Death Descends On Saturn Villa (The Gower Street Detective Series) Read online

  Sidney Grice’s eye fell out and he caught it without a glance. ‘What if my investigations prove you and some or all of your colleagues to be guilty?’

  Brother Ambrose considered the question. ‘I shall have papers drawn up pledging that the Secreta is placed in your hands the day you reveal the culprit or culprits, whatever the result of your inquiry.’

  Mr G pulled his upper and lower eyelids apart with a thumb and forefinger. ‘I shall take the case.’ He forced his eye back into place.

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘I have never been to Yorkshire.’

  ‘I regret to say that, whilst we are reluctantly admitting a self-confessed heretic through our doors, the monastery rules strictly forbid anything so impure as a woman to enter the premises.’

  ‘Women are no more impure than men,’ I retorted and our visitor smiled wisely.

  ‘You forget, Miss Middleton, that I used to be a publican.’

  4

  The Dog and the Letter

  WINTER HAD SET in hard and with it came the short dark days, made gloomier by the heavy yellow fogs and slushy rain. I had never yearned for my old life in India so much as I did during the long hours spent sketching by the fire or standing by the window, watching the tradesmen battle with the elements or the wandering huddles of the homeless picking putrefying scraps to eat from the filth of the pavement.

  Sidney Grice set off alone the next morning.

  ‘How long do you think you will be gone?’ I rotated the brass handle to raise our green flag outside for a cab.

  ‘I doubt it will take me more than a few days,’ he said as Molly handed him his Grice Patent Insulated Flask of tea. ‘The Roman clerical mind is subtle and devious and therefore much easier to fathom than the dim-witted blunderings of the common criminal. Stupidity is the only thing that ever baffles me.’

  It occurred to me that, if my guardian were unable to return for any reason, I would never hear his response to the letter, but yet again I lost my nerve and only asked, ‘Have you packed your toothbrush?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And a change of shirt and collars?’

  ‘I know you are trying to make fun.’ Mr G adjusted his glass eye in the hall mirror. ‘But you should know by now that I have never been cursed with a sense of humour.’ He picked up his valise. ‘Please do nothing to embarrass me, March.’ And with those fond words he was gone.

  *

  I had only Molly for human company and even my kitten, Spirit, seemed lethargic, but Sidney Grice had hardly been gone an hour when we had our first caller, a Mrs Prendergast, who came to ask for help in finding her lost puppy. My guardian would have been grossly insulted, but I had nothing better to do and accompanied my sobbing client to her residence immediately. She had a nice three-bedroom house off Upper Thornhaugh Street and eagerly took me to see little Albert’s bed and bowls in a cupboard under the stairs.

  I was uncertain how to proceed with the investigation and so I put the age-old parents’ question to her. ‘Where did you last see him?’

  ‘Do you think you might find a clue?’ She took me to the basement laundry room where I spotted a black-and-tan Cavalier King Charles spaniel curled asleep under a pillowcase on top of a pile of blankets.

  ‘Alby!’ Mrs Prendergast was ecstatic and kissed the dog repeatedly on its mouth and nose until it looked almost as ill as I felt. She insisted I stayed for tea and fruit cake, and pressed five shillings into my hand as I departed. It was my first solo case, but not one I would be boasting about when I became London’s first female personal detective.

  The fourth post had just been delivered when I got home and all the letters were stacked on Mr G’s desk, including a parcel bearing the great maroon wax seal of the King of Poland. Beside this pile were three letters for me: my dressmaker’s account, which I hastily put aside; Mr Warwick, the land agent, informing me that the tenants for The Grange, my family home in Parbold, had quit the lease; and another postmarked Highgate. For lack of anything better to do, I decided to apply my guardian’s techniques when faced with unexpected correspondence and examined the envelope, holding it up to the gaslight and sniffing it. I used one of his magnifying glasses. There were a few faint scratches and an even fainter elliptical grey smudge, and the ink had an unusual green tint to it, but all in all it was just an ordinary vellum, fourpence-a-hundred envelope.

  The handwriting was a masculine copperplate in that old-fashioned style which denotes countless raps of the childhood knuckles with a rule and looks lovely with its extravagant curls and swirls but is almost illegible. I hoped the contents would be easier to read but I was disappointed. The author had used the greater surface area available to give free rein to his calligraphic exuberance and the words curled and swirled over and around each other in an almost incomprehensible filigree.

  I rang for tea and settled down at the desk to study it. The signature was large and swept across the page but, for all its skilful penmanship, I could make out no more of it than a possible Sergeant or Marquis. I went back to the opening line. The first word, which looked like Slgf must surely have said Dear. I sought other similar squirls for each letter and found a few possibilities which I copied on to a clean sheet of paper. The envelope helped because I knew what that was meant to say.

  Molly came in, looking as though she had slept in her clothes and carrying a tray. When Mr G was absent I had biscuits with my tea. He rarely ate them, having an eccentric idea that sugar is bad for the teeth.

  ‘Have you any idea what this says?’

  Her eyes flickered. ‘Is it the butcher’s bill?’

  ‘You know Mr Grice will not have meat in the house.’

  Molly flushed. ‘Well, what with him being away…’

  I knew I had smelled sausages but I had assumed the aroma had drifted from the house next door. ‘But how do you hope to explain the bill when it arrives?’ I asked as she wrapped a strand of hair around her thumb.

  ‘We asked him to put it down as run-up beans ’cause his son’s a greengrocerer.’

  ‘I am very disappointed in you, Molly.’ I regarded her severely. ‘Going behind your master’s back like that.’

  Molly unwrapped her thumb. ‘Please don’t not snitch, miss. He’ll have us out on the street before you can say gorblimey and I ain’t not never had such a kind master as Mr Grice even if he does have a temper like a badger, and please don’t not tell him I said that neither.’

  I put down my pencil. ‘I am afraid you leave me no choice, Molly.’

  ‘Oh.’ She paled. ‘Oh but… Oh…’

  ‘Unless,’ I said, ‘I was to get involved in your crime in which case I could not tell without incriminating myself.’

  Molly chewed the strand thoughtfully, opened her mouth, closed it and recommenced chewing. ‘I’ll fetch you a plate,’ she declared.

  ‘And plenty of mustard.’ I went back to the letter.

  Dear March I translated at last. This was clearly not a formal letter but I could not think of anyone I knew in Highgate. I had never even been there. Forget – No – Forgive this – I struggled with the next word before deciding it read unsolicited. I was getting the hang of this, training my eye to ignore the ornamentation and concentrate on the core of each word: approach but…

  Molly brought my bribe.

  ‘Tell Cook to burn some cabbage with the basement door wide open,’ I said and her eyes widened.

  ‘Blimey, we’ll make a criminal of you yet.’

  I cut one of the sausages open. ‘I hope not, for Mr Grice would be sure to bring me to justice in no time.’

  Whatever people say about fruit, forbidden sausages taste immeasurably better. I had two before I went back to the letter, and the treat must have fortified my brain for I was able to get through the entire letter by the time I had consumed the last one and the first wisps of incineration were drifting up the stairs.

  Saturn Villa

  Highgate

  Tuesday 20 October

  Dear March,

/>   Please forgive this unsolicited approach but I could think of no better way to contact you.

  Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Ptolemy Travers Smyth.

  I doubt very much that you have ever heard of me, but the truth is that I am your father’s cousin and therefore quite confident that we are the closest and probably the only relations that either of us possess.

  I am an old man now and fear I have not long in this world, and my only wish is to see you before I die. It would bring me untold pleasure if you would visit me. I am at home every day. Come for dinner today, if you can, and – if, having met me, you feel safe – stay the night.

  If you send your acceptance to the Stargate Road telegram office in Highgate, I shall have my carriage collect you within the hour.

  We have a common acquaintance in Inspector George Pound. Please consult him if you have any reservations about my provenance or respectability.

  With kind regards

  ‘Uncle’ Tolly

  How the last loop of that y careered over the page. I traced it idly with my finger and it finished in the top right-hand corner but, before I had reached the end, I had made my decision. I wrote two notes and rang the bell.

  Inspector Pound had worked on many cases with Mr G, but last autumn he had been sent at my guardian’s expense to a cottage hospital in Dorset to recover from his wounds. Because of me he had been stabbed in the stomach and he could not easily be reached. He was a decent, honest man and we had a loose understanding, so the fact that Ptolemy Travers Smyth could use him as a reference was all the reassurance I needed.

  Molly traipsed in, her apron even more crumpled than before.

  ‘Take this to the Tottenham Court Road telegraph office – I am going out for the night.’ I gave her a florin and pointed to the letter I had placed under the paperweight made from Charley Peace’s patella mounted in silver. ‘This is where I shall be if anybody needs me.’

  ‘What?’ she wondered. ‘On the desk?’

  ‘Just send the telegram, Molly.’ I straightened her uniform as best I could, though the hat kept collapsing, and went into the hall.

  ‘Yes, miss.’ She bobbed unsteadily and dropped my note.

  I left her trying to pick it up without bending her back and went upstairs to pack my Gladstone bag and change into my new dress – royal blue with cream lace trim. I looked at myself in the cheval mirror. A little rouge might have helped, but Mr G would have had an apoplexy if I had brought any into his house. I thought about letting my hair down but it was such a dull mass of mouse-brown that I left it tied back.

  The smell of burned cabbage was so overpowering as I went down that I wondered if Cook had started a fire, but I decided to leave her to it and settled in the study to read an account in The Times of a man caught smashing plaster busts of Beethoven. When arrested he was raving something about a blue diamond. It was a curious case and I cut it out for my guardian to put into his files.

  5

  Past the Necropolis

  I DID NOT have to wait long for the doorbell to ring and Molly to announce, in impressed tones, that my carriage had arrived.

  ‘I am going to Highgate,’ I told her and her jaw dropped.

  ‘Oh, have a care, miss. There’s dead people there what ain’t even alive.’ She threw out her arm as if indicating their imminent approach.

  ‘The departed cannot hurt you,’ I reassured her but she did not seem convinced.

  ‘What about that dead damnation dog what fell on Cook’s brother’s head? He was unconscienced for nearly a forthnight.’

  ‘I shall take my strongest umbrella,’ I promised.

  A little, pinch-faced coachman in red livery was waiting to see me into a black brougham ornamented with a coat of arms – a green oak tree with the golden letters T and S interlocked in the foreground. The front lamps were already lit.

  Two students were coming out of the Anatomy Building opposite, their coats heavily stained with human fluids, which they saw as badges of honour. They were growing moustaches and whiskers but – though they must have been about my age – they still looked like children. One of them whistled as I climbed aboard and my dress rose up my calf.

  ‘Cut up a prettier cadaver this morning,’ his companion jeered.

  The coachman gestured angrily and folded up the steps.

  ‘She would have had to be dead to let you near her,’ I retorted and the door closed, the driver clambering up and flicking his fine black mare to set us on our way.

  This was true luxury, to be enclosed in a glazed box rather than behind the flaps of a hansom where one was exposed to the elements or forced to shelter behind a leather curtain. The seats were generously stuffed soft burgundy leather and our progress was stately, the four wheels being sprung to deaden the impact of the myriad bumps and potholes in the road.

  The sun was down with the hint of an orange glow through the smoke of coal fires and the discharge of the thousands of factories labouring ceaselessly in the greatest metropolis the world had ever known.

  A group of children came running after us. With their shaved heads and shapeless rags, I could not tell if they were boys or girls.

  ‘Takin’ ’er to the Tower, mister?’

  ‘She’s a wrong ’un and no mistake.’

  ‘Off wiv ’er ’ead.’

  I laughed but could not throw them any coppers from my isolated comfort.

  My father had never mentioned any living relatives to me and I was always under the impression that we had none. My mother was an only child and the last family member that I knew of – my father’s older brother – had been lost at sea when I was a toddler.

  It did occur to me that the writer of that letter could be mistaken or lying, possibly in the hope of persuading me to support him in his old age. It could even be a cruel joke and I began to wish that I had waited for a chance to contact Inspector Pound before setting off, but I was intrigued. Perhaps Mr Travers Smyth could tell me something of the family history about which my father had always been so taciturn. He might possibly know why Sidney Grice had felt it his duty to take me into his home. I was not even aware that I had a godfather before Mr G contacted me, and he either became evasive or developed temporary lockjaw when I probed into his past.

  We had a slow journey. The thoroughfares designed for a hundred thousand people now struggled to serve two million, and every omnibus, private carriage and trader’s van in London had to jostle constantly with all the others to make any progress at all. Gradually, however, the roads became less congested and the rows of terraced houses broke up into semi-detached and then detached homes, set back from the streets behind front gardens. We got into a fairly steady trot, our horse tossing her head like a pit pony having its day in a meadow, as we travelled beside the high red-brick, treelined walls of the vast necropolis of Highgate. By the time we passed the entrance of the western cemetery night was falling so quickly that I could hardly make out the imposing mock Tudor gateway, flanked by Gothic-turreted chapels in black and grey brick, reminding me more of a prison than a resting place for the dead, who were unlikely to attempt a mass escape this side of Judgement Day.

  We turned off the main thoroughfare and down a series of increasingly quieter lanes, which would doubtless be leafy in summer but were now bordered by the skeletons of plane trees and chestnuts, little more than angular shadows in the shadows. There were no streetlights here and the only illumination came from our twin front lamps, the crescent moon and the occasional glow from a villa where a curtain had not yet been closed.

  Droplets of rain were pattering on the glass now.

  We turned right down a side street, then right again and round a long curve and right again, and I had a feeling we were travelling in a circle, but then we took two left turns, by which time it was so dark I wondered how the driver could see where he was going. Our horse slowed, cautiously feeling her way as we rattled along the cobblestoned roads. I tried to work out our direction as we made a few more turns, bu
t the moon was hidden now behind the heavy clouds and I was just realizing what a fool I had been to enter a vehicle at the invitation of a stranger when we stopped.

  The night was black as a cat by now, but the coachman sounded his horn four times and all at once the scene to the left of me was transformed. A series of lamp posts lit up, starting at an open iron gate and leading either side of a long gravelled path up to a house. And a moment later the house itself burst into light from every window in the same brilliant white glow.

  The coachman scrambled down, opened the door and pulled down the steps for me. ‘Saturn Villa,’ he proclaimed proudly. ‘If you will allow me, miss.’ He proffered his arm and helped me on to the pavement where I gazed in amazement at the prospect before me. ‘Mr Travers Smyth likes to surprise his guests.’

  ‘He has certainly done that.’ It was as though a pocket of day had opened in the garden and I saw the copper beeches and rhododendrons and raked lawns as clearly as if it were early morning. And I was not the only one taken unawares for a tawny owl swooped startled over my head as we passed under an ancient horse-chestnut tree.

  Saturn Villa was a three-storey building, a big house with an unfussy brick front and – especially with its illumination – a welcoming appearance. The driver took my bag from the luggage box at the back and I followed him, looking all about me like a child in fairyland. It certainly did not look like the residence of a man who would need to beg from me.

  We climbed two semicircular steps to the white-painted entrance.

  ‘Allow me, miss.’ He pressed a polished brass button and immediately a shrill bell sounded inside the building, followed shortly by the door being opened by a young valet in red tails.