Death Descends On Saturn Villa (The Gower Street Detective Series)

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  About Death Descends on Saturn Villa

  About M. R. C. Kasasian

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  For Trevor Grice

  Preface to First Edition

  IT MIGHT SEEM vainglorious for me to write a preface to a book written to celebrate my genius but, whilst I freely admit to being vain about my many enviable qualities, there is little glory to be had by anyone involved in the events described here.

  For obvious reasons Miss Middleton was not able to give a complete account of this tragic case and, after she was lost to this world, it fell upon me to finish it for her. I fear that I lack her lightness of style but at least I am able to provide some of the missing details.

  I have resisted the urge to correct the many errors in my ward’s account and some credit must be given to Mr Laurance Palmer (the chief editor of Messrs Hall and Co.) for bringing her notes into something approaching coherency, though I cannot help but wish that he and she had a little more regard for scientific technique and a little less interest in more sensational aspects.

  It is only my wish to honour Miss Middleton’s contractual obligations that persuaded me to cooperate with this account and allow it to be published so soon.

  I count this as one of my very few and by far the greatest of my failures. I swore to March that I would save her but, in the end, found myself powerless to do so.

  Her chair by the fire is empty and, though I craved peace and quiet while she was here and have it in plenty now, I am obliged to confess that my house is a dismal place without her.

  Sidney Grice, 2 May 1883

  125 Gower Street

  Part I

  Extracts from the Journals of March Middleton

  1

  The Delivery of the Soul

  THE FLAMES HAD long since died since I let Dorna Berry’s message flutter into the fire, but the words still haunted me. I saw them when I tried to read Edward’s letters. I saw them in the line of every book in which I struggled to bury myself. So many times I was on the brink of asking my guardian what they meant but on every occasion I pulled back, frightened that they were true.

  I had never known Sidney Grice to tell a lie. What if I confronted him and he admitted his guilt? Where would I go? Who would protect me and give me shelter? Who could I trust? My father had died nearly two years ago in a walking accident in Switzerland. He was all that was left of my family, for my mother, he had told me, had been delivered of me in one breath and her immortal soul in the next.

  The London of 1883 was a pitiless place and I had seen many a respectable woman reduced to poverty and the choice between immorality and starvation, for want of a man to care for her. Besides, Sidney Grice was probably – or, in his estimation, unquestionably – the foremost personal detective of the British Empire and I harboured hopes of following in his footsteps. I knew I could not let matters rest. It was just a question of finding the right moment.

  7 November 1882

  I am afraid for you, March. [Dorna had written] You must leave that house. Leave it today or Sidney Grice will destroy you, just as he destroyed me and just as surely as he murdered your mother.

  2

  The Portrait of Marjory Gregory

  MARJORY GREGORY HAD everything. She was pretty, charming and intelligent. She married well and bore two beautiful children. She had a growing reputation as an artist, being much in demand for portraits and having exhibited at the Royal Academy.

  On Christmas Day, 1876, at about three o’clock in the morning, Marjory Gregory got out of bed. Her husband stirred, but he was not especially concerned as she had long been an insomniac. She put on her dressing gown and slippers and padded downstairs. He went back to sleep.

  Nobody knows what she did for the next four or five hours. Perhaps she looked at some of the paintings she had produced so long ago. They still hung in her studio, propped on easels or against walls. Perhaps she took up her charcoal. For the last seven months she had tried to draw a self-portrait every day, staring into her own eyes for hours on end but destroying the results every night.

  All that is known is that as the sun rose from behind Winter Hill, Major Bernard Gregory was awoken by screams. He armed himself with his old service revolver and rushed downstairs to find his wife in her favourite wicker chair, a carving knife swinging frenziedly. It had slit her nose and gashed her lips. Her breast had been hacked wildly and he was just in time to see her stomach ripped open, whilst she writhed in unspeakable agony.

  Before Bernard Gregory could reach his wife, one final stab thrust deep into her throat and was wrenched across it. The carotid artery was completely severed and the windpipe lacerated.

  Marjory Gregory died, bleeding and choking blindly.

  There were many strange things about her death, not least of which was that the hand that wielded the knife was her own. But Major Gregory would not accept a verdict of suicide. His wife had been murdered, he insisted, four and a half years ago.

  3

  The Death of Dom Hart

  IT BEGAN AS it must end – with death and a priest.

  The man who stood before us on that dark January morning was dressed in a black habit, the hood pushed back to reveal a mass of thick, greying chestnut hair and a rounded, rosy-cheeked face, the tip of his bulbous nose still reddened by the chill of London.

  ‘Please,’ he demurred, ‘I can’t take your place.’

  ‘But how do you know it is mine?’ I had not been standing by the armchair when I offered it to him.

  Our visitor smiled. ‘I do not imagine Mr Grice reads the poetry of John Clare.’ He pointed to the book lying splayed open on the cushion.

  I laughed. ‘Have you come to teach us our work?’

  ‘You will have had a wasted trip if you have,’ my guardian muttered.

  ‘Let me fetch you another chair,’ I offered. But the monk put down his carpet bag and took a wooden chair from the central table, swinging it easily in one hand as he returned to deposit it facing the fireplace.

  Sidney Grice and I sat opposite each other either side of the hearth as our visitor lowered himself on to his seat.

  ‘Quite a change of career for you, from publican to Benedictine monk,’ Mr G commented and our visitor tilted his head quizzically.

  ‘It is not a giant stride of the imagination to guess my calling,’ he touched the silver cross that hung from his neck, ‘especially since I announced myself as Brother Ambrose. But how in heaven’s name can you know my history?’

  ‘No man can hide his past.’ My guardian waved a hand. ‘Though many have tried to do so. It is written in his face, his hands, his movements and his speech. Quite obviously you worked in a small establishment by the sea.’

  The priest scratched his chin. ‘I have not set foot in a public house nor been to the coast for over a decade. What trace of evidence can there be on me now?’

  Mr G leaned back. ‘I suspected it at once from your manner. You have the assured yet amiable air about you of one who serves yet remains in charge.’

  ‘So might a head waiter,’ I reasoned.

  ‘A waiter, whatever his rank, would be more deferential.’ Mr G sniffed. ‘A publican knows how to be welcoming and yet remain in authority to deal with the people he has intoxicated.’

  ‘
So that is it?’ Brother Ambrose was unimpressed. ‘I just happen to act like a landlord?’

  ‘It was a signpost on my road towards the truth,’ my guardian told him. ‘You have a well-developed torso – muscular rather than obese, though you have filled out with fat of late.’

  The monk’s mouth tightened at this description of himself. ‘Please go on.’

  My guardian put his fingertips together. ‘Such a development comes of a job involving heavy lifting as a publican might in shifting barrels. You carried that chair with very little effort.’

  ‘Many other jobs involve lifting,’ Brother Ambrose objected. ‘A stevedore, for example.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Mr G concurred, ‘but I have never come across a dock worker yet whose back was not bent by his labours, and your right arm is much more developed than your left as results from many years of pulling pumps.’

  ‘What if I were a carpenter? Using a saw would have the same effect,’ the monk proposed.

  Mr G smiled thinly. ‘Your hands may have softened and lost their callouses over the years, but I have yet to meet a carpenter whose fingers are not thickened by the hard use they have been put to, and permanently scarred by splinters and deep cuts from accidents with his tools.’ He leaned back to tug the bell pull twice, joggling the skull toggle.

  ‘And how did you know my pub was small and that it was on the coast?’

  ‘A larger establishment would have employed a potman to deal with the barrels.’ My guardian flicked his thick black hair off his forehead. ‘And your accent – unless my exceptional sense of hearing is deceived, which it never is – comes from or very close to Hove. Many men dream of moving from the city to run a public house by the sea but I have never known one to do the reverse.’

  Brother Ambrose chuckled. ‘You are an entertainment, Mr Grice.’

  And my guardian inhaled sharply. ‘I am neither a hurdy-gurdy man nor a prestidigitator. Tell me your business.’

  Our visitor’s face darkened. ‘I do not know what religion you subscribe to, Mr Grice.’

  ‘Rest assured that it is not yours,’ my guardian said sharply.

  ‘That is all to the good.’

  ‘But why?’ I asked.

  And Brother Ambrose touched his crucifix. ‘We want somebody who will not be in awe of our calling. A devout Catholic might hesitate to contradict or make accusations against someone he regards as his spiritual father.’

  ‘I can set your mind at rest there,’ I assured him. ‘Mr Grice does not care who he offends.’

  The monk’s mouth twitched. ‘That is what we were given to understand.’

  ‘Then you might also have been informed that I never travel beyond the confines of this great but vile metropolis,’ Mr G told him.

  Brother Ambrose ran his thumb over the feet of the figure of Christ. ‘You will at least hear me out?’

  ‘It might fill an otherwise tedious moment.’ My guardian stretched a hand over the back of his chair. ‘Proceed.’ He yanked the bell rope impatiently twice more.

  ‘As you have observed I am a monk in the Order of Saint Benedict. My home for the last eight years has been in Yorkshire.’

  ‘A wild place.’ Mr G shivered. ‘Populated by savages in tweed jackets and patterned stockings.’

  ‘I believe it has some beautiful scenery,’ I put in.

  Sidney Grice shrugged. ‘Nowhere is beautiful until it has been flattened and built upon.’ He waved a hand. ‘Recommence.’

  ‘Claister Abbey was once one of the greatest monasteries in England,’ Brother Ambrose told us, ‘until it was dissolved by Henry VIII in his tussle with the Pope for supremacy. It was reopened thirty-four years ago in—’

  ‘1849,’ Mr G broke in. ‘Even a non-Catholic can do that sum.’

  ‘The monastery is a pallid reincarnation of its former self,’ Brother Ambrose continued. ‘Once the grounds housed three hundred monks with their own bakery, dairy, farriers and brewery – a small town in itself. Now a dozen of us crowd into a single house, surviving on the small profits of our garden produce and the printing of religious tracts, but mainly on charitable bequests.’

  ‘No doubt from those wishing to have Masses celebrated for their souls in the belief that God judges the rich more benevolently,’ Sidney Grice remarked sourly.

  ‘Or those who have charity,’ our visitor disagreed mildly. He had cut himself shaving, I noticed, and drops of blood had stained the collar of his cassock. ‘But to return to the point, our much-loved Abbot, Dom Simeon, was taken by the Lord last January. We had hoped that our senior brother in Christ, Jerome, would succeed him – indeed he became temporary head – but an outsider was appointed in his place.’ Brother Ambrose’s strong fingers wrapped around the crucifix. ‘Dom Ignatius Hart was not a popular choice. He came with a well-deserved reputation of being a mean man. He had a haughty manner, quick to take offence but dilatory to lose a grudge, and he had a flare for turning popular tasks into intolerable chores.

  ‘Brother Daniel, the youngest of our brethren, quit his holy orders rather than face the daily humiliations heaped upon him; and many considered doing the same, but the vows of a monk bind his soul so tightly that he needs fear loosening them lest he lose it.’ He pondered his own words for a while. ‘The summer was hard but the winter was worse. Dom Ignatius introduced cold baths as a penance for trivial faults and there was little doubt that Brother Peter’s end was hastened by such brutal treatment.’ Brother Ambrose’s grip tightened. ‘We began to hold clandestine meetings to discuss how best to deal with our master and I have to confess that more than one man, including myself, made whispered threats in the heat of those discussions.

  ‘Then on the fifth day of January, a wet and icy Friday morning, Dom Ignatius failed to appear for Lauds. This was very unusual, especially on the feast of the Epiphany, and an anxious discussion took place as to who, if any of us, should wake him.’

  ‘You do not strike me as a timid man,’ I said, and his hand fell into his lap.

  ‘When you are sworn to absolute obedience to a tyrant you think long and hard before arousing his displeasure.’ He grasped the end of his rope belt. ‘Eventually it was agreed that we should risk his wrath and enter his cell en masse.’

  ‘Let me guess break one of my own rules,’ Mr G put in. ‘Your detested master was dead.’

  Brother Ambrose concurred grimly. ‘We found him on the stone floor, his vomit so preternaturally black that some of my brethren feared he had been possessed by demons.’ He twisted the rope around his fist. ‘The police were called immediately. They are convinced we are hiding the culprit and have threatened to arrest us all and close the Order down, which is why, Mr Grice, I have made this journey.’ Brother Ambrose put a hand to his brow. ‘We would like you to investigate the matter.’

  Mr G looked at his watch. ‘I have yet to discover any connection between what you desire and what I am inclined to do.’

  Molly came in with a tray of tea, placing it warily on the table between us.

  ‘Do I alarm you?’ our visitor asked as she backed away.

  ‘Oh, when Cook and me saw your frock when we was idling by the basement window, we thought you was her mother come back for revengeance.’

  The monk chuckled. ‘But why would Cook’s mother want revenge?’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘Get out,’ her employer snapped.

  Molly bobbed falteringly and left.

  ‘Mr Grice does not like leaving London,’ I explained to our visitor, but he seemed unconcerned.

  ‘I anticipated as much,’ he told me, ‘after I made enquiries about him. But I was given to believe that he is an exceedingly rapacious man.’

  ‘You might also have noticed that he is still in the room,’ Mr G grunted.

  ‘I think it would take a great deal of money to lure him as far as Claister.’ I poured three cups of tea.

  ‘We are a poor Order,’ Brother Ambrose said.

  ‘Then I shall bid you good day.’ Mr G rotat
ed his cup to align the handle with the long edge of the tray.

  ‘But you have something else to offer,’ I said.

  The monk nodded. ‘You are a perceptive young lady,’ he approved.

  ‘If you are going to offer me Masses for my soul, do not trouble.’ Mr G stirred his tea first one way and then the other. ‘But I might be interested in that ancient book in your luggage.’

  ‘How do you know it is an old book?’ I asked.

  ‘I can smell it.’

  And as Brother Ambrose brought it out so could I: that unmistakeable fustiness of lightly mildewed leather and old parchment. I might have been back in my father’s library.

  ‘Mein Gott!’ my guardian exclaimed. ‘Jacob Cromwell’s Secreta Botanica.’

  ‘A gardening book?’ I hazarded and the men raised their faces in mutual despair.

  ‘The Secreta Botanica contains everything that was known in 1425 about the art of poisoning,’ my guardian explained. ‘The sources, effects, symptoms, tastes and disguising of.’ He put a hand to his eye. ‘It is the bible of toxicology.’ His face flushed with excitement. ‘It is said that Lucrezia Borgia read it instead of her breviary in church.’

  ‘There were only four known copies in existence,’ Brother Ambrose told me, ‘and two of them are under lock and key in the vaults of the Vatican.’

  ‘Have you read it?’ I asked.

  The monk shook his head. ‘The Secreta has been on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum – the list of books Catholics are forbidden to read – since 1562.’

  ‘Let me examine it,’ Mr G implored, but our visitor slipped the book back into his bag.

  ‘I might never get it back. Men have killed each other for a chance to peruse the contents of this tome.’ Brother Ambrose drained his tea in one gulp. ‘If, however, you were able to help us,’ he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, ‘there is a space on that bookshelf which this volume might fill very prettily.’