The Mannequin House (6 page)

‘Who found the body?’

She repeated the question back to him. ‘Who
found
her?’

Perhaps the woman was stupid, after all. It was a simple enough question. It was possible that she could be both stupid and deaf. ‘Yes, who found her? I presume it was you and Arbuthnot?’

‘If you presume that then you would be correct. And I don’t see the need to go around tapping folk on the shoulder.’

Her eyes had a glazed detachment. But he decided she was not stupid. Far from it. She was undoubtedly cunning. Her repetition of his question had simply been a delaying tactic to give her time to formulate her answer. But why would she feel it necessary to do that unless she had something to hide?

Perhaps he was being unfair. He knew that he had a tendency to over-analyse. The simplest explanation often proved to be the correct one. Quite possibly the woman was still in shock after discovering the victim. What he had taken to be a hint of enjoyment might have been something quite different. Terror was a form of excitement. He must not underestimate the emotional bonds that existed between the housekeeper and the girls in her protection. To some of the younger ones, she would have been like a mother. She would have felt the girl’s death severely, especially as she had found her.

And yet, somehow, looking at her calm demeanour, he had trouble imagining her feeling anything. Was that the secret she guarded – an unimagined depth of feeling in the most private part of her being?

Quinn himself was no stranger to buried secrets. His police work was the camouflage he used to conceal them, from himself as much as from others. This realization brought him back to the task in hand. ‘Where is Mr Arbuthnot now?’

‘Back at work, I should imagine. Mr Blackley would not countenance his remaining idle for no reason.’

‘Doesn’t the intrusion of death into the working day constitute a reason?’

‘Not as far as Mr Blackley is concerned.’

‘Yes, I saw him myself, standing in front of the store, greeting his customers as if he hadn’t a care in the world.’

The housekeeper made no comment. At that point, a man with an undersized bald head and oversized moustache appeared at the top of the stairs and peered down. Quinn was dismayed to see that he was wearing a herringbone Ulster.
That’s what I wear!
was his first thought. Naturally he had left the garment at home today as it was shaping up to be fine, with not a drop of rain in sight.

If this was Coddington, Quinn was not impressed. No doubt he thought the herringbone Ulster made him look more of a detective. Why else would he insist on keeping it on inside? Perhaps he had even heard that it was something of a trademark garment with Quinn, and was seeking to emulate him. Quinn was surely not flattering himself to think that he was known for his herringbone Ulster, at least amongst the detectives of the Met. But this was ridiculous. They could not both wear herringbone Ulsters. If it should happen to rain one day and they were working together, they would look like a couple of idiots.

‘Inspector Quinn, I presume? DCI Coddington. Come on up – we’ve been waiting for you.’

So this
was
Coddington. Quinn felt immediately that he had nothing to fear.

‘You won’t be needing me anymore, then?’ said the housekeeper.

‘We may have some questions for you later.’

‘I’ve already spoken to the other one.’

‘Yes, of course. But in an investigation such as this it is often necessary for us to interview witnesses a number of times as we go over their evidence and make new discoveries.’

‘I’m not a witness. I didn’t see anything.’

‘You found the body. You knew the deceased. You may have witnessed something significant without realizing it. Please don’t go anywhere without letting us know.’

‘Where would I go?
I
have work to do.’ Her resentful emphasis suggested that the policemen, on the other hand, were merely engaged in some kind of idle horseplay. She nodded tersely and disappeared towards the back of the house.

Quinn looked up at Coddington, who was waiting expectantly at the top of the stairs. That great drooping moustache dominated his face, at the same time as sapping it of any intelligence or energy. Quinn presumed there was a mouth beneath it because he had heard the man speak. Facial hair was all very well; it might even be considered necessary on a man. But one mustn’t let it get out of hand. That, at any rate, was Quinn’s position, whose own moustache was so minimal as to be hardly worthy of comment.

It looked far too much as if Coddington had grown the moustache in another attempt to look the part. It was his bid for a trademark feature of his own. And yet he evidently lacked confidence in it, because he had felt the need to appropriate Quinn’s use of the Ulster.

‘Very glad to have you on the case,’ said Coddington, extending his hand as Quinn reached the first landing. But the shifty flicker of his eyes belied his welcome. Quinn suspected that DCI Coddington was one of those who were capable of saying the precise opposite of what they meant, if they felt it would serve their ends better than the truth. ‘Of course, your reputation precedes you.’

Quinn nodded tersely as he shook Coddington’s hand; there was more than one way to take that remark. ‘Are you not hot in your coat?’

Coddington frowned in confusion as he led the way along the first-floor landing. He kept his head half-turned back towards Quinn. He managed a deferential expression, or perhaps it was simply wariness. It couldn’t have been easy for him, as the higher rank, to have Quinn catapulted in to take over his case. ‘I . . . uhm . . . I had not really thought about it. We have been so busy, you see. I had no time to hang up my coat.’

Quinn decided to let it go. ‘What have you discovered so far?’

‘The dead girl is a professional mannequin at the House of Blackley. A French girl by the name of Amélie Dupin. It appears she was strangled. We’re still waiting on the ME’s full report but Doctor Prendergast, who examined the body at the scene of crime, confirmed that the facial appearance was consistent with strangulation. There was blood in her eyes. And a red silk scarf around her neck, which we assume to be the murder weapon.’

‘Do we have a time of death yet?’

‘Doctor Prendergast was able to offer the opinion that death occurred sometime during the evening or night of this Tuesday, March thirty-first. That is consistent with witness statements. She was last seen returning to the mannequin house that evening. She locked herself in her room and did not take her evening meal with the other mannequins, which apparently was nothing unusual. She failed to turn up for work yesterday morning. Mr Blackley sent someone round from the store to find out what had happened to her and her dead body was discovered.’

‘I hear you are pursuing the theory that the murderer is a monkey?’

There was a derisive snort from Inchball.

Coddington dipped his head in embarrassment. ‘Well, no, I . . . obviously not. That would be . . . absurd. I merely happened to make a jocular remark to a colleague to the effect that I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be the monkey. Unbeknownst to me, there was a journalist in earshot.’

‘But why that particular attempt at jocularity? What is the monkey’s part in all this?’

Coddington’s demeanour became guarded. ‘You haven’t been told?’

‘I have been told nothing. Other than that a girl is dead.’

‘You haven’t read the newspapers?’

‘I prefer not to. I would rather hear the details myself from the senior officer of the local CID. I know from first-hand experience how the gutter press can twist things round.’

Coddington smiled tentatively and even risked an appreciative nod. ‘The case has a number of extraordinary features. The door was locked from the inside.’

‘From the inside? How can you be sure?’ So this was the detail that Sir Edward had deliberately kept back. He was sending Quinn to investigate a locked-room mystery. No wonder Coddington was out of his depth.

‘Amélie’s key was still in the lock.’

‘I see.’

‘Making it impossible for anyone to have locked the door with another key from the other side. The windows were fastened too. The room was sealed, in fact. There was no way the murderer could have made his escape. However, the dead girl was not alone in the room.’

‘The monkey?’

‘Yes!’ Coddington appeared unduly impressed by Quinn’s guess. After all, the animal had to fit into the jigsaw somewhere. Quinn was beginning to doubt the man’s sincerity. He couldn’t possibly be as stupid as he appeared to be. ‘When Arbuthnot and Miss Mortimer knocked on the door, the monkey calmly turned the key. The door was opened and the beast ran off.’

‘I see. And so, it was natural to presume that the monkey . . .’

‘I made no such presumption, I tell you!’ The force of Coddington’s insistence suggested that this was precisely the assumption he had made.

Quinn attempted a conciliatory tone. ‘I was merely going to say that it was natural to presume that the monkey must be involved in some way. If not as perpetrator, then as accomplice. He could have locked the door after the murderer had got away. At the very least, he is a witness.’

Coddington frowned. His oversized moustache twitched as if it was a small dog sniffing out a scent. ‘Are you serious?’ A look of almost cunning came into his eyes as he scrutinized Quinn.

‘Are you familiar with the works of Edgar Allan Poe? There is one story,
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
.’

‘But that is fiction . . .?’ Coddington’s objection was tinged with a touching hope that Quinn might be able to persuade him to the contrary.

‘I believe it was based on a real case.’

Coddington’s moustache became suddenly enlivened; his eyes took on a dangerous gleam. ‘Yes!’ The DCI suddenly clamped one hand over his moustache, as if he was afraid that in its excitement it would bolt from his face. ‘I confess, it was that story that gave me the idea.’

‘If it could happen once . . .’

‘It could happen again!’

‘And did Sherlock Holmes not say something along the lines of, “Eliminate the impossible, and whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth.”’

‘The Sign of the Four!’ Coddington held out his hand for Quinn to shake again. ‘I have a feeling you and I are going to get along just fine, Inspector Quinn. Just fine!’

Quinn caught Inchball’s scornful glance. And now it was his turn to give a
well-what-do-you-expect
shrug.

T
he sound was animal and raw, a constant stream of small, emotional explosions, each somewhere between a sob and a yelp. Quinn thought of something tender and blind being pulled from deep within a bed of pain. Repeatedly.

He held up his hand to halt Coddington.

‘That’s Albertine,’ said Coddington. ‘One of the other mannequins. She was very close to the deceased. The only one of the girls here that was, apparently.’

Quinn rapped quietly on the door and opened it.

A single bed practically filled the room. It sat on top of a zebra-striped rug that took up what little floor space there was. The girl sitting on the edge of the bed, framed by the doorway, was the physical embodiment of the sound he had just heard, a sound which was shockingly amplified now that there was nothing between Quinn and its source. She was wrapped in a rather tatty rust-coloured dressing gown several sizes too large for her. Either it belonged to somebody else, or it had once fitted her and she had shrivelled inside it. The damp pallor of her face was reminiscent of a plate of tripe; or perhaps of something even more unseemly: his own flesh after he had lain too long in the bath. Her frail body appeared to be twisted together from pipe cleaners. How it supported her enormous doll’s head was a mystery.

She barely acknowledged Quinn’s intrusion. The heavy swivel of her eyes was devoid of all curiosity; no room for anything but anguish there. If she looked at Quinn at all, it was not to take him in but to transmit her suffering. This was done involuntarily, of course. The savage, raucous gulps that convulsed her did not abate. How could they? She had no power to control them.

‘I wanted to look at her grief,’ said Quinn as he closed the door on her.

Coddington nodded as if what Quinn had just said was standard procedure. ‘All the other mannequins are at the store. Clearly she is too distressed to model clothes successfully.’

‘You have taken statements from the others?’

‘Of course.’ Coddington took out a notebook from the inside pocket of his Ulster. ‘I took them myself. Given the seriousness of the crime, I thought it best. Would you like to read them now?’

‘I’ll have a look round first, I think.’

Coddington pocketed the notebook. ‘Whatever you think best.’ Was there a hint of resentment at Quinn’s rebuff? It was clear that Coddington was proud of the statements he had taken, and was eager to share them. He gestured to the door next to Albertine’s. ‘This is the dead girl’s room. Her body has been taken to the morgue, of course, but everything else has been left as it was found.’

Quinn crouched down and peered into the keyhole. ‘The key is still in the lock, I see. Have you examined it?’

‘It has been dusted for fingerprints.’

‘And?’

‘It was wiped. The only imprints found are thought to be the monkey’s. They are too small to be human.’

‘Wiped, you say?’

‘Yes.’

‘Presumably
not
by the monkey,’ observed Quinn drily as he stood up.

‘Well, no. Obviously not. That is to say, we don’t know who wiped the key.’ Coddington appeared wounded by the quip.

The talk of fingerprints reminded Quinn to don the white cotton gloves that Macadam insisted he wear when examining crime scenes.

‘Ah, yes, of course,’ said Coddington, following his example. ‘You can be sure that I ordered my men to take scrupulous care in preserving the integrity of the crime scene.’

Quinn gave a non-committal nod. In truth, he disliked the gloves and often forgot to wear them. He valued the direct touch of his skin against some object that the victim, and quite possibly the murderer, had handled. In his mind, a kind of communion took place. Of course, he would never admit it to his eminently rational and scientifically-minded sergeant.