The Dark Palace--Murder and mystery in London, 1914 (23 page)

The hand that was not hidden behind his back delved into the inside of his jacket. After a moment of struggling, Grant-Sissons waved a set of greasy, well-thumbed papers in front of Quinn's nose.

Quinn couldn't help raising an objection. ‘Why did you send him your plans? Wasn't he … a rival?'

Grant-Sissons withdrew the documents, without giving Quinn a chance to read them, and one-handedly replaced them with as much difficulty as he had taken them out. ‘Some ideas are greater than petty rivalry. I was hoping for his financial support. I thought he would recognize me as a fellow inventor. I thought he would realize the potential of my ideas and fund my business. Oh, he saw the potential all right.'

‘Forgive me for saying so, Mr Grant-Sissons, but it seems to me that you were a little naive.'

Grant-Sissons seemed to take offence at this. And a moment later proved that he did at least have the instinct for revenge. ‘Shall I tell you why your father took his own life?' There was a sadistic edge to his voice.

Quinn had been on the verge of taking the man in as a suspect. But he was deterred by the prospect of discovering at last the information that had for so long tormented him. Furthermore, he had to accept that without the girl, there was little to charge anyone with. ‘I am in the middle of conducting an investigation.'

‘It won't take a moment.'

‘Tell me where I can find you. When I am ready, I will come to you.'

Again, his one visible hand probed his coat, on the other side this time, his left hand bending back into the left breast. It was evidently too difficult for him to achieve this manipulation. His right hand involuntarily came round to help. Quinn saw that it was bandaged. With both hands, Grant-Sissons was able to fish out a card. He withdrew the bandaged hand from sight immediately. ‘This is my workshop. I am often there. When I am not … elsewhere.'

Quinn declined the offered card. ‘What happened to your hand?'

‘It is an old injury. In fact, a skin condition for which I must seek regular treatment. I have just had it dressed at the hospital. So you see, I did not come here with the intention of looking for your girl. It is simply a coincidence that I happened to be here.'

Quinn endeavoured to communicate his deep mistrust of coincidences through some complex fluctuations of his brows. At last he deigned to take the card. It bore an address in Clerkenwell:
3, St John's Passage.

‘I
will
be in touch.' Quinn heard the reassuring insistence in his own voice, as if it were more important to Grant-Sissons to tell him what he knew than to Quinn to hear it.

‘You cannot bear it, can you? You cannot bear the truth.'

‘I must find the girl,' said Quinn. But even to his own ears it sounded like an excuse.

S
cudder was trapped inside the darkness. He couldn't move at all. The darkness struck him against the snout whenever he tried to spring out of it. And when he scratched his paw against the darkness, it was hard. Not like the darkness through which he was used to scampering, navigating with his twitching nose across the trade routes of scents. In this darkness, his feet tapped and scraped without him getting anywhere. And the only scent was that of his own fear.

All he could do was open his jaws and let the fear and the rage snap and whine in the tensioned sinews of his throat.

He turned and twisted in the tiny black corner of darkness. There had to be a way out. There was always a way out. If you pushed with your snout or scratched with your paw, whatever was in front of you would eventually yield.

But there was no yielding in this darkness. This darkness held him in its jaws. This darkness held his howls too, and the smell of his fear. And the smell of his fear made him more afraid.

There were moments when the darkness rattled and seemed about to fall apart. But then the darkness boomed terrifyingly. He cowered down and back, away from the heavy pounding on the top of the darkness.

All he could do was scratch and snarl and whine. But the darkness was not touched by anything he did. The darkness held him.

The darkness filled and echoed with his whining. His whining wrapped itself around him. His whining pierced his ears. His hairs stood up and a shiver took hold of him. His shiver set the darkness rattling.

Then the deafening
boom-boom-boom
sent him cowering into the corner of the hard darkness.

‘S
o … what do we know?' Quinn straightened tentatively. He was standing in the highest part of the attic-room headquarters of the Special Crimes Department. He knew that he should have been able to reach his full height here without cracking his head, but, even so, a habit of caution cramped his movements.

Inchball yawned and blinked. His eyes were red with exhaustion. Even the soft reflected glow from the blank wall that faced the skylight seemed to be too much for him. He held his hands in front of his face, rubbed vigorously into his aching sockets, then glared, a bewildered, ravaged wreck of a man. ‘We know where Hartmann lives. I followed him after that shindig to an address in Forest 'Ill.'

‘Forest Hill?'

‘Yeah, Forest bloody 'Ill. I will need you to sign off the taxi fare, guv. Four shillings and sixpence.'

‘Of course.'

‘I waited outside the 'ouse all bleedin' nigh' and then followed him back into town this morning. Fortunately, he took the train and I was not obliged to splash out on another bleedin' taxi. I would have been in a pickle otherwise, I can tell you. I can also tell you that he did
not
return to Cecil Court. He took the train to London Bridge, and from there he proceeded on foot – my poor achin' legs! – across the river to an address in the City. On St Swithin's Lane, to be precise. You want the number, do ya?' Inchball sighed monumentally. He then tried each of his pockets in turn until at last he found his notebook. His bemused expression seemed to suggest that he had been unaware of the very existence of that particular pocket until that moment. He leafed through the pages. ‘A 'undred and nineteen, St Swithin's Lane. A number of businesses is located at this address.' Inchball read from his notebook. ‘Palgrave 'Oldings. Jacobs and Jacobson, Solicitors.' Inchball paused as if he was going to make a comment but thought better of it and continued reading the list. ‘Imperial Trading Consortium. London Nitrate Company. The Colonial Financing Corporation. The Panamanian Investment Syndicate – parenthesis London, close parenthesis. The England and Continental Finance Bank. That's it.'

‘And which of these offices did he enter?'

Inchball rolled his eyes at Quinn's question. ‘Do me a favour, guv! Ain't it enough I got all this for you? I 'ad 'a be careful, you know. Din' want him to see me. I couldn' afford to go breathin' down 'is neck or nuffin'. By the time I got through the front door, 'e was nowhere to be seen.'

‘Of course, Inchball. I understand. This is excellent.'

‘The way I see it, he either went into one of the offices on the ground floor, which would be the Panamanian Investment Syndicate – parenthesis London, close parenthesis – or the England and Continental Finance Bank. Or, 'e went into the office what was on the second floor, that is to say, the London Nitrate Company.'

‘How do you figure that out?' asked Macadam.

‘I 'eard the lift come to a halt above. I took the stairs and found it on the second floor. Where this London Nitrate Company is.'

‘It is more likely that he had business with the Finance Bank on the ground floor,' suggested Quinn. ‘I imagine that the Panamanian Investment Syndicate …'

‘Parenthesis London, close parenthesis,' added Inchball.

‘I would imagine that they are concerned largely in raising investments for Panama specifically, and perhaps for Central and South America more widely. It is possible that Hartmann has business interests there. But if his film production business is legitimate, as it seems to be – he has after all produced at least one film that I saw with my own eyes – then he will need to raise finance from time to time.'

‘We can't assume that any of these set-ups is legitimate, guv,' objected Inchball. ‘Any one of 'em could be a cover for his nefarious activities.'

Quinn remembered his conversation with Lord Dunwich the night before. The peer had been at pains to impress upon Quinn Hartmann's bona fides. He had also let slip that he had business interests in common with the German. It was likely these interests went back a long way. Perhaps some of these interests were tied up in one of the companies on St Swithin's Lane.

Quinn sensed his sergeants watching him expectantly, like pupils awaiting instructions from their teacher. They would have to wait. There was a tangle here and Quinn set himself to tease it apart.

Dunwich had tried to steer them away from the barbershop. Perhaps this was out of loyalty to his friend Hartmann, whom he perhaps knew to be connected to Dortmunder. Dunwich's robust defence of Hartmann last night could be put down to a self-protective reflex. If Dunwich was in hock to Hartmann, or his associates, that made him vulnerable, not to say suspect. He would naturally wish to divert attention away from an object that had the potential to blow up in his own face. Not only that, the connection meant that Dunwich would be a tool that the German could employ when he needed to. Quinn had a sense of Herr Hartmann as a very patient individual indeed. He suddenly remembered the sinister package that Lord Dunwich had been sent. ‘Did anything come for me from Lord Dunwich?'

Macadam shook his head. Inchball had actually dozed off.

‘Oh, there was one thing came for you.' Macadam handed over an envelope. Quinn noticed immediately that his name and the address were written in green ink.

Quinn took out a mimeograph of about two hundred names arranged in several columns on a single sheet of paper. Some of the names were marked with a green
x.

Also enclosed was a brief note on stationery headed ‘Visionary Productions', handwritten and signed in the same green ink by Hartmann.

My Dear Inspector Quinn,

Please find enclosed the list of guests invited to last evening's gala screening of ‘The Eyes of the Beholder'. I have marked the names of those who also attended the party afterwards, approximately 50 in number. I sincerely hope that this is of some use to you in your endeavours to apprehend the vicious attacker of that poor girl.

Your servant,

Oskar Hartmann

Quinn glanced down the columns of names, until he found his own. Then he handed the sheet back to Macadam.

‘I want you to go through that and check the names against the files.'

‘Each and every name, sir?'

‘You may overlook mine.'

‘And may I ask, sir? Are we to switch our surveillance operation to this new address of Inchball's? Perhaps deploy the kinematographic camera again? It would have to be in a different van, sir, as Hartmann has seen the baker's. If we could catch Dortmunder on film coming to this address it would clinch it. What possible business could a German barber have with one of these companies?'

Quinn nodded thoughtfully, without committing himself. ‘An interesting idea. First, however, I would like you to do some background checks on the companies. See if you can find out the names of the directors. Then you can cross-check them with the list of names from Hartmann. Oh, and did you have a chance to follow up on the girl for me?'

‘The telephone is just one of the many boons of modern technology that have revolutionized police work. Instead of wearing out my boots tramping the streets, I was able to make my enquiries without leaving my desk.' There was a tone to Macadam's voice that suggested the thought:
You really ought to try it one day, sir!
‘No girl was admitted to any London hospital last night with injuries consistent with the removal of an eye.'

‘And this Doctor Casaubon?'

‘There is a Doctor Augustus Casaubon listed in Kelly's Directory on Harley Street. Number seventeen.'

‘Does his surgery possess a telephone?'

‘It does. But no one is answering it this morning. I will keep trying, of course.'

‘In this case, perhaps it might be worth our while to apply a little boot leather to the task. I shall go there myself. Inchball …'

‘Nguh?'

‘I have a very important task for you.'

Inchball blinked and winced as he struggled to sit up in his chair.

‘Go home and get some sleep.'

M
agnus Porrick stirred in the darkness, turning his back on fitful, flickering dreams. The four tip-up auditorium seats he was stretched out across shook and groaned in protest.

He had not slept well. His back began to ache almost as soon as he lay down. It was now locked in a muscle clench of pain. And he was cold. God, it was cold in the Palace at night, after the massed bodies of successive audiences had finally vacated the rows. Once he had started shivering, he could not stop. And every shiver sent a fresh jolt of pain shooting through his limbs.

No, he had not gone home. He had thought it best to give Edna a little time to calm down. She would come round eventually, he felt sure. He had needed time too. Time to sober up.

The plush of the seat dug into his face, stubble against stubble. He kept his eyes closed tightly though he was awake, as if dreading what the day might offer to his sight. The image of that aristocratic erection was a chastening example. Some things, once seen, are hard to eradicate from the memory, however much we might wish it. Some sights change everything.

Movement was painful. It was as if the darkness was a vice that gripped him tightly. It was fruitless to struggle. The vice held him facing the memory of last night.

Granted, it was all very sordid and unpleasant. There was nothing he could do about that. It was a question of business now. And there are all sorts of unpleasant businesses that men steel themselves to undertake. (Undertaking being one of them. Was the undertaker squeamish about manhandling the dead? Porrick doubted it.) A lesser man might give in to the natural instinct to put it all behind him. But he could not afford to take that view. The darkness would not let him take that view. He was a businessman. A businessman was obliged to look for the commercial opportunity in any given situation, and exploit it.