The Secrets of Gaslight Lane Read online

  THE SECRETS OF GASLIGHT LANE

  M.R.C. Kasasian

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  About this Book

  About the Author

  Table of Contents

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  About The Secrets of Gaslight Lane

  All is quiet at 125 Gower Street. Sidney Grice is swotting up on the anatomical structure of human hair whilst his ward, March Middleton, sneaks upstairs for her eighth secret cigarette of the day. The house is, perhaps, too quiet.

  So, when a beautiful young woman turns up, imploring London’s foremost personal detective to solve the mystery of her father’s murder, Grice can barely disguise his glee.

  Mr Nathan Garstang was found slaughtered in his bed, with no trace of a weapon or intruder. A classic locked-room case. But what piques Grice’s interest is the crime’s link to one of London’s most notorious unsolved murders. Ten years ago, Nathan’s uncle, aunt and servants were murdered in their sleep in the very same house.

  Now, it seems, the Garstang murderer is back...

  For Mel, Tom and Will

  with love

  Contents

  Cover

  Welcome Page

  About The Secrets of Gaslight Lane

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Chapter 1: The Slaughter of Innocents

  Chapter 2: Over the Point

  Chapter 3: The Demons of the Night

  Chapter 4: The Sydenham Cyclops

  Chapter 5: Hezzuba Grebe and the Battle of Ruspina

  Chapter 6: The Old Wound and the Beast

  Chapter 7: The Nine

  Chapter 8: Gouging Eyes and Gauntlets

  Chapter 9: The Stone Sarcophagus

  Chapter 10: Widows’ Weeds and Horses’ Brains

  Chapter 11: Swallowing Keys and the Unsavoury Snood

  Chapter 12: The Mad Girl and Lord Alphreton’s Son

  Chapter 13: The Stranger in the Parlour

  Chapter 14: The Man in the Meat Safe and the Elephant in the Park

  Chapter 15: Yellow Oceans and Pernicious Distillations

  Chapter 16: The Vertex of Vacuity and the Sleeping Journeyman

  Chapter 17: The Man Who was Not There

  Chapter 18: Noises in the Night

  Chapter 19: Flesh and Blood

  Chapter 20: The Staple and the Spikes

  Chapter 21: The Spare Room

  Chapter 22: The World Through Pale Glass

  Chapter 23: The Tyrant and the Mirror

  Chapter 24: Brian

  Chapter 25: The Lamp and the Lions

  Chapter 26: The Hook

  Chapter 27: The Chasm and the Scar

  Chapter 28: Beyond the Threshold

  Chapter 29: The Courtesan and the Mouse

  Chapter 30: Mutton and Mr Marwood

  Chapter 31: The First Demon

  Chapter 32: The Psalms and the Bamboo Rat

  Chapter 33: The Eyes of Death

  Chapter 34: The Axeman of Oxford Street

  Chapter 35: Crushed Flowers and Hearts

  Chapter 36: The Prince and the Patella

  Chapter 37: Trails and Snails

  Chapter 38: The Menace in the Mist

  Chapter 39: The Last Straw and Wicked Wicked Women

  Chapter 40: The Wages of Justice and the Burning of Bodies

  Chapter 41: The Man in the Shrubbery

  Chapter 42: Sarus Crane and the Caspian Sea

  Chapter 43: The Stationmaster, Whisky and the Rabid Cur

  Chapter 44: The Man Outside

  Chapter 45: The Conversion of Emergencies

  Chapter 46: Feet, Elbows and Liver

  Chapter 47: The Night of the Badger

  Chapter 48: The Eye of the Beholder

  Chapter 49: The Mathematics of Murder

  Chapter 50: Tracking Tigers

  Chapter 51: Moses and the Ape

  Chapter 52: The Gates of Hell

  Chapter 53: The Shadow of an Angel

  Chapter 54: The Name of Pathology

  Chapter 55: The Elgin Marbles and the Size of a Teardrop

  Chapter 56: The Pendulum and the Pit

  Chapter 57: Heaven and the Man in Black

  Chapter 58: Monkeys, Cats and Dragons

  Chapter 59: Calvary Swords and Limbo

  Chapter 60: Ghosts in the Window

  Chapter 61: Brandy, Gin and Naval Slang

  Chapter 62: The Price of Ink

  Chapter 63: Gypsy James and the Gentle Fist

  Chapter 64: The Outrage and Arthritis

  Chapter 65: Double Entry and Blocked Drains

  Chapter 66: The Storm of Stones

  Chapter 67: Ruffians and the Varnished Skull

  Chapter 68: The Pipe of Dreams

  Chapter 69: Snakes

  Chapter 70: The Dead File

  Chapter 71: The First State

  Chapter 72: The Lanes of Logic

  Chapter 73: The Empty Harness and the Black Maria

  Chapter 74: Dead Men’s Dreams

  Chapter 75: Blood in the Gaslight

  Chapter 76: The Wounded Tiger

  Chapter 77: The Fallen Woman

  Chapter 78: The Price of a Life

  Chapter 79: The Lilac Finger

  Chapter 80: The Mary Murders

  Chapter 81: Walking in the Sky, Black Snow

  Chapter 82: The Bloodhound and the Beast

  Chapter 83: Ghosts, Ghouls and Demons

  Chapter 84: Catching the Scream

  Chapter 85: The Sound of the Devil

  Chapter 86: The Roar of the Demon

  Chapter 87: The Mattress Murder

  Chapter 88: The Deluge

  Chapter 89: The Cobweb and Cold Ashes

  Chapter 90: The Ocean of Fears

  Chapter 91: Pan Troglodytes

  Chapter 92: The Unexploded Bomb

  Chapter 93: The Possession of Corpses

  Chapter 94: The Snowman

  Chapter 95: The Viewing of Bodies

  Chapter 96: The Last Day

  Chapter 97: The Last of the Grices

  Chapter 98: Broken Glass

  Chapter 99: Characters and the Vixen

  Chapter 100: Clockwork Soldiers and the Three Eyes of Sidney Grice

  Chapter 101: His Last Bow

  Chapter 102: The Wants of Women

  Chapter 103: The Unity of Death

  Chapter 104: Judgment Day

  Chapter 105: Crumpets and Catmint

  Postscript

  About M.R.C. Kasasian

  About the Gower Street Detective Series

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  Copyright

  Introduction

  ✥

  I VISITED OUR OLD maid in her new home yesterday and, while we were talking, a bell tinkled in the background. Two rings for tea, she remembered, but was too tired to get up. After I had made sure that she was settled, I took my leave and, on exiting the building, found that Thanet Street had been cordoned off whilst the army dealt with an unexploded bomb.

  And so I passed down Burton Crescent – as I still think of it. The elegant curve of buildings was broken at the northern tip by the massive edifice of a house called Gethsemane, the only remaining fragment of what used to be Gaslight Lane.

  Terrible things had happened in that building but, with the shockwaves of a near miss, the façade had collapsed into the road and turned the building into a giant dolls’ house, its darkness finally exposed to the world. Some of the furniture had been blown into the street or looted but the octagonal table was still there, poking through the dust and rubble.

  For a moment I saw Cherry by the fireplace, reading a letter, and I almost called out. But we are separated by a gulf now
that I would have to give my life to cross.

  The horror evoked by the awful deeds in the area led to demands from the residents for the place names to be changed. And so, in 1908, Gaslight Lane and the Crescent lost their separate identities and were rechristened Cartwright Gardens, in honour of the social reformer whom Sidney Grice so heartily detested.

  My guardian regarded this case as one of his greatest achievements, though the world believed it to be a rare failure. But I cannot think of it in such terms.

  I pass the firemen unseen, drifting unnoticed amongst ARP officers and weary crowds, for I live in shadows now and the shapes of the past are as real as those of the present. It is as if I am no longer part of this world but have not yet joined the many ghosts still haunting the wreckage of Gaslight Lane.

  M.M., 19 July 1943

  125 Gower Street

  1

  ✥

  The Slaughter of Innocents

  ON THE TWENTY-FIRST night of September 1872, almost ten years before I came to London, the Garstang household was murdered. Holford Garstang, his wife Augusta and three of the residential servants were discovered with their throats cut. Their godson, Lionel Engra, was strangled.

  The only survivor was Angelina Innocenti, the lady’s maid, found in a deranged and bloody state the next morning.

  They had lived and died in Gethsemane, an imposing building in the Bloomsbury area of Camden, London. Holford Garstang was a respectable and successful seller of religious tracts and a master of his Masonic Lodge. Augusta came from a long line of ship owners and the merger of their companies created a highly successful export business. The marriage was not entirely one of convenience, however. By all accounts they were an affectionate couple, though their union was not blessed by children. The Garstangs had every reason to anticipate long and healthy lives. They had no reason to anticipate being slaughtered like pigs.

  2

  ✥

  Over the Point

  THE MAN WHO had murdered my father hid a depraved and calculating mind behind an amiable manner. But the mask had shattered when he thought that I was going to kill him, and he was curled in a whimpering ball when Sidney Grice and Inspector Pound found him on the floor in the corner of the laboratory. The prisoner was handcuffed and chained in the guard’s van for our trip back to London, and it was only when my guardian went to check on him that I had a moment alone with the inspector.

  I edged along the seat until I sat opposite him in our compartment.

  ‘Thank God you are safe,’ he said, but made no attempt to move towards me.

  ‘I am sorry that I gave you back your mother’s ring,’ I told him. ‘I have spent too long clinging to a memory. I learned that much from my experiences.’

  George Pound touched his brow. ‘I wonder what would happen to me if your fiancé could return tomorrow.’

  ‘I cannot answer that.’

  ‘Perhaps it was an unfair question.’ He plucked at his forehead. ‘But something else concerns me, Miss Middleton.’

  ‘Miss Middleton?’ After all I had been through, I found I could still be shocked.

  ‘I do not feel I can be more familiar.’ He put his palm out. ‘It is not just that you prefer a dead man to me but, when we met, I understood that you had little in the way of personal wealth.’

  ‘That was the case,’ I confirmed, ‘but some of my father’s mining shares increased in value.’

  ‘So now you are a woman of means,’ he lowered his hand but the palm still faced me, ‘and therefore beyond my reach.’

  I considered his words. ‘If that is the only barrier that stands between us, it is easily torn down.’ The train rattled over a series of points. ‘When I am of age I can give my money to a good cause. There is no shortage of those.’

  Pound looked out at the darkness. ‘I cannot permit you to do that.’

  I flared indignantly. ‘You cannot prevent me.’

  ‘No.’ He struggled for words. ‘I mean I could not ask any woman to give up her comforts to share a pinched life with me.’

  ‘I had hopes that you would be my comfort.’

  A ghostly image materialized in the outer corridor window and I slid back. I was in my place when my guardian rejoined us. The world we inhabited kept me there.

  Hoping to recover from this personal blow and from the effects of the poisons I had been fed in an attempt to drive me mad, I travelled throughout Britain, accompanied by my true friend, Harriet Fitzpatrick, with whom I became embroiled in the appalling occurrences at Scarfield Manor, the journals concerning which are stored in my banker’s vault.

  In the autumn of 1883 I returned to 125 Gower Street, but I fear I was of little use to my guardian until that November when, once again, I accompanied him on a case, the details of which must remain confidential. I do not suppose that I shall ever be able to publish an account of the sordid events surrounding the Clerkenwell Publisher.

  3

  ✥

  The Demons of the Night

  IT ALWAYS BEGINS in the same way – I fall into the emptiness, no light, nothing to hold on to, just the falling. If I land, the jolt wakes me up. I take my medicine and try to calm down.

  Then there is the hand over the eyes forcing the head down. I feel the pressure on the nose and brow, every finger, the palm and heel of the hand.

  Usually it ends there and I sit up with a jump, but it changes in between. Bits might be added or taken away. There may be an endless corridor, the boards squealing silently or a staircase cracking without a sound under somebody’s feet. Something rushes. Is it me or towards me? Something shrinks back. Is it me or away from me? The worst is when it goes on – the whiteness in the moonlight, the thin line widening and darkening. No that is not true: the worst is the whimper and the word when I hear it.

  NUTTY.

  And then I am tumbling, fighting to escape, unable to run in the treacle air, not daring to think what is behind or before me, boards squealing shrilly, the staircase cracking explosively.

  And NUTTY bounces about inside my skull, trying to find a way out. But there is no escape. It hurts. My head hurts. I stumble.

  That is when I wake up drenched and choking, my heart hammering in my tight chest. I am paralysed as the shades loom above me but I force myself to breathe, will myself to reach out through those shapes. The tiny glow shines like my guardian angel, my one protection against the demons of the night. I fumble to turn up the wick on the oil lamp that I keep forever burning by my bed. My hand trembles so much that I almost knock the lamp over. The shapes dart around me and away from me, cowering from the light, and the only shadows are those of the furniture. I know them by heart but I still fear them.

  Sometimes – and I am deeply ashamed to confess this – I wet my nightgown but I dare not do anything about it. I am terrified to stay soaking in my bed – it feels like hot blood – and yet I am petrified to move out of it; and it cools as blood cools, as we all cool.

  Even when I am awake that word whispers close by.

  NUTTY.

  And then I remember why I fear it so much and my very soul screams out of me. That was not the nightmare. This moment is the nightmare. And this moment will never end.

  4

  ✥

  The Sydenham Cyclops

  A SPIT OF RAIN hit the glass and burst.

  ‘Twenty-five,’ Sidney Grice said.

  He had been standing by the window of 125 Gower Street for almost an hour, huffing and breaking off only to limp round and round the central circular table before returning to his vigil.

  ‘What is?’ I gave up trying to write my account of The Sydenham Cyclops in the journal I kept of our cases.

  ‘The approximate age of the woman standing on the pavement. I cannot see her clearly through her veil.’ My guardian spoke over his shoulder. ‘But she has just put her spectacles on to read my new professional plate and they are almost on the tip of her nose.’ He wiped some condensation off the glass with the side of his hand. ‘I h
ave oft observed that as men get older they wear their spectacles lower down their noses since they need them for reading but, because they have become long-sighted they peer over them for general purposes. Young women who are forced to wear eyepieces, however, start with them low so as not to obscure what they imagine to be their alluring eyes, but slowly push them up as necessity overrules their vanity.’

  ‘So at about forty both sexes should be wearing them on the bridge,’ I hazarded.

  ‘Forty-five,’ he corrected me, ‘but, for once, you have grasped the idea. She has set her foot upon the lower step.’

  ‘Should you be staring at her?’ I asked and he piffed.

  ‘Of course I should. It is my job to stare at people.’ The doorbell rang in the hall and Mr G turned away. ‘Molly is disappointingly swift to respond.’

  I could just make out her footsteps clumping up the stairs.

  ‘Why disappointingly?’

  Mr G whipped off his scarlet patch and produced a glass eye from his waistcoat pocket, holding it between his thumb and forefinger like a kindly uncle offering a toffee. ‘Because if she were performing her tasks she would be setting them aside before emerging from her lair.’ He stretched his right eyelids apart and forced the eye into his socket. ‘Whereas the speed of her reactions is more indicative of a guilty start.’

  ‘Even Molly is entitled to rest sometimes,’ I said.

  ‘Nonsense.’ Mr G limped to the mantel mirror and ran his fingers back through his thick jet hair. ‘Her entire life is one of leisure.’

  I was about to enquire who he thought performed all the household duties when Molly came in. Unusually – since Sidney Grice often accused our maid of sleeping in her uniform – her apron was brilliant white and uncreased, though her ginger hair, as always, strayed from the clips that fought and failed to restrain it under her crisply starched hat.

  ‘A lady wishes to see you, sir,’ she announced, holding out the silver hall tray. ‘I told her you aintn’t not very well but she said it was urgent.’