The Dark Palace--Murder and mystery in London, 1914 (24 page)

Business consisted of the relationships between men. That was why the handshake was so important. Last night, something had changed in the relationship between Magnus Porrick and Lord Dunwich. Both men knew it. Why, Lord Dunwich would have been amazed if he had not taken advantage of it.

But he need not be in any hurry. Indeed, it was preferable to wait for Lord Dunwich to come to him. And when that happened, the first thing to do would be to reassure his lordship of his goodwill. He must insist that he had known nothing about the Novaks' grubby plan to entrap him; he was a pawn in their game. And if Lord Dunwich doubted it was a plan, he would reluctantly disabuse him. At which point he would offer to intercede with the Novaks. He could put himself forward as a man of influence in the motion picture business. It wouldn't be overstating it too much to say that he could see to it that neither of them ever made another film. Certainly, if his plans with Waechter came to fruition, he could ensure that they never appeared in another of the Austrian's films.

And so, without doing anything very much, he would manufacture that most valuable of commodities: the gratitude of a rich and powerful man.

Porrick kept his eyes closed, as if he was afraid to let reality intrude on his daydreams. And yet, what was there to worry about? It all seemed watertight. And whatever happened, he would be in the clear. He himself had done nothing wrong. What he was proposing was not blackmail. It was more a question of leverage.

Something, however, nagged at the edge of his consciousness, a vague awareness that there was something he had forgotten.

Of course, this would all take time. Things had to be allowed to unfold at their own pace. You couldn't force it. And in the meantime, if Kirkwood's warnings had any substance, his chain of Porrick's Palaces could come tumbling down around him.

No, no, it'd be all right. He'd show them all. He'd turn it round. He had a plan. And he didn't just mean the business with Lord Dunwich. He had another plan …

But there was so much to keep in mind. Everything contingent on everything else.

The other plan, the business with Waechter. Yes, that was the thing. The production company. He'd turn it round with the production company. That would be a great success, he'd show them. He had a secret weapon. He had …

And at that point he sat up and opened his eyes. The released seats sprang into the upright position. The auditorium was in utter darkness still. Porrick had no way of knowing what time it was, but the lights would not be put on until it was time to admit the matinee audience at eleven. The heavy drapes at the entrance prevented any light from the foyer from seeping in.

‘Scudder?'

How could he have been so stupid? So drunk! Scudder was not just a dog, he was a valuable business asset. He might even put it more forcibly than that: Scudder was his ticket to future prosperity. And he had just abandoned him, as if he was a worthless street mutt! Would Hartmann have treated his star, Eloise, with equal carelessness?

Porrick rose to his feet. The remaining tip-up snapped shut. He groped his way to the end of the row and felt for the wall ahead of him. When he had that, he turned to the right and made his way along the wall towards what he knew was the rear of the auditorium.

At last the solidity of the wall gave way to the swing of drapery. He burst through into the dim half-light of the foyer before opening.

It took a while for Porrick's eyes to adjust, for him to realize that the silhouette coming towards him was Max Maxwell.

‘Have you seen Scudder?'

‘Scudder?'

‘My dog. The Yorkie.'

Maxwell scrutinized Porrick's face closely, as if he were struggling to remember ever having seen him with a dog. ‘No. I haven't
seen
him since last night.'

‘What do you mean by that?'

Maxwell held up a rolled newspaper that he was carrying. He used it to point at Porrick, almost accusingly. ‘You had him at the party with you last night, did you not?'

‘Yes, but you meant something, I'm sure.'

Maxwell dropped the hand holding the newspaper. ‘Did you not take him home with you?'

‘No … I … I did not, as it happens. I lost sight of him during last night's … celebrations.'

‘That was very careless of you.'

‘I imagine he found a corner somewhere, where he curled up and went to sleep. Now he will be hungry, poor chap.'

‘That's probably it. Try Hartmann's place in Cecil Court. That was where I last saw him.'

There was something in Maxwell's eye that Porrick didn't like. An open hostility, brimming with impertinence. He had long suspected Maxwell's hostility towards him, his hatred even. He knew that the man who had died in the fire in Islington had been a friend of his. It was reasonable that he would harbour a grudge. As an employee, Maxwell had kept his feelings close to his chest, until now. Porrick sensed that something had changed in their relationship.

‘Yes. I'll do that. Thank you.'

Maxwell again lifted the newspaper. ‘Have you seen it?'

‘What?'

‘It's all over the front page of the
Clarion
. It mentions Porrick's Palace. And there's a quote from Waechter.'

Porrick took the tubed paper and unfurled it.

Maxwell grinned sarcastically. ‘Was it right, I wonder, to have
celebrations
after this?' Maxwell's emphasis of the word that Porrick had just used was pointed. ‘Mind you, it will be good for the box office, I dare say. Unless they shut us down.'

‘You'd better hope that doesn't happen, Max. Or you'll be out of a job. I shall order prints of all Waechter's previous films. Perhaps the time has come for a Waechter retrospective. I fear that this incident may indeed have excited a morbid interest in his work among the public.'

‘Which you of course will do your best to pander to!'

‘You know what pays your wage as well as I do, Max. If we don't get them through the door and on the seats, then you and me both will be in the workhouse.'

Max held out his hand for his newspaper. As he took it back, a brief, mechanical smile spasmed across his mouth. ‘I hope you find your
dog
.' But his voice was an emotionless sing-song.

A
s Quinn walked across Cavendish Square, the sun broke through a crack in the marbled clouds and ignited the shuddering foliage with a frail, green, luminescent pallor.

Quinn half-expected to see Grant-Sissons lit up in the unexpected flare, hiding ineffectually behind one of the London plane trees. He imagined the strange, bitter man beckoning him over. This time he would walk right up to him and hear him out as he divulged the secret of his father's death. He wondered at his reluctance earlier. Why, after so many years of longing to know the answer to that mystery, he had turned and run from the first real opportunity of a breakthrough. He told himself that he was not ready to hear what Grant-Sissons had to say. It had come too much out of the blue. He had not been able to prepare himself. When he was ready, he would seek the man out and demand to be told what he knew.

Quinn's heart seemed to fold and flutter. He had the taste of something bitter and empty in his mouth. The taste of regret, of a missed opportunity.

He had to accept that his fear of what Grant-Sissons might say had got in the way of his conduct of the investigation. One minute the man was a suspect in the attack on the girl. The next, Quinn was refusing to bring him in.

But he had enough acquaintance with violent death to know that whatever was behind it, it was never anything good. He did not doubt that the same would hold true with his father's death.

When he was younger, he believed that his father had been murdered. This was the truth that he would one day prove. But Grant-Sissons had spoken categorically of suicide. Although he had consciously given up the consoling myth of his father's innocence in his own death, it was clear that he retained some barely registered hope that the hero of his youth would not turn out to be a self-murderer.

The air temperature dropped perceptibly. The clouds huddled into a sudden mass. From nowhere, a shower of hail clattered over the pavement. Quinn hastened his step. The hailstones pelted his face in an icy assault.

The shower was over as suddenly as it had begun. The clouds began to scatter. The sun fingered its way through, the mottles of blue spreading until the sky was almost completely clear. It was like the lights going up at the end of a stage show. The weather seemed to be bowing for applause at the startling trick it had just pulled off, fishing for an encore.

Quinn's spurt of energy carried him across Wigmore Street and into Harley Street, propelling him up the three steps to Dr Casaubon's door.

The brass plaque revealed a little more than Macadam's enquiries had been able to turn up:
Augustus Casaubon, MD, FMPA
.

From his own dealings with the medical profession Quinn was familiar with the last set of initials. He knew very well to what specialism they referred. Augustus Casaubon was a Fellow of the Medico-Psychiatric Association. He was a psychiatrist.

Quinn rang the bell and, when it wasn't answered after several minutes, tried the door. He was surprised to discover it wasn't locked. Presumably Dr Casaubon's surgery was open now, and the door was left open for patients. Quinn dispelled the notion that Casaubon was waiting for him.

The door led on to a marble-tiled hallway. Gilt lettering and a pointing hand symbol on a small wooden sign indicated the reception. There was no one there. Quinn hit the bell push. When that produced no response, he leaned over the reception counter and called out into the cave of medical records behind it. ‘Hello?'

At last, a stooped, elderly man with silver hair and a neatly trimmed imperial beard appeared tentatively from a door at the rear of the practice office. ‘You must bear with me. I'm all on my own today.' The man's accent was genteel Edinburgh. ‘My nurse is ill. And the secretary, well, we had to let her go. Between you and me, she was an absolute disaster. Take the appointments book. I have no idea what she's done with it. Would you credit it? How on earth are we meant to run a practice without an appointments book? I hope to God she hasn't taken it with her. Out of spite, you know. People do the most extraordinary things out of spite. It's hardly rational, but, well … I'm used to dealing in the irrational. Very well, you'll just have to come straight in. I shall see people today on a first-come, first-served basis.'

‘Who are you?'

‘Doctor Casaubon, of course.'

That may be the case, thought Quinn. But you are not the Dr Casaubon I'm looking for. He was about to say something to that effect, when the elderly Dr Casaubon cut in. ‘Go back out the way you came, then turn right. Take the first door on the right. I'll be waiting for you.'

‘But … I … I am a police officer. A detective. I'm here on an investigation.'

‘Yes, of course you are. I understand. A detective.' Dr Casaubon chuckled. ‘We'll have a good long chat about it. We'll sort out the paperwork afterwards.'

No, Dr Casaubon, I really am a police detective
, thought Quinn. But for some reason, he said nothing.

D
r Casaubon directed Quinn to recline on a leather-upholstered chaise longue while he drew the drapes, cloaking the tribal masks and fertility symbols that adorned his surgery in discreet semi-darkness. The doctor had a persuasive manner that was hard to resist. But although Quinn took a seat, he refused to put up his feet. That would be a retrograde step, he felt.

‘So, how long have you been a policeman?' The question came to him from out of the darkness. Its tone managed to be both sardonic and indulgent.

Quinn sensed Dr Casaubon moving to position himself behind him. Yes, they always sat behind you, so that you couldn't see them as they observed you.

‘I really am a policeman, you know. I can show you my warrant card.'

‘That won't be necessary.'

‘You seem to be under the misapprehension that I am one of your patients. I don't want to waste your time, Doctor. I am not … That is to say … I am not …'

‘What are you not?'

‘I am not …'

‘Why can't you complete the sentence, I wonder? Could it be because you wish to say,
I am not ill
. But your mind, your unconscious mind, will not permit you to state this blatant lie. When were you first aware of this desire to be a policeman?' Dr Casaubon's intonation made it clear that, in his mind, having a desire to be a policeman was not the same thing as being a policeman.

‘I
am
a policeman. My name is Silas Quinn. I am Detective Inspector Silas Quinn of the Special Crimes Department.'

‘The Special Crimes Department?' The psychiatrist's tone became openly sceptical. ‘I haven't heard of
that one
.'

‘I don't wish to take up any more of your time. If you have seen the papers this morning, you may know that there was a vicious attack on a young woman in central London last night.'

Dr Casaubon's pen scratched the darkness. ‘It was in the
papers
, was it?' Quinn had experience in interpreting psychiatrists' intonations. He understood the doctor clearly enough. He was insinuating that Quinn was a fantasist who had taken the basis of his fantasy from a newspaper account.

‘One of her eyes was forcibly removed from her head.'

‘The newspaper said that, did it?'

‘The woman in question was taken from the scene – it was assumed to hospital – by a man who claimed to be a doctor. Indeed, he gave his name –
to me
– as Doctor Casaubon. That is why I have come to see you today.'

‘You believe I was the doctor who took her away?'

‘No, it was not you. It was someone else. I apologize for wasting your time.' But Quinn made no move to get up from the chaise longue.