Full Dark House(134)

‘And Davenport’s very pleased. He came into the unit this morning and wandered around for a while, shifting pieces of paper about, looking into drawers, fiddling with things. Turned out he’d come to congratulate us formally, and was having trouble uttering the words.’

‘Perhaps he could jot it on a postcard,’ offered Bryant. ‘He means well but he’s such an awful clot. Fancy ordering our front door to be barred.’

‘I think he was a bit embarrassed about that. You should have seen his face when Biddle stood up for you. He looked as if he’d been stabbed in the back.’

‘I don’t suppose Davenport’s good mood will last. The Lord Chamberlain has changed his mind about the show. Says it’s indecent and has to come off. I think somebody higher up must have had a word with him.’

‘So all of Elspeth Wynter’s efforts were wasted. The production would have closed anyway. How sad. God, we’re such a lot of hypocritical prudes.’

‘You didn’t sleep with her, did you?’ asked Maggie. ‘You didn’t get your conkers polished by a murderess?’

Bryant looked horrified. ‘No I did not, thank you,’ he said, as though the thought had never even occurred to him. ‘For a spiritualist, you can be very crude.’ He suddenly brightened. ‘Mind you, he did, our Mr May, he made love to a murderess.’ He pointed at John May.

‘Unproven,’ said May hastily. ‘I mean Betty’s involvement in the death of Minos Renalda. There’s nothing on record, only the conversation I had with Andreas.’

‘I thought her real name was Elissa.’

‘That’s right, abbreviated to Betty. She has a sister in the Wrens. I should introduce you.’

‘I don’t think so. Once bitten and so on.’ Bryant raised his trilby and shook out his floppy auburn fringe.

‘I should be going.’ Maggie Armitage set down her tea glass. ‘I’ll be late.’

‘What have you got tonight?’ asked May. ‘Druid ceremony? Séance? Psychic materialization?’

‘No, Tommy Handley on the radio at eight thirty. I never miss him.’ She thrust a lethal-looking pin through her hat. ‘I was listening when Bruce Belfrage got bombed. We hadn’t laughed so much in ages.’ Belfrage was a BBC news announcer who became a national hero after carrying on his live radio broadcast even though the studio had received a direct hit and several people were killed. ‘I actually think I’m going to miss the war when it’s over.’

‘Don’t be obscene, Margaret,’ said Bryant hotly, swinging his legs down from the weed-riven embankment wall. ‘Death is stalking the streets, death made terrifying by its utter lack of meaning.’

‘The closer you are to death, the more attached you become to life,’ the coven leader reminded him. ‘The city is filled with strengthening spirits.’

‘The city is filled with brave people, that’s all,’ said May, and took a long drink of his beer.

‘If people ever stop thinking about the ones they leave behind, Mr May, your job will cease to exist. All that you see—all this,’ she gestured around her, ‘is about generations yet to be born.’

‘Don’t take her too seriously,’ Bryant warned his partner. ‘You were wrong about one of us dying in an explosion, Maggie.’

‘It’s never a dead cert, otherwise I’d make my fortune on the gee-gees instead of helping the police with their inquiries,’ she snapped at him, stung.

‘You told me you once copped a monkey on a nag called Suffragette racing at Kempton Park because he was possessed by the spirit of Emmeline Pankhurst,’ complained Bryant.

Maggie saw more than she ever dared to tell anyone. Time compressing, days blurring into nights, speeding skies, great buildings whirling into life, wheels of steel and circles of glass. She saw a girl her age but half a century away, a girl too afraid of life to leave her house.

She saw the future of John May’s grandchild.

‘I’m sorry,’ she apologized suddenly. ‘I have to go. Don’t be downhearted, Mr May. And don’t worry about the future. Things have a way of working out. The song of the city will live on, so long as there is someone to sing it.’

‘Well, I wonder what got into her?’ exclaimed Bryant. The detectives watched as she walked off down the street, pausing to stroke a tortoiseshell cat on a doorstep, listening to it for a moment, then moving on.

‘You know some very peculiar people, Arthur,’ May pointed out.

‘Oh, you haven’t seen the half of it. I intend to bring many more of them into the unit. I have a friend who can read people’s minds by observing insects. He’d be useful. And I know a girl who’s a ventophonist.’