The Memory of Blood(52)
‘Like St George,’ said May.
‘Exactly. It’s about sex, too. The length of the nose signifies lechery, as does the stick.’
‘All this sounds rather cerebral. I mean, our killer wouldn’t know about this stuff, would he?’
‘Oh, Mr Punch is not an intellectual,’ Bryant pointed out. ‘He’s pure unthinking energy. In his Italian origin he was a notorious coward and boaster, but in England he becomes a hero.’
‘That’s right,’ Salterton agreed. ‘Punch hates to be dog-bitten, henpecked, opposed, imprisoned, bedevilled, so he strikes out. He has no hypocrisy. He only deals in blood. He kills the Baby because it cries. He kills Judy because she hits him, he takes out the Doctor’s eyes, he tricks the Hangman into hanging himself and roasts the Devil to death on a turning fork. In one version he survives all the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition. He’s been described as a cross between Sir John Falstaff and Richard III. Merriment and cruelty. Fear and amusement. It’s a very English notion. Punch’s confidence and presence of mind never desert him. And it’s important that Mr Punch wins. There’s a historical account of a pious showman who was pelted with mud for refusing Punch a victory over the Devil. I say Punch can be anything, but really, at root, he’s a Pagan.’
‘I was terrified of him as a child,’ May admitted. ‘That creepy voice of his.’
‘Here.’ Salterton held out a serrated circle of pressed tin. ‘It’s called a swozzle, or a call. Put it on the back of your tongue and speak.’
May wasn’t too happy about this, but gingerly inserted it in his mouth. He tried to talk but a peculiarly high rasping sound came out, and he nearly choked. He quickly spat the swozzle into his hand. ‘God, I nearly swallowed it.’
‘If you do swallow it, it doesn’t hurt you,’ said Salterton. ‘That one was owned by my great-grandfather. He swallowed it hundreds of times.’
May turned pale. Bryant and Salterton laughed.
‘There are all kinds of traditions surrounding Punch. The puppet must be made from birch or poplar. If there’s a dog it must be a real one, wearing a flat hat and a ruff, and it must dance on its hind legs. The script is not written down, but passed orally from one generation to the next. And it usually contains words of a mystical nature. Dickens mentions the Punch cry of “Shalla-balah” in The Old Curiosity Shop. Of course, the great secret to Mr Punch—the great paradox, if you will—is that he is not the master of his universe at all. That honour belongs to the puppeteer, the man who controls him. And this marionette master remains invisible, hidden behind the curtains of Punch’s life.’
‘You’re not just a seaside entertainer, are you?’ said May. ‘Who are you?’
‘Tell him,’ said Bryant. ‘It’s all right.’
Salterton smiled sadly. ‘I was an academic employed in investigating the provenance of Victorian artifacts at the British Museum. I used to work with Arthur’s old friend Harold Masters. But I left the museum under a cloud. After my wife died, I fell to drink and got myself in debt. I stole some small articles to pay my bills, and went to jail for my sins.’ He returned the puppet to its case and carefully relocked it. ‘But now fate has had the last laugh on me. I’m the penniless guardian of a priceless collection that I can never allow myself to sell. If I did, it would be broken up. I sit here in the damp and darkness, listening to the rain fall through the roof, and know that once again Mr Punch has come out on top.’
‘Forget this rubbish about Punch and bloody Judy,’ Raymond Land warned the PCU staff. ‘Let Bryant and May wander around the country looking at puppet theatres while we concentrate on the basics of criminal investigation, before the whole of the bloody Met starts laughing at us again.’ Bryant had ill-advisedly left a message apprising Land of his whereabouts. Perhaps his note should not have read: Gone to see puppets at the seaside. Back soon.
‘Bring in the usual suspects from around Blackfriars and Cannon Street. Run a check on the hostels, see if they’ve had any trouble. Any offices that were working late, bus drivers, cabbies, street sweepers, tube workers, anyone who might have seen him. I want some answers today. Who were Gregory Baine’s enemies? Close friends? Work colleagues? Talk to the girlfriend. Who’s his family? What were his movements last night? Come on, you all know the routine. How the bloody hell did he end up underneath Cannon Street Bridge? Was he killed before being strung up? If so, how did the killer get his body there? Where did he park? And the doll of the hangman, where was that bought?’