The Mannequin House Read online

‘Well, staying with that theory, what about this? Suppose this girl, Edna, or Albertine, or whatever you want to call her . . . suppose she was the jealous one? Suppose she was jealous of Amélie’s relationship with whoever gave her all these presents? It’s possible, ain’ it? Couldn’t that be a motive?’

  Quinn looked down at the letters in his hand.

  ‘All that passionate feeling,’ Coddington continued. ‘Love can turn to hate like that, you know.’ He clicked his fingers.

  ‘But have you seen her? There’s hardly anything to her. She’s a mite. Do you really think she’s capable of strangling the life out of a healthy girl?’

  Coddington parroted Quinn’s own words. ‘I merely put it forward as a possibility. A theory.’

  Quinn screwed his face up in distaste.

  ‘What’s the matter, Quinn?’ Coddington’s tone was suddenly bullish. ‘Is it because you didn’t think of it yourself?’

  The remark struck home. ‘It’s possible, of course. Sir. As yet, there are still many features of this case that we do not understand. We must try to bear all possibilities in mind. And not jump to any conclusions.’

  ‘Of course, yes.’

  ‘What you are suggesting is something along the lines of a crime passionelle, as the French have it. A crime of passion. And yet, the business with the lock rather militates against that. That smacks of premeditation, I think. And this girl, she may be capable of strangling her best friend, her beloved friend . . . But is she also capable of contriving this feat of mystification?’

  ‘Perhaps she had help?’

  ‘You are proposing a conspiracy? A man to engineer the mechanical trickery? Then I am afraid it looks less and less like a crime passionelle, which therefore undermines the reason why you suspected her in the first place.’ Quinn found himself stroking his own rather insignificant moustache. He realized with horror that he was unconsciously mimicking DCI Coddington’s trademark mannerism. His hand flew away from his face. He glanced quickly at the other man. Had he noticed?

  Coddington’s gaze was angled down towards the bed. But the tail of a smile flickered across his lips and vanished.

  The Spare Room

  Quinn turned his back on Coddington and crossed to the window, which looked out over a long, narrow garden at the back of the house. The sun was a soft flare high up to his right, just at the periphery of his vision. Sometimes, in the midst of a murder enquiry, it shocked him more to discover the sun still shining than to find a bloody handprint or a discarded garrotte. The garden itself had benefited from the recent downpours. It presented a lush, almost unruly abundance – predominantly green, but with other spring colours starting to come through. It was like something unleashed.

  A vestigial path led away towards a high wooden screen at the bottom of the garden, fragments of paving stone peeping through the long grass of a loose-edged lawn. Long-established climbing plants – Virginia creeper, wisteria, ivy – covered the screen. Layers upon layers of concealment, everywhere he looked.

  The structure of the house projected out on the right, with Amélie’s room being set back in relation to it. Two other windows were set in the wall that came out, curtains drawn: more concealment. Quinn sighed. He made a half-hearted effort to lift the sash window.

  ‘The window was fastened from the inside,’ Coddington informed him. ‘Besides which, as you can see, the woodwork is painted fast. It’s immovable.’

  ‘So whoever killed her did not get out this way?’

  ‘It would appear not.’

  The door opened. Quinn turned to see Inchball return. He stepped to one side, revealing Miss Mortimer behind him.

  The housekeeper’s face was set in an expression of impatient belligerence. ‘What is it now? I have work to do, you know. The girls will be back soon, expecting their lunch.’

  This revelation interested Quinn. ‘They eat here? Isn’t there a canteen for staff at the store?’

  ‘Mr Blackley doesn’t like the mannequins to mix with the other staff. Especially the men.’

  ‘And no men were allowed inside the house, apart from Monsieur Hugo? Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Was there a minute hesitation in her answer? And a telltale flickering of her eyes as she considered her lie. ‘And you absolutely insist that Amélie had no male admirers?’

  ‘What a question!’

  Her answer was, of course, an evasion.

  ‘Please.’ Quinn gestured for her to follow him to the wardrobe. He took out the fur coat. ‘Have you ever seen her wear this?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you think a mannequin’s wages run to such luxuries?’

  ‘I really can’t say. Staff receive a five per cent discount on purchases at the House of Blackley.’

  ‘Five per cent! Even with five per cent off, I doubt she could afford to dress herself in mink. Or if she could, why hide it away in her wardrobe? You said yourself that you have never seen her wearing it.’

  ‘Perhaps she got it as a reward for her work in the Costumes Salon. I know Monsieur Hugo thought very highly of her.’

  ‘And this?’ Quinn pulled out a black sequinned gown. ‘Another reward? I did not realize Mr Blackley sanctioned such generosity. Her wardrobe is crammed with similar extravagances.’ Quinn replaced the gown and waved briefly in the direction of the ornaments on Amélie’s shelves. ‘It seems she liked to treat herself. Are all the other mannequins’ rooms similarly full of trinkets? I didn’t notice any in Albertine’s. Or should that be Edna’s?’

  ‘Oh? You’ve been prying in there, have you?’

  ‘It is my job to look into these things. I take it you have keys to all the rooms?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I am the housekeeper.’ She produced a great fob of keys from her apron.

  ‘Then you can show me round. I will want admittance to every room.’

  ‘I told you, I have work to do!’

  ‘And I am investigating a murder.’

  Miss Mortimer’s expression made clear her opinion on the relative importance of investigating a murder and preparing lunch for a group of fashion mannequins. ‘If the girls are late back to the store there’ll be hell to pay. You’ll have to answer to Mr Blackley for it.’

  Quinn caught Coddington’s eye and shook his head in disbelief. He did not deign to answer Miss Mortimer’s threat.

  ‘What do you want me to do, guv?’ asked Inchball.

  ‘Perhaps DCI Coddington will be so good as to take you through the statements he has taken from the other mannequins. They will be home for lunch soon. It will be as well to do some prep before you have the pleasure of interviewing them.’

  It soon became apparent that Amélie’s was by far the largest of the mannequins’ rooms. However, Quinn’s investigation of the other girls’ wardrobes – or ‘snooping’, as Miss Mortimer dubbed it – revealed that Amélie was not alone in possessing furs. ‘Whose room is this?’ he asked, as he pulled out a silver fox stole from one wardrobe.

  ‘This?’ Again the stalling reiteration. Why on earth should she be reluctant to answer his question? But there was no denying that she sounded despondent when she finally did: ‘Marie-Claude.’

  ‘Real name?’

  ‘That’s what I know her as. If she has any other name you’ll have to get it out of her yourself.’

  ‘Amélie has the largest room, does she not?’

  ‘Monsieur Hugo’s is larger, I would say. Not to mention the front parlour.’

  ‘Very well. She has the largest room of the mannequins.’

  ‘Someone has to.’

  ‘That was all there was to it? It was not a sign of seniority perhaps?’

  ‘Oh, no. Nothing to do with that. Marie-Claude is the eldest. She used to have Amélie’s room but . . .’ Miss Mortimer trailed off.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘There was a vacancy in the mannequin house. Marie-Claude moved into the vacant room and Amélie was given her room.’

  ‘But why? Why
not simply put Amélie in the vacant room?’

  ‘That was the way it was done.’

  ‘So if the largest room is not a symbol of seniority, it is perhaps a symbol of favouritism. Marie-Claude fell out of favour?’

  ‘I’m sure it wasn’t that. Marie-Claude probably preferred this room because of its location. Or disposition. Or for some other reason. You know these girls. They will get all sorts of ideas in their heads. I can’t keep up with them.’

  Quinn continued to browse the girl’s clothes. ‘She does not have quite as impressive an array as Amélie.’

  ‘That’s no one’s fault but her own.’

  ‘What do you mean by that remark?’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know what I mean. Only she ought to work harder . . . then perhaps she would be better rewarded.’ For the first time Miss Mortimer seemed almost flustered.

  ‘So Amélie acquired her wardrobe solely through hard work?’

  ‘She must have. I can think of no other way. As I said, she was very highly thought of. A true professional.’

  ‘Were the other girls envious of her?’

  ‘They had no right to be.’

  ‘You liked her?’

  ‘She gave me no trouble.’

  Quinn replaced the fur stole and nodded. He had seen enough of that room.

  Miss Mortimer followed him out on to the landing and locked Marie-Claude’s door. ‘Can I get back to work now? The girls will be home soon.’

  ‘We haven’t seen Monsieur Hugo’s room yet.’ Quinn pointed to a door at the end of the landing. ‘Is it that one?’

  ‘No, that’s a spare room.’

  ‘I’d like to see it.’

  ‘Why? It’s just a spare room. It doesn’t belong to anyone.’

  Quinn was even more determined to see it now that she had tried to deter him. ‘Nevertheless.’

  ‘It’s been a long time since this room was opened.’ Her tone was discouraging. She seemed to be suggesting that it would be a Herculean task to get the door open, given the aeons of unrecorded time during which it had remained closed.

  He nodded once, not in encouragement but as a command. Even Miss Mortimer was not so obtuse as to ignore that, though of course she took her time finding the right key, shaking her head doubtfully all the time.

  The room was disappointingly neutral, sparse in every sense, lacking any indications of personality; and certainly, at least at first sight, devoid of clues. A severely neat room. There was a single window in the far wall; next to it, a large mahogany wardrobe.

  Quinn looked down at the bed, the sheets tightly drawn and tucked. It certainly did not look as though it had been slept in recently, if ever. He sniffed the air suspiciously. If what the housekeeper had said were true, he would have expected the stale, dusty itch of an unaired room; but he detected something else, a scent more animal, almost musk-like in its pungency. It was the scent of recent occupation.

  ‘Why is the bed made?’

  ‘Why is the bed made?’ Miss Mortimer seemed outraged by the stupidity of the question. ‘Why wouldn’t it be made?’

  ‘Because this is a spare room. No one sleeps here.’

  ‘We must always have it ready. Just in case.’

  ‘Just in case of what?’

  ‘In case of guests.’

  ‘What guests do you have? Are the mannequins allowed to entertain guests?’

  ‘Mr Blackley might need to stay over.’

  ‘Mr Blackley?’

  ‘That’s right. That’s what I said. Sometimes his business keeps him late at the store. It is convenient for him to have a place to stay nearby. If he is exhausted he does not want to make the long journey back to Surbiton.’

  ‘That’s where he lives?’

  ‘I should hope so. Otherwise, why else would he go there of an evening?’

  ‘But he does not go home every evening? Sometimes he comes here.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How often does he stay here?’

  ‘It’s difficult to say. It varies from week to week.’

  ‘Let me make it easy for you. Did he stay here the night before last?’

  The housekeeper hesitated. ‘No.’

  ‘You don’t seem certain?’

  ‘I did not see him.’

  ‘And you would have seen him if he had been here?’

  ‘Well, I would have known, I think. Though it is true to say that Mr Blackley has his own key. He lets himself in and out. Sometimes he works very late indeed. I believe I would have heard him come in – and I did not.’

  ‘But you are a little deaf, are you not, Miss Mortimer? You find it hard to tell what people are saying unless you are looking at them?’

  ‘Nonsense.’ She shook her head vehemently. ‘Besides, I would have had the bed to make. Even if he left without me seeing him in the morning.’

  ‘But if he did not want you to know that he had been here? Might he not have made the bed himself?’

  ‘Impossible!’

  ‘Unlikely perhaps, Miss Mortimer. But not impossible.’

  ‘Impossible!’ insisted the housekeeper. ‘Look at it! A man did not fold that sheet!’

  ‘From what I hear, Mr Blackley is a very clever man, capable of a great many things. Do you not think he is capable of making a bed?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Miss Mortimer?’

  She met his questioning tone with a shifty glance.

  ‘When was the last time you were aware of Mr Blackley using this room?’

  ‘Not for a long time. He rarely uses it.’

  ‘But the impression you gave me a moment ago . . .’

  ‘I can’t be held responsible for any impressions.’

  ‘You said the frequency of his stays varies from week to week. That rather implies that he stays here at least one night, most weeks, does it not? Is that not the case?’

  ‘I told you, he hardly ever stays here.’ She was becoming agitated, almost frantic, as if she was afraid that she had said too much already.

  Quinn decided there was little to be gained from picking away at the inconsistencies of the woman’s story. He walked round the bed to the wardrobe and tried the door. It was locked. ‘Where’s the key?’

  Miss Mortimer shrugged. ‘We never use that wardrobe. The key is missing, I think.’

  Quinn frowned. It was not quite an answer to his question. ‘You’ll need to find the key for me. I will want to look in here.’ He crossed to the window. He saw that it was actually set in a door that had been papered over. The frame, however, was clearly visible, and someone had cut through the paper all around the door, leaving the possibility that it could be opened. ‘There is a door in this wall.’

  ‘But it doesn’t go anywhere,’ objected the housekeeper.

  Quinn peered through the window. ‘It gives out on to the garden.’

  ‘But there is no way to get down there. We are on the first storey. If you open that door and step out you will fall a good fifteen feet.’

  ‘What’s the point of it then?’

  ‘There used to be steps up to it from the garden. But they rotted away and Mr Blackley had them removed. He saw no point in replacing them. The room was used as an upper drawing room by the house’s previous owner. When Mr Blackley took it over, he converted as many rooms as possible to bedrooms.’

  Quinn continued to peer through the window. A blur of movement in a cherry tree at the bottom of the garden caught his eye. At first he thought it was a grey squirrel, but the colour wasn’t quite right; the movement and shape all wrong. Besides, there was something attached to the creature’s head that looked suspiciously like a hat.

  ‘Coddington!’ he called out, running from the window. ‘I’ve found your monkey!’

  The Monkey in the Tree

  Quinn picked up Coddington and Inchball on the landing and led them out to the garden. They were joined by a couple of the uniforms, whom Coddington directed to ‘surround the cherry tree’. This seemed to confuse the poli
cemen, who failed to grasp how two men could surround anything. Coddington’s excitement only added to the confusion. His commands were practically incoherent.

  The blossom was not yet out in the cherry tree, but it soon would be. Fine shoots laden with tight pink buds were already beginning to appear on the thick central boughs, groping towards spectacular fulfilment.

  From the window the tree had seemed small, stunted almost. But this was deceptive. There was enough height to the topmost branches for the monkey to cower out of reach of the men. Not that any of them knew how to go about extricating a monkey from a tree. Coddington’s nearly hysterical barking was not likely to help. Quinn kept his distance; Inchball even more so. ‘Don’t want to be anywhere near that thing if it starts throwing shit around,’ the sergeant explained in a confiding snarl.

  Miss Mortimer joined them in the garden, no doubt drawn by the commotion. Quinn might have expected to see a look of detached irony on her face at the antics of the police. But her expression was cold and intense. She glowered at the monkey with something like hatred. Possibly fear.

  Her habitual amusement returned when Coddington sent her back into the kitchen for a titbit to tempt the creature down. ‘Do you have anything like a banana?’ he asked.

  ‘What is like a banana?’ she wondered facetiously.

  Coddington shared his thinking with Quinn. ‘He must be hungry.’

  Quinn said nothing. He preferred not to be implicated in Coddington’s operation, which had the whiff of farce about it.

  The monkey seemed to agree. It made a noise that was suspiciously close to laughter, and bared its teeth in an approximation of hilarity.

  ‘It’s mocking us,’ said Coddington under his breath.

  ‘What do you expect?’ said Inchball.

  The monkey ducked and shifted through the branches, a restless flurry of agitation. It kept its face hidden, only to peep out from time to time for a burst of manic cackling. There seemed to be something in what Coddington said. ‘Now that you have seen the beast face-to-face what do you think, sir?’ Quinn gestured up to the leering animal. ‘Is that the face of a killer?’

  Coddington frowned. ‘I would not put anything past it.’