The Curse Of The House Of Foskett (The Gower Street Detective Series) Page 15

  ‘He is a good policeman in a world of incompetence and corruption and I should miss that, but my weeping at his bedside will not heal him any the quicker. Give him my regards if you wish.’ He poked the pliers through the hole and grasped something. ‘Now’ – there was a loud click – ‘if Cook uses this as instructed we should never have another lump in our creamed potatoes again.’

  ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘how was your visit to Dr Berry?’

  ‘Most pleasant.’ He twisted the pliers a fraction clockwise. ‘She had a pretty blue dress on and—’

  ‘I meant the tests,’ I said and he looked up again.

  ‘Oh, those? Yes, they were all positive. Edwin Slab was definitely poisoned with strychnine. She had a frilly collar and matching cuffs too. Something like that would flatter even you, March, if you were not so studiously occupied with looking dowdy.’

  ‘There is nothing studious about my dowdiness,’ I retorted, uncertain what I meant but feeling it was probably sufficiently withering to merit flouncing out of the room.

  29

  Weals, Flares and the Figure of Death

  ‘The trouble is,’ Sidney Grice said over breakfast the next morning, ‘I have not been focused. There are too many strands in the web of these murders and I have allowed them to lead me in different directions when I should be tracing them all back to the centre.’

  ‘I am not sure I know what that means,’ I said.

  ‘Neither am I.’ He nonchalantly crumbled his charred toast into his prune juice and over the tablecloth. ‘It seems reasonable to assume, though not to take for granted, that the deaths of Messrs Green, Slab and Braithwaite were connected. Horatio Green and Edwin Slab were both members of that ludicrous society, which makes them self-selected targets, but why Braithwaite? His only connection that we know of was that he was Horatio Green’s dentist. I rifled through his meagre patients’ records and scantily filled appointment book and none of the other members have ever consulted him. So why would he be a victim?’

  ‘Perhaps he knew something that would incriminate the murderer,’ I suggested.

  ‘That would seem the most likely explanation.’ He felt the teapot and pushed it away. ‘Though the fact he said nothing to us indicates that he might not have even realized the significance of his information and, if my profession has taught me anything – which it has – the most likely explanation is often the wrong one. Perhaps the delightful Quigley was right – and what an unappealing idea that is – and Braithwaite killed himself accidentally.’

  ‘But what about the marks on his wrists?’ I reminded him. ‘Could he not have been tied to his chair and only released when he was unconscious or dead?’

  ‘The marks on his wrists were at least a few days old,’ he declared. ‘Long ago I observed that rope marks cause a triple-layered inflammatory response – a red impression, bordered by a paler, less well-delineated flare, bordered by a weal mark. It takes some time for these marks to fade depending on the severity of the trauma. The flare and weal had disappeared, but the inner lurid colouration was still evident even to your poorly trained eye. Hence the marks were not made immediately ante-mortem.’

  ‘So how do you explain them?’

  He refilled his cup. ‘I was not aware that I was obliged to do so.’

  ‘Do you think that when Jenny referred to Mr Braithwaite wanting her to play games he—’

  ‘Quite possibly.’ He opened his egg with a teaspoon but I did not bother with mine. It was crypt cold and my toast was soggy but just about edible.

  Molly came in with a copy of the Manchester Guardian and her employer dabbed the cover with his middle finger. ‘This has not been pressed,’ he told her. ‘Go and do it immediately.’

  ‘I started to press it,’ Molly said, ‘but there’s a lovely funny picture of you on page four, sir. So I thought you would want to see it straightways. I know how much you love a good hoot.’

  Sidney Grice looked at her as if she were a changeling, rustled through the pages, tut-tutting at the ink stain which had miraculously migrated on to his shirt front.

  ‘It’s ever so good ain’t it, sir?’

  ‘One shilling off your wages,’ her employer said absently. His face clouded and he put a finger to his eye. He rammed the paper back at her. ‘Take it away and burn it… now.’

  ‘Can I see?’

  ‘No, you may not,’ he said, but I had already whisked it out of her hand. It was a cleverly executed cartoon and there was no mistaking Sidney Grice with his eye patch on and the cruel exaggeration of his shortened left leg, but even worse were the corpses strewn about his feet, every one of them named – Sarah and William Ashby, Judith Stravinskij, Sir Randolph Cosmo Napier, Alice Hawkins, Horatio Green, Edwin Slab, Silas Braithwaite, Rosie Flower. And Sidney Grice stood over them, holding a scythe and dressed in the hooded robes of Death.

  ‘What in the name of everything unholy has Rosie Flower got to do with me?’ Sidney Grice demanded. ‘And how the devil did they find out about her?’

  ‘Ten shillings off your wages for strong language,’ Molly whispered as she skipped heavily out of the room, and my guardian threw his napkin after her.

  ‘Sarah Ashby was dead before I had even heard her name,’ he fumed, ‘and William Ashby, who is portrayed as an innocent dupe, was a murderer tried and found guilty by twelve men good and true in an almost fair trial.’

  ‘But he was your client.’

  ‘Then more fool him.’ He swept out his hand, sending his egg flying into the coal box. ‘He wanted the truth and he got it.’ He wiped his fingers on the tablecloth. ‘And nobody can blame me because Napier and Hawkins got in the way.’

  I put my toast down. ‘Got in the way? I can hardly believe you have said that. Alice Hawkins was—’

  ‘A corpse,’ he interjected, ‘before I even took on the case, and Quarrel – not I – killed them all.’ He knocked his teacup but caught it as it spun off the saucer. ‘None of the others was ever a client of mine except for that that damned fool Green, and I am in the process of bringing his murderer to book as I speak.’

  ‘I hope so,’ I said. ‘But who was Judith Stravinskij?’

  ‘I throttled her,’ my guardian conceded, ‘but it was all an innocent misunderstanding on her part.’ He looked at the ceiling for a moment. ‘Besides which, it is the unnamed figure that really injures me.’

  I looked again and in the bottom right-hand corner was a faceless dead man that I had not noticed before. This body was simply labelled next client.

  ‘Will you sue?’ I knew of Sidney Grice’s predilection for bringing civil actions against his detractors, but he shook his head. ‘The editor of the Manchester Guardian knows things about me that I would rather he kept to himself, and I have information about him that would destroy his marriage, finish his career and quite possibly put him in prison. We would be like two drowning men, clutching at each other and dragging each other under.’

  I remembered Eleanor Quarrel and Father Brewster, and imagined how it must have been for them as the stormy seas closed over their heads. She murdered members of her own family in cold blood, and so many others. Did she repent in her terror or did she only fear for herself? Could her own death make atonement for what she did? I prayed so every night.

  ‘Shall I burn it?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I shall save this scurrilous rag and the next time I meet Mr Charles Prestwich Scott and his amusing sketch artist, I shall take great pleasure in making them eat their words – preferably literally.’ He turned back to the carbonized slurry in his bowl and I tried to shake off my thoughts.

  How could she have laid Sarah Ashby on the ground, stabbed and hacked at her and calmly sliced that angelic face through the soft skin and warm muscle down to the teeth and bone?

  Sidney Grice let his napkin fall on the floor. ‘Come, March.’ He scraped back his chair. ‘Today we shall visit the displeasingly named Mr Piggety.’

  30

  Piggety’s Cats in Big W
hite Letters

  There had been a fire in Euston Square and the Metropolitan Brigade was still fighting it with water wagons connected to a rattling steam pump, leaving hardly any room for traffic to pass by.

  ‘The subterranean railways were supposed to alleviate our transport problems,’ my guardian said, ‘but I suspect they have merely added to them by enabling the vulgar herds to invade our capital at will.’

  ‘This is nothing to the chaos I encountered in India.’

  He looked away. Firemen were breaking open a window with their axes and the smoke rolled blackly out, stinging the eyes of the onlookers and startling a team of dappled horses harnessed to a stonemason’s wagon which skewed across the road, slowing our progress even more.

  ‘There is another approach we could take to these investigations,’ Sidney Grice said. I liked the we, though I suspected he meant himself rather than me. ‘We could just wait until all but one of the club members is dead and arrest the sole survivor. At the rate they are dying it should not take very long.’

  ‘You cannot mean that,’ I said as we edged round the obstructions. ‘Surely it is your job to protect these people.’

  My guardian undid the clips on his satchel and brought out his patent heat-retentive flask.

  ‘On the contrary.’ He poured some tea into his new specially designed tin cup, tall with a slight internal lip to discourage spillages. ‘If you recall the terms of my engagement, I am employed to investigate the deaths of the members, not to nanny them and, if they do not die, I cannot do my job.’

  ‘But surely your instincts are to save them?’

  He recorked his bottle. ‘The beasts in the field have instincts. I have intellect and I do not need to exercise it overly much to know that any other deaths will reflect badly on me, and my professional standing has already been battered like the wreck of the Deutschland. Besides, it is an inelegant solution.’

  ‘It helps that we only have five suspects,’ I said as he put his flask away.

  ‘Not necessarily.’ He steadied his cup as we swung round a fireman carrying a nightgowned old man like a child out of the house. ‘Someone who is not even in the society may hold a grudge against the victims. Besides which’ – he put his hand over the cup – ‘numbers are immaterial. There were one hundred and three suspects when Granny Griggs was sawn in two at four post-meridiem, but I apprehended the culprit before the clock had struck the quarter. Conversely, it took me four years to prove the guilt of Lorraine Merrylegs when she was the only person present at three different murders. If she had remembered to brush behind her teeth, she could still be about her work now.’

  ‘I have never heard of her,’ I said, ‘and I read all the shilling shockers.’

  ‘The Lord Chancellor begged me to keep the matter quiet for reasons which I am unable to divulge until this century has reached its inglorious conclusion.’ He drank a little tea. ‘Anyway, you are forgetting there is a sixth suspect.’

  I thought about it. ‘Who?’

  ‘Myself,’ my guardian said. ‘I also stand to gain a tidy sum of money pursuant to the deaths of all the members.’

  I laughed. ‘You cannot seriously suspect yourself.’

  ‘One must always consider all the possibilities,’ he said. ‘However, I have sufficient intimate knowledge of my actions to enable me to discount myself as the guilty party with a reasonable degree of confidence. You, however, may keep me on your list.’

  ‘I shall bear that in mind,’ I told him as we jolted over a pothole that nearly caused him to choke on his tea.

  We turned off Euston Road but our rate of progress did not improve. Two men were loading furniture into the back of a van and our cabby had to threaten them with his whip before they would move it to one side. The streets became narrower and shorter and the houses smaller and shabbier the further we went east, and there were fewer carriages and more pedestrians, until ours was the only hansom in view, pushing its way through the bustling crowds.

  ‘What a fine history this place has.’ My guardian raised his voice above the general din. ‘Over there is The Prospect of Whitby, formerly and more aptly known as The Devil’s Tavern. The great Hanging Judge Jefferies frequented it, and his house stands nearby with a noose in the window to commemorate his glorious career. Why, in two particularly productive days of September 1685, he condemned one hundred and forty-nine people to death.’

  ‘What a jolly card he must have been.’

  The streets were slightly wider now but more oppressive with their high sides – the towering windowless walls of warehouses, their red bricks blackened by the sooty London air and joined across the road by a mesh of wooden walkways at every level. The alley opened out into a seething mass of porters and lightermen, heading their way to and from the docks, many burdened so heavily that they were bent double under their loads of sacks and crates.

  ‘They used to call this Execution Dock.’ He strained to make himself heard. ‘It was a favourite site for dispatching pirates and mutineers. They really knew how to hang a man in those days. If the executioner did not pull his legs to finish him off a man could jiggle on a short rope for the best part of an hour – the Marshal’s Dance as they called it. My father came to watch the last hanging here and told me it was quite wonderful.’

  ‘Like father like son,’ I said and he beamed.

  The hansom came to a halt. ‘That’s as far as what I go,’ the cabby shouted and my guardian passed up his payment.

  ‘Keep the change and there’s a guinea for you if you wait.’

  ‘One hour,’ the cabby said and wrenched the reins to urge his horse out of the way.

  ‘Keep your eyes skinned,’ Sidney Grice told me. ‘We are looking for Piggety’s. No need. There it is.’

  I followed his hand to see a tarred wooden building, two storeys high, built against the side of a sugar warehouse with a hexagonal tower on top and a row of skylights in the roof, a sign on the side bearing the legend Piggety’s Cats in white letters three feet high.

  We pushed our way through a group of dockers who were bent over a game of Find the Lady. A fat man with a wooden leg was sitting on the cobbles, putting a stone on a tray, then covering it with one of three mugs and shuffling them about while the audience placed bets on which mug he had used. We watched for a while and he was very fast. I could never guess the correct mug.

  ‘Left,’ Sidney Grice said and it was. ‘Centre.’ He was correct again.

  The fat man looked up. ‘You ’aving a punt, guv?’

  ‘I never gamble,’ my guardian told him, ‘even on certainties like this. Left again.’

  I was aware of a man in a green jacket standing behind us, and turned to see him grasping a wicked-looking cudgel bristling with spikes.

  ‘Time to go before I smash your pretty face.’

  Sidney Grice seemed to be engrossed in the game. ‘Centre,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I am not often accused of being pretty.’

  ‘I was talkin’ to your old man.’ The man in the green jacket moved in close and raised the cudgel. I felt it prick my chin. Instinctively I raised my parasol and accidentally caught him in his right nostril. It was quite a hard jab and he was so taken off-guard that he dropped his weapon and clutched at his nose.

  ‘Centre.’ My guardian spun round and I looped my arm through his.

  ‘Take me away from these ruffians, Mr G,’ I said as the man scrambled for his club.

  Sidney Grice kicked it skittering away. ‘Certainly, Miss Middleton,’ he said and glanced over his shoulder. The man had retrieved his weapon but made no attempt to follow us.

  ‘Why did you call me Mr G?’ he asked as we came up to the shed.

  ‘I was not sure if you wanted them to know who you are,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I think I quite like it.’

  A cesspit was overflowing down the slope towards the water’s edge.

  ‘So do I.’ He lifted the knocker. ‘It manages to be informal and formal simultaneously.’
He rapped on the door, which flew open almost immediately, and the stench struck us so forcibly that we both staggered backwards.

  31

  The Curious Incident of the Cats

  in the Daytime

  ‘Oh, you’ll soon get used to that.’ The man who answered our call was so short and onion-shaped that, had he been wearing a peaked cap, I would have been tempted to ask where Tweedledee was.

  ‘I think not.’ Sidney Grice put a hand over his mouth and nose.

  Our greeter put his hands damply together. ‘Think of it as the smell of money.’ The front of his head was flattened, sloping downwards, giving him a curiously low brow.

  ‘I shall not be putting it in my purse,’ I assured him.

  ‘Sidney Grice.’ My guardian held out his card. ‘And this is Miss Middleton. You must excuse her peculiarities.’

  ‘Prometheus Perseus Piggety.’ He took the card and turned it over, as if expecting to find a personal message. ‘I can forgive a beautiful lady anything,’ he said, quite gallantly, until he added, ‘but this one will have to mind her p’s and q’s.’

  ‘I will tell her that,’ I said, ‘but I doubt that she ever will.’

  Piggety screwed up his eyes and pushed his face quite close to my guardian’s. ‘How very like your cartoon you are.’ And Sidney Grice whipped his card away.

  ‘Were your parents fond of Greek myths, Mr Piggety?’ I put in hastily.

  All the time we were speaking Mr Piggety was shuffling backwards, like a flunkey in the presence of his monarch, to admit us to his premises.

  ‘I hated them,’ he said, ‘and they hated me. So they changed my name from Samuel when I was fourteen.’

  ‘How could anyone hate you?’ I sprayed some perfume on to my handkerchief.

  ‘Many people have asked me that question and I have yet to provide an answer…’ He licked his lips. ‘For there is not a more loveable man in this land than me.’ He locked the door. ‘The only one ever cut’ – he held up a long, steel key with rows of teeth set at various angles around the cylindrical shank – ‘and one that cannot be copied. Security is my watchword, my guiding light, my beacon, my—’