Bryant perked up. ‘I know that watering hole. It was named after Queen Charlotte, the wife of King George III. He was being treated for insanity at a doctor’s house in Queen Square. The queen leased the cellar beneath the pub to keep the king’s special foods there.’
‘Wynley left the Queen’s Larder some time after ten – no one’s been able to pinpoint the exact time – and made her way up to the Euston Road, but then she doubled back into Bloomsbury, which suggests a deviation from simply returning home.’
‘I told you so,’ said Bryant. ‘She had another destination in mind.’
‘Then perhaps you made a mistake about the name of the pub,’ May suggested.
‘We’ll soon see.’ Bryant climbed the small stool behind his desk and reached up among his books, pulling down a green linen volume with untrimmed pages. ‘Here we are, The Secret History of London’s Public Houses.’
‘Wait, when was that printed?’
Bryant checked the publisher’s page. ‘1954. Not one of my more recent acquisitions.’ He flicked to the index. ‘Here you are. Going mad, am I? Look at this.’ He turned the book around and held it up with the pages open.
The others found themselves looking at a photograph of a public house built on the corner of Whidbourne Street, Bloomsbury, but they did not seem pleased.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Bryant. ‘I was right after all, wasn’t I? We just overlooked it. Let’s go back and—’
‘Arthur, this can’t be the place,’ said May. ‘This picture was taken two years before the pub was demolished, in 1925. It’s been gone for over three-quarters of a century.’
12
* * *
ECDYSIAST
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ asked DC Colin Bimsley. ‘That belongs to Mr Bryant.’
‘It’s a marijuana plant,’ said Renfield, dragging the great ceramic pot along the corridor towards the top of the stairs.
‘It’s for his rheumatism.’
‘And it’s illegal, or did nobody bother to point that out to him?’ asked Renfield.
‘Give him a break, Jack – he gets pains in his legs.’
‘Then he should be retired and relaxing at home. He could be working as a consultant.’
‘It’s not your job to decide what he does.’
‘It is if he can’t do his job without the aid of psycho- active narcotics.’
‘Wait, what else have you got there?’ Bimsley pointed to the battered cardboard box Renfield had also dragged out of the office.
‘Old books. They’re everywhere, even blocking the fire exits. I’m stacking them by the rubbish. They can go to charity shops.’
‘You can’t do that, he’s taken a lifetime to collect them.’
‘Land has asked him to take them home dozens of times, but they’re still here, so out they go.’
‘But he needs them for research.’
‘Really?’ Renfield bent down and retrieved a stack of slender volumes. ‘Let’s see what he’s been researching, shall we? Yoruba Proverbs; The Anatomy of Melancholia; Embalming Under Lenin; Cormorant-Sexing for Beginners; The Apocalypsis Revelata, Volume Two; A Complete History of the Trouser-Press; Financial Accounts for the Swedish Mining Board, Years 1745–53. I suppose the next time they bring a gunshot victim in from Pentonville, he’ll be able to use these in his investigation.’
‘You’d be surprised,’ said Bimsley, ‘how an intimate knowledge of the workings of the trouser-press might aid in the capture of a determined rapist.’
‘Are you making fun of me?’ asked Renfield suspiciously.
‘You’ll never know, will you?’ Bimsley stood his ground.
‘I say, what are you doing with Mr Bryant’s books?’ asked Giles Kershaw, who had found his path blocked upon entering the hall. ‘He’ll go bananas if he sees you’ve moved them. They’re very useful.’
‘Not you as well.’ Renfield was starting to wonder if the senior detectives had brainwashed the unit staff. Kershaw raised his long legs in a spidery fashion to climb over the obstruction, and admitted himself into the detectives’ office.
‘I’m thinking the bash was incidental,’ he began, throwing himself into the guest’s armchair.
‘I’m sorry, what are we talking about?’ asked May.
‘Mrs Wynley. There’s an abnormality in the base of her skull. The bone is extremely thin. It wouldn’t have taken much of a knock to damage it. But even so, I think it occurred as the result of something else.’