‘I can make you up one. We keep a file of regular visitors. I won’t be a minute.’ Granville eased himself from the stool with some difficulty, and tottered over to a gigantic ledger, which he proceeded to pull down from the shelf.
‘Do you want me to give you a hand with that?’ asked May.
‘Thank you, I can manage,’ said Granville, looking as if he was about to be flattened. Clutching the immense tome, he staggered over to a corner of the counter and slammed it down.
‘This isn’t going to help us,’ May whispered to Bryant. ‘So far I’ve learned about mechanical dolls, robots, puppets and wax dummies, and absolutely nothing about the case at hand.’
‘Not so.’ Bryant shook his head. ‘We’re much closer to understanding what we’re up against.’
‘Would you care to enlighten me?’
‘Not really.’
‘Here we are,’ Granville exclaimed, thrusting a piece of paper at Bryant. ‘If I can be of any further help, do pop in.’
‘Well, that was a waste of time,’ said May as they left the museum shop. ‘Let’s get back to some proper policing.’
‘I think we have one more stop to make,’ said Bryant, showing his partner the slip of paper. ‘Look who’s a regular visitor to Pollock’s.’
Ella Maltby, the New Strand Theatre’s set designer and props manager, was listed at the top of the page as a collector of dolls and automata. ‘According to Mr Granville’s records, the last item Maltby purchased from the museum shop was this.’ He unfolded a sheet of photocopied paper and showed May the picture on it.
May found himself looking at a puppet of the Hangman.
Ella Maltby lived in a redbrick Jacobean-style house overlooking the north end of Hampstead Heath. It rose in magnificent isolation on the brow of the hill, rendered almost invisible by the profusion of damp greenery that surrounded it. Here kestrels, tawny owls and woodpeckers made their homes in the trees, and London, blue and misted, was spread out below, its glass financial towers placed to one side, like condiments at a picnic feast.
‘This is probably the grandest building I’ve ever attempted to enter legally.’ Bryant looked up at the door with approval. ‘It makes Hampstead Golf Club look positively plebeian.’
‘I wonder why she works if she lives in a place like this?’
‘I don’t know. Ray Pryce said she was very odd. Let’s find out just how very odd.’ He gave the iron bellpull a tug.
‘Is my tie straight?’ May turned to Bryant with his chin forward.
‘It’s fine. I don’t know why you feel the need to straighten a piece of silk dangling from your neck whenever you visit a woman.’
‘I don’t want to look an utter scruffbag like you.’ May looked down at Bryant’s knees and recoiled. Blue and white striped material was sticking out of his trouser bottoms. ‘Please tell me you’re not wearing pyjamas underneath your strides?’
‘It was cold when I got up, so I just put another layer on. Is that so wrong?’
‘I can’t believe you have to ask.’
The door was opened by Ella Maltby herself. She was clearly unhappy and unprepared to find the detectives standing on her doorstep.
‘Ms Maltby, we need to talk to you about a purchase you made from Pollock’s Toy Museum six weeks ago,’ said Bryant.
‘You’d better come in before anyone sees you,’ Maltby said, looking behind them.
She led the way into a wide oak-paneled hall hung with cobwebbed chandeliers. When May studied them, he realised that the cobwebs were stage effects that had been carefully sprayed onto the candlesticks.
‘Well, they say you never can tell what’s behind an Englishman’s front door,’ said Bryant in a not entirely complimentary tone.
‘I am not English and I’m not a man,’ Maltby pointed out. ‘I am German, originally from Hamburg. My father anglicised our family name after the war.’
‘Ah, a Jerry, yes, well, I imagine he would. We had quite a few family friends who visited Hamburg. Didn’t stop, just flew over it and returned to base. Never mind, forgive and forget, eh?’
‘Give me strength,’ May muttered under his breath, but Bryant was on a roll.
‘It probably explains your fascination with torture, I mean with the Hun being a notoriously cruel race, but you gave us our royal family, even though we dumped the Saxe-Coburg and Gotha surname because it was simply too embarrassing.’
Maltby froze Bryant with a cold stare. ‘You wanted to talk about a purchase.’
‘A Hangman doll, I believe.’
‘That’s correct.’