The Curse Of The House Of Foskett (The Gower Street Detective Series) Read online

  ‘How do you know it was Mr Slab?’ My guardian dropped his sample into a white envelope.

  Rosie Flower twiddled with a ringlet. ‘The bell came from his workroom and so—’

  ‘And so you made the illogical but possibly true assumption that it was your employer who rang it.’ He scribbled on the envelope and sealed it with a metal clip.

  ‘But there was nobody else in the house, sir.’

  ‘The fact that you did not observe anybody else in the house does not mean there was nobody else.’ Sidney Grice poked a straight length of wire in the specimen’s ear. ‘Proceed with your account but do try to gather your senile mind.’

  ‘Just ignore him,’ I said.

  He grunted and pulled out the wire to scrutinize the end.

  ‘I went to see what he wanted.’ She tickled behind a hyena’s ear.

  ‘Why you?’ he asked as she patted its head.

  ‘Because Maissie was scullery maid, Daisy was having her cow-heel jelly and Mrs Prendergast was Cook.’

  ‘Continue.’ Sidney Grice sat behind the desk in a brown leather captain’s chair and pulled open the top drawer of the desk. He brought out a stack of letters and undid the string tied round them.

  ‘You shouldn’t be looking at those, sir.’

  ‘Which is exactly why I am.’ He unfolded the top letter. ‘What happened when you answered the call?’

  Miss Flower wrapped a string of fur round her finger and said, ‘Poor Mr Slab was lying in his tank.’

  ‘What tank?’

  ‘His pickling tank. I can show—’ She started towards the hall.

  ‘Stay exactly where you are.’ Sidney Grice paused from measuring the hyena’s teeth. ‘I shall not have you deliberately or inanely misleading me with your false impressions. Was the tank full?’

  ‘Yes, sir. It was full of Mr Slab and overflowing with pickling water.’

  ‘Was he face-down?’ I asked.

  ‘Sort of.’ She unwrapped her finger. ‘He was all bent backwards in a funny way – except it wasn’t funny – and the poor man had been sick everywhere.’

  ‘He cannot have been sick on the ceiling,’ my guardian pointed out. ‘Be more specific, woman.’

  ‘Everywhere,’ she said. ‘All over the floor. There was a lovely donkey-skin rug soaked all through. We had to throw it away.’

  Sidney Grice snatched at the words. ‘You admit you destroyed evidence?’

  ‘I was just clearing up, sir, me and—’

  ‘Where else did he vomit?’

  ‘All over his cutting-up table and Veronica too.’

  ‘Who is Veronica?’

  ‘A mangrove.’ Miss Flower tapped on the snout of a hyena. ‘A sort of otter what kills snakes.’

  ‘I think you mean a mongoose,’ I suggested.

  ‘Do not attempt to put words in the witness’s mouth,’ my guardian snapped.

  ‘Took me all morning to clean her up and she’s still damp. And he made a terrible mess of Sidney.’ She pointed to an especially mangy wolf near a magazine rack. ‘We brought him up here to get dry.’

  I laughed. ‘Is that really its name?’

  ‘It is now.’ Rosie Flower winked.

  ‘What else did you remove from the scene?’ Sidney Grice snapped. ‘A gun or a knife perhaps? Do not answer that. Proceed with your rambling.’

  Rosie Flower pulled down her lips and tensed them for a moment. ‘I went over to the tank and he didn’t look at all right, sir. Apart from being dead and curved up like a humpback bridge, his eyes were near popped out of his eyeholes like tennis balls, they were, but the worst of it was he had this horrible grin, like a cheddar cat it was, and he had ground his teeth so hard that they were all smashed up.’ She shook out her handkerchief. ‘Oh, miss, it was most distressing.’ Rosie Flower dabbed her eyes.

  ‘Continue,’ my guardian said and she raised her chin.

  ‘Pardon my saying so, but you are not a nice man, Mr Grice,’ she said as he strolled round her. ‘Then I ran to the top of the stairs and shouted down to Maissie, Go fetch Dr Berry. She has young legs. And be sharp about it, you idle good-for-not-very-much. But he was dead by then. I’m sure of it. Oh, the poor man. He was…’ Rosie Flower’s mind strayed far away. ‘He was…’ she repeated distractedly.

  My guardian clicked his fingers. ‘Did he have any callers that day?’ And she jolted back to us and said slowly, ‘Not a rich man nor a poor man.’

  ‘Or the day before?’

  ‘Not a saint nor a sinner, nor the day before that, nor any other day this side or the other side of any day you trouble yourself with, sir.’

  ‘Why not?’ I asked.

  ‘Why, he had no time for callers with all his work, taking innards out and stuffing stuffing in and dealing with all his visitors.’

  He regarded her through a glass paperweight. ‘You led us to believe that he had no visitors.’

  ‘No callers.’ She pushed the wig up her forehead. ‘Callers come to the front. Visitors go round the back and there was no end of those – people with pets what they wanted done. We had a horse last month, but they were too slow bringing it and the gases exploded it. All its insides were outside.’

  ‘Did he have any visitors on the day he died?’ I asked.

  ‘I expect.’ She pulled the wig down again. ‘But we never really knew who was there or not.’

  Sidney Grice folded the letters and tied them in a bundle again. ‘Where is the workshop?’

  ‘Down the end of the hall to the left, sir.’

  He waved the letters at her. ‘Show me.’ And let them fall on to the desk top.

  21

  The Regiment of Cossacks

  Off we set back into the hall and down a long colonnaded vestibule, our footsteps clicking on the green marble floor. On either side the walls were plastered and painted with garish jungle scenes. Improbable tigers peeped from behind palm trees and unconvincing lions poked their heads through bamboo screens, and all along the arched ceiling peculiar serpents stretched and coiled in iridescent greens with impossibly daggered fangs. A stuffed black bear stood sullenly in an alcove and a brown one in another. Their paws were probably meant to be slashing, but they looked more like they were waving mournfully to each other.

  We got to the end and Rosie Flower unlocked the door. ‘Here we are.’ It opened into an enormous conservatory. I had not seen anything so big since my father took me to Chatsworth House, and for an instant it was like stepping into an indoor zoo.

  There was not a beast I could think of that was not present in that room. Mice played around cats who dabbed at mastiffs and Great Danes. These in turn looked up at ponies and carthorses, an elephant and two giraffes. Panthers, leopards and wolves stood in a peaceful circle, watched happily by a dozen owls perched on the leafless branches of a gnarled olive tree.

  Unlike a zoo, however, there was not a cage in sight and every creature there was silently frozen, while our noses were assaulted not by animal odours but by the sting of formalin and the sickly sweet pungency of mothballs.

  We made our way through the dead menagerie into a windowless white-distempered room that was more reminiscent of a mortuary. To one side stretched a huge operating table with a rack of gas lamps hanging low over it. Rosie turned the lights up. Surgical saws glinted on hooks along the wall and there was a row of knives arranged in order of size, from scalpels to butchers’ skinning knives and cleavers. Four covered bins stood below on the white tiled floor. A stepladder was propped against the wall. To the right was a glass tank about six foot high and five foot square, I estimated. It was three-quarters full of a murky liquid and reeked of formaldehyde.

  I tried the handle of the back exit. It was locked. ‘Where does this go?’ I brushed against a sack and got white powder on my dress.

  Rosie blew her nose. ‘It opens on to Hatter Street. His visitors came and went this way.’

  ‘And you never saw them?’

  ‘Not unless Mr Slab called me in, which wasn’t of
ten enough to be called often.’

  ‘Where is the key?’ Sidney Grice took a large femur from a wooden box on a shelf.

  ‘On the wall there, sir.’

  He took it off the hook and opened the door. On its outer side was a brass plaque. EDWIN SLAB, TAXIDERMIST TO THE GENTRY. PLEASE RING. The street outside was deserted and it was raining heavily. He stepped out and tested the bell. ‘It has been disconnected.’

  ‘Children used to ring it and run away, sir. Customers knew to knock five times.’

  He shut the door and locked it. ‘This room stinks of bleach.’

  ‘We had to clean up, sir.’

  ‘And destroy evidence.’ He pushed his wet hair back. ‘That could go very badly against you in court.’

  Miss Flower’s lower lip quivered. ‘Court, sir?’

  He picked something off a shelf. ‘This syringe is broken and by the small cuts on your right thumb and forefinger you may come under suspicion of having caused the damage.’

  Miss Flower bit her lip. ‘I picked it up, sir… from the floor over there.’

  ‘Your answer to the next question may have terrible consequences for you.’ Sidney Grice put his face very close to hers and peered into her old eyes through his pince-nez. ‘Did you bend the needle accidentally or on purpose?’

  ‘Neither, sir. It was already—’

  ‘Who washed the floor?’ he asked angrily as I opened a cupboard to find it stacked with pelts steeped in camphor.

  ‘Why I did, sir, with Polly.’

  He replaced the syringe. ‘Then perhaps you would like to describe every footprint upon it, the size and shape of the boots that made them, any distinctive defects of the soles or heels, the movements conveyed by their patterns but then’ – Sidney Grice banged his cane on the table – ‘perhaps you cannot. No more than you can tell me where every fibre was, its length, thickness and colour, whether it lay on the dust or partly or completely under it. Of course you cannot because you are a senile and witless short-sighted old—’

  I slammed the cupboard door. ‘That is enough.’

  My guardian jerked his head back as if avoiding a blow. ‘Kindly do not interrupt my interrogation of a suspect.’

  Rosie Flower quailed. ‘Suspect, sir?’

  ‘She is a frail old lady,’ I said. ‘And please do not trouble to tell me about the frail old lady who single-handedly wiped out a regiment of Cossacks with a cheese wire.’

  He looked puzzled. ‘I am unfamiliar with that case.’ He put his head into an open wall safe and Rosie Flower stepped back uneasily.

  ‘That is all for now, thank you,’ I told her as my guardian’s head reappeared.

  ‘I have not finished questioning her yet,’ he bridled.

  ‘Yes, you have,’ I said, and to my surprise he acquiesced, shutting the safe as if it were delicate, then opening it again and wiping his hands on a white cloth from his satchel. ‘Well, congratulations, Miss Flower. You have carried out the most professional obliteration of clues that I have ever been honoured to witness. And I speak as a man who has worked with – or in spite of – the police forces of eight different nations. What a pity for your employer that you were not always so assiduous in your duties.’ Rosie Flower opened her mouth in protest but thought better of it. ‘There is nothing to be gleaned here.’

  We made our way back through the conservatory, skirting a splendid crocodile that I had not noticed before, with a kid goat lying placidly between its jaws.

  Miss Flower straightened her wig. ‘Shall I see you out, sir?’

  He shooed her away. ‘We are not leaving yet.’ He went back into the study. ‘And do not attempt to flee.’

  ‘Where would I go, sir?’

  ‘Are you asking for my advice on how to escape justice?’

  ‘No, sir. I should be glad to see some justice one day.’

  He turned his back on us.

  ‘Do not let him upset you,’ I told her. ‘It is just his way.’

  ‘If he were my charge I should tell him to mend it.’

  ‘What will happen to you now?’ I asked and she trembled.

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know, miss. I shall stay here until they throw me out. In the meantime I have food and shelter. After that, what is there for my sort? I’m eighty-six, you know, and I have no savings to speak of – just a few shillings I was putting aside for some pretty pink ribbons for my hair – and I shan’t go in the workhouse, miss. I shan’t.’ She stamped her foot and nearly toppled over.

  ‘Have you no family?’

  ‘Brothers and sisters all dead.’ She steadied herself on the edge of a zebra-skin stool. ‘They never had nice employers like Mr Slab.’

  ‘Are there no charities that can help?’

  ‘Oh, miss,’ she exclaimed, ‘there’s precious little charity in this fine city and what there is goes to fallen women, and the trouble is I never fell.’ She smiled shyly. ‘Wish I had now.’

  I laughed. ‘It is a probably a little late for that now.’

  Rosie Flower put her hand on my arm. ‘Never too late to fall, miss.’

  I remembered Harriet Fitzpatrick telling me about a new charity for old servants. ‘I shall make some enquiries,’ I promised as I turned away.

  22

  The Hyena in the Room

  There was a stack of paperwork on the captain’s chair when I returned. My guardian had pulled all the drawers out of the desk and was on his knees, peering inside its empty shell.

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  Mr G emerged, looking a little grubby. ‘A scientist records all the information he observes and a good scientist observes everything.’ He turned the drawers upside down and banged on them. ‘You would be astonished how many people think it is safe to hide things by affixing them under drawers. I have sent two women to prison simply by inspecting their bureaux. But it is difficult to persuade the average policeman to search anything, let alone underneath it.’ He slid the drawers back into place. ‘Desks are usually a cornucopia of information. They have diaries noting important rendezvous, letters revealing romantic liaisons; incriminating documents, hidden weapons, locks of hair. But this is the most unrewarding piece of furniture I have come across since I searched your bedside cabinet last week.’

  I clenched my jaw. ‘You searched my bedside cabinet?’

  ‘It would appear that Miss Flower’s psittacine tendencies are contagious,’ he said and I was just working out that psittacine referred to parrots when he asked, ‘What is the first thing you notice about this room?’

  ‘The hyenas,’ I replied and waited for a sarcastic response.

  ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘Grice’s third rule of detection is not to ignore the obvious. What else do you notice?’

  I thought about it. ‘There is only one armchair.’

  ‘Precisely,’ he agreed. ‘So presumably that scuttle-brained housekeeper was telling the truth about her master never entertaining callers, at least not in this room. Take a look around and see if the other rooms are more sociably equipped, and do try not to destroy any clues.’

  ‘Everything is a clue,’ I reminded him.

  ‘Remember that and you might be slightly less of a nuisance.’ He crawled round the desk. ‘This is only the second time I have come across this type of varnish used on walnut veneer.’ He lay on his back with his arms stiff at his sides. ‘What is the easiest way to give somebody poison?’

  ‘Put it in their food or drink… providing the flavour is masked.’

  He crossed his ankles. ‘Would liqueur-filled chocolates do it?’

  ‘I imagine so.’

  Sidney Grice pointed lazily and I followed his hand. In plain view on the mantelpiece was a wooden box. ‘Open it, but do not touch the contents.’

  There were five chocolates in the box with a space just the right size for a sixth.

  ‘So you think—’

  My guardian put a finger to his lips.

  ‘Attempt neither to anticipate nor to interpret the
complexities of my intellect.’ He closed his eyes and began to hum loudly and as tunelessly as ever.

  I left him to it and crossed the hall into a dining room, decorated with fish: brown trout over the fireplace; sticklebacks suspended in an aquarium amongst wilted reeds; and a giant tunny fish in a case on a low stand. A rectangular table surrounded by twelve chairs dominated the room. All but the carver at the head were covered in dust sheets.

  Further down I found a sitting room. Birds were the theme here – sparrows, owls, hawks and seagulls, two eagles with wings outstretched, an unhappy-looking robin on a twig and a kingfisher frozen in mid-swoop. In this room too there was only one armchair.

  From somewhere above me I heard a dull thump and the sound of feet scrabbling. It did not seem likely that Miss Flower would be scurrying about so energetically. I went quickly to the study.

  ‘This room has been searched by someone else and recently.’ Sidney Grice had turned a small rug upside down and was dabbing the undersurface with a strip of gummed paper.

  ‘There is somebody upstairs,’ I said. ‘I heard feet running.’

  ‘Is there any point in telling you to stay here?’ My guardian snatched up his cane.

  ‘No,’ I said, and we hurried into the hall and up the wide staircase. It turned back on itself on to a well-lit square corridor.

  ‘It was over the sitting room’ – I pointed – ‘which should be that way.’

  The door was ajar but I could hear nothing now. Sidney Grice twisted the handle of his cane until it sprung out to twice its original length, motioned me to stand to one side and prodded the door. It swung open easily. The room we found ourselves in was bright and cheerfully decorated. It had floral wallpaper and a pink Persian carpet. There was a single bed with a red counterpane and a lacquered dressing table with a set of brushes and a cheval mirror on it. The wardrobe was open with one plain dress hanging in it.

  ‘Mr Slab certainly treated his servants well,’ my guardian observed.

  ‘There is the rope she spoke of.’ There was a thick four-ply cable spliced into a loop and attached to a hook under the sill. The other end hung through the window.