Bryant & May 09; The Memory of Blood Read online

  “Now tell him the rest. Tell him how you plagiarized someone else’s work to worm your way into Kramer’s good books.”

  Ray looked shocked, and started stammering. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Come off it, chum. I know you copied the play.”

  “It’s not plagiarism, not in the strict sense.”

  “The Two Murderers follows the script of Les Deux Meurtriers almost word for word.”

  “I’m clear of the seventy-year rule.”

  “You haven’t exactly gone out of your way to acknowledge the original, have you? Does Robert know?”

  “No, but – ”

  “The seventy-year rule,” May repeated. “An author has to have been dead for seventy years before his work comes out of copyright.”

  “That’s right,” said Ray, shamefaced. “I found the script right here in the building.”

  “Now perhaps you’d like to tell my partner about the Grand Guignol,” Bryant prompted.

  “OK, sure.” May could see that Ray was not nervous because he was standing near a corpse, but because he had suddenly had the spotlight of suspicion turned on him. “The Grand Guignol was built in the Pigalle, in Paris, at the end of the nineteenth century, by a man called Oscar Metenier. It was a kind of vaudeville of horror. It staged a programme of one-act plays that featured murder of all kinds – matricide, infanticide, kidnap and rape. The scenes were graphically depicted on stage. They were so realistic that audience members regularly used to pass out.”

  “And where did the name of the theatre come from?”

  “From ‘Guignol’, the Punch and Judy puppet character from Lyons.”

  “The plays were often taken from the police blotters of the times,” Bryant added. “True crimes, staged to delight and horrify Parisian audiences. Sex and violence for the chattering classes. Now explain what happened over here, if you would be so kind.”

  Ray glanced back at the body and blanched. “Can we go somewhere away from – her?”

  “I’m sorry. Of course.” The detectives took him out to the foyer. “Pray continue if you would,” Bryant asked.

  “Well, it’s simple. The Grand Guignol of Paris was a huge success for the next twenty years. So it was brought across the Channel and staged in what was then known as the Little Theatre, later the New Strand Theatre, here in Adam Street. But right from the start there was a problem. We had a Lord Chamberlain who censored plays and he refused a licence to any play he considered dangerous to the morals of the public. So the Grand Guignol at the Little Theatre highlighted the psychological cruelty of the characters, rather than showing blood and sex.

  “In a way, that was worse. In two years they staged eight series of plays, and many more were turned down. Altogether, forty-three plays were seen here. Most of them were psychological studies of damaged people. Stanislavsky created emotional memory exercises for actors – the idea was that you give a more convincing performance by inhabiting the character and making it believable from a psychological point of view. As a result, the theatre attracted famous names, even though it drew adverse critical reviews and caused a scandal. Noel Coward wrote a play for the Little Theatre called The Better Half, and Dame Sybil Thorndyke appeared in many of them. For four years, young Londoners came here to be shocked. Eventually, the Lord Chamberlain got fed up with what he considered an affront to human decency, and the theatre company had to close. The place changed its name and carried on for a while, but it was never really successful again.”

  “So that’s why nobody remembers the old theatre.”

  “He banned all the plays from public performance. Odd, really, when you consider that the English stage has a history of horror, from the blinding of Gloucester in King Lear to the gruesome tortures of The Revenger’s Tragedy, where the Duke’s lips are burned away with acid and his eyelids are torn off so he has to witness his wife’s adultery. The Little Theatre was low theatre in the Lord Chamberlain’s eyes and there was a danger that it might appeal to the lower orders. So he came up with a solution. He allowed plays to be performed in their original French, because he thought only the middle classes would come here then and they were less likely to be corrupted.”

  “How did you find out about the play?”

  “I was working in the building.”

  “Doing what?”

  “After I finished working for the government, I became a night watchman. One evening I was asked to clear out a load of old boxes from the basement, ready for the dustman in the morning. There was a bunch of playscripts inside. I was sitting behind the desk with nothing to do, and some nights Mr Kramer came to look at the building with his producer. I had time on my hands, so I rewrote a few of the plays and submitted them as my own work. I didn’t hurt anyone. These things are ancient history. I just modernized them and bumped up the levels of sex and violence.”

  “You acted with questionable legality,” said May, “but we have bigger problems now.”

  “Are you going to make an arrest?” Ray asked.

  “You’ll know at the same time as everyone else,” May replied. “I’d make myself scarce if I were you. This place is now off limits.”

  Mona Williams’s body was delivered to Giles Kershaw while Banbury cleared the crime scene. The detectives watched what appeared to be a second Grand Guignol play being performed in front of the proscenium arch, then returned to North London.

  “I think we know what we’re dealing with now,” said Bryant, waving his walking stick at a taxi. “Robert Kramer is clearly the target, not the suspect.”

  “But why?”

  “Because he has a secret, something he hasn’t revealed to us in almost a week of questioning. This secret is so great that someone wants him to suffer very badly. They took his child, and that should have been the end of the matter. Then they went after his money man, his best friend, destroying his financial empire in the process. Kramer knows someone is out to get him. But here’s the interesting thing. Despite his secret being known to another individual, he doesn’t know who his own enemy is. Intriguing, no?”

  “A woman,” said May suddenly.

  “Hm. I was thinking about that possibility.”

  “The harming of a child by throwing it about. Frightening an old lady, but not intending to kill her. It feels like a woman somehow, one who’d been angered by Kramer’s behaviour. Particularly if we say that Gregory Baine’s death was suicide.”

  “I see what you mean. Kramer’s enemy finds out that Mona Williams knows something which can give the game away. But she’s an old lady, she’ll frighten easily – she can be scared into silence.”

  “The plan goes wrong. And revenge is not properly dealt. Kramer’s still around and his life continues; nothing seems to touch him. He’s not as broken up over his child as he was meant to be, because he’s not the father. He’s not destroyed by Baine’s death, because for all we know there could be another offshore company designed to protect his finances from Baine. So there could still be another attempt to hurt him.”

  “But why doesn’t this enemy simply kill Kramer if he wants revenge?” Bryant asked.

  “Where’s the pleasure in that? Someone needs to see Kramer suffer. Merely being rid of him won’t take away that gnawing anger. The killer wants to watch the pain slowly building in the victim’s eyes. Nothing is working out as it was intended to. Hardly anything has gone right. Something else is bound to happen now.”

  “Women,” repeated Bryant. “There are four in the case. Delia Fortess, the female lead; Ella Maltby, the set designer; Jolie Christchurch, the front-of-house manager; and Judith Kramer.”

  “Incredible,” May marvelled. “Last week you parked your car to get a bag of boiled sweets and spent the rest of the day trying to remember where you’d left it, but you can remember the name of everyone in the investigation.”

  “I have a system for finding Victor now,” Bryant replied.

  “I only park in places where I upset people. That way I can alwa
ys find someone who remembers my car. Hang on, I’ve left one female out. Gail Strong.”

  “Ah, the disreputable Ms Strong. I’m not sure I believe a word she’s said to me so far. Maybe we should talk to her again.”

  “After we’ve grilled Ella Maltby about her scold’s bridle.” Bryant made a strange sound between a sink gurgling and a cow waking up. This noise usually indicated that he’d had an idea.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I’ve just had another thought. According to my Twentieth-Century British Theatre, when the Lord Chamberlain banned the plays he destroyed the reputation of the theatre’s owner, who died in penury. You don’t suppose someone at that party was a descendant of the original owner, looking for revenge against Kramer now?”

  “Incredible as it may seem, no, I don’t,” said May.

  “OK, it was just a thought.”

  The taxi sloshed through gutters filled with rainwater, wending its way into the deepening northern light.

  ∨ The Memory of Blood ∧

  35

  La Ronde

  In the warehouse that had become the headquarters of the PCU, Bryant took one suspect and May took the other. Ella Maltby sat in the common room with her arms folded and her boots turned outwards in a gesture of defiant unhelpfulness.

  “The bridle in my props room is one of three we made,” she explained icily. “When Ray brought the scripts to us, we first chose a different play, and it featured a scene where the village gossip was locked into a bridle. Robert was never really happy with the second act, and eventually we junked it in favour of The Two Murderers.”

  “What happened to the other two bridles?”

  “I imagine they stayed in the props room at the theatre.”

  “Aren’t you in charge of that?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t have to keep track of them; they weren’t exactly lethal weapons.”

  “They were, as it turned out.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Who had access to the props room?”

  “Everyone. I mean, we wouldn’t keep it locked unless there were weapons involved in the production. Anyone who needs to get into the backstage area of the theatre has to sign in at the stage door.”

  “So access is strictly limited to cast, crew and theatre staff.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And at the time when Mona Williams was attacked, you say you were – ”

  “At home. By myself.”

  Bryant had nothing more. Banbury had found no prints on the bridle and had not been able to lift anything from the stalls carpet. “All right, you’re free to go, but don’t go far,” he told Maltby. “At least you could have come up with a decent alibi this time. No wonder you haven’t got any friends. Janice, make her sign something, then kick her back onto the street.” He wandered into May’s interrogation.

  “This reminds me of An Inspector Calls,” said Neil Crofting. “Mona was terribly good in that. I shall miss her. A real trouper. What do you think happened?”

  “We’re pretty sure someone tried to intimidate her and went too far,” May told him. “You were by her side on the night of the party. Did she see or tell you anything unusual?”

  “Let me think. I’d had rather a lot to drink. She usually gives me far too much information, a running commentary on the state of her innards, what she doesn’t like about the leading lady, how Andrew Lloyd Webber is killing the theatre, why she can’t eat sprouts before a show, that sort of thing. We were like an old married couple.” He wiped a misted eye. “She chattered a lot, the usual tittle-tattle about the company. Mona was a terrible old gossip. Loathed the director, thought he was an idiot. It’s hard to believe she’s gone. She made a lovely Ophelia in her time. There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. She had the legs for it, you see.”

  “What did she talk about specifically?” May prompted.

  “Well, various people came up to pay their respects – she was a bit of a grande dame, after all, waiting in one spot for everyone to circle past her and pay respects like a remnant of the Hapsburg Empire, then she relayed the talk on to me. She said Russell was drinking too heavily, Delia had a yeast infection, Ray was complaining his nicotine patches didn’t work, Marcus had been seen backstage with Judith, Ella was being a bore about her ex-girlfriend, that sort of thing. But the big scandal was that Robert’s wife and mistress were both in the same room. And I don’t think Judith had an inkling.”

  “You know his mistress?”

  “It wasn’t common knowledge, but we both knew because we’ve worked with Robert in the past, and we recognized the signs.”

  “What sort of signs?”

  “The ones that tell you when a man is about to become infatuated again. We were there going over our scenes on the night Robert first met her. And we could tell from the first moment what was going on. You could see the sparks from the stage.”

  “Who is his mistress?”

  “Gail Strong,” said Crofting, as if it was obvious. “She set her cap at him. A disgraceful display. I suppose he was flattered, a man of his age.”

  “When was this?”

  “Oh, a couple of months ago, way before she joined the play. I think she’d been introduced to him through her father. And then at the party I remember Mona saying something that struck me as odd, just before everything went wrong.”

  “What was that?”

  “She said, That completes the circle. You know, like La Ronde. And I asked her to explain, but she wouldn’t.”

  “She meant exactly what she said,” said May. “Gail Strong was seeing Robert Kramer, Kramer’s wife was seeing Marcus Sigler, and then at the party we think Marcus and Gail had sex.”

  “But did Marcus and Judith know about Gail?”

  “Perhaps not, but somebody does. Did Mona Williams have any enemies?”

  “Mr May, you reach a certain age when you don’t have enemies any more, just people who find you mildly annoying. You become invisible. Mona had got to the point where she only existed on stage.”

  “You can’t think why anyone would want to kill her?”

  “No, of course not.”

  May sat back with a sigh. “Arthur, is there anything you want to ask?”

  Bryant was rooting through his pockets and looked as if he’d been caught out. “Ah, yes – I have this written down somewhere but I can’t find it – bladder complaints.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You said she talked to you about her innards. Any bladder complaints?”

  “Well, I suppose the usual, at that age.”

  “Only it would make sense if she had.”

  “Arthur, you’re not making any sense, as usual,” said May.

  “It’s very simple,” said Bryant impatiently. “The only reason Mona Williams was threatened was because she knew the killer’s identity. Now, she didn’t know it before the party because the first death hadn’t yet occurred. Maybe she worked it out later, but she saw or heard something at the party that revealed the killer’s identity to her. And at some point this realization also hit the killer. I seem to remember from the chart Janice gave me that Mona Williams visited the loo three times. On several occasions during the evening there was a queue in the hall. In those kinds of situations, people tend to talk to each other. I’m wondering if somebody told her something they shouldn’t have.”

  “Well, Mr Crofting, I think we can let you go for now,” said May. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  Bryant watched the old actor don his coat. “I thought you were marvellous in The Crucible. I saw you when I was a child.”

  Crofting eyed Bryant coldly. “No, I don’t think it was that long ago,” he said, and left.

  Bryant trotted off to the kitchen to brew tea, chatting to May as he went. “We’re missing something very obvious in this tangle, aren’t we? Something in plain sight. I should have been able to figure it out in an instant. After all, we’re not dealing with a particularly sophisticated
killer. Rather the reverse. A baby shaken to death, an accountant knocked over the head and hanged, an old woman intimidated. And the crude symbolism of the dolls, everything intended to frighten Robert Kramer – but nothing ever does. Have you spoken to him in the last twenty-four hours?”

  “He’s annoyed about the theatre being closed but has negotiated it down to three days. They’ll reopen on Tuesday.”

  “You see? Nothing touches him. And he leaves nothing to chance. Which brings me to Gail Strong’s father.”

  “Her father? What about him?”

  “Kramer’s not a nice man, we agree on that? He was horrible to his first wife, he cheats on his second and he has a string of compliant girlfriends who can be relied upon to keep their mouths shut. So why would he choose Gail Strong? She has a high media profile and seems physically incapable of behaving herself. She’s a liability.”

  “He’s probably just infatuated with her.”

  “He may well be, but if she proved to be a nuisance he’d drop her like a hot brick. He’ll have made sure she knows nothing about his business dealings, but she could still make life very difficult for him.”

  “Unless he needs something from her,” May suggested.

  “My thought exactly. He’s not sleeping with her because he’s in love.”

  “Then it’s her father he’s after.”

  “He introduced them. He’s in charge of building licences. The original licence for theatrical performances would be attached to the building, and if Kramer needed to get the licence of the theatre extended, Gail’s father would be the key to that.”

  “But surely if her father finds out that Kramer is having an affair with his daughter, he won’t be disposed to grant a licence application.”

  “We don’t know what Kramer is capable of doing. He’ll use her to get what he wants, then dump her. It’s more business than pleasure. I don’t suppose we’ll get any more answers from Kramer or his wife, not unless we allow Jack Renfield to torture them – something he’d probably relish the opportunity to do. I think we need to bring in Gail Strong.”