Suddenly a detail from the night, which had troubled Quinn in his dreams, made sense. ‘Her eye was the wrong colour.’

Waechter let out a rueful laugh. ‘Is true?’

‘Yes. The eye I retrieved was brown. But her eye, the eye on her face, was blue, I believe.’

‘He would not think about that! We are too used to working in black and vite!’

‘He? Are you saying that you are not responsible for this grotesque prank?’

‘No. I knew nothing of it until the night. And then I keep silent because I knew that it had been done for the best of motives. A harmless prank. Maybe it would help to promote our film. But most, I be-leeff, it vos intended to make me lahh-ff.’

‘Make you laugh?’ Inchball’s eyes bulged in disgust.

‘I be-leeff so.’

Quinn turned away from the projected image and faced Waechter. He found his attention focused on the inky pool of blackness that was the Austrian’s eye patch. ‘Why would it make you laugh? Wouldn’t it be more likely to cause you pain?’

Waechter’s hand flew up to his eye patch. ‘Because of this?’ Waechter lifted the patch. Quinn felt his heart hammer. Once again he was going to stare into the potent darkness of an empty eye socket. But even in the chiaroscuro of the semi-darkened room, he could make out that what he expected to see was not there. There was not an absence of an eye, but an eye. The softly spreading beam of the projector revealed Waechter to be the possessor of a full complement of gleaming eyes. ‘I do not lose my eye in a duel. I do not even lose my vision.’

‘But when I asked you about your eye before, you told me that a splinter from a gunshot robbed you of it?’

Waechter shrugged. ‘To me, it vos not any of your business.’

‘So why do you wear the patch?’

‘Symbolisch. I vear this to show how I am damaged.’

‘It is a deception.’

‘No. It is a confession.’

‘So. Who? Who is he? The man who thought you would find this funny.’

‘I do not know for sure. For that reason, I would rather not say. To make accusations mit no foundations, it is not gut.’

‘Berenger? I noticed the way you looked at him when we came to arrest you.’

‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ said Macadam. ‘May I start the film running again? I am nervous about holding it on one frame for too long in case it combusts.’

‘By all means, Macadam. Run it to the other point we discussed.’

The action moved forward a few frames and juddered to a halt once more. Quinn pointed out the actor playing the director of the lunatic asylum. ‘This is the man who escorted her away. Is he the one responsible?’

‘Zat is Heinrich. Heinrich Klint. He is not responsible.’

Quinn nodded to Macadam to continue running the film. ‘You must have known when you sent this film over that we would see them and recognize them.’

‘It had gone on long enough. It started as an innocent prank.’

‘Wasting police time! They are all three of them culpable. This woman, Lyudmila … Klint. Conspirators in an offence.’

‘Vy offence? They perform ein kleines Theaterstück. A little play. That is all. They do not know that the police will come along. That you are at the premiere.’

‘I was invited.’

‘They do not know. I be-leeff they wanted to hoax your journalists. Ja?’

‘And what about Dolores Novak? Is that a little play?’

‘Berenger is nothing to do mit Dolores, ja? You understand that? He is a fool but no killer.’

‘Nevertheless, we will have to bring him in and talk to him. Where will we find him?’

‘You may find him at his hotel. He stays at the Savoy. Off coursse.’

‘It is a far cry from the room in which Dolores Novak was found.’

‘Berenger is ein Stern. A star – ja? Dolores vos …’ Waechter spat out a German word that sounded remarkably similar to whore.

‘I don’t know what that means,’ said Quinn. ‘But it is no reason for her to be killed.’

‘Berenger had nothing to do with it. I svare on my life that he is innocent.’

Macadam ran the film to the end, to the moment when the inmates and staff of the asylum removed their human masks and revealed the skulls beneath. The moment of Berenger’s final surrender to madness and damnation.

‘No man is entirely innocent,’ said Quinn as the end of the film flapped around the spinning spool and the wall was lit up with a rectangle of blank light. ‘Even if he did not kill Dolores Novak, there’s a chance he put the idea in the killer’s head. He showed the way. Her murder seems to have been modelled on his contemptible hoax, after all.’

Waechter returned the patch to its place over his perfectly sound right eye. His face possessed a stern, defiant dignity. He gave the impression of being a man convinced of the correctness of everything he did. Either he had lived a truly blameless life, or he was utterly devoid of a conscience.

FORTY-FOUR

The grainy twilight thickened overhead as Macadam turned the Model T off the Strand. An incandescent glow pooled out from the front of the great hotel, distracting Quinn momentarily from the purpose of their visit. They were not there to bathe in the glamour and glitz of the establishment. They were there for the darkness. The honk of a car horn brought him rudely back to earth. The car was coming directly at them, apparently on the wrong side of the road. But it was Macadam who swerved to avoid a head-on collision. ‘I almost forgot, sir. This is the one street in the country where you drive on the right. God knows why.’

A flicker of darkness as they drove under the arch that spanned the short stub of a road, beneath the statue of an armed knight that surmounted it.

A liveried doorman held the door for them.

Somewhere a piano was playing, the pianist favouring the higher, more refined keys. Beneath a high ceiling dripping with chandeliers, the wealthy guests moved with what seemed like purpose but was actually entitlement. It was clear from the angle at which they held their heads that they had no intention of opening doors. And it was doubtful if they would be able to see the people who opened them on their behalf.

Quinn showed his warrant card at the reception. ‘You have a guest here. Berenger is the name. Room number and key, if you please. Your bellboy may accompany me to save time.’

In the event, it was decided that the manager would go.

They rode the elevator to the second floor. It was frustrating to have to wait for the shuttering of the gate, for the lift to respond to the operator’s touch, for the freighted shudder into motion and the gathering momentum as the cage ascended. And to wait for it all to unwind in reverse as they reached the floor.

Sensing the urgency of the situation, the manager hurried along the corridor to the door numbered 232. He stood back and allowed Inchball to pound his knuckles against the wood. ‘Oi, you in there. Open up. Police.’

The door next to Berenger’s opened. Eloise Dumont peered out. When she saw Quinn an expression of disappointment settled over her features.

‘Ah, Miss Dumont, good evening. Do you remember me? I am Detective Inspector Quinn.’

‘How could I forget? You were rude to me. Not many men are rude to Eloise.’

‘I really don’t have time for that now. Your … colleague – Mr Berenger – do you know if he is in his room?’

‘I believe so. We came back from Islington together.’

Quinn nodded to the manager, who used his service key to unlock the door. The bedroom was in semi-darkness, the only light coming in from the street through the open windows, ruffling the lace curtains as it passed through them. There were signs of recent occupancy. A suit of clothes strewn across the floor. Shoes in flight from one another. The bed clothes in disarray.

A door leading off was ajar.