Smoke and Mirrors (9 page)

‘I know they do.’

‘And, when they do, the only answer is to get drunk.’

*

It was an answer, thought Max, as he walked back along the seafront, but not a wholly satisfying one. There was something tempting about the idea of the Pavilion Tavern, the warm fug of congratulation and strong spirits. But, in the end, he’d still have to go back to his room with the cold radiator and the knowledge that the morning was only a few hours away. He thought of Ruby. Her first night was next week. What would she do after the show? He was sure that there would be a crowd of dancing pageboys who’d be only too happy to take her out for a celebratory drink. He imagined Edgar hovering nervously on the edge of the group. On the one hand, he wanted to say to Ruby that Edgar was worth a million of the stage-school types she’d come across in the business. On the other, he wanted to tell Edgar that if he laid a finger on his daughter he’d cut him into two without the help of magic. It was hell being a father. The trouble was, he hadn’t had much practice. He had only become aware of Ruby’s existence a year ago.

At Upper Rock Gardens he headed straight for the stairs but a voice called from the back of the house, ‘Mr M? Is that you?’

‘Just going up to bed, Mrs M.’

The landlady appeared in the doorway of what she called ‘the snug’. She was wearing a midnight-blue dress that enhanced the impressive contours of her figure. Her hair was piled on top of her head and he could see the glitter of earrings. Her theatre-going outfit, he realised.

‘Care for a drink to celebrate the success of the first night?’

‘Did you enjoy it?’

‘You were the best Abanazar I’ve ever seen.’

‘Have you seen many?’

She laughed, a full-throated guffaw that sent the chandelier twinkling. It was a long time since Max had heard a woman laugh like that.

‘To tell you the truth, darling, you were the first.’

He moved towards her. ‘Perhaps just a quick drink then.’

He had always enjoyed being the first.

Edgar shared his weekend reading with the team at the Monday meeting. He also told them about the murder of Betsy Bunning in 1912. Ever literal, Bob couldn’t see the connection.

‘I mean, they found out who did it. This Nightingale character. And he was hanged. That’s the end of it.’

Emma was poring over the archive edition of the
Argus
.

‘Ezra Nightingale had a son, aged ten. He would be nearly fifty now, if he’s still alive.’

‘And he decided to take up where his dad left off?’ Bob’s voice was incredulous but he was overdoing it. Emma was irritated. Edgar could tell by the flush on the back of her neck.

‘We shouldn’t make too much of this,’ he said. ‘But there are similarities. The theatrical setting. The whole fairy-tale thing. I think it’s worth considering.’

‘What about the man with the theatre in his garage?’ said Emma. ‘Could he be the right age? To be Nightingale’s son, I mean.’

Edgar thought of Brian Baxter, the neat little man in collar and tie. ‘I took him for a bit older. He said he was retired. But he could have taken early retirement, I suppose. I think it’s worth going to see him again in any case.’

‘I think we’re making too much of these stories.’ Bob gestured towards the books on Edgar’s desk. ‘I mean, all children like fairy tales. They don’t
mean
anything.’

Edgar thought of his ghastly hour with ‘The Juniper Tree’, the innocent deadly words seeping into his skull as the gas leaked into the air. He would like to think that Bob was right, that the fairy tales were a false trail, misdirection. And yet . . . the line of sweets in the snow, Annie’s stories of death and sibling rivalry, Miss Young’s voice as she enumerated the horrific plots . . .

Emma cut in. ‘I found the story about the hedgehog. It’s a Grimm’s fairy tale called “Hans My Hedgehog”.’

‘Really?’ said Edgar. ‘It wasn’t in my book.’

‘It’s not in all the anthologies. But I found it in an old book in my parents’ library.’

Edgar tried not to look too interested. Emma rarely mentioned her family but it was obvious they were well off. A library, eh?

Emma took out a mottled book with roughly cut pages. She turned to the page marked by a piece of ribbon.

‘A merchant and his wife are desperate for a child. The man says he’ll be happy with a son, even if it’s a hedgehog. Then he goes home and finds that his wife has given birth to baby that’s a hedgehog from the waist up.’

‘Painful,’ said Bob. Emma ignored him.

‘The hedgehog grows up to be a brave little boy and goes off to seek his fortune. He saves a king’s life and, in return, the king promises his daughter. The king changes his mind so the hedgehog pricks his daughter till she bleeds. Then he saves a second king, who also offers his daughter but keeps to his promise. On the wedding night, Hans asks for a fire to be lit, steps into it, sheds his hedgehog skin and –
voilà
– a handsome prince.’

Emma showed them an illustration of a demonic little creature with snout and prickles, wearing red trousers and carrying a set of bagpipes. There’s a second picture of a golden-haired prince and princess before a castle. A spiny mess in the background is obviously meant to represent the discarded skin.

‘He played the bagpipes,’ explained Emma. ‘I’m not quite sure why.’

‘So it’s worse than they think,’ said Bob. ‘He’s not just a hedgehog, he’s a Scottish hedgehog.’

‘It’s got a lot of the traditional themes,’ said Edgar. ‘The longing for a child, promises kept and broken, retribution, transformation, rebirth.’ He paused, wondering if he should go into the imagery of the hedgehog pricking the false princess until she bled.

‘Of course, there’s a Freudian interpretation too,’ said Emma briskly. ‘The wedding night, blood on the sheets and all that. It’s a bit like the Little Mermaid bleeding as soon as she gets legs. I’m interested, though, that Miss Young read this story to her class, given that it’s so hard to get hold of.’

‘Yes,’ said Edgar. ‘We should certainly see Miss Young again.’

Bob was flicking through the pages of the book with a disgusted face. ‘Thank God my parents never read to me. That’s all I can say.’

*

Max walked to the theatre on Monday with a distinct spring in his step. The night with Joyce had been extremely enjoyable, so much so that they had repeated the experience on Sunday. Max was even thinking about ignoring his ‘no landladies’ rule and allowing the affair to continue until the end of the run. He had to admit that this thought was partly – but not entirely – influenced by the fact that Joyce’s bedroom was miraculously warm
all night long
.

‘The radiators upstairs don’t work very well,’ she told him airily, putting on her make-up at her kidney-shaped dressing table. ‘I expect it gets quite cold at night.’

‘It does,’ Max assured her.

‘Well, darling . . .’ She gave him a bold look in the mirror. ‘The temperature was certainly torrid in here.’

She was cool though. When the other lodgers were around, it was still ‘Mr M’ and not ‘darling’. He’d even deigned to have breakfast this morning and Mrs M’s presence certainly lent a frisson to the bacon and fried bread. So, all in all, things were looking up. The
Evening Argus
wasn’t printed on Sundays but the pantomime had earned some very good reviews from the national press. Roger Dunkley would be delighted. The
Sunday Times
had called it ‘everything a panto should be’. Max was sure that this line would find itself on the billboards before long.

Sure enough, he was met at the stage door by the director himself, waving an early copy of the
Argus
. ‘It’s a love letter,’ he said. ‘An actual love letter.’

‘Really?’ Max tried to edge past. He liked good reviews as much as the next pro but he liked to read them in private with a whisky or a black coffee to hand. He wondered if he could send one of the ASMs out for supplies.

‘Listen to what it says about you, Max. Here it is . . . “Legendary magician Max Mephisto casts a powerful spell as Abanazar, the villain of the piece. His stage presence is mesmerising – I wondered if it was almost too sinister for his young audience – and the magic tricks performed with his usual aplomb. Altogether a sparkling production.” ’

Roger looked expectantly at Max.

‘Almost too sinister?’

‘Oh, that . . .’ The director waved the words away. ‘You’re meant to be sinister. You’re the villain. It’s a humdinger of a review. And it’s the local paper that brings in the local crowds. The reviewer even had a good word to say about old Diablo: “Veteran music-hall star The Great Diablo steals the first scene.” He’ll love that, the old ham.’

Roger exited chuckling. Max walked slowly towards his dressing room. Roger was right, it was an excellent review, but, even so, the faintest hint of criticism caught in his teeth like a piece of Mrs M’s fried bread. Almost too sinister? Had he judged it wrongly for the family audience, so different from the normal variety crowd? Had scores of children gone home to nightmares about the tall green magician who could make people disappear beneath his magic cloak?

He sent Sid, an obliging ASM, to the Italian cafe to get him a coffee. Then he lit a cigarette and sat at his dressing table to read the rest of the reviews, thoughtfully left there by Roger. He could see why the director was so pleased. The production was praised on all sides; even Annette came away with nothing worse than ‘the usual rather wooden Principal Boy’ and ‘seemingly rather overawed by the occasion’. He was variously ‘brilliant’, ‘delightfully villainous’ and ‘the perfect Abanazar’. Even so, the local paper’s words kept coming back to him. Almost too sinister. Should he lighten things for the matinee audience today? Come on beaming and shouting ‘Hallo, boys and girls’ like Diablo?

‘Hallo, darling boy. Reading the ghastly old reviews?’ The old ham himself was standing in the doorway.

‘They’re not ghastly at all. Have you read them?’

‘Just skimmed through them, dear boy. At my age you don’t take much notice of reviewers.’

Max didn’t believe a word of it. He was sure that Diablo would like to get ‘The Great Diablo steals the first scene’ embroidered on his emperor’s robes.

‘Anyway Roger the Dodger is pleased.’ Diablo sat down heavily on the small sofa (a perk for heading the bill). ‘And it gets that tedious scriptwriter off my back.’

Max doubted this. He was sure that Nigel Castle would hound Diablo until the end of the run, waving the script in front of him.

‘Did you have a good night on Saturday?’ Max asked.

‘Tolerable, dear boy. Tolerable. They’re a nice crowd. Little Hilda is a sweetheart. A bit like your Ruby, don’t you think?’

Max said nothing, although the resemblance hadn’t escaped him. Diablo was still talking, stretched out at his ease, feet (in slightly threadbare velvet slippers) up on the sofa.

‘And even Annette is a nice girl when you get to know her. And, of course, Denton and I go way back.’

Max remembered Diablo greeting the Dame with slightly ironical affection. ‘Oh yes, I forgot that you knew each other. Have you been on the bill with him before?’

Diablo’s eyes bulged slightly. ‘Many times. But the first time was in the pantomime that I was telling you about.
Babes in the Wood
in Hastings. When that poor girl was killed.’

Max stared. Like many pros, Denton McGrew could be any age but he doubted if he was more than sixty.

‘He was in that show with you? Before the first war?’

‘Yes. He was the other Babe, you see. The boy Babe.’

And Max thought of Denton McGrew last night, dressed in his voluminous skirts, throwing sweets down to the audience, that cascade of glittering pink and white, caught by the children’s eager hands.

They hadn’t warned Brian Baxter that they were coming but he was ready for them all the same, once again dressed in a suit and tie as if for a day at the office. Edgar saw Bob looking at the neat little man and coming up with the worst of conclusions. For his part he thought Brian odd but not exactly sinister. If anything, he looked sad, ushering them into the spotless sitting room and saying, ‘I thought you’d be back.’

‘And why was that, Mr Baxter?’

‘Because they’re dead, aren’t they? This is a murder enquiry now.’ Brian took out a neatly folded handkerchief and dabbed his eyes although, as far as Edgar could see, they weren’t wet. When he spoke again, though, his voice was distinctly shaky.

‘I kept hoping, you know, that you’d find them alive. That they’d . . .’

‘That they’d what?’ It would be interesting to know where Brian had thought the children might be. After a moment’s pause, he said, ‘That they’d gone to their grandparents or something.’

Edgar let it go, though he was sure that this was not what the man had meant. He said, ‘As you say, Mr Baxter, this is now a murder investigation and we’re talking to anyone who knew the children, hoping to throw some light on their movements on the night of the twenty-sixth of November.’

He had meant to frighten Brian slightly with the official language and with the presence of the silently glowering Bob but the speech seemed to have the opposite effect. Brian drew himself up, every inch the respectable citizen, and, putting away the handkerchief, looked him squarely in the eye.

‘What is it you want to know?’

‘When was the last time you saw Annie and Mark?’

‘I told you, at the weekend.’

‘They disappeared on the Monday. Did you see them on Saturday or Sunday?’

‘It must have been Saturday. Annie’s parents don’t like her to go out on a Sunday. They’re quite religious, I think.’

‘So why did Annie come to see you that Saturday?’

‘She had some homework she wanted to do. Like I said, it was difficult for her to work at home. I don’t think there was much space. She liked it here because she could look at my encyclopaedias.’ He indicated a set of red hardbacks that took up a whole shelf of the bookcase.

‘What subject was she studying that Saturday?’

‘History, I think. Yes. She wanted to look up something about the Romans.’

Volume eight, thought Edgar, RA to TR. His parents had owned a similar set and he never forgot the thrill of the arbitrary juxtapositions, Boadicea next to Bob Cat, Henry VIII on the same page as Henley Regatta. He understood exactly why Annie had wanted to study in this house.

‘You said she wanted to tell you about her latest play. Do you remember what it was about?’

Brian frowned. ‘I think it was something about a Witch. No, a Witch Man. It struck me as a bit dark for a child.’

‘Her other plays hadn’t been dark?’

‘No, they were about fairies and goblins. You know, suitable things for children.’

You wouldn’t say that if you’d read ‘The Juniper Tree’, thought Edgar. Aloud, he said, ‘You said that it was a teacher who first heard about the theatre in your garage. Do you remember the teacher’s name?’

He knew the answer already and wasn’t surprised to see Brian’s face infused with a schoolboy’s blush. ‘Yes. A lovely young woman. Her name was Young. Miss Daphne Young.’

*

The lovely Miss Young seemed a lot less lovely on a busy Monday morning. Emma interviewed her in the cloakroom and through the glass pane in the door Miss Young could see her class disporting themselves under the ineffectual control of the head boy and girl.

‘The trouble is, they’re the same age,’ she said apologetically to Emma. ‘The class hasn’t got any respect for them. It’s not like this with the younger children.’

Emma watched as paper darts flew through the air. The head boy was actually cowering under the desk. She doubted if even the infants held him in much respect.

‘I’ve been reading Annie’s play,’ she said.

‘Have you?’ The teacher looked genuinely pleased. ‘Don’t you think it’s terribly good?’

‘I don’t know about that,’ said Emma. ‘It’s strong stuff.’

‘But such impressive writing for a thirteen-year-old,’ said Miss Young. ‘I thought it was exceptional.’

‘Weren’t you at all worried by the content?’ asked Emma. ‘Gretel hating her brother and planning to kill him?’

‘It’s the genre,’ Miss Young protested. As I said to you, fairy stories are very bloodthirsty.’

‘How did Annie really get on with Mark?’ asked Emma. ‘Everyone said they were friends but was there ever any animosity? Did they ever fall out?’

Daphne Young stared at her. ‘Do you mean to say that you’ve taken it literally? That you actually think that Annie wanted to kill Mark?’ Her voice rose almost hysterically.

‘Well, how did you take it?’ asked Emma.

‘It’s a play.’ Daphne spoke very slowly, as if to an idiot. ‘A story. That’s all it is.’

‘And do stories never tell us anything about the writer’s state of mind?’

‘What do you think? That Annie killed Mark? Is that the official police theory?’

‘We’re just examining every line of evidence,’ said Emma. ‘And that play is evidence. She was halfway through writing it when she died.’

‘She wrote it to be performed, not to be analysed like some undergraduate thesis.’

‘I wanted to talk to you about that. I understand that it was you who introduced Annie to Brian Baxter.’

Daphne’s eyes were bright with scorn now. She tossed back her Pre-Raphaelite hair. ‘Oh, is he your number-one suspect? Well, it makes sense, I suppose. Lonely old man living alone. I know what the police are like.’

‘Just tell me how you got to know Mr Baxter.’

Daphne took a deep breath, composing herself. A wodge of wet blotting paper hit the window with a splat.

‘One of the dinner ladies here is a neighbour. She knew his wife, I believe. She told me about the theatre. I thought it would be interesting for the children so I took a small group along.’

‘Including Annie?’

‘Yes. She was already really interested in the stage. She wanted to be an actress and director.’

‘Really? Her headmistress said she wanted to be a doctor.’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake.’ More hair-tossing. ‘That’s typical of the grammar school. No imagination. Annie was an artist. I could see her being a writer, an actress or a director. Never a doctor.’

‘Did you know that Annie visited Mr Baxter often?’

‘I think she mentioned it, yes. I thought it was nice. As I say, he was lonely.’ She looked defiantly at Emma, daring her to see anything sordid in the relationship.

‘Mr Pettigrew said that you and Annie were writing the Hansel and Gretel play together,’ said Emma. ‘Is that true?’

She had meant to jolt the teacher but Daphne just smiled. ‘We said that we were writing it together but really it was all Annie. She wrote it all. I just listened to her ideas, suggested stories she might read. That sort of thing.’

‘I’ve been reading some of the stories you mentioned the other day,’ said Emma. ‘ “Hans My Hedgehog”, for example.’

‘Oh, you found that one did you? It’s hard to track down. What did you think?’

‘I thought it was weird,’ said Emma. ‘What did Annie make of it?’

‘She loved it. It was very appropriate for Annie, that story.’

‘In what way?’

‘Well, she was a bit of a bagpipe-playing hedgehog, wasn’t she?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, I’ll leave you to work that one out,’ said Daphne, smiling serenely as the noises from next door reached riot pitch.

*

On her way out, Emma thought to call on Mr Carew, the Class Five teacher, the man who could apparently give Daphne Young an alibi for the Wednesday night. She found him reading the
Manchester Guardian
whilst his class ran around the concrete playground.

‘PT,’ he said vaguely, ‘or something like that.’

‘Are they having a race?’

‘Nothing so vulgarly competitive. It’s like the Caucus Race in
Alice in Wonderland
.’

‘All must have prizes?’

‘That’s right. I like a girl who knows her children’s literature.’

You don’t know the half of it, thought Emma. She realised immediately why Mr Carew had not left teaching to fight in the war. His left leg stuck out stiffly in front of him and a walking stick leant against his chair. He saw her looking and smiled.

‘Lost it in August 1918. Any earlier and I could have saved myself a lot of bother.’

‘How long have you been teaching here?’

‘About twenty years. The head before Pettigrew was a real tartar. I felt I had to stay just to protect the children from him. Pettigrew’s all right though. He wants to give these children a chance. Most of them will leave school at twelve or thirteen, half of them have parents who can’t read; even today we have children take time off to help with the fishing boats.’

Emma looked at the children trotting around the playground. Many had stopped running altogether and were walking along chatting but a few dogged souls were still running, round and round, kicking the wall to show when they’d finished a lap. Were they the ones who would succeed, pass the eleven-plus and go on to the oak-panelled world of the grammar school?

‘I’m investigating the murders of Annie Francis and Mark Webster,’ she said. ‘Do you remember them?’

‘Of course,’ said Mr Carew. He folded his paper carefully but Emma noticed that his hands were shaking. One hand was missing a finger. Emma remembered her father telling her that many veterans had this injury. ‘You light up a cigarette and – wham – a sniper’s bullet gets you.’ Mr Carew certainly looked like a smoker.

‘They were both very bright,’ he said. ‘Annie especially. When I first met her, I thought, there’s a girl who’s born to succeed. Well . . .’ He smoothed back his hair with his uninjured hand. ‘God had a nasty sense of humour.’

‘I’ve just been talking to Miss Young about Annie.’

‘Ah, they had a real bond. I was too dry a teacher for her really. But Daphne, she’s got a real imagination.’

I bet she has, thought Emma.

‘I understand you saw Miss Young when she was working late on the night of Monday the twenty-sixth?’

Mr Carew gave her a sharp look. ‘Yes. I looked in on her at about five-thirty. She was still marking books. She works very hard.’

‘Did you talk to her?’

‘I think I suggested that she might give the marking a miss and go for a quick drink in the Evening Star. She said no thank you.’

Mr Carew might be pushing sixty, thought Emma, as she said goodbye to the teacher and made her way out through the exit marked ‘Boys’, but he had a thing for Daphne Young all the same. But he had given her an alibi. It would have been hard for Daphne to leave the school after five-thirty, abduct the children and kill them. Hard, Emma reminded herself, but not impossible. As she headed off down Bristol Road, she could hear Class Five still running around the playground.

*

Back at the police station Edgar and Bob were in the subterranean CID room. The electric fire was on but there was a raw, dank feeling in the air. The smell of Bob’s fish-paste sandwiches didn’t help either.

When Emma came in, she brought a rush of cold air and a palpable sense of energy.

‘I went to see Daphne Young again,’ she said. ‘And I saw Mr Carew, one of the other teachers, who confirmed that he’d seen her at the school on the night of the twenty-sixth.’

‘Well, that’s her off the hook then,’ said Bob, through a mouthful of sandwich.

‘Not necessarily,’ said Emma, her face taking on her stubborn look. ‘I still thought that Daphne Young was odd about Annie. She wouldn’t admit that there was anything disturbing about the Hansel and Gretel play and she said that Annie was “a bit of a bagpipe-playing hedgehog”. I asked her what she meant and she told me to work it out for myself.’

‘What do you think she meant?’ asked Edgar.

‘Well,’ said Emma, ‘I thought it might mean that she was bit of a freak in her family. You know, clever, imaginative and all that.’

Edgar thought of the Francis family, of the house full of children, washing and the detritus of family life. There was no doubt that Annie had sometimes wanted to escape – to her grandparents or to Brian Baxter’s house – but who was to say that she wasn’t also happy with her parents and brothers and sisters? Edna Webster had said that Sandra Francis expected a lot of Annie but she had also voluntarily spent a lot of time with the younger children, organising them into her ‘acting troupe’. There was probably affection there too.

‘Didn’t Mark’s mother say that Annie’s parents were strict with her?’ said Emma.

‘She did,’ said Edgar, ‘but we mustn’t read too much into that. Remember, Mark was an only child. It was different in their house.’

‘I’m an only child,’ muttered Emma. ‘That’s no picnic either.’

Interesting, thought Edgar.

Bob finished the last of his sandwich. ‘I just can’t believe it was any of the parents. Brian Baxter, though, I didn’t like the look of him at all. Nasty, weaselly little man.’

‘That doesn’t make him a killer though,’ said Edgar.

‘He hasn’t got an alibi for the Monday night,’ said Bob.

‘He hasn’t got a motive either.’

‘Did you ask him about his parents?’ asked Emma. ‘Just to rule out the son of Ezra theory?’

‘Yes,’ said Edgar. ‘No go, I’m afraid. He’s Brighton born and bred. His father only died last year.’

‘Pity,’ said Emma. Edgar saw Bob stifle a smile. He was about to say more when he noticed a shape lurking in the doorway. Either the ghost of Chief Constable Henry Solomon or one of the duty officers from upstairs.

‘Sorry to bother you, sir.’ Definitely not a ghost. ‘But there’s someone to see you.’

‘I can’t see anyone. I’m in a meeting.’

‘He said it was important, sir.’

Edgar sighed. ‘Does the visitor have a name?’

The PC exhaled with something like awe. ‘It’s that magician chap from the pier. Max Mephisto.’

*

‘It might be nothing,’ said Max. ‘But I thought I should tell you.’