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

  ‘Should we be interfering with evidence?’

  ‘Wherever the crime took place,’ my guardian said, ‘it was not in this house. Now, if I take the corpse under the arms…’

  ‘He had a name.’

  ‘And lift it like so…’

  I pulled the chair away. For a small man, Sidney Grice was surprisingly strong and he lowered Horatio Green on to the floor with hardly a bump. ‘Turn the gas up.’

  The white flames high on the wall made little difference to the day-shadows as my guardian put on his pince-nez, kneeled beside Mr Green’s head and prised his jaws apart, twisting the head from side to side to catch the light. He produced a white handkerchief and wiped round the open mouth, glancing at the bloodied linen before tossing it into the unlit fire.

  ‘What do you make of this, March?’

  I kneeled on the other side and took a closer look, the sharp fumes stinging my eyes and making my head spin.

  ‘He has bitten his tongue quite badly and his throat is very ulcerated. He has’ – I counted – ‘seven teeth missing. The two molars on the lower left have been filled recently with silver amalgam and there are three older fillings on his top teeth, but they all look intact.’ I twisted round to look at him from the other side. ‘There is a large cavity in the back of his upper-right canine. Perhaps he had a dressing in that.’

  ‘Possibly.’ My guardian sounded unconvinced. ‘Let us take a look in his jacket.’

  In the left inner pocket was a pair of spectacles and in the right a calfskin wallet with two compartments. One contained three one-pound notes neatly folded and six of Mr Green’s calling cards. The other side bulged with different cards and Sidney Grice read them out as he dealt them on to the floor.

  ‘Auctioneer. Wine merchant and – here we are – Mr Silas Braithwaite, dental surgeon, 4 Tavistock Square. I think Mr Braithwaite might be worth a visit.’ He stuffed the cards back into the wallet and slipped it back inside the coat pocket. He scrambled to his feet and dusted his trousers down. ‘In the meantime I must have some quiet while I think.’

  My guardian went back to his armchair and sat on the edge of the seat, looking intently at the body in front of him. He brought out two halfpennies from his waistcoat and flipped them about in his left hand. I heard a banjo strumming and went to look out. A young man stood on the pavement, singing in a fine tenor voice to the tune of ‘My Bonny’.

  ‘I had a small problem on Monday

  So I went to see Sidney Grice

  He said, “Don’t you worry. Just pay me.

  I’ll have you strung up in a trice.”’

  A few pedestrians stopped to listen and his body swayed as he went into the chorus.

  ‘Strung up, strung up, I’ll have you strung up in a trice, a trice.’

  Two young ladies giggled behind their white gloves and a little girl with them broke into a waltz. And all the while, behind me, the coins clicked and Sidney Grice sat staring, seemingly oblivious.

  ‘Strung up, strung up, I’ll have you strung up in a trice.’

  I slid the casement down and muffled the street again, and thought how strange that a sheet of glass could isolate us so effectively from the world.

  From the hall I heard the front door open and the tumult of traffic swell before it was cut off again. My guardian looked up, as if out of a pleasant dream, and got to his feet.

  ‘Do you trust me, March?’ He straightened his shirt cuffs.

  ‘Sometimes,’ I said.

  ‘Then I would ask you to make this one of the occasions that you do.’ He ran tidying fingers through his hair.

  ‘Inspector Pound,’ Molly announced, ‘ain’t—’

  ‘That is one shilling off your wages,’ her employer snapped. ‘I have warned you before about saying ain’t.’

  ‘Oh, but I ain’t done nothing wrong.’ Molly fiddled with her apron. ‘I only tried to tell you—’

  ‘Two shillings.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No buts.’ He sliced the air. ‘If I were not so famously soft-hearted I should dismiss you without a reference on the spot,’ he said. ‘I shall be out in a moment… Go away.’ He turned back to me, his voice low and urgent. ‘This is very important, March. There is no need to mention the dentist. That is not evidence, just what we have surmised. We must allow Pound to draw his own conclusions. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘I do not tell lies and I am not asking you to, only not to disagree with him.’ My guardian slotted his glass eye back into its socket. ‘Please, March.’ I had never heard him say please before and there was something almost childlike in the way he looked at me now.

  I tried to smarten my dress but there were tea stains down the front and sides.

  ‘Very well.’

  Thank you would have been nice, but Sidney Grice was never overly concerned with being nice. He strode straight to the door without another word and threw it open.

  6

  The Crackpots of Wapping

  The man who stood in the hallway was not Inspector Pound. This was a shorter, older, clean-shaven but vaguely frowsy man.

  ‘Tried to tell you.’ Molly slunk away.

  ‘Are you a servant?’ the stranger asked.

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘Are you?’

  He straightened his straight back. ‘No, miss. I am a detective.’

  ‘So am I,’ I said.

  ‘But you are a girl.’ His voice was low but clear and his fingernails, I noticed, were cropped back by chewing.

  ‘What a fine detective you must be to observe that,’ I said, at which my guardian stepped forward, holding out his hand.

  ‘Inspector Quigley,’ he said. ‘Don’t mind Miss Middleton. She has a sense of humour.’

  ‘Never saw the point of one myself,’ the inspector said as they shook hands, and Sidney Grice grunted.

  ‘It is just a passing phase, like a bicycle or the electrical telephone. Is Inspector Pound not available?’

  ‘His mother is ill.’

  ‘But his—’ I began, and my guardian shushed me with a finger to his lips.

  ‘Then I must thank you for coming in his place.’

  Inspector Quigley brought out a notebook. ‘If that maid of yours is to be believed, you have threatened and murdered your client. I suppose at least you have saved the hangman the trouble this time.’

  ‘When I sent Ashby to the gallows’ – Sidney Grice put a finger to his glass eye – ‘it was with your force’s enthusiastic collaboration, Inspector. Fortunately for both of us, I was able to prove twice that he was guilty as Cain.’

  ‘I only wish the public shared your opinion,’ Inspector Quigley said. ‘But I have plenty of other fish to fry at present. Perhaps you would like to tell me what the trouble is here.’

  Sidney Grice led the way into the study where Horatio Green lay untidily on his back beside his pulled-away chair. The inspector walked over and looked down at the body.

  ‘Well, he’s dead all right.’ He toed an upturned saucer on the rug.

  ‘Yes.’ My guardian blew his nose.

  ‘Prussic acid,’ the inspector said. ‘I can still smell it. Now where would he have got that from?’

  ‘He was a chemist,’ I said and the inspector twisted towards me.

  ‘Did you see him take it?’

  ‘No. And his name, if you are interested, was Mr Horatio Green.’

  Inspector Quigley crouched to smell half the broken cup. ‘Well, it wasn’t in his tea. Did he have anything to eat?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  He replaced the cup and got to his feet.

  ‘Seems straightforward enough,’ he pronounced. ‘Man dies of poisoning. You didn’t give it to him either deliberately or by mistake. Nobody else was here. Therefore he took it himself.’ He inspected himself in the mantel mirror. ‘No doubt about it. Suicide.’

  My lips parted but I forced myself to stay silent.

  ‘Your note said something about a society,�
� Inspector Quigley recalled.

  ‘One of those final death clubs,’ Sidney Grice said. ‘He came to see me because he was concerned that the members might murder each other.’

  The inspector faced me again. ‘Did he seem very agitated?’

  ‘No,’ I said and Inspector Quigley inclined his head wisely.

  ‘There you have it.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘Nine out of ten of these cases come as a complete shock to the suicide’s family and friends. The criminal—’

  ‘Criminal?’ I interrupted and the inspector frowned.

  ‘Suicide, as you are probably aware, Miss Middleton, is an offence in law.’

  ‘Punishable by what?’ I asked. ‘A fine? Imprisonment with hard labour? Death?’

  Inspector Quigley smirked at my simplicity. ‘By the stigma it casts upon him and his family and by being excluded from a burial in a Christian cemetery.’

  ‘But why would a man who was worried about being murdered kill himself?’

  My guardian shot me a glance.

  ‘Men who fear death most are often the ones who will try to pre-empt it,’ the inspector explained patiently. ‘I have lost count of the number of men who will take their own lives rather than face the gallows.’

  ‘Usually by hanging themselves,’ Sidney Grice said and the inspector cackled.

  ‘Quite so,’ he concurred. ‘This Mr Green had got himself so terrified with the thought of what might happen to him that he decided to end it all here and now rather than await some grislier fate.’

  ‘I had not realized quite how crass men could be until now,’ I said, and Inspector Quigley patted the air where my shoulder had been before I stepped smartly away.

  ‘Not all men are as wise as me and Mr Grice. But as a matter of fact I come across far more female suicides than male in the course of my work – cheap girls usually, who have seduced gullible men and then failed to entrap them. I am sorry if this shocks you, Miss Middleton.’

  ‘The hypocrisy of men will never fail to appal me,’ I said. ‘Have you never heard of men seducing women or even forcing themselves upon them?’

  ‘Steady on.’ It may have been the shadows but I could almost swear the inspector blushed. He rubbed the back of his neck. ‘There will have to be an inquest,’ he said.

  ‘Without a doubt.’ Sidney Grice ushered him back into the hall and I followed. ‘But you can leave that to me.’

  ‘I hope so. I have more than enough on my plate at the moment with those damned – excuse my language, miss – so-called New Chartists.’

  ‘But surely Chartism died out thirty years ago,’ I said.

  ‘As a mass movement,’ the inspector agreed, taking his long overcoat off the stand where Molly had hung it. ‘But there is a fanatical core still all too active at the moment.’

  ‘But what have they done?’ I asked.

  My guardian blew his nose and told me, ‘Their very existence is an affront to civilization.’

  ‘What is wrong with wanting universal male suffrage?’

  Sidney Grice flushed indignantly. ‘The word universal is what is wrong.’ He gestured towards Gower Street. ‘If you followed that view to its lunatic conclusion, why the potman and the wretch who sifts through the sewers for trinkets would have the same voice in choosing a member of Her Majesty’s government as I do. A minister of the Crown would have to court popularity with the vagrant and the rag-and-bone man. Can you conceive it? The whole structure of society, the monarchy and the empire itself would collapse into a hideous heap of…’ his lips curled, ‘democracy.’

  ‘Is it not their country too?’ I asked and Sidney Grice rolled his eye.

  ‘The privilege of voting has to be earned,’ he told me. ‘You cannot hand it out like stale bread at a soup kitchen.’

  ‘And before you knew it, we would be giving the vote to women.’ Quigley chortled and my guardian groaned.

  ‘Do not put that thought in her head,’ Sidney Grice told him. ‘Miss Middleton has enough eccentric ideas as it is.’

  ‘I see nothing wrong with some women having the vote,’ I said. ‘Not all of them, of course. But I still do not see what the problem is.’

  ‘This is strictly between ourselves.’ The inspector put on his bowler hat. ‘Recent intelligence suggests that they are planning to assassinate Her Majesty and set up a revolutionary council in Wapping. Crackpots, needless to say, but in the meantime I have been deployed to round up suspects.’

  ‘Then we shall leave you to it.’ My guardian opened the front door and closed it behind the inspector. ‘You promised not to argue with him.’

  ‘I promised not to argue with Inspector Pound,’ I said and an unborn smile fleeted across his face.

  ‘After the impression you made, he would probably have been suspicious if you had agreed with him.’ His voice rose. ‘Come out, Molly.’ And she appeared sheepishly from behind the stairs.

  ‘I was just—’

  ‘Do not bore me with any more lies. You were eavesdropping.’

  ‘I—’

  He blotted her words out with the palm of his hand. ‘Why did you give that letter to Inspector Quigley after my strict instructions?’

  Molly twisted her fingers. ‘Oh but, sir, but he made me.’

  ‘Did he knock you unconscious and wrench it from your bleeding fingers? If so, you have made a remarkable recovery. If not, you should have returned the letter to me.’

  ‘No, sir. It was worserer than that. He said as he would tell you about my abdominable past if I didn’t. So I did.’

  Her employer groaned. ‘Molly, has your brain been completely vulcanized?’

  Molly considered the question. ‘I like to think so, sir.’

  ‘The only thing Inspector Quigley knows about your past is that, like everybody else, you have one, whereas I know more about it than you do.’ He pointed the way she had come. ‘Go down and ask Cook to broil your head.’

  ‘Boil, sir?’

  ‘Broil.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ Molly dipped lopsidedly.

  ‘And I have warned you before about trying to curtsy.’ He looked at his hair in the mirror. ‘Stop it or I shall replace you with the jackdaw you so closely resemble.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’ She scuttled away.

  Sidney Grice straightened his sticks in the hallstand. There were eight of them, all of which looked identical to me.

  ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘Inspector Pound’s parents are both dead. He told me so himself.’

  ‘I know.’ He ran his finger under the hall table. ‘If he is taking time off work he must have a very good reason.’ He held up his finger coated with dust. ‘Now I must write a note for the undertakers to come and remove the body. Then Molly can tidy up and everything will be back to normal.’

  ‘Normal?’ I echoed. ‘A man has just died.’

  ‘And what’ – Sidney Grice selected a cane – ‘could be more normal than that?’

  I went to my room to change my dress, then sat at my dressing table tidying my hair as I prayed for the soul of Horatio Green and for the strength to continue. And I wondered if that strength was making me ugly and whether you would recognize that woman in the mirror.

  7

  The Dentist and the Miller’s Daughter

  We could easily have walked to Tavistock Square but my guardian rarely rubbed shoulders with his fellow man if he could avoid it. Had he consented to go on foot it would have been a great deal quicker since a collapsed sewer had closed the road at Byng Place and half the traffic of Bloomsbury was being diverted.

  A sizeable crowd had gathered in the central gardens of Russell Square and, as our cab halted yet again, I stood to get a better view. The centre of their attention was a man holding a black bear by a chain around its neck. He was trying to make the bear stand on an upturned tub but the bear swiped it over with one giant paw and sat on the grass. The onlookers jeered and the man lashed at his animal with a broom handle. Half a dozen times his stick rained down, while the crowd ho
oted and clapped and I heard the bear bark and saw its toothless mouth roar impotently.

  ‘We should stop him,’ I said and my guardian looked grim.

  ‘I thrashed a man once with the whip he was using to flay a donkey. I thought I had saved the creature from its suffering but I found out later that the man sold his animal to the abattoir, having mutilated it first in revenge.’

  ‘We should call a—’ But even as I spoke I saw two constables push their way to the front. There they stopped and applauded as the bear stumbled blindly on to the tub. I fell back into my seat as we lurched forward.

  The hatch opened as we turned down Bedford Way. ‘T’ain’t right to ’it a bear wiv a stick,’ our cabby called down.

  ‘I am glad you think so too,’ I replied.

  ‘Well, it’s obvious.’ He appeared to be searching for something in his armpit. ‘You need an iron bar for a savage beast like that.’

  ‘The only savage beast I saw had a stick in his hand,’ I called up.

  ‘Women.’ He slid the hatch shut.

  We stopped on the right-hand side of the square outside a row of Georgian houses and walked along until we came to one with a tarnished brass plaque inscribed: