‘Would it be all right if I had a quick look through?’ asked May.
‘I suppose so,’ Alma sniffed, ‘but remember,’ she raised a fat finger at the ceiling, ‘he can still see you.’
‘He always did like watching me work. Take me to the boxes.’
May spent several fruitless hours wading through the files and papers in the cartons, but they were arranged according to the workings of Bryant’s disordered mind. The human male possesses a powerful urge to collect things; Bryant had collected books, papers and magazines that revealed a lifetime of idiosyncratic behaviour. As May rummaged through the photographs of forgotten faces, the absurd news clippings, the abstruse monographs of disbarred lawyers, maverick scientists and mentally unstable professors, he knew he would find little of use. Sixty years of tangled memories; there was simply too much to decipher.
A papery cloud of moths fluttered out of a carton containing nothing but old razor blades. One box contained several hundred keys, another held only seed packets and raffle tickets.
May raised himself from his knees and dusted down his trousers. Perhaps Bryant had thrown the list away. His partner had, to his certain knowledge, visited one other place in his final days. The archive room of the Palace Theatre.
He dug out his mobile and rang ahead for an appointment. It felt good to be doing something, however uncertain. Positive action was the only way to keep his mind from sinking back.
12
INTO THE PALACE
Dr Runcorn had already instructed the Palace not to open its doors to the public that morning. The last thing he wanted was for customers to tramp any remaining evidence through the magenta pile of the foyer carpets.
Theatrical rehearsals were under way for Orpheus in the Underworld. The production was due to open without previews on the coming Saturday night. The unusual step of premiering on a day when the critics had normally gone to the country was deliberate. Nearly all of the first week’s performances were sold out, thanks to shocked stage whispers along Shaftesbury Avenue that the production would not survive for more than a few performances before the Lord Chamberlain closed it down. Nobody knew exactly what had been altered in this radical reworking of Offenbach’s operetta, but the scenery going in depicted all the damnations of Hell, including several freshly invented for the occasion. The carpenters were telling their mates in the public bars that they had never heard such dirty language recited on the London stage, and there were tales of skimpy costumes on the girls that put the Windmill in the shade and left nothing to the imagination.
Bryant knocked at the theatre’s main entrance. PC Crowhurst nodded to him through a gap in the boarded-over glass, and hastily unlocked the door. The interior of the Palace was mock-Gothic, with a central marble staircase that offered views back on itself like a recurring image from an Escher etching. Its steps and walls were worn pale, scoured by their nightly brush with more than a thousand bodies. Dusty electroliers hung down through the stairwell, their crystals gleaming dully like ropes of low-grade pearls.
‘Hm. Nobody home.’ Bryant peered into the frosted-glass lozenge of the box-office booth. ‘Let’s try the floor above.’ He enthusiastically took the stairs in pairs and triples, forcing May to trot beside him. ‘We’re not going to give the press anything on this one. Davenport wants us to screw the lid down tight because of the victim’s background.’
‘Which is what?’
‘Apparently her parents are Austrian. She trained in Vienna, mother’s dead, father’s Albert Friedrich, the international concert organizer. He’s a pretty well-known chap, worked with C. B. Cochran here in the twenties, but Friedrich has lost a lot of good faith lately over his attitude towards the Jews. He has enough right-wing connections in neutral territories for the FO to keep files on him. He’s also a professional litigant. I imagine he’d be prepared to make trouble for everyone if anything unsavoury leaks out about his daughter. Do you have a girl?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I was wondering if you had a girl. You know, a sweetheart. I don’t, more’s the pity.’ Bryant sighed and shook his head with incredulity. ‘It’s not through lack of trying. I don’t understand it. There’s supposed to be a shortage of decent men. You just don’t seem to meet the right ladies in this job.’
‘I don’t have a girl at the moment,’ May admitted. ‘I was seeing someone, but she’s been posted to Farnham and isn’t keen on writing letters.’
‘Oh well, we anchor in hope, as the sailors say. Our contact here is a woman called Elspeth Wynter, supposed to be a mine of information.’ He held up the cloth bag and checked that it was still dry. ‘I must walk these feet back soon so that Oswald can get started on them.’