The Dark Palace--Murder and mystery in London, 1914 (32 page)

‘It is a deception.'

‘No. It is a confession.'

‘So. Who? Who is he? The man who thought you would find this funny.'

‘I do not know for sure. For that reason, I would rather not say. To make accusations
mit
no foundations, it is not
gut
.'

‘Berenger? I noticed the way you looked at him when we came to arrest you.'

‘Begging your pardon, sir,' said Macadam. ‘May I start the film running again? I am nervous about holding it on one frame for too long in case it combusts.'

‘By all means, Macadam. Run it to the other point we discussed.'

The action moved forward a few frames and juddered to a halt once more. Quinn pointed out the actor playing the director of the lunatic asylum. ‘This is the man who escorted her away. Is he the one responsible?'

‘Zat is Heinrich. Heinrich Klint. He is not responsible.'

Quinn nodded to Macadam to continue running the film. ‘You must have known when you sent this film over that we would see them and recognize them.'

‘It had gone on long enough. It started as an innocent prank.'

‘Wasting police time! They are all three of them culpable. This woman, Lyudmila … Klint. Conspirators in an offence.'

‘Vy offence? They perform
ein kleines Theaterstück
. A little play. That is all. They do not know that the police will come along. That you are at the premiere.'

‘I was invited.'

‘They do not know. I
be-leeff
they wanted to hoax your journalists.
Ja
?'

‘And what about Dolores Novak? Is that a little play?'

‘Berenger is nothing to do
mit
Dolores,
ja
? You understand that? He is a fool but no killer.'

‘Nevertheless, we will have to bring him in and talk to him. Where will we find him?'

‘You may find him at his hotel. He stays at the Savoy.
Off coursse
.'

‘It is a far cry from the room in which Dolores Novak was found.'

‘Berenger is
ein Stern
. A star –
ja
? Dolores vos …' Waechter spat out a German word that sounded remarkably similar to
whore
.

‘I don't know what that means,' said Quinn. ‘But it is no reason for her to be killed.'

‘Berenger had nothing to do with it. I
svare
on my life that he is innocent.'

Macadam ran the film to the end, to the moment when the inmates and staff of the asylum removed their human masks and revealed the skulls beneath. The moment of Berenger's final surrender to madness and damnation.

‘No man is entirely innocent,' said Quinn as the end of the film flapped around the spinning spool and the wall was lit up with a rectangle of blank light. ‘Even if he did not kill Dolores Novak, there's a chance he put the idea in the killer's head. He showed the way. Her murder seems to have been modelled on his contemptible hoax, after all.'

Waechter returned the patch to its place over his perfectly sound right eye. His face possessed a stern, defiant dignity. He gave the impression of being a man convinced of the correctness of everything he did. Either he had lived a truly blameless life, or he was utterly devoid of a conscience.

T
he grainy twilight thickened overhead as Macadam turned the Model T off the Strand. An incandescent glow pooled out from the front of the great hotel, distracting Quinn momentarily from the purpose of their visit. They were not there to bathe in the glamour and glitz of the establishment. They were there for the darkness. The honk of a car horn brought him rudely back to earth. The car was coming directly at them, apparently on the wrong side of the road. But it was Macadam who swerved to avoid a head-on collision. ‘I almost forgot, sir. This is the one street in the country where you drive on the right. God knows why.'

A flicker of darkness as they drove under the arch that spanned the short stub of a road, beneath the statue of an armed knight that surmounted it.

A liveried doorman held the door for them.

Somewhere a piano was playing, the pianist favouring the higher, more refined keys. Beneath a high ceiling dripping with chandeliers, the wealthy guests moved with what seemed like purpose but was actually entitlement. It was clear from the angle at which they held their heads that they had no intention of opening doors. And it was doubtful if they would be able to see the people who opened them on their behalf.

Quinn showed his warrant card at the reception. ‘You have a guest here. Berenger is the name. Room number and key, if you please. Your bellboy may accompany me to save time.'

In the event, it was decided that the manager would go.

They rode the elevator to the second floor. It was frustrating to have to wait for the shuttering of the gate, for the lift to respond to the operator's touch, for the freighted shudder into motion and the gathering momentum as the cage ascended. And to wait for it all to unwind in reverse as they reached the floor.

Sensing the urgency of the situation, the manager hurried along the corridor to the door numbered 232. He stood back and allowed Inchball to pound his knuckles against the wood. ‘Oi, you in there. Open up. Police.'

The door next to Berenger's opened. Eloise Dumont peered out. When she saw Quinn an expression of disappointment settled over her features.

‘Ah, Miss Dumont, good evening. Do you remember me? I am Detective Inspector Quinn.'

‘How could I forget? You were rude to me. Not many men are rude to Eloise.'

‘I really don't have time for that now. Your … colleague – Mr Berenger – do you know if he is in his room?'

‘I believe so. We came back from Islington together.'

Quinn nodded to the manager, who used his service key to unlock the door. The bedroom was in semi-darkness, the only light coming in from the street through the open windows, ruffling the lace curtains as it passed through them. There were signs of recent occupancy. A suit of clothes strewn across the floor. Shoes in flight from one another. The bed clothes in disarray.

A door leading off was ajar.

Quinn called out. ‘Berenger?'

An echoing intermittent drip answered. But there was no sound of anyone stirring. A wet bathroom smell came through the gap.

He turned to Eloise, who had followed them into the room. ‘Please, miss, I think it best if you go back to your own room now.'

‘Be gentle with him. Whatever you think he has done. He is not a bad man. I know that. You only have to look into his eyes to know that.'

Quinn nodded acknowledgement of her admonition. That seemed to satisfy her. She slipped from the room, blown out on the same breeze that stirred the curtains. The darkness seemed to contract and harden at her passage.

The men allowed themselves one final look into each other's eyes before they burst into the bathroom.

Berenger was in the bath. He turned his doleful eyes towards them, registering no surprise at their intrusion. In fact, he seemed to welcome them with a small bow of the head. It was almost as if he were expecting them.

‘Paul Berenger? We have to ask you some questions concerning your role in an incident that occurred in Cecil Court on the evening of April the seventeenth. Konrad Waechter has made a formal statement naming you as the perpetrator of a deliberate hoax designed to publicize a film in which you appeared. Do you have anything to say about that?'

There was a stir in the water. Berenger stood to his full height in the tub, his profuse black body hair plastered against his pallid white skin: he presented an image that was both imposing and disconsolate.

The water cascaded noisily off the end of his hanging penis. But Berenger was not in the least abashed. He faced them without embarrassment, and without any attempt at concealment. He was the image of a man with nothing to hide.

Quinn concentrated his attention on a crack in the marble fronting of the bath. ‘Our main concern is to confirm that no actual attack took place and that the woman involved – one Lyudmila Lyudmova, I believe – is unharmed. We are naturally desirous to talk to her and the other individual implicated. I understand that this may have started as a harmless prank that got out of hand …'

Still Berenger did not speak. Quinn looked up to meet his eyes, which were full of regretful appeal. He held his hands out imploringly.

‘Ah, yes. I understand. You wish to put on a robe, perhaps, or some clothes. We will wait for you in the bedroom. This need not take long. I imagine that the worst that will happen is a caution. With the appropriate contrition, and a generous contribution to the Police Benevolent Society, even that may prove unnecessary.'

Quinn noticed Inchball's frown, presumably at Quinn's uncharacteristic promise of leniency. It suddenly occurred to him that he had not established whether Berenger spoke English. ‘You do understand what I am saying?'

Berenger nodded.

‘Very well. We will be in the bedroom.'

The first inkling Quinn had that something was wrong was when he heard the door to the bathroom locked from the other side. It seemed a redundant act, like closing the proverbial stable door after the horse has bolted. They had already intruded on his nudity, after all. And he had shown himself to be a man untroubled by physical modesty.

Quinn tried the handle, which was indeed now locked. He knocked on the door and pressed his ear against it. He could hear movement inside, a splash of water, as if Berenger had got back into the bath.

He allowed ten minutes or more to pass before turning to the manager. ‘Can you open this?'

The manager shrugged. ‘I am sure Herr Berenger will come out when he is ready.'

Quinn nodded to Inchball, who threw his shoulder against the door, but to no avail.

‘Stand back!' commanded Quinn, drawing his revolver.

‘No, no! Please!' cried the manager. ‘There is no need for vandalism. I can get a key from downstairs.'

‘A key ain't no use,' Inchball pointed out. ‘'E's already got his key in the other side, ain't he?'

‘We are wasting time here!' cried Quinn. But it was the thought of Eloise next door that restrained him from firing. He could well imagine how the sound of gunfire might alarm her.

‘With respect, sir,' said Macadam, ‘he can't go anywhere. I did not see any window in the bathroom.'

‘That's right,' confirmed the manager. ‘There is no window.'

‘He's mocking us.'

‘I suggest we remain patient, sir,' said Macadam. ‘He must come out eventually.'

But when ten more slow minutes had passed and Berenger had still not emerged, Quinn found his patience had run out. The gun was already in his hand. It was too bad if he frightened her. He had a job to do.

He discharged three deafening shots around the lock. Predictably enough, a scream came from the room next door.

Quinn paused only to inhale the satisfying odour of the blasted wood.

As he had suspected, Berenger was back in the bath. His head was slumped forward, as if gazing down in perplexity at the suddenly darkened water. A cut-throat razor lay open and bloodied on the side of the bath nearest them.

Macadam rushed forward and lifted one arm out of the water to feel for a pulse. But the darkness gathered at his wrist.

The sergeant's deep-felt groan confirmed the worst. He shook his head. ‘Nothing.'

‘Look at that, guv,' said Inchball, pointing at the mirror. ‘Some kind of suicide note, by the looks of it.'

The words were smeared in the condensation on the glass.

‘Do you speak German?' Quinn demanded of the manager.

The man appeared to be in shock. He stood with his mouth open, gaping at the dead man in the bath.

Quinn took out his notebook and hurriedly copied down the incomprehensible message before it disappeared:
Wenn ein Mann seine Kunst verrät, verrät er seine Seele.

As he turned away from the mirror, he noticed Eloise standing in the doorway. She must have been drawn by the gunshot.

‘What have you done?' Her eyes were fixed on Berenger.

‘Please, you should not see this.' Quinn tried to usher her out. Her diminutive frame was surprisingly resistant to his pressure. ‘We had no idea. We found him like this. We had just spoken to him. We were waiting to ask him some more questions. There was no indication …'

‘What did you say to him?'

‘Let us talk about this outside.'

‘He is dead?'

‘I am afraid so.'

‘You never have anything nice to say to me.'

‘I'm sorry. I cannot believe he has done this. There was no need for this.'

‘Why did you want to talk to him?'

‘Please …'

Eloise suddenly caught sight of the words on the mirror. She read them aloud fluently.

‘Do you know what it means?' asked Quinn.

‘When a man betrays his art, he betrays his soul.'

Quinn put his arm around Eloise's shoulder and gently, finally, turned her away from the spectacle of her dead friend. ‘Come. Is there anyone …? You should not be alone.'

‘You will not stay with me?'

‘I?' It seemed an extraordinary, almost incomprehensible suggestion. ‘Surely, there is someone better than me?' Quinn turned to the manager. ‘Do you have the number for Mr Hartmann of Visionary Productions?'

The manager seemed to pull himself together, at least enough to nod in answer to Quinn's demand.

‘Call Hartmann. Tell him that there has been an accident and Mademoiselle Eloise needs him. If I were you I wouldn't go into too much detail over the telephone. I will remain here to break the news to him about Mr Berenger.' Quinn looked at the words on the mirror and thought about their meaning. ‘You might tell him to bring Konrad Waechter with him. I believe the two gentlemen will be together.' Quinn had released Waechter into Hartmann's care earlier. Now there were new questions to put to him. ‘In the meantime, is there someone – a lady – who can sit with her until her friends arrive?'