The Zig Zag Girl (21 page)

‘Dropped in to see him yesterday. Seemed in a pretty
bad way, but that’s only to be expected. Babbling on about some people called the Magic Men. Course he was half drunk. Can’t say I blame him.’

Edgar didn’t feel up to explaining the Magic Men to Deacon. He rang off, promising to keep in touch.

Edgar had his lunch sitting at his desk. Bob returned to say that he hadn’t been able to find any trace of Diablo.

‘For God’s sake,’ said Edgar, ‘Someone must have seen him. He’s not exactly hard to miss, a fat old man in a white suit.’

‘I tried my best,’ Bob put on his offended voice.

‘Well, keep trying. Go to the Theatre Royal and the Hippodrome. Those theatrical types always hang round theatres.’

By five o’clock, Bob still hadn’t returned. Edgar wondered if his research had led him into the orbit of the Bath Arms. Edgar worked on at his desk, going through transcripts and witness statements.
I thought I’d be seeing you sooner or later
. Who was the person Tony had expected to see? But, then again, hadn’t Tony said that the trick was never to seem surprised at anything the audience might throw at you? Maybe it was all an elaborate bluff. Maybe he hadn’t been expecting his visitor after all? Edgar’s head swum. Perhaps he should give it a rest and join the others in the pub. A drink or two might sharpen his wits and it would mend some fences with the team too. He was just standing up when the internal phone rang.

‘Lady to see you, Inspector Stephens,’ said the desk sergeant.

For one mad moment, Edgar was sure that it was Ruby. It suddenly seemed natural that she would have come to him, rather than Max, for help. And he would help her, he would protect her … He ran along the corridor and up the stone steps to the lobby. But the woman sitting meekly by the door wasn’t Ruby with her shiny hair and bold brown eyes. It was someone altogether younger and less captivating.

‘She says her name’s Desdemona,’ said the sergeant with a kind of aural shrug.

Edgar approached the girl, who seemed to be trying to shrink back against the wall.

‘Hallo,’ he said, trying to make his voice sound reassuring. ‘Why did you want to see me?’

The landlady’s daughter looked up at him with watery blue eyes. ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ she said. ‘He told me to do it.’

Edgar felt as if the supernatural cold of the police station had seeped into his heart.

‘Who told you to do what?’

In answer, Desdemona held out a letter. Edgar recognised the typewriter, the slightly raised ‘a’ which had been seen in all the correspondence from Hugh D. Nee.

‘He told me that I had to give you the letter at six o’clock on Monday. Not a moment before or after. He said that if I didn’t do it, he’d come back for me and kill me like he killed Mr Mulholland.’

‘When did you see him?’

‘This morning. He turned up at the door as soon as Mum left for the market.’

So the killer had been in Brighton that morning. He had been watching the lodging house, just as he had watched Edgar and Tony and Jean. He had marked out Desdemona as his stooge, knowing that she’d be too frightened to do anything other than obey him.

Edgar opened the letter.

Underneath the signature was a crossword clue. ‘Death by a thousand cuts’, three letters. Edgar worked it out almost without thinking. A thousand was always M. Cuts must mean an implement of some kind. Three letters. M-ax. Max.

He looked at the clock on the wall. The hands were in a straight vertical line. He thought of the playbill in the Incident Room downstairs. The show on Hastings pier started at seven-thirty. He thought of the Major, standing in his sunny garden.

Take Massingham now. He’s a wolf, a womaniser. He’ll never settle down.

And how do you catch a wolf? With a wolf trap.

Max stood in the wings watching the Fantinis flying past the gilded thirties chandelier. They were good. Ernesto Fantini had told him that, before the war, he and his brother had performed for all the crowned heads of Europe. Ernesto had fought in Egypt and ended up as a prisoner of war; his brother had been killed on the Russian front. Now he had built up the act again with his sons, but the crowned heads didn’t entertain like they used to (and some, like the Italian royal family, had disappeared altogether). But the Fantinis continued to leap and somersault because that was all they knew how to do. Max, watching them, felt a surge of fellow feeling. A good tumbling act was once a passport to the world; now it was just something to entertain the burghers of Hastings on a Monday night.

And the burghers were a sticky audience tonight. Of course, it was Monday so the royal circle was full of landladies with giant handbags perched on their laps and expressions of stoic indifference. Max had already spotted
Queenie, wearing a rather moth-eaten fox fur. He hoped that she wouldn’t come backstage after the show. At least there was no second house.

The Fantinis were reaching a crescendo: four bodies spinning in a whirr of spangles. Max listened to the applause, thinking that the acrobats had done well to produce such a sound from a Monday audience. Ernesto Fantini bowed jointlessly, like a marionette. His sons stepped forward in perfect unison. The clapping died away (the landladies weren’t prepared to exert themselves for long) and Max readied himself to go on. He could see the orchestra were about to start the ‘Danse Macabre’.

‘Mr Mephisto.’

Max turned in surprise. It was an unwritten law that you didn’t talk to someone waiting in the wings. He half-expected to see Beryl there, having second thoughts about her appearance. But he’d already checked that Beryl was in her seat and, besides, he knew that nothing short of a direct hit would stop her going on stage.

‘Mr Mephisto.’ The whisper was urgent now. In the auditorium the orchestra was playing his tune. Max peered into the darkness. He saw a tall, uniformed figure accompanied by diminutive Archie, the stagehand.

‘Mr Mephisto.’ It was PC Granger, the policeman from last night. ‘We’ve got reason to believe that a threat’s been made against your life.’

‘Bugger off,’ said Max. ‘I’m on in a minute.’

‘A letter came for you,’ piped up Archie.

With one eye on the stage, Max opened the letter. It was typewritten and brief.

Max looked about him almost wildly, but his entry music was playing and, obedient as a performing poodle, he threw down the note and walked onto the stage.

*

Edgar pressed his foot to the floor. The Wolsey surged forward, causing two elderly ladies to jump away from the kerb, hands on hearts. But, even as he shot the lights at the Steine, Edgar knew he’d be too late. There was no chance that he could get to Hastings before seven-thirty. Hugh D. Nee had done his work well. Six o’clock was too late to save Max, but, agonisingly, there was just enough time to make Edgar feel that he had to try. Black Rock, Roedean, Rottingdean, Saltdean, they all blurred into one as the police car streaked along the coast road. Maybe a miracle would happen. Maybe the theatre wouldn’t open. Maybe Max would be taken ill. But he knew that these were both remote possibilities. The theatres had kept open all through the Blitz. There was no way a lone madman would prevent the curtain from going up. As for Max, he’d never had a day’s sickness (apart from hangovers) in all the time that Edgar had known him.

Before he left the station, Edgar had rung Hastings police and told them to warn Max. But, as he took the
bridge at Newhaven, he knew that Max wouldn’t listen to warnings. He would go on stage, unless the killer had already struck. According to Desdemona, the man had visited her at midday. ‘He had a hat over his eyes, I couldn’t see his face.’ ‘How did you know it was him?’ A shiver. ‘I knew all right. I recognised his voice.’ Edgar remembered how Desdemona had described the man’s voice as ‘whispery’. If the whispering man had left Brighton after depositing his letter with Desdemona, he could easily have reached Hastings before the start of the show. Maybe Max was … but Edgar couldn’t let himself think that far ahead. He drove on through Seaford, hardly noticing that it had started raining again.

*

At first, adrenalin carried him through. In fact he was in the audience taking pearls out a stout lady’s handbag before he realised quite what was happening. Then he stood there, the spotlight on him, thinking that perhaps Ruby was dead, or dying horribly, and he was in a theatre making jewellery appear from the sleeve of his dinner jacket.

‘Are these yours, madam?’

‘No!’ A delighted titter.

‘Quite right. Pearls mean tears. But every lady likes flowers.’

He passed the pearls through his left hand and opened his palm to show that it was empty. Then, reaching into the evening bag once more, he pulled out a bouquet of roses. Applause. One step in front of the other. Max was
back on stage and the Egyptian music was starting, the pyramids projected onto a screen at the back of the stage.

‘Egypt, land of mystery … This is a trick that I learnt from my mummy.’ A shrug at the hackneyed joke. He turned to the audience to check that Beryl was in her seat. She was, eyes bright, leaning forward, making it too obvious. Then Max looked again. The music swelled behind him and he took a step back, almost colliding with the trestle table draped with the Egyptian robe. For the first time in his life, Max stood on stage, utterly at a loss. Because there, in Row E of the stalls, was a face that shouldn’t be there. Couldn’t be there.

He saw the orchestra looking up at him, knowing that he was going wrong. He had once done a trick where the stage tilted, very slightly, but enough to make objects move in answer to his summoning hands. Now he felt as if the same thing were happening again, that the walls were closing in and the floor was disappearing beneath his feet. ‘Egypt, land of mystery,’ he said again. He scanned the audience. The face had vanished.

*

Edgar reached Hastings at eight-thirty. He drove the car almost onto the pier itself, parked it under the nose of a scandalised deckchair attendant and ran for the theatre. As he entered the lobby, he could hear applause. Was it for Max? At least the show was still going on. Surely if Max had been murdered there would be cancellation boards up?

‘You can’t go in there,’ said the front of house manager. ‘You haven’t got a ticket.’

‘Police,’ Edgar flashed his card.

The auditorium was dark. On the stage, Edgar could just make out two men flinging custard pies at each other. He backed out hastily.

‘Has Max Mephisto been on?’ he asked the manager.

‘Yes,’ the man was still eyeing Edgar nervously. ‘He closes the first half.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘In his dressing room, I expect.’

‘He’s not.’ An urchin-like figure had appeared out of the shadows.

‘What are you doing out here, Archie?’ asked the manager. ‘You’re meant to be doing the props for Big and Small.’

‘Tom’s doing them.’

Edgar cut through this cross-talk act. ‘Where’s Max?’

‘He left,’ said Archie. ‘Straight after his act. That policeman went with him.’

‘A policeman went with him?’ For the first time in two hours, Edgar found himself breathing a little more easily.

‘Yes, the copper that talked to him before he went on.’

‘Have you any idea where he went when he left the theatre?’

‘I dunno. It could have had something to do with the note.’

‘What note?’

‘I gave him a note before he went on. He seemed shocked like.’

‘Where’s the note now?’

‘Dunno. Could be in his dressing room.’

‘Can you show me where that is?’

*

Fisherman’s Walk was a row of cottages facing directly onto the beach. Max and PC Granger approached it from the back, stumbling over pebbles and clumps of coarse grass. The air was salty. There were no lights and the rain was coming down heavily now. Max couldn’t see the sea but he knew it was there. He could hear it whispering in the dark. Number one looked just the same as the others in the row, a child’s drawing of a house: door, window, two windows above.

‘I’m going in,’ said Max. ‘You go round the front.’

‘What shall I do there?’ said PC Granger, who was evidently not a leader of men.

‘Wait until I call you. Don’t let anyone in.’

Max pushed open the back door.

*

Max’s dressing room was just like his dressing room in Eastbourne and, Edgar supposed, dressing rooms everywhere. The mirror with lights around it, the make-up carelessly strewn on the table, the sink with a bottle cooling in the water. An Egyptian headdress lay on the floor and beside it was a string of pearls. The room smelt of cigarettes and Max’s cologne.

*

Edgar sent Archie to search in the wings. He knew that it was a vain hope that Max would have left the note lying about, but he had to try. He scrabbled on the floor,
disturbing years of dust and several spiders. Behind him, he heard the door open.

‘Did you find it?’ he asked, not turning round.

Then, with a sound like a curtain falling, darkness.

*

The back door opened immediately. Max was in a small kitchen: cooker, yellow-painted cupboards, Formica table. The whole place had a forlorn look, as if it had been empty a long time. The only signs of occupation were two cups on the table. Max thought of the cups on Tony’s bedside table, of Ethel being forced to drink belladonna. Beautiful woman. Ruby was a beautiful woman and now she might be dead. There was a hatch through to a sitting room with a stained chintz sofa and chairs. The dust was thick and undisturbed on the floor. Max stood in the tiny hallway, he could see PC Granger’s shadow through bubbled glass in the front door. Where was Ruby? Was she here at all? Was this just another false pass, more misdirection? He ran up the short flight of stairs and searched the two small bedrooms. Both were completely empty. In the bathroom a tap was dripping, leaving a green stain on the chipped pink bath. Max stood still for a moment, listening to muffled plunk of the water, eerily amplified by the complete silence. Ruby, where are you? Had the killer taken her somewhere else entirely, leaving Max trapped in this empty house, this stage set? Perhaps he should telephone Edgar, but by the time that he’d driven from Brighton, it would be too late.

Then he heard it. A slight sound, like a chair moving. He leapt down the stairs in one bound and stood, listening,
in the hallway. The policeman still stood with his back to the door, oblivious to everything. There it was again and another noise too, a sort of dry slither. It wasn’t coming from the kitchen but seemingly from somewhere below his feet. Then he noticed the door at the foot of the stairs. Treading lightly, as if he were on stage, he crossed the hall and opened the door.

Stone steps led into a cellar which was lit by a single bulb. The room was windowless and damp. It was empty apart from a few packing cases and a single bed on which lay Ruby, bound hand and foot. In an instant, Max was at her side.

‘Ruby!’

She opened her eyes. ‘Max.’ She didn’t even sound surprised. Her pupils were huge. He didn’t know whether that was the belladonna or fear.

‘Are you hurt?’ He fumbled with the ropes. He, who could – in the dark – undo a different knot with each hand.

Ruby shook her head, but she was looking past him, her eyes wide.

‘Is he here?’ asked Max. ‘Is he in the house?’

Ruby had her hands free and she used them, not to cling to him but to point towards the door.

Max turned, clenching his fists, expecting to face Hugh D. Nee, the man who had killed three times and surely planned to do so again.

Instead he saw a vast, moving coil, a creature moving towards them across the dusty floor, primeval and deadly.

‘The snake,’ whispered Ruby.