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

  I got up from the table. ‘And what will you do?’

  He gave up on his breakfast and rose. ‘I shall go to my study and cross-reference my files on matricide – that always relaxes me – while I ponder the implications of this loquacious telegram and await the prophesied arrival of the letter and key. Promise me, March. You will take a cab straight there, get it to wait and come straight home.’

  ‘I shall be careful,’ I said.

  ‘That is not what I asked.’

  ‘Goodbye, Mr G,’ I said and went down into the hallway to turn the brass handle and run up the flag.

  42

  Moss Velvet and Black Snow

  I put on my faithful moss velvet coat and a new Ardith bonnet with green trim and matching ribbon tie, and selected a parasol. I would not need the last item but, as my friend Harriet once told me, a bonnet is not a bonnet without one. A cab had already pulled up when I stepped out and the horse was trying to lower its head to the water running down the gutter, but the cabby kept pulling it up.

  ‘Why will you not let him drink?’ I asked as I clambered through the flaps.

  ‘Thirsty ’orse works ’arder,’ he said briefly, setting off at a trot before I was settled into my seat.

  The air was grey that day with sour wisps of yellow streaming through it, and the soot hung in big black snowflakes, patting on to my sleeve and lapel. I tried to flick one off but only smudged it.

  A gang of street urchins had spotted me and were running after my hansom, chanting,

  ‘Siddie Grice Gower Streeter

  ’Ad a client couldn’t keep ’er.

  ’Ad another didn’t luv ’er.

  Killed ’er daugh’er. Killed ’er muvver.’

  Once I might have found them amusing, but there was no humour in the deaths that hovered around Sidney Grice and me. I threw them some pennies. Not one of those children would have had a meal half as nutritious as the food I complained about.

  We passed through Holborn and into Newgate, once the site of one of seven gates built by the Romans when London was a walled city. Now its most impressive feature was the forbidding massive-stoned structure of the prison.

  ‘Want to visit your dad?’ the cabby called down.

  ‘At least I know who my father was,’ I said and he whipped the horse.

  Cheapside and what Dickens described as the busiest thoroughfare in the world was bustling but strangely quiet. The atmosphere had thickened and was sharp with coal smoke. I could barely see the shops and offices either side of us. Even the rumble of carriage and cart wheels and clipping hooves of straining horses was muffled, and by the time we arrived in Wapping I could see almost nothing at all. The whole of the Thames seemed to be rising out of its basin and creeping over the city, gathering the filth from the air as it advanced.

  We came to a stop. ‘Four shillin’s.’

  ‘That seems rather a lot.’

  ‘Four shillin’s.’

  I opened my purse. ‘I should like to give you some beer money,’ I said and was rewarded with a confusion of rotting teeth as I clambered out. ‘But a thirsty man works ’arder.’ And I pitched him two florins.

  He wrenched the reins and swung round so sharply that I thought his cab might topple on to me, before I had the chance to ask him to stay.

  I paused to get my bearings. The buildings were fuzzy in the diffuse light, their hazy sides scarcely distinguishable from the vapours they were jutting into, but I only had to turn to find that I was directly outside the telegraphy office. The fog had got in before me and the gaslights scarcely penetrated it as I made my way to the back.

  ‘I received this telegram this morning.’

  The woman behind the counter was writing in a long red book. ‘You shouldn’t ’ave done that.’ She stopped writing. ‘This is addressed to Mr Sidney Grice the detective and when he finds out ’e’ll kill you just like ’e did all them others.’

  She had a brown hat on that was much too small for her.

  ‘I am Mr Grice’s assistant,’ I told her and she perked up, but almost immediately looked incredulous.

  ‘Not ’er,’ she said. ‘Sidney Grice’s assistant is tall and dark. I read it in The Ashby Slashin’s. She’s beautiful and mysterious, but you’re like a free-quarters-drownded alley cat. No offence.’

  A bored young man was sitting behind her, his finger static on a Morse key, a piece of fruit bread in his free hand.

  ‘I must be his other assistant then,’ I said. ‘Did you send this telegram?’

  ‘What if I did? I told ’im it was all wrong.’

  ‘It was a man then?’ I took the paper back.

  ‘A mudlark, come in off the ’igh tide,’ she said. ‘’E said ’e ’ad been told to make sure it went ’xactly as what it was written.’

  ‘I always sends them ’xactly as they is written.’ The young man sprayed crumbs over his desk.

  ‘Did he say who sent him?’

  ‘Did ’e ’eckers. And did I ask? Did I ’eckers.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘A mudlark.’ She stretched to look over my shoulder and called, ‘Next,’ though the office was otherwise deserted.

  There was a rapid series of clicks and the young man jumped to attention. He dropped the remnants of his bread and frantically riffled through the papers on his desk. ‘My pencil. Where’s my poxy pencil?’

  ‘Behind your cruddin’ ear,’ the woman said without turning her head.

  ‘Oh, so it is… Oh, sugar me, the lead’s broken.’ He rooted frantically through a drawer and the clicks stopped.

  ‘’Is brain’s broken if you ask me.’ The woman dipped a splayed nib into her ink pot.

  ‘Oh, well,’ he said. ‘It was only about someone’s mother dyin’. Nuffink you can do about that now.’

  I waved the telegram under her nose. ‘Do you have the original copy?’

  The woman’s lips pulled away from her like a braying donkey. ‘’Course I do,’ she said. ‘I frame every message to ’ang on the walls of my bleedin’ palace.’ She indicated the fireplace. ‘Got to keep warm some’ow. Next.’

  I took the hint and turned to go.

  ‘Not even a tanner for my time,’ she grumbled to the young man as the clicker started again.

  ‘And don’t you go tryin’ to fit us up for nuffink,’ he shouted after me as I left. ‘I got friends in ’igh places.’

  ‘Monkeys in trees?’ I asked politely as I went outside.

  The fog had lifted a fraction and the ghostly crew of a spectral clipper filed down the alley towards the dock, the canvas of their duffel bags bulging over their shoulders. Not one man was speaking or looking anywhere but straight ahead to the cabin boy at the front carrying an oil lantern high on a forked stick. I tagged on behind and, where the bottom of the lane opened out, found myself on a quay a few yards from the looming outline of a long shed with a hexagonal tower on top.

  43

  Mermaids and the Muffled Man

  I do not think I fully intended to go to Piggety’s Cats. It was just that I thought I had a better chance of finding a cab at a dock than in the confusion of lanes and alleys that led away from it. But now that I was here it seemed a shame not to at least take a look.

  The shade of a gentleman was clambering out of a blurred hansom at the foot of a wharf. I hurried over.

  ‘Will you wait while I visit that factory? I shall pay you for your time.’

  ‘All right.’ The driver had leather gauntlets on and a leather peaked cap, and was wrapped in a long coat with a scarf around his face.

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘I said all right.’ He hauled out a huge fob watch on an amulet-laden chain and set it on his lap.

  His horse looked well fed and groomed so I decided I could trust him. I wound my way through a labyrinth of packing crates and between two hillocks of stacked sacks. Some girls were playing hopscotch. They threw their stones at the side of the shed and ran away as I slid my feet over slippery cobbles li
ke a nervous ice skater until I got to the entrance. There I hesitated. I knew the telegram had forbidden Sidney Grice from calling before three o’clock, but there was no mention of me. I rapped and waited. Two dockers came by, rolling an enormous barrel up the slope. It was oozing black oil and glistening.

  I knocked again but could not hear anything above the cacophony around me. A porter came by with a tray on his head and whistling ‘My Mother Was a Mermaid in the Sea’. I put my ear to the door and thought I heard a noise – a creak? a cough? – I could not say what it was but it came from inside the building.

  I put my hand to the door and despite Prometheus Piggety’s verbose insistence in his telegram, it was unlocked. I pushed it open a foot and called out. ‘Hello? Mr Piggety?’ But there was no reply. I started forwards but then I hesitated. I knew Mr G would be angry when he found I had been interfering and also I had not really thought about what I was going to say. And then I definitely heard something. To this day I am not sure what. Perhaps it was a rustle or maybe the scrape of a boot on the metal platform, but I had a distinct impression that there was somebody behind that door, hiding from me, and suddenly I was frightened. I turned and rushed away, and when I checked over my shoulder that no one was following, I was almost certain that the door was closed.

  ‘Gotcha!’

  I was so busy looking back that I ran straight into a man but, instead of stepping aside, he clutched my wrist and held on tight. I looked up and it was the man in the green jacket, the one who had pulled a cudgel on us the last time we came.

  ‘Let me go.’ I took some satisfaction in noting that his nose was still bruised from our last encounter.

  He grinned and his breath was like rotting meat. ‘Fink you can make a dolly out of me, do you? Well, you won’t slip me so easily this time, cod-face.’

  ‘Let me go this instant.’ But I knew that all my squirmings and protestations were useless.

  ‘Well, you ain’t much of a catch.’ His lips were cracked and bleeding. ‘And I am ’arf tempted to throw you back.’

  I remembered something Inspector Pound had told me about the area and tried to straighten up and look him in his filmy eyes. ‘Have you any idea who you are talking to? I am Mick McGregor’s niece.’

  The man tightened his grip. ‘And what? Mick McGregor had a bi’ ov a accident last week. Went for a swim and never came up for air. Favourite uncle was ’e? Seein’ as he never ’ad no bruvvers or sisters.’

  ‘The police know I am here,’ I said.

  ‘Good.’ His saliva flecked my face. ‘Then it won’t take them long to fish you awt.’ He had another look at me. ‘Shame really, ugly bottle like you. Lay a bob to a wren you’ve never been kissed.’

  ‘I have never been kissed by a stench-breathed mongrel,’ I said, ‘and I do not intend to start now.’

  I thought about using my parasol again but he knocked it out of my grasp.

  ‘Naughty.’ He raised his hand to slap me with the back of it. I slumped as if in a swoon and, as the man leaned over to look at me, jumped straight up again. The top of my head crunched into his chin and cracked my teeth together. I yelped, he grunted, let go of me and staggered two steps back. I picked up my parasol and ran. I did not look to see if he was after me. I was quite good at running as a child, but I had not done much of it since and I was not constricted by several layers of feminine frippery then. I put everything I had into that race as I wound back between the cases. A young Chinaman in black robes and a coolie hat was carrying two baskets on a pole. I swerved to avoid him and nearly collided with a tin bath lying on its side, but just managed to clear it with a desperate leap.

  I heard somebody clatter into it close behind and metal-studded boots on the cobbles. It was still quite a way to where the hansom had been parked, but when I lifted my head I could see it heading at a good pace towards me through the clouds. I put on a final spurt and jumped on to the board. A hand reached out from inside and I took it just as I felt my dress being grabbed and myself being dragged backwards. I kicked out and my boot made solid contact, but my assailant only swore and held on.

  ‘Gerroff!’ the cabby yelled and with one crack of his whip dealt with my attacker, and with another propelled his horse forward as I fell through the flaps and collapsed into my seat.

  ‘Careful. You nearly shattered my flask.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  Sidney Grice tugged his coat out from under me as I straightened myself up. ‘You did not seriously think I would let you wander around the docks by yourself?’

  ‘Why did you not come sooner then?’

  ‘We could not see what was going on in the fog. I was just about to get out and look for you when it lifted a little and Gerry saw you brawling with a ganger.’

  The cabby pulled his scarf down and grinned broadly. ‘I’ll put a fiver on you against Gipsy James Mace any day, miss. You certainly got the better of Ted Gallagher there.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Had him by the collar a few times, miss. Got him three years’ hard labour once. There’s a goodly few round here with grudges against me. That’s why I cover my face.’

  ‘Gerry used to be Police Sergeant Dawson,’ my guardian told me.

  We turned up an alley, the wheels nearly scraping the sides. ‘Until I got a taste for the grog,’ our driver said. ‘I was captain of the Met Cricket Team too – miss that more than the work, I do. Mr Grice put in a word for me to get this job, though. He even paid for—’

  ‘Your hat has not come very well out of the fray,’ Sidney Grice said loudly.

  ‘Oh, my poor bonnet.’ I took it off and saw the top had been completely crushed. I felt for a bruise and found a gratifyingly large one on my crown. The hansom stopped and we pulled out into a wider road.

  An old lady was struggling with a wobbly pram full of rags. I leaned forward and skimmed her my hat and she caught it and grinned gummily. ‘Bless yer, darlin’,’ she called and put it on her head.

  ‘Looks better on her than it did on you,’ my guardian said.

  You would have disagreed with him about that. You always liked me in hats and almost fell out with Harry Baddington when he said that the one I wore to his brother’s wedding made me look like a standard lamp. I told you to forget about it because he was your best friend, but you told me no, he was not, I was – and insisted he apologized. The silly thing was I caught sight of my reflection and thought he was probably right.

  I wonder how you would have reacted to my fighting on the docks – probably a mixture of amusement and alarm but I like to think that part of you would have been proud of me.

  ‘Does your head hurt very much?’ Sidney Grice asked, and it was only then that I realized I was sighing.

  44

  The Ninth Sense

  ‘Smollet’s whalebone corsets for the distinguished gentleman,’ I read out. We were stuck behind an advertising van with its boards proclaiming in smaller print, Undetectable Waist Trimming for Every Occasion. Another van was trying to come down the road, extolling the virtues of Dr Crambone’s Liver Tonic – Never Suffer Biliousness Again, and there was hardly space for one of them in the road already.

  ‘So.’ Sidney Grice pulled the cork out of his flask but, as always, did not have a spare cup to offer me a drink. ‘What did you discover – apart from the gentle art of head-butting?’

  My scalp was feeling quite tender now. ‘The telegram was taken to the office by a river scavenger.’ I rubbed my head gingerly. ‘A boy. Other than that, they knew nothing about him and they burnt the original copy.’

  ‘And then?’ He tapped the cork back into place.

  I steeled myself. ‘I went to Mr Piggety’s factory.’ I waited for the onslaught but my guardian only sipped his tea and said, ‘I would have been astonished if you had not. So what happened?’

  ‘I knocked,’ I said, ‘and when there was no answer I tried the handle and the door was not locked.’

  His fingers blanched on his cup. �
��And then?’

  ‘Shift your frebbin’ nag and your festerin’ heap of scrap, you bloomin’ grut,’ Gerry Dawson bellowed, ‘or I’ll turn your sign to matchwood and stick the splinters up your mother’s—’

  ‘Ladies,’ Sidney Grice called up.

  ‘Nostrils,’ the ex-sergeant muttered.

  I said, ‘I thought I heard somebody behind the door and I got frightened and ran away. I was probably just imagining it.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ my guardian expounded. ‘I am convinced there is something innate in man and many other creatures, which warns them of dangers they cannot detect by more recognized means – a ninth sense perhaps – and you were well advised to pay attention to it.’

  I did not trouble to ask what the other extra senses were but said, ‘I left the door open but when I looked back, it had been closed.’

  Sidney Grice rested the flask on his knee and said, ‘That is most intriguing. Either you were indulging in a bout of hyperthermic feminine hysteria or there was somebody behind that door and you were in graver danger than you realize.’ He shuddered. ‘If anything had happened to you, March, I might have blamed myself. But that would require a degree of self-criticism which is alien to my nature.’

  ‘At flippin’ last,’ our driver shouted. Dr Crambone was reversing and Smollet’s Corsets was forcing its way through the gap left on to King William Street, and we followed close on his heels before the Liver Tonic pushed its way back in. ‘They likes to cause a jam so more people read their advertisements.’

  ‘And hate their product,’ I commented.

  ‘You would have thought so,’ Sidney Grice said, ‘but when a Winston’s Toothpowder board wedged in Mortimer Market for half a day, sales of their alarmingly corrosive dentifrice trebled for a week afterwards.’

  We came to another halt.

  ‘Hold on tight,’ Gerry warned us, and my guardian hastily swallowed the last of his beverage just as we swung violently to the left again, one wheel mounting the kerb and flinging me over my guardian’s lap.