pantomime but the line-up included Wee Bobbie McPherson, who played the accordion, Walter Von Krum, a German ex-POW who had a strong-man act, a singer called Eloise Hanley (‘The Croydon Nightingale’) and a double act called Tommy and Thomas, two elderly men who shared a double room. They were all involved in a variety show at the Hippodrome. Nothing Max had seen or heard so far had made him keen to see the show.

As he walked up Upper Rock Gardens, he prayed that the dining room would be empty and his prayers were answered. The room was empty and the table clear. From upstairs came the plaintive strains of Wee Bobbie practising his accordion.

Mrs M came out of the kitchen. She wasn’t wearing her usual apron and, in fact, looked rather smart in a black dress and glittery earrings.

‘You’re late, Mr M. Don’t worry, I’ve kept something warm for you.’

‘That’s very kind, Mrs M. Are you going out?’

Was it the light or did she blush?

‘No. I just got dressed up for a Townswomen’s Guild lunch today.’

‘Sounds a wild occasion.’

‘You wouldn’t believe it if I told you. Sit down and make yourself comfortable.’

And it was comfortable in the dining room. The curtains were drawn across the bay window and the only light came from the standard lamp and a flickering gas fire. Mrs M brought him a sherry and he sat in front of the fire listening to the gas popping and thinking about Edgar and Ruby and whether Annette would ever do the disappearing trick properly. Mrs M brought his supper on a tray and sat opposite him while he ate, regaling him with stories about the townswomen and the idiocies of her past husband. It was very pleasant, even if Mrs M was blowing smoke over his food.

When he’d finished eating, Joyce produced a bottle of brandy.

‘I keep it locked away. You know what pros are like.’

‘Only too well.’

She leant forward to fill his glass. ‘So, how’s the panto going, Mr M?’

‘Well, it’s going, Mrs M, that’s all that can be said for it.’

‘I’m coming on the first night. I can’t wait to see your tricks.’

Was it his imagination or was there a speculative gleam in her eye? It was hard to tell through all the cigarette smoke.

‘It’s a family show, Mrs M.’ He risked a raised eyebrow.

‘What a pity.’ There was no doubt about it now. She blew smoke into the air and eyed him coolly. She wasn’t bad-looking. A bit brassy and overly made-up but her figure was good and he liked the way that she seemed to be calling the shots. She was older than his usual girls – probably his own age, in fact – but he liked that too. It might mean that there wouldn’t be any tears or demands or declarations of love. On the other hand, ‘never sleep with the landlady’ is one of the first rules of the touring life. Upstairs, Wee Bobbie embarked on ‘The Rose of Tralee’.

Joyce was still looking at him. Slightly amused now, red lips parted. ‘Should I be scared?’ she asked.

‘Of what?’

‘Of you. They say you can make women disappear.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘You shouldn’t believe everything that you hear about me.’

‘Well, that’s a relief, I must say.’

He was just on the verge of making a move (a kiss on the hand would probably do it) when there was a sound outside. Footsteps. They looked at each other, more alarmed than they should have been. The house opened straight onto the road and callers weren’t unexpected at a guest house, after all. But something about the snow and the firelight had made them feel isolated, as if they were alone in the world. Max reached for his cigarettes and Joyce stood up, smoothing down her skirt. She was at the door almost before they heard the knock.

Max heard voices in the hall and then Joyce saying, ‘Someone for you, Mr M.’

It was Edgar or, at least, Edgar’s ghost. A tall figure in a long dark coat, black eyes in a white face, mouth twisted in a parody of a smile.

‘Thought I’d just drop in.’

‘Sit down, you look like hell.’

They sat at the table. Mrs M tactfully withdrew, saying that she was putting the kettle on. Max thought that the situation probably called for more than tea.

‘Have some brandy. I’ll get her another bottle tomorrow.’

‘Thanks.’

Edgar drained the glass in one gulp. Max poured some more. Edgar held the glass up to the light, squinting slightly.

‘Good stuff.’

‘Yes. She normally keeps it locked away.’

Edgar looked at Max as if seeing him for the first time. ‘Have you heard? About the children?’

‘Yes. I was at the station at lunchtime.’ He didn’t remind Edgar about their missed appointment.

‘I saw them, Max. I saw them lying in the snow.’

Max said nothing. He didn’t think that he could say anything that would help. He’d seen death in the war – they both had – but those had been soldiers, men who had marched out knowing that they might die. Nothing like this.

‘I had to tell their parents,’ said Edgar.

‘God. Don’t they have special people to do that sort of thing?’

‘I thought it was my duty.’ Edgar gave a hollow laugh. ‘After all, I hadn’t done anything else for them.’

‘Jesus, Ed. It wasn’t your fault. You tried your best to find them.’

‘But my best wasn’t good enough, was it? Mrs Webster, the boy’s mother, she just fell to the floor screaming. She really thought that we’d find them alive.’

‘But you didn’t.’

Edgar rubbed his eyes. His hands were shaking but Max thought that it was tiredness rather than alcohol. ‘No,’ he said. ‘As soon as they went missing, I knew. I knew that we were dealing with a murderer.’

Again, thought Max. But he didn’t think it would be a good idea to mention the last time that they’d hunted a killer together.

But it seemed that Edgar’s thoughts were moving in a similar direction. ‘I want your help, Max.’

‘
My
help?’

‘Yes. The way the bodies were found, there was something theatrical . . .’ He took another gulp of brandy. ‘When we cleared the ground, there were sweets . . .’

‘Sweets?’

‘Yes, a trail of sweets leading to the bodies. And the bodies were meant to be found. They were just in a shallow ditch. If it hadn’t been for the snow, they would have been found almost immediately.’

‘You say there was a trail of sweets?’

‘Yes. Brighton rock. Humbugs. That sort of thing. A whole line of them leading to the ditch where the bodies were.’

‘What the hell did that mean?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Edgar. ‘But it’s a clue.’ He looked owlishly at Max. ‘And you’re good with clues. Smoke and mirrors. Sleight of hand. Mis . . . misdirection. Isn’t that what you’re best at?’

He had started to sound slightly belligerent.

‘Of course I’ll help you,’ said Max. ‘But I think you should try to sleep now. You can stay the night here. Mrs M will make you up a bed.’

‘Sleep!’ Edgar almost shouted the word. ‘I’ll never sleep again.’

But by the time that Joyce came back in with the tea, Edgar’s head was on the table, his brandy dripping gently onto the carpet.

Max woke with a headache and the feeling of impending gloom that he associated with first nights in difficult venues. He looked around the room, gradually noting his surroundings: sloping ceiling, sash windows, Brighton,
Aladdin
, Joyce Markham, Edgar, dead children. He groaned and sat up. He hadn’t pulled the curtains and the light was blue and cold, which meant that the snow was still there. Max pulled on his dressing gown and went to the window. The gardens and pavements were still white but he could see cars moving along the coast road. There would be no reason for the show not to open tomorrow. He sighed and set off on the arctic expedition to the bathroom.

Coming downstairs half an hour later, he found Edgar sitting at the dining-room table staring into a cup of coffee.

‘How do you feel?’

‘As bad as I look.’

‘I’ve got some Fernet Branca upstairs.’

‘I don’t think I could keep it down. I woke up on a sofa. Couldn’t remember how I got there.’

‘You passed out at the table. I got you onto the sofa with some help from Mrs M.’

‘She’s been very kind. She’s making me some breakfast. Says it will help.’

‘Well, she’s had a lot of experience in this sort of thing.’

Edgar flushed. ‘I wasn’t that drunk. It was just not sleeping for twenty-four hours and . . . well, everything else.’

‘I promise you, what you saw was enough to make anyone pass out.’

‘Well, today the real work begins.’

Max noted that this last statement seemed to energise Edgar. He sat up straighter and took a thoughtful sip of coffee. He wondered again at his friend’s resilience. Last night he had seemed broken, traumatised by the horror and sadness of the case. But now, with the task of finding the killer before him, he seemed to be gaining strength by the second. Even the appearance of a huge fried breakfast didn’t unduly disturb him.

‘Got to keep your strength up,’ said Joyce.

‘Thanks very much,’ said Edgar. ‘You’re very kind.’

Joyce placed black coffee in front of Max. ‘You ought to have some breakfast too, Mr M.’

‘Thank you, Mrs M, but you know I never eat in the mornings.’

When the landlady had left, Edgar set to with a will. Max averted his eyes. ‘Are you working today?’ Edgar asked, cutting into black pudding.

Max winced slightly at the word. Edgar would be tracking a murderer; he would be dressing up in a green gown and shooting firecrackers from his sleeves.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s the dress rehearsal. We open tomorrow. Saturday.’

‘Is it Friday today? I’ve lost count.’

‘I’m not surprised. You’re welcome to a comp but I’m sure it’s the last thing you feel like.’

‘Is Ruby coming to see it?’

It was the first time that Edgar had mentioned her and he managed it well enough, thought Max. Just a slight hesitation before the name and the suggestion of a blush. Tells, they were called in the business.

‘I sent her a ticket,’ he said. ‘She’s only in Worthing. She’s in the panto there. If you can call it that. Back row of the chorus in
Cinderella
.’

‘I know. I’m going to see her show next week.’

This time there was a definite hesitation. Edgar was clearly worried about Max’s reaction. Max tried to keep his face completely blank. ‘I hope you enjoy it,’ he said.

‘I’m not sure I can enjoy anything any more,’ said Edgar.

*

‘This is now a murder investigation,’ Edgar told the team. ‘We’ve got to put aside all feelings of sadness and regret and concentrate on finding the person who killed Annie and Mark. We owe it to their parents and we owe it to the community. Because, if I’m sure of one thing, it’s that this person will strike again. They’ll be feeling clever, they’ll be thinking that they’ve outwitted us, they’ll want to try again. Well, we’ve got to stop them.’

He looked at the faces in front of him. Emma had cried yesterday when she’d seen the photographs of the dead children but now she was utterly calm, notepad open on her lap. Bob, who had turned away and punched the wall, was now registering only professionalism and determination, his boyish face a picture of concentration. Edgar felt proud of them all.

‘The crime scene has been thoroughly searched,’ he said. ‘Carter thinks that the children were strangled and then laid in the ditch. It’s probable that they weren’t killed at the site so we’re looking for anyone seen with a car near Devil’s Dyke on Monday evening or Tuesday. The cold has made it difficult to ascertain time of death but we’re pretty sure that the bodies were put in the ditch before the snow started to fall on Tuesday night. The positioning of the bodies, almost in the open near the footpath, makes it seem as if the killer wanted them to be found quickly. It was the snow that scuppered that plan. And these were found at the scene.’ He upended a plastic bag onto the table. Chairs scraped back as people leant forward. Emma was scribbling furiously.

‘It’s a selection of sweets,’ said Edgar. ‘They were placed along the path as if they were leading to the children. Some sweets, like this stick of Brighton rock, were actually thrown into the grave with them.’

Bob was the first to say it. ‘Does this point to the sweetshop owner, Sam Gee?’

‘We’ll compare the sweets to the selection sold in Mr Gee’s shop,’ said Edgar, ‘but we have to be careful about concentrating on any one suspect at this early stage. We have to keep an open mind.’

‘If anyone bought that lot,’ said Bob, ‘it would be a year’s worth of rations.’ Bob had a sweet tooth – Edgar had noticed this before – and often talked about the halcyon day when sugar rationing would be over.

Emma pushed the hair back from her face. ‘It’s a bit like “Hansel and Gretel”, isn’t it? Didn’t they lay a trail through the forest? And they were imprisoned in a house made from sweets.’

There was a murmur in the room. Edgar said quickly, ‘Excellent observation, Sergeant Holmes, but let’s keep it to ourselves. The last thing we want is for the press to call this the “Hansel and Gretel murder”.’

‘I was just wondering about Annie’s play,’ said Emma. ‘
The Stolen Children
. There was something in it that reminded me of “Hansel and Gretel”.’

‘The bit about the Witch Man keeping them until they were fat enough to eat,’ said Bob. ‘I remember that too.’

‘It’s worth checking,’ said Edgar. ‘Let’s speak to her parents and her teachers. Emma, you go to Annie and Mark’s schools. Bob, you come with me to talk to Mr Gee.’

Frank Hodges had been standing in the background, watching Edgar critically. Now he came forward to examine the photographs. ‘Hansel and Gretel,’ he said. ‘More like Babes in the Wood. Poor little sods.’

*

Max was met at his dressing-room door by Roger Dunkley.

‘Bad news,’ said the director.

Max opened the door. ‘Surprise me.’

‘We’ve found Dick Felsing pissed out of his head on a park bench. He’s hit the bottle in a big way. There’s no way he can go on tomorrow.’

‘Has he got an understudy?’

‘For the Emperor of Peking? Do me a favour. The management doesn’t run to understudies. But I’ve had an idea.’

This struck Max as even worse news. He shrugged off his coat and took out his cigarette case.

‘Want one?’

‘Thanks.’

‘What about the fire regulations?’

‘Bugger the fire regulations.’

Max inhaled deeply. ‘Well, what’s your idea?’

‘Stan Parks. Isn’t he a friend of yours? I heard he was living in Hastings. Anyway, I tracked him down. He’s staying with a theatrical landlady called Queenie. I rang him last night and offered him the part. He jumped at it. Said he couldn’t wait to see you again.’

Stan Parks. The Great Diablo. Max didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

*

Annie and Mark attended adjoining grammar schools in Hove. Today both schools flew the Union flag at half mast but, as Emma entered the girls’ school, she was comforted by the unmistakable signs of life going on: girls giggling in the corridors, posters advertising the Christmas carol concert, lists of hockey and netball teams. She was sure that some of the people in the building would be mourning Annie but it also felt right that most of them were carrying on as usual. Maybe there would be a memorial to Annie, a cup named in her honour, but then she would be forgotten. In some brutal way it made sense.

The hallway – polished oak, scuffed skirting boards, imposing staircase with notices saying ‘Keep Right’ – reminded Emma of her own school. She had been to Roedean, something she kept very quiet from her colleagues. She remembered Bob making some comment once about the school, which towered above the cliffs at Black Rock, saying that it was ‘a prison for posh girls’. Emma was a posh girl (‘Nothing but the best for my princess,’ her father had said whilst signing the cheques) but she didn’t see that it was her fault exactly. Besides, when she thought about school, she didn’t think about the fortress on the cliffs but of the wonderful few years when the school had been evacuated to Keswick and she had experienced the country childhood that she had previously only read about in books. At Keswick, she had ridden, rowed and skated on frozen lakes. She had a furtive romance with a village boy called Ernie. Recently she had read an interview with Nancy Mitford in which the author had described the war years as ‘heaven’. Miss Mitford had received a lot of criticism for this but Emma thought that she knew the feeling. Certainly going back to Roedean for her last few years of schooling had been dull and depressing. Maybe that was why, despite achieving excellent academic results, she had been determined not to go to university, which she saw as a bigger, grimmer Roedean, but to go out in the Real World. Well, this was the Real World, if you like, a place where children could be murdered and their bodies left out in the snow. Emma squared her shoulders and set out in search of the headmistress’s office.

The headmistress, a surprisingly young woman called Patricia Paxton, shook Emma’s hand and agreed that it was a very sad day.

‘She was an extraordinary girl, Sergeant Holmes. Exceptionally bright, especially considering that she came from a home where . . . well, maybe academic achievement wasn’t automatically expected.’

Emma thought of Annie’s home, of the bedroom shared with her siblings, of her attempts to find somewhere ‘tidy’ to do her homework. She said, ‘Annie was in the second year, wasn’t she?’

‘Yes, she was one of the oldest in the year, thirteen in October. That was one reason why she was made form captain.’

‘Had she settled in well here? Made friends?’

Emma had half expected to hear that clever, working-class Annie had struggled to fit in at the grammar school but Mrs Paxton smiled warmly. ‘She was very popular. A natural leader. Always surrounded by friends.’ She took a lace handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed her eyes. ‘There are going to be a lot of very sad girls here today and for many days afterwards. The teachers too. She was a pleasure to teach.’

‘She was good at English, wasn’t she? We know about the plays she wrote.’

Mrs Paxton gave Emma a sharp look, as if suspecting her of asking a trick question. ‘Plays? I’ve never heard of any plays. Annie was an all-rounder but she excelled at maths and science. She talked about becoming a doctor . . .’ She brought out the handkerchief again.

‘Do you do any drama here?’

Miss Paxton drew herself up. ‘Indeed we do. We put on
Twelfth Night
last year.’

Emma’s mind boggled slightly at the thought of
Twelfth Night
with an all-girl cast. Her school had put on
The Tempest
and that was bad enough (Emma had played Gonzalo).

‘And we had some drama workshops only a few weeks ago,’ Miss Paxton went on. ‘I didn’t notice Annie being particularly interested, though she took part, of course.’

‘What did you know about Mark Webster?’ asked Emma. ‘Did you ever see them together?’

Now Mrs Paxton looked properly horrified. ‘We never have anything to do with the
boys
. It’s a completely separate school. And I certainly never saw Annie with a boy. It’s strictly forbidden by the school rules. Girls must not fraternise in any way.’

Emma’s school had had a similar rule but she seemed to remember that fraternisation had gone on anyway. She smiled placatingly. ‘Thank you very much, Mrs Paxton. I won’t take up any more of your time. I know this must be a very difficult day for you.’

‘It’s a terrible day,’ agreed the headmistress. ‘But life must go on.’

Yes, life must go on, thought Emma, as she followed Mrs Paxton’s upright figure through the panelled corridors and somehow, seeing the red-blazered schoolgirls scuttling past, casting awed looks at their headmistress, Mrs Paxton’s cliché began to sound like an exhortation. These girls could be in danger from Annie’s killer. It was up to Emma to make sure that life went on.

*

The girls’ and the boys’ schools had adjoining playing fields. There were signs saying ‘Girls must NOT walk across the field’ but it was quicker than going back round by the road so Emma took the path around the edge of the pitch, noting the point at which hockey turned into rugby. There was still snow on the ground but both schools had teams running about, being yelled at by teachers in sheepskin coats. The hockey players and rugby players studiously ignored each other but Emma wondered if it was always like this. It would have been easy enough for Mark and Annie to meet at the Rubicon, maybe even to pass notes. She must remember to ask Annie’s friends when she interviewed them.

Mark’s headmaster, Dr Martin Hammond, was an older, drier character than Mrs Paxton but he, too, had nothing but praise for his pupil.

‘A model student. Well behaved, diligent, full of promise. Dear me . . .’ He took off his glasses and wiped them. ‘To say that now . . .’

Dr Hammond didn’t need to say what he meant. Mark’s promise would never be realised. He would never leave this school with academic honours, just as Annie would never become a doctor. The headmaster stared bleakly ahead of him while Emma asked about Mark’s school career.

‘A solid citizen. A little quiet in lessons, some of the masters said, but always hard-working and well prepared. And, as I say, his written work was of an excellent standard. He was shaping up to be quite a decent little batsman too.’