The Mangle Street Murders Read online

  ‘Which of you is right does not matter very much at the moment,’ I said. ‘Either way there is a madman on the loose. He could be hacking another defenceless girl to death this very minute, and all you can do is stand here squabbling.’

  ‘Now see here…’ the inspector said, but did not finish his sentence.

  Sidney Grice stepped back and stared at the dead girl. He clicked his tongue, rubbed the back of his neck, and said nothing.

  39

  Judas

  My guardian was thoughtful as we rode home in a hansom, but after a few minutes he brightened and began to tap his knee almost rhythmically.

  ‘You seem very cheerful,’ I observed and Sidney Grice smiled.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘How on earth can you be happy after what we have just seen?’

  ‘Because it gives me the opportunity to silence my critics once and for all,’ he said and started to hum.

  I took a breath and said as calmly as I could, ‘Is that all it means to you? Do you not feel anything for that poor girl?’

  ‘She knows nothing now,’ he said. ‘No pain. No fear. My feelings cannot help her.’ He looked down for a moment and then straight ahead. ‘But you were right about one thing, March. Whoever did this will certainly strike again – unless he is stopped. And there is only one hope for that – me.’

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘I have not the faintest idea.’ Sidney Grice smiled and twiddled his cane. ‘But rest assured I shall do it.’

  I was beginning to think that Inspector Pound must be right.

  ‘Have you ever been wrong?’

  He looked deeply puzzled. ‘Why on earth should I want to be that?’

  We passed an old woman lying by the other side of the road unattended.

  ‘May I ask you another question?’

  ‘By all means,’ he said, breaking off from a tuneless hum to polish the top of his cane with his glove.

  ‘Ge’ owov the way,’ the cabby shouted, but I could not see at whom. He cracked his whip and we shot forwards.

  ‘Do you know where the basin which you used to test William Ashby’s knife came from?’

  ‘Probably one of the lesser Stoke potteries,’ my guardian said. ‘It was asymmetrically cast and the quality of the glaze was poor, but I did not look at the stamp on the base. The bowl was full of water as even you will have observed.’

  A pigeon landed on the sill and he shooed it away.

  ‘I mean where the policeman fetched it from.’

  ‘No, but I sense that you wish to tell me.’

  ‘Drayton and Son,’ I said.

  Sidney Grice’s cheek ticked and he caught his eye.

  ‘Blast this thing. Blast that quack Goldman and his stupid gutta-percha and all his glass-blowing nincompoops.’ He slipped it into his waistcoat pocket. ‘The butcher’s shop next door to the police station?’ he asked, a little too casually, I thought.

  ‘Yes.’

  My guardian took a patch from his satchel and turned to look at me. ‘And what are you inferring from that?’

  I drew a breath and said, ‘Do you not think it possible, indeed likely, that the bowl itself could have been contaminated by blood either by being used to store raw meat, or even just from being touched by a bloodstained hand?’

  ‘Yes.’ He tied the cord behind his head.

  ‘And that does not worry you?’

  ‘Not in the least.’

  ‘Might I ask why not?’

  ‘Certainly you might.’ He straightened his patch.

  ‘Why not?’

  Sidney Grice sighed.

  ‘Because, my dear girl, if there had been blood in the bowl, even the slightest trace of it, the crystals would have changed colour when they were put into the water whereas, as you will recollect, they did not do so until the knife was put into the water.’

  ‘And swirled around,’ I said.

  ‘And swirled around,’ he agreed.

  The cab rocked violently and we heard a few shrill barks.

  ‘Ge’ owovit,’ the cabby bellowed as his horse shied towards the pavement. The hansom stopped, one wheel up on the kerb, and we heard the crack of a whip and a yelp. ‘Blasted strays,’ he shouted, ‘gettin’ under my ’orse’s ’ooves. I run ’em over when I can. Blast the blasted fings.’

  ‘Ladies,’ my guardian called.

  We straightened ourselves up and the cab set off again, a little unsteadily at first, jolting over a pothole.

  ‘Do you remember remarking that the water was very cold?’ I asked.

  ‘My powers of recall are more than the equal of yours,’ he said. ‘I remember it perfectly.’

  I hesitated again. ‘Do you think it possible that any blood on the bowl did not wash into the water until you swirled it?’

  ‘I do not.’

  ‘Or that the crystals did not dissolve in the water until you stirred it with the knife?’

  ‘No.’ Sidney Grice banged on the roof with the silvered ferrule of his cane and called, ‘Pull over, cabby. I shall walk from here.’ He flung open the flap. ‘I have supported you out of the charity of my heart, Miss Middleton. It would be pretty to receive a little loyalty in return.’

  ‘Even at the cost of a miscarriage of justice?’ I asked, my voice rising above the noise of the street.

  Sidney Grice thrust some coins into my hand and said, as he alighted, ‘That should pay your fare back to my home, or do you want your forty pieces of silver?’ He slammed the door and shouted, ‘Drive on, cabby.’ And the hansom lurched forwards, flinging me back into my seat.

  I leaned over and looked out, and saw a head bobbing jerkily to the right, but the crowd closed in and Sidney Grice was lost from view. Swamped, for the first time I had known, by humanity.

  40

  Diogenes

  I waited for two hours in the study but my guardian did not return.

  ‘Gone to his club, most likely,’ Molly said, tucking one stray strand of hair under her hat and making two more fall out.

  ‘What club is that?’

  ‘Why, the Diogenes. Mr Grice taught me how to say that,’ she told me, tossing her head proudly. ‘He often stays there when he is perplexicated. They have no women and no talking. He likes both those rules a great deal.’

  ‘I imagine he does,’ I said. ‘Turn round.’ I tied the bow of her apron for her. ‘How long have you worked for Mr Grice now?’

  ‘Two years and two months.’ She flicked the hallstand half-heartedly with a feather duster. ‘Which cook says is two years and one month longer than anybody else ever.’

  ‘So why do you stay?’ I pinned her hair back up.

  Molly wrinkled her nose. ‘Well, I know he shouts a lot and says cruel things, but I like that. I can’t abide masters or mistresses who think you are the best of friends. If I am their friend, why do I have to fetch and carry for them? Mr Grice knows my place and so do I. Also, he is very kind at heart.’

  ‘Kind?’

  ‘Very.’

  I went to my room, where I wrote my journal. I took the letters out and held them but I could not read them that night. I touched the gold and put them away to smoke a cigarette out of the window. The city was curiously quiet and there were a thousand stars glinting. At about midnight the front door slammed and heavy jerky footsteps came up the stairs. A few minutes later I heard the bath filling, the pipes clattering against my wall, and an hour later I heard it emptying, the water rushing down the drainpipe. I stood by my door and flung it open the moment I heard his.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I did not realize you were home.’

  My guardian stood in a full-length red silk dressing gown. He had matching slippers on and a turban made from a white towel. He did not have his eye in or a patch on.

  ‘Well, you do now,’ he said, and turned towards his room.

  ‘Why did you take me in?’

  Sidney Grice stopped with his hand on the doorknob, but kept his back to me.

 
‘As I told you, from the charity of my heart.’

  ‘But as you have also told me many times you have no charity and precious little heart.’

  He kept hold of the handle but turned to face me.

  ‘Out of vanity,’ he said.

  He looked so comical, seeming to wink at me with his headdress bobbing about, that I wanted to laugh, but I only said, ‘How does my presence flatter that?’

  For a moment I thought he would say that he had come across my photograph and that he wanted to be seen about town with a beautiful young ward, but he shrugged and said, ‘There are so many downright lies written about me. I read your book about your father. It was more than a little naive and had a number of factual errors and omissions but—’

  ‘Errors and omissions?’

  ‘Yes.’ He wiped a trickle from his temple. ‘But it made me wish that I had known him… better. I thought you might do the same for me – record my cases – be my Boswell, as it were. Your diaries are not very flattering, but they describe my methods and character far better than anything I have—’

  ‘You have been reading my diaries?’

  ‘Every day.’

  I drew myself up and looked him in the eye, but he did not seem the least bit abashed.

  ‘How could you? I suppose you will try to tell me it is part of your duty in caring for me.’

  He shook his head and the towel unravelled a little.

  ‘Certainly not. I have little or no right at all to read them, but I have always been inquisitive. It is the fuel of my profession.’

  I said, ‘My diaries are private. I confide things to them that I would not disclose to any man or woman alive. You have gone too far this time, Mr Grice. I cannot stay here to be spied upon. I shall leave in the morning.’

  His face fell.

  ‘That would be a great pity.’

  ‘Do not pretend you would miss me.’

  ‘I should not pretend that,’ he said, ‘but it would be a pity for both of us. I should lose my honest chronicler and you, who have nowhere else to go, incidentally, would lose the chance to see that poor girl’s murderer brought to justice.’

  ‘I shall stay until the case is solved,’ I said, ‘but you had better be quick about it.’

  My guardian’s mouth twitched.

  ‘I shall do my best.’

  ‘What errors and omissions?’

  Sidney Grice smiled.

  ‘Goodnight, March,’ he said. ‘I shall see you in the morning.’ And he turned the handle of his bedroom door.

  I went to bed and tried to stay awake, but sleep conquers all in the end.

  I see you every day. But in the night I can touch you. We hold hands and walk, and the sun pounds on our bare heads. The earth is hard and the grass withered. We never talk. Sometimes we are happy – though we never laugh – and sometimes unbearably sad.

  But it is always the same at the end. We stop and you turn to me and all I see is a confusion of black gouts and splinters of white bone, and it is only when my name breathes hollow through those raw lips that I know. And that is all you ever say because it is all you can say. That last lost word empties you of air and fills you with blood. It sprays in my face as I lean over you, and flows on to my hand, and I cannot wipe it off.

  I sit up and the air is thick with terror.

  Then I open my eyes and know what it was, but there is no relief. The cruelty of dreams cannot begin to match the savagery of being alive.

  And I hold it inside me like a dead child, the heaviness of my guilt.

  41

  Reasonable Doubt

  Inspector Pound had been drinking – I could smell the whisky on his breath – but he was not drunk. He was wet, however, for it was raining heavily.

  ‘Miss Middleton.’ He bobbed his head unsmilingly.

  ‘A vile night.’ My guardian shook his hand. ‘Will you take tea, Inspector?’

  ‘Do you never have anything stronger?’

  ‘On special occasions I am not averse to a drink,’ Sidney Grice said, ‘of coffee.’

  ‘Then I shall take tea.’

  I poured for the three of us.

  ‘Thank you.’ Inspector Pound cleared his throat. ‘Well, this is a pretty thing, Mr Grice.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Because everything that happened yesterday supports William Ashby’s protestations of innocence.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ Sidney Grice said. ‘I have neither seen nor heard anything to give me the slightest doubt that we hanged a murderer when we put a rope round William Ashby’s neck.’

  ‘How can you say that?’ I asked and Sidney Grice smiled.

  ‘Let me summarize the case against Ashby,’ he said. ‘His story was absurd from start to finish. He expected—’

  ‘We have been through all this at the trial,’ Inspector Pound broke in, ‘but, as you are well aware, there have been developments since then.’

  ‘Which are?’ Sidney Grice stirred his black tea.

  ‘Firstly’ – the inspector dug his spoon into the sugar – ‘William Ashby told us that he had sold a knife identical to the murder weapon to an Italian with extravagant clothing and bright red hair. You and I and the prosecution ridiculed this account. It seemed so patently silly that it went very heavily against him. Now we have discovered the body of such a man, who may not have been Italian but made his living pretending to be one. Not only that but he has in his pocket a letter which he himself wrote, admitting—’

  ‘How do you know he wrote it?’ Sidney Grice asked.

  ‘Who else could have written it?’ I asked.

  ‘The murderer or a confidant,’ Sidney Grice said.

  ‘But I am coming to that,’ Inspector Pound said. ‘James Hoggart was the murderer.’

  ‘That is an enormous leap of faith,’ Sidney Grice said, ‘so great that its logic shatters the moment it hits the ground.’

  ‘But surely,’ I said, ‘he gave us details of the murder which only the murderer could have known.’

  ‘No.’ Sidney Grice leaned forwards. ‘The writer of that letter knew details which must have come from somebody who knew a great deal about the crime.’

  ‘The murderer.’ Inspector Pound brought out his pipe.

  Sidney Grice raised his hand and said, ‘I do not permit the smoking of tobacco in this house. It deadens one’s senses of smell and taste, muffles one’s hearing and weakens the eyes and brain, and I intend to keep my senses as acute as possible for as long as possible but, to stay with the subject of the letter writer’s identity, let us see who we can exclude. The man who knew most about the crime was the criminal himself. That much is obvious. You have not forgotten that I received a letter from Ashby, asking for my help?’

  The inspector pointed with his pipe. ‘You have not forgotten that I was there when he wrote it?’

  ‘You told me you saw him actually writing the letter.’

  ‘I came in as he was finishing it and I read it. In fact I pointed out that he had misspelled your name, but he said it did not matter, that you would not ignore his plea. Lord, how he must have wished you had.’ He rammed his pipe back into his outer breast pocket.

  Sidney Grice lifted a small cardboard filing box from the table at his side and hinged open the lid.

  ‘This is the letter?’

  The inspector glanced at it and said, ‘You know it is.’

  ‘Whose idea was it to write it?’ My guardian put on his pince-nez.

  ‘His mother-in-law’s. She said if anyone could help him, you could, and that she would bring the letter personally to this house. She was overwrought, as one would expect, so much that when she stood to receive the letter she fainted. I believe I mentioned it at the time.’

  ‘Did she hurt herself?’ I asked.

  ‘Thank God she did not, for she is with child.’

  ‘I only asked because—’ I began, but my guardian batted me away.

  ‘Who went to her assistance?’ he asked.

  ‘Why, I
did’ – the inspector stirred his tea – ‘while the constable kept Ashby firmly in his seat. We are not innocents, Mr Grice. I am fully aware that these situations can be faked to give one party the opportunity to pass notes or weapons or lockpicks to the other.’

  ‘Did it take her long to recover?’ I asked.

  Pound took his cup. ‘A minute or so. Is all this important?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sidney Grice said. ‘I wished to be absolutely certain that there was no trickery and that Ashby wrote the letter himself. Having satisfied myself as to that point, we can rule him out as the writer who calls himself Caligula, for the two hands were completely different. Ashby’s is large and ungainly whereas Caligula’s is small and neat.’

  ‘Another point in Ashby’s favour,’ Inspector Pound said, but Sidney Grice sipped his own tea and responded, ‘I beg to differ, but we will leave that to one side for the moment. How do we know the letter found on Hoggart was not written after the trial?’

  Inspector Pound put his tea down untouched, slopping a little in his saucer. ‘Because the state of decay of the body showed it had been in the water for longer than that.’

  I mopped his saucer and the underneath of the cup.

  ‘What if somebody took the body out of the water, put the letter in its pocket and replaced the body?’ Sidney Grice said and the inspector blinked.

  ‘Now you are clutching at straws, Mr Grice. That body had not been disturbed for weeks, the weeds had grown around and over it, and they would not do that overnight. Also, the theft of a box of vestas from the match girl was never mentioned at the trial but the writer knew about it.’

  ‘As did I, you, your constable and Miss Middleton,’ Sidney Grice said.

  ‘Now you are being absurd.’

  Sidney Grice put his hand to his eye and held it there for a moment and said, ‘I am trying to make two simple points, Inspector. Firstly, that the finding of a letter in a man’s pocket does not prove that he wrote it and, secondly, that people other than the murderer had an intimate knowledge of the circumstances of the crime. Ring for more tea, please, Miss Middleton. This pot is getting stewed.’