The Secrets of Gaslight Lane Read online

  ‘How do you put up with her?’ my good friend Quigley enquired.

  ‘I have a well-deserved reputation for tolerance and kindliness,’ Mr G responded without a hint of irony. ‘So what evidence do you have?’

  The inspector bent to his right and delved into an unvarnished wooden crate, about the size of a tea chest, from which he extracted a number of boxes and placed them on his desk.

  ‘This belonged to Nathan Mortlock and was found under the bed of Mrs Amelia Emmett, his housekeeper,’ he announced, and a dog howled outside. ‘No explanation was offered as to how it got there.’

  Quigley drew out a scuff-edged sheet of parchment.

  ‘In a box?’ I asked.

  ‘Just lying on the floor,’ he told me.

  ‘May I?’ I held out my hand.

  ‘Not suitable for a lady.’ He passed it over, his fingerplates chewed so far back that the nail beds were raw. ‘But I can’t see any ladies right now.’

  ‘Perhaps you should consult an ophthalmologist,’ I suggested, and took the parchment from him. On the back was a dark stain. On the front was a beautifully executed pen-and-brown-ink drawing of a nude kneeling and fastening her plaited hair. ‘There is no need to be coy, Inspector. I see a naked female body every time I undress.’ I was not sure which of the men looked more revolted, but I stuck to my task. ‘It is signed Albrecht Dürer and I think it might be original.’

  ‘Valuable?’ Quigley asked.

  ‘I read about one being sold for six hundred pounds,’ I recalled and the inspector spluttered.

  ‘That’s more than I’m worth.’

  ‘It certainly is,’ I agreed, and Inspector Quigley closed his hand, doubtless wishing my throat was in its grasp. ‘If Mrs Emmett stole it, she did not make much attempt to hide or look after it.’

  I held out the drawing to Sidney Grice, who took it with the air of a schoolboy being presented with a difficult Greek translation and placed it on the desk without comment.

  Quigley drew out a length of cord.

  ‘This was found hanging on the back of the valet Hesketh’s door,’ he announced, and a dog howled outside.

  ‘Was it used in the murder?’ I asked.

  ‘Well…’ The inspector gave me his silly girl look. ‘It ain’t a skipping rope.’

  ‘Pity,’ I said. ‘You look like you could do with a bit of exercise, Inspector.’

  Mr G ran it through his fingers and passed it to me. It was a curtain pull made of blue, red, gold and green cords and stained with blood.

  ‘It is very thick,’ I commented.

  ‘The drapes are long and heavy,’ Quigley deigned to explain.

  ‘Can I borrow it?’ I recoiled the rope.

  ‘Why?’ Inspector Quigley folded his arms.

  ‘To see if it matches the marks on Nathan Mortlock’s neck.’

  The policeman nodded approvingly. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Show me those keys.’ Mr G made a begging bowl of his hands and Quigley dropped a small bunch into it.

  ‘There are two sets.’ He scratched his nose. ‘The valet has one and these were found in Mortlock’s bedside table.’

  Sidney Grice clipped his pince-nez on to his thin elegant nose. ‘Two of these are Chubb detectors.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Quigley scratched his arm. ‘The lock jams if anyone tampers with it or tries to use the wrong key. This turned easily, so there had been no attempt to pick it.’

  ‘With what power of magnification did you scrutinize these devices before inserting them?’ Mr G crossed his ankles.

  ‘I looked at it carefully and there were no scratches.’ The inspector’s fingers flexed. He had taken to wearing a hefty signet ring, embossed with an intricate Q. It would make a vicious knuckle-duster, I decided.

  ‘Zero magnification then.’ Sidney Grice rattled them. ‘Even under a pocket glass you might have seen burrs which were invisible to the unadorned eye and would show whether it had ever been used before.’

  I held out the rope and Quigley snatched it away. ‘There were no burrs,’ he insisted.

  ‘What else do you have?’ My words filled the awkward gap.

  Quigley’s thin lips shrivelled as he reached over and dragged a large, flat brown cardboard box out. ‘This was found crumpled up in the bottom of the footman’s wardrobe, a bloke by the name of Nutter.’

  ‘Oh lord.’ Mr G put a hand to his brow. ‘If he is the culprit, I will never live it down. The press will be clamouring to know why I did not arrest him on the spot.’

  ‘Pound got enough chaff when he let Harry Lightfingers go for that jewel theft,’ Quigley sniggered as he revealed a stained bundle of cloth. ‘Obviously worn by the murderer.’

  ‘Examine it,’ my guardian commanded and I stood to lift it out.

  ‘It is a man’s shirt,’ I began.

  ‘You don’t say?’ Quigley mocked.

  Sidney Grice pencilled something in his notebook and shut it. ‘Why a man’s?’

  The cotton was heavy and dried scabs broke from a cracked brown crust as I opened it out.

  ‘The buttons have been removed but the holes are on the left.’

  ‘Good.’ Mr G leaned back. ‘It is the obvious that is all too often overlooked.’

  ‘And it is thick with blood.’

  ‘Not paint?’ My guardian closed his eyes.

  ‘It smells like blood.’ I turned the shirt round. ‘But it was not soaked during the murder.’

  Inspector Quigley put his elbows on the blotter. ‘Rubbish.’

  ‘The blood is almost all on the body of the garment,’ I pointed out. ‘If I cut a man’s throat I would expect a lot of it to be on my sleeve – the right in my case.’

  ‘What if he rolled the sleeves up?’ Quigley objected as Mr G sank lower into his chair.

  ‘It would be difficult to take the shirt off without them getting smeared,’ I reasoned, ‘even if you rinsed your arms first. And…’ I rotated the shirt for him to see what I meant, ‘the stain on the back of the shirt almost exactly matches the front. How would that happen?’

  ‘When the murderer took it off.’ Quigley wavered. ‘I suppose,’ he qualified his assertion.

  ‘If you wore an old shirt and rubbed ink over the front I don’t think you would get a perfect copy on the back when you took it off.’ I tried not to sound too confrontational, for I knew that we needed this man’s cooperation. ‘Also, most of the stain is in one area with no droplets.’

  Quigley found a partly smoked cigarette in his nib tray. ‘If you were close up you’d get a violent gush like from a hosepipe, not a spray like a watering can.’

  My guardian stretched out his legs.

  ‘You would expect some peripheral spatter,’ I reasoned.

  ‘So what do you think happened?’ the inspector challenged and Sidney Grice covered a yawn with the side of his fist.

  ‘I think somebody laid it out flat and poured blood on to it,’ I told him. ‘Then, when it was dry – or the blood would be all over it – the shirt was rolled up and put in the room where you found it.’

  Quigley clacked his teeth but said nothing.

  My guardian opened his eyes, the right sticking in a crescentic slit. ‘Bravo.’

  ‘I suppose you guessed that straight away,’ I said crossly.

  Sidney Grice raised the eyelid with one finger. ‘I never guess.’ He showed us his notebook where he had written in block capitals BLOOD POURED.

  ‘So it was all a stupid game,’ the inspector growled, the cigarette butt wiggling foolishly with his words.

  ‘I never play games.’ Mr G stretched lazily. ‘And I never do anything stupid. I wanted to see if Miss Middleton could work something out for herself that you could not.’

  Quigley bristled. ‘I haven’t had a chance to look at it properly.’

  He gripped the stub between his lips.

  I put the shirt back and pointed at the next item. ‘What is in that?’

  ‘See for yourself.’ The inspector
thrust an oblong silver case at me. It was embossed with a standing lamb overlapped by a cross. ‘The Garstang family crest. They were some kind of religious people.’

  I hinged back the lid to find an ivory-handled straight razor.

  ‘Where was that found?’ Mr G enquired.

  ‘In the possession,’ Quigley told him sulkily, ‘of Veronique Bonnay, the—’

  ‘Suspiciously foreign maid,’ I put in.

  ‘In her bedroom, under the pillow,’ he added.

  ‘Is she mentally defective?’ I asked, and felt my chair creak beneath me.

  ‘She is French.’ The stub split.

  Mr G wrinkled his nose.

  ‘Who would hide a murder weapon where it could be found so easily and incriminate her?’ I demanded.

  ‘Perhaps she did not have time to find a better place.’ Mr G yawned. ‘But we have not established that it is the murder weapon or that she put it there or, even if she did, that she was the one to use it.’

  ‘Obviously.’ The inspector picked a few strands of tobacco from his hairy tongue. ‘Which is why she was released after questioning.’

  I fought down a shiver, for I had personal experience of Marylebone police cells and Inspector Quigley’s interrogation techniques. He returned my gaze scornfully.

  Sidney Grice reached across for the silver box. ‘Was it in this when it was found?’

  ‘Yes.’ Quigley pulled open the top drawer of his desk and took out a leather pouch. ‘And it was clogged with blood.’

  ‘You washed it off?’ Mr G asked in disbelief.

  Quigley unbuttoned the pouch and brought out a flimsy rectangle of paper. ‘We had to clean it up to examine it.’

  ‘So you washed off a clue to look for a clue,’ Mr G muttered.

  ‘It was just blood.’ Quigley took a fresh pinch of tobacco.

  ‘Fresh or coagulated?’ Mr G hauled a pink handkerchief out of his pocket.

  The smell of grilling meat drifted in, delicious to me, but my guardian – the man who poked around decomposed corpses with relish – clamped the handkerchief over his lower face.

  ‘Coagulated.’ The inspector lined up the tobacco and rolled it into the paper.

  ‘How coagulated?’ Sidney Grice’s enquiry was muffled. ‘Did you cut any of the clots open to see if they were hard and dry all through?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Quigley jeered. ‘We don’t do any of your fancy tricks here.’ He licked the paper with forced casualness.

  My godfather put his handkerchief away.

  ‘More is the pity,’ I retorted and the inspector glowered at me.

  ‘I do not need you to tell me my job.’

  ‘Apparently you—’ I began, but my guardian put a hand on my arm – ‘have your own methods,’ I added hastily.

  Quigley mouthed something but I could not read it.

  ‘And to think you two did not get on at first,’ Mr G remarked drily as he adjusted the angle of his pince-nez and lifted the razor out. ‘It has done good service. See how the ivory has worn on the handle? It would take years of use to do that.’ He put a thumb to the tang and flipped the blade out. ‘Square end. Double transverse stabilizer.’

  ‘They are not called cut-throats for no reason,’ I said. ‘What a wicked-looking blade.’

  ‘Blades have no moral value for good or bad,’ Mr G informed me. ‘They can, however, tell us a great deal.’ He turned the razor this way and that. ‘Sheffield silver steel, the very finest, and engraved by Crispin’s – true craftsmen – hollow-ground for maximum sharpness. Whoever used it for its intended purpose was highly skilled at his task.’

  ‘How can you say?’ I enquired.

  ‘The blade is seven-eighths of an inch,’ he explained, ‘which is wide. Barbers use them because they hold more lather and need less rinsing, but it is much more difficult to do the fiddly areas such as under the nose. Most men use a five-eighths for personal shaving.’

  ‘The edge is badly chipped,’ I noticed.

  ‘I don’t suppose it was used very gently,’ Quigley countered.

  Mr G extruded a smidgen of lead from his pencil. ‘So how many pieces did you pick out of Mortlock’s neck?’

  ‘Well,’ the inspector shifted uneasily, ‘none.’

  Mr G printed NONE, in huge letters. ‘There were not any in his flesh when I looked and, though the undertakers had sponged the body, they would not have picked flakes of metal out of his wounds.’ WHATSOEVER, he wrote underneath, and then !!!

  ‘So where did the pieces go?’ I asked, not sure why it mattered.

  Quigley shifted in his chair. ‘In a frenzied attack they could fly anywhere.’

  ‘If they are to be found, I shall find them.’ Mr G looked at his own right palm as if that were the start of his quest. He touched a spread of handwritten papers. ‘Are those your records of the case?’

  ‘A rough draft.’ The inspector sealed his cigarette.

  ‘Have a copy sent round,’ Mr G instructed and Quigley bristled furiously.

  ‘I am not a grocer, Mr Grice. In fact I am not sure why I am helping you at all.’

  ‘It is a moot point who is helping whom, Inspector Norbot Stillith “Sly” Quigley,’ Mr G said coolly, ‘for we shall both benefit if this case is solved with the minimum delay.’

  Far away a child hollered God Save the Queen presumably in hope of a patriotic contribution from a passer-by.

  ‘And you can concentrate on placating the nobility,’ I reminded him.

  Quigley considered the matter. ‘Very well,’ he decided.

  ‘According to Miss Mortlock, her father’s bedroom has been sealed.’ Sidney Grice fastened the buckles on his satchel.

  ‘With a padlock.’ The inspector rooted through the box and slapped something on the desk. ‘It is the only key, so I shall want it back and,’ he sneered, ‘you needn’t think I didn’t see you slip that bunch into your pocket.’

  ‘Nothing escapes you, does it, Inspector?’ I gushed. ‘Except the occasional criminal.’

  ‘Why you…’ Like Sidney Grice’s kettle, Quigley was constantly two degrees below the boil.

  ‘One last thing.’ Sidney Grice made some sort of animal shadow in the gaslight. ‘Any chance of a cup of tea?’ He did not sound very hopeful.

  Inspector Quigley swept his notes into a pile and tapped them straight, ‘None,’ he said shortly.

  NONE, Mr G wrote again, and sprang to his feet. ‘Light your cigarette, Mr Quigley, and inhale the products of its combustion deeply. They may do something to you.’

  ‘Go hang yourself.’ Quigley flicked ash in my godfather’s direction.

  ‘How can I,’ Sidney Grice enquired politely, ‘when you will not lend us the rope?’

  *

  There was still no sign of Inspector Pound when we made our exits. Sidney Grice left him a note at the desk.

  13

  ✥

  The Stranger in the Parlour

  WE HAD A quiet meal as usual. Sidney Grice regarded dining not as a social occasion, but a chance to get more reading done – the papers at breakfast, case notes at luncheon and an informative book with his dinner.

  ‘What is it tonight?’ I asked and he stirred through his food.

  ‘Vegetable stew.’

  ‘No, I meant your reading matter.’

  ‘The Anatomical Structure and Biological Chemistry of Human Hair.’ He raised the book for me to glimpse the cover. ‘By Dr R. V. Fourtrees – the only person of intellect to come from Lancashire in the last thirty years.’

  ‘But I come from Lancashire,’ I reminded him and my guardian humphed.

  ‘My statement stands.’

  I turned back to my book, Far from the Madding Crowd. I loved Bathsheba and I envied her – her looks and even her name. How I wished I could have been a proud beauty or even a modest one.

  ‘Do you think the two cases are linked?’ I asked as he made a note in the margin.

  ‘I assume you mean the Garstang massacre and the death o
f Nathan Mortlock.’ He sighed and put down his pencil, carefully aligning it with the edge of the table. ‘Well, let me see – members of the same family have their throats cut in the same house. I think even you might spot some tenuous connections.’

  I speared a large chunk of turnip with the back of my fork and it oozed into the rest of my meal. ‘A Spanish maid on both occasions and the same valet with the same sick mother,’ I added, trying to decide if I was actually hungry enough to ingest the turnip.

  ‘He could hardly have a different sick mother.’ My guardian polished his fork on the tablecloth. ‘But, as I have already observed, I do not care for speculation.’ He dug into his dinner. ‘It is always idle and the fruits it bears are often false.’ He pushed a dripping pile of mush into his mouth and chewed it twenty-four times, though it required little if any mastication.

  ‘I am sure that I read about another murder in Burton Crescent,’ I pondered.

  Mr G groaned. ‘I could name another three cases in the last twenty years, but I suspect you are referring to the death of Rachel Samuels, a widow aged seventy-three, who resided across the gardens at number 4 – on the straight side of the D – and expired there on the twelfth of December 1878.’

  ‘Oh yes, that was in a Penny Dreadful I bought at Southport Station,’ I recalled. ‘The Battering of Burton Crescent.’

  Mr G picked a hair out of his food. ‘Where would the dregs of Fleet Street be without their alliterations? What would they have called it if she had been throttled?’

  ‘The Samuels Strangling,’ I suggested. ‘The police never found her killer either, did they?’

  He puffed out his cheeks. ‘When have the constabulary ever apprehended anyone who was not caught in the act or stupid enough to confess?’

  ‘As I remember it, they arrested her cleaner.’

  ‘Mary Donovan,’ he confirmed. ‘She was the last person known to have seen Mrs Samuels alive and there were stains on her shawl which might have been blood. Donovan herself admitted they had argued because she had been sent to fetch a haddock and returned with a bloater, but she claimed that a man had turned up in the meantime claiming to be looking for lodgings, and that he was still waiting in the parlour when she left. Nobody was ever convicted and reports of strangers loitering in the gardens late at night sent property prices plummeting so badly that they have not yet recovered.’