The Curse Of The House Of Foskett (The Gower Street Detective Series) Page 16

  ‘A Williams-Hazard deadlock,’ Sidney Grice interrupted.

  ‘You know your locks, sir.’

  ‘Mr Hazard paid me three hundred guineas to attempt to pick his prototype.’

  ‘And did you manage?’ I asked.

  ‘He paid me another two hundred guineas to keep that information confidential.’

  We were standing on a concrete platform with waist-high railings, looking down to a large, well-lit room with four long, parallel rows of cages stacked three high and resting on trestles.

  ‘This used to be a factory for canning soup,’ Prometheus Piggety told us, ‘until people realized what a useless idea that was.’

  ‘But surely it preserves the food,’ I said and Prometheus Piggety snickered. He was neatly if slightly shoddily dressed in a shiny-elbowed, bottle-green coat and good-quality black twill trousers which needed pressing, but his shirt collar was stained a vivid red with a blue tint.

  ‘Yes, dear girl, but how do you get it out again?’

  ‘I am sure I could design an opening device,’ my guardian said, half to himself, and Mr Piggety snickered again.

  ‘I should not trouble yourself, sir. It is just a passing frivolity like paraffin. What is the point in that when we have an endless supply of sperm whales already?’

  I was about to point out that paraffin was cheaper, cleaner and kinder, but Sidney Grice said, ‘You have an interesting business here.’

  ‘Come and see for yourself.’ Mr Piggety led the way down a flight of open metal steps into the great hall and stopped at the first cage we came to. It contained five white kittens.

  ‘Aren’t they gorgeous?’ Mr Piggety opened a cage, lifted one out and handed it gently to me, a tiny thing with big green eyes and soft pink paws. I stroked its head and it nuzzled my hand. I put my finger under its throat and felt nothing.

  ‘How very odd,’ I said. ‘It seems so happy and yet it does not purr.’

  ‘There is something very curious about the noise these cats are making,’ Sidney Grice said.

  ‘I cannot hear anything.’ I tickled behind its ears.

  ‘That is what is so curious.’ My guardian rattled his cane along the bars of a row of cages and the occupants jumped back and, though some opened their mouths and bared their teeth, not one of them hissed or meowed at him.

  Mr Piggety made a high whinnying sound. ‘Well spotted, sir. Do you know I have shown countless gentlemen around this establishment and not more than two of them observed that fact until their attention was drawn to it?’

  The kitten dabbed a button on my coat.

  ‘Why do they not make any noise?’ I asked and Mr Piggety whinnied again, but in a lower register.

  ‘These cats all came from a remote valley in an area of Spain called’ – the whinny rose – ‘Catalonia. Rather good, don’t you agree?’

  ‘Not remotely.’ Sidney Grice genuflected to peer under a cage.

  ‘I bought a job lot of cats’ – more shrill hilarity forewarned of another pun – ‘fur three pounds, but I realized at once these were absolutely purr-fect for my purposes: snowy white, wonderfully soft fur and every one of them dumb. What more could you want?’

  ‘Money,’ my guardian said and Mr Piggety heehawed.

  ‘You and I could be brothers,’ he said and Sidney Grice recoiled. ‘For the love of lucre is exactly why I purchased this magnificent edifice.’

  ‘How many cats do you have here?’ I asked.

  ‘Four thousand, four hundred and twenty-two,’ Mr Piggety replied, taking the kitten from me and putting it back in its cage where it mewed silently. ‘I shall start marketing them before the end of next year.’

  ‘But why have you not sold any yet?’

  ‘Two reasons,’ Mr Piggety said. ‘First, we have to sell by the hundred to make the business viable.’

  ‘But surely people buy cats individually.’ I brushed some fine hairs from my collar and Mr Piggety snickered.

  ‘What on earth could you do with one cat?’

  I was about to tell him when my guardian said, ‘What is the second reason?’

  ‘Why, to let them grow, of course.’

  ‘I would have thought most people want kittens,’ I said and Mr Piggety neighed.

  ‘Goodness, miss, but you have a lot to learn. Let me show you.’

  We passed between two rows of cages, the occupants pressing their little pink noses out or playfully poking their paws between the bars.

  ‘Every cage has its own bowl of fresh water and a twice-daily supply of minced horsemeat,’ Mr Piggety pointed out.

  ‘They seem very well cared for,’ I said.

  ‘Indeed they are, miss. Indeed they are,’ Mr Piggety agreed. ‘We have a system of steam pipes to warm the room in winter and all those skylights can be opened to cool it in the summer. It is important to maintain exactly the right temperature.’

  ‘Sixty-two degrees,’ Sidney Grice said, pointing to the far wall and a thermometer so small that I could only just see its outline.

  Piggety rubbed his hands together. ‘Too cold and they become ill, too hot and they moult and that would be a complete disaster. The steam is piped from my offal-boiling factory on Offal Lane just behind this factory, so I have a constant supply without the need to buy coal or employ a layabout to stoke up a boiler when he feels like bestirring himself.’

  ‘What has happened to your shirt?’ I asked. The stain seemed to be spreading and Mr Piggety looked abashed.

  ‘I suffer from Chromhidrosis,’ he told me, ‘an embarrassing condition which stains the sufferer’s sweat green, yellow, black or – in my case – bluish-red.’ He spoke so sheepishly that I was about to apologize when Sidney Grice gave up examining the hinge of a cage and asked abruptly, ‘How many businesses do you own?’

  Mr Piggety narrowed his eyes. ‘You are not from the ministry of taxation?’

  ‘Do I look like a civil servant?’ Sidney Grice bristled as we came to a door at the far end.

  ‘There is not much civil about you,’ Mr Piggety observed. ‘But since you ask, I have three other businesses, the production and marketing of clockwork animals – mice and dogs mainly – a second-hand sock warehouse, and another factory for the manufacture of false hands – very much in demand in Hungary for some reason. Perhaps they are very…’ he smirked ‘…Hungary.’ He paused for effect. ‘Hand they eat hands.’

  I cringed and my guardian threw him an atrophying look, as Mr Piggety opened up and stood back for us to go through into a smaller rectangular room. Here there were hooks hanging from two parallel belts of chains either side of us, running the length of the room towards two big enamelled circular vats.

  ‘When this is fully functional,’ Mr Piggety said, ‘four men should be able to put two hundred and forty cats through here in an hour. These,’ he picked up a heavy wooden cosh, ‘are what we will pretend to kill them with.’

  ‘One moment,’ I interrupted his happy flow. ‘Why would you want to pretend to kill them?’

  Mr Piggety shrieked with merriment. ‘No, miss. We won’t pretend to kill them – we’ll pretend to kill them with the clubs.’

  ‘Let me see,’ my guardian said and marched over to a vat to peer in and back to us, pausing to examine an array of wheels and levers halfway down. ‘So your intention is to tie the cats to the hooks.’

  ‘Using only these silken cords so as not to damage them in any way,’ Mr Piggety affirmed.

  ‘I still—’ I began but Sidney Grice carried on over me.

  ‘Presumably you will fill the vats with hot water.’

  Mr Piggety clapped his hands. ‘There you have it, sir. The cats will be transported from here to the tubs in a continuous line to be automatically lowered into the vats.’

  ‘For how long?’ Sidney Grice enquired.

  ‘From experiments I have conducted so far, about one minute,’ Mr Piggety said. ‘As a good rule of thumb, we will just wait until the water stops frothing.’

  ‘So you are going
to put live cats into scalding water?’ I hoped I had misunderstood him.

  ‘Quite so, miss,’ Mr Piggety said proudly. ‘The clubs are only there to allay the suspicions of goody-goody milksoppers like the RSPCA should they decide to pay us a visit. I had the room soundproofed for the same reason, though I would not have troubled had I known I would come across such conveniently mute creatures. There are ridiculous laws now based on fanciful ideas that animals are capable of suffering the same as we are. Why, these cats cannot even squeal, and it is a well-known medical fact that a dumb man does not really feel pain.’

  ‘But why not at least stun them first?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, you ladies.’ Mr Piggety winked at me and then at my guardian. ‘So soft-hearted. Three reasons not to club them, miss. First, it takes time, second, there is a risk of damaging their pelts and, third, the skin is looser on a live cat and the writhing makes it more so. Also, it tenderizes the meat, which we intend to make into a very superior food for the discerning dog owner.’

  ‘Discerning dog owners do not eat the flesh of cats,’ Sidney Grice pointed out.

  ‘Perhaps you would like to see the skinning room next.’

  I felt queasy. ‘What a repellent man you are,’ I said, and Mr Piggety flared.

  ‘I wonder if you will be so childishly sentimental when Mr Grice gives you a lovely soft white fur coat for Christmas.’

  ‘You are—’

  My guardian stepped between us. ‘—a member of the Death Club.’

  ‘What is left of it,’ Mr Piggety agreed merrily.

  ‘You realize, I assume, that – since some of your members have been murdered already – you must be a suspect yourself?’ my guardian enquired, and Prometheus Piggety sniggered sneezily.

  ‘Suspect away,’ he said, ‘but you would be better employed suspecting the real killer.’

  ‘It causes me no sorrow to tell you that you are going to die, Piggety,’ Sidney Grice said, ‘horribly and soon. If you are not the murderer you will be murdered, and if you are the murderer I shall experience great Schadenfreude in seeing you hanged.’

  ‘I hear you have a fondness for executing innocent clients,’ Mr Piggety sneered.

  Sidney Grice’s grip tightened on his cane.

  ‘Why, you—’ he began, but I jumped in with, ‘Are you not concerned that the other members are being murdered?’

  ‘Concerned?’ Prometheus Piggety took off his gold-rimmed spectacles and hurred on them. ‘Delighted, more like. Why, every death brings me closer to a considerable fortune.’

  Sidney Grice brought his anger under control and said, ‘It does not take a giant stride of the imagination to know that the person most likely to benefit is the murderer himself.’

  ‘Nor does it take a giant stride to know that when there are two of us left, I shall turn the other member in to the very first peeler I bump into. I do hope it’s the vicar. I should love to see a vicar swing.’

  ‘But what if you are not his last intended victim?’ I asked, and Mr Piggety sniggered yet again.

  ‘Dear girl.’ He polished his spectacles with a square of chamois leather and held them up. ‘Though I can tell you have taken a shine to me already, you need have no fears on my behalf. I have already taken out an insurance policy which will guarantee Mr Grice will have to do everything in his power to keep me alive. I have placed a notice in tomorrow’s Times, announcing that I am under his protection.’

  Sidney Grice wiped his cheek with the back of his hand. ‘Then I shall place a larger notice making it quite clear that you are not.’

  Mr Piggety wiggled his fingers as if warming up to play the pianoforte. ‘It is of no matter. I had my palm read by an old smelly gypsy woman when I was fifteen and she forecast a number of things correctly, such as that I should grow up irresistible to members of the gentler sex – and please do not trouble to deny it, miss – but also that I should die in my bath before my eightieth birthday, so I am not expecting a visit from the grim reaper for many a year yet.’ He hooked his spectacles behind his ears.

  ‘You cannot really think anyone can tell the future by the creases in your palm. If that—’ I began, but Prometheus Piggety said over me, ‘According to Professor Stone, who has a chair in mathematics at Cambridge, palmists and fortune-tellers are more often correct in their forecasts than economists or weather forecasters.’

  ‘That is like asking who is the most blind man in the country of the blind,’ Sidney Grice commented, and Prometheus Piggety giggled.

  ‘I have heard that you are half-blind yourself, Mr Grice.’

  My guardian blanched and put a quick finger to his eye. ‘I wonder if your gypsy told you what a gullible, conceited, shrivel-brained small man you would become, or if she forecast how odious and malodorous you would be, or perhaps she did not trouble since you possessed all those qualities already.’

  ‘Small?’ Mr Piggety clutched the edge of a table to steady himself. ‘How dare you, sir? You come barging in with your… dun-headed bat-faced—’

  ‘No wonder your parents did not like you,’ I told him. ‘I am only astounded that you had parents in the first place.’

  Mr Piggety drew himself to his full height, but even then he was a good three inches shorter than me.

  ‘I will thank you to quit my premises.’

  ‘There is no need to thank us,’ I said and spun on my heel, trying to pretend I had not caught it in a grating. ‘It will be our pleasure.’

  ‘I shall have you closed down by the end of the week,’ Sidney Grice told him, but Mr Piggety jeered.

  ‘I think not, sir. Several senior members of the Cabinet have invested heavily into this project,’ he called after us as we climbed the stairs.

  ‘To think we are governed by such people,’ Sidney Grice bemoaned when we rejoined the swell of dock workers. ‘If the British Empire should last a thousand years, men will say this was their most squalid hour.’

  ‘Wotcha, Mr Grice.’

  I turned and saw an urchin sitting on an algae-coated mooring post. My guardian did not turn his head towards him but replied through frozen lips, ‘If ever you acknowledge me again, you and all your verminous gang can report to Wandsworth for a flogging.’ And he spun the boy a shilling as we walked past.

  *

  ‘Dr Berry told me something interesting yesterday,’ Mr G said as we went in to his study. ‘The previous afternoon she was in Tavistock Square on her way to see a patient when she glanced up and saw a woman looking out of a window.’ He thumbed through his mail. ‘Guess where.’ He sliced open an envelope using a wicked little stiletto, the very one – he once told me – that Jimmy Makepeace had used to cut the throat of his father.

  ‘Silas Braithwaite’s waiting room,’ I exclaimed. He nodded and I thought about it. ‘It could have been a cleaning lady sent by a letting agent or a relative looking—’

  ‘Dr Berry could not be sure,’ he threw the letter over his shoulder straight into his wastepaper bin, ‘but she thought there was a dark stain on the left side of the woman’s face.’

  ‘Primrose McKay.’

  ‘Hardly a titan stride of the imagination to imagine so.’ He threw another two letters away unopened. ‘And she felt that the postulated Miss McKay was watching her, but then you know my views on feelings – they belong in a compendium of fantasies and myths.’

  ‘But why would Primrose go there?’

  He tore a letter in half and put one part under his desk lamp. ‘You are the one who is besotted with speculation.’

  ‘To check there was no sign of her there – her name in his files, a letter from her or an entry in his diary.’

  ‘Goodness, you are feeling creative today.’ He sneezed.

  ‘Shall we call and ask Miss McKay about it?’

  ‘You go if you want to.’ He blew his nose. ‘I do not share your enthusiasm for wasting my days. How many times must I tell them?’ He waved a thick document under my nose. ‘I do not want to be president of—’ But the last wor
d was lost in another sneeze.

  32

  Chorea and the Whale

  The cries were reverberating down the corridor as I made my way along it. It sounded like two people, an adult and a child, but it was difficult to tell and none of the visitors was paying any attention. Pain was all too common in the treatments that were supposed to alleviate it.

  There was no sign of the matron as I went into the Liston Ward and to Inspector Pound’s bed. His eyes were closed and his breathing shallow, and his skin had a waxy glaze to it. I felt his pulse, weak and rapid, and pulled the blanket down. The sheet looked clean at any rate. I lifted it away.

  ‘Don’t tell Matron or we’ll lose our jobs and never get another,’ the older nurse pleaded as the two of them approached, ‘but we’ve been cleaning him up with the carbolic like you said.’

  ‘I can see you have changed his bedding.’

  ‘The wound looks a lot better too,’ the younger one said.

  ‘Then I shall not disturb it.’ I replaced the sheet and blanket. ‘Has he been unconscious long?’

  ‘All day,’ said the younger one. ‘He had a bit of that pie but he could hardly keep it down.’

  His moustaches were damp and ragged.

  ‘Who is his surgeon?’

  ‘Mr Sweeney,’ the older nurse said. ‘He’s Irish but he’s very good. I once saw him cut out a live baby unharmed and the mother lived.’

  An old man was shouting – something about Lord Raglan. He repeated the name five times, each time more faintly, the last time breaking up. I saw him struggle to sit up but a nurse pushed him back into his pillow.

  ‘Is he here today?’

  ‘He does a ward round in about half an hour usually, if he hasn’t been held up in surgery, but they won’t let you stay while he’s here.’

  I took a card from my handbag – it had a print of a robin on it – and propped it up on the side table.