Last Nocturne

by M. J. Trow

  He stepped into the room and closed the door.

  ‘In fact, I am grateful for the opportunity full stop, sirs.’

  Miss Wolstenholme’s heart gave a little flutter. And polite as well; perfection.

  ‘I was not sure that the newspaper business was quite right for me. But enquiring, now, that is something I think I could enjoy.’ He looked around the room, his smile dying as he did so. ‘What happened?’ he asked, his melodious voice full of concern.

  ‘What happened where?’ Grand shook himself free of the almost soporific atmosphere which Martin seemed to engender.

  The dogsbody waved a languid arm. ‘Well,’ his eyes were wide, ‘here! Those papers everywhere.’ He looked more closely at a pile in the corner. ‘Is that a chair under that one? And the ink-stains on the floor. The blind at the window, all caught up in its strings. The wastepaper basket overflowing.’ He suddenly stopped and laughed. ‘Oh, I see. You set up this whole scene to test my enquiry agent skills. I should have known, as soon as I saw the stuffed parrot on the shelf.’

  Grand glanced behind him. ‘I thought I asked you to dispose of the parrot, Miss Wolstenholme,’ he said, frostily.

  ‘I don’t like touching it, Mr Grand,’ she complained. ‘The feathers make my fingers feel all funny.’

  Batchelor turned to Martin to explain. He was worried that the lad would be back to the Telegraph if he didn’t make the office seem at least passingly normal. ‘The parrot is part of a divorce case we worked on,’ he said. ‘There was an issue regarding custody and, while it was being thrashed out, we looked after it.’

  Martin gave a nervous laugh. ‘You do know it’s dead, though,’ he said, as one breaking bad news.

  ‘It’s dead now,’ Grand said, testily. ‘Parrots get like that when they don’t get any food.’ He looked at Miss Wolstenholme, who began to sniff into her hankie.

  ‘It could have happened to anyone, Mr Grand,’ she snuffled.

  ‘Long story cut short,’ Batchelor said hurriedly, ‘we had the parrot stuffed …’

  ‘… it was the least we could do,’ Grand said.

  ‘… and the gentleman and lady involved didn’t get divorced after all. They decided we could keep the parrot. But I’ll get rid of it, if it offends you. I know not everyone is keen on taxidermy.’

  ‘Don’t worry on my account,’ Martin said. ‘My father has an extensive collection at our country house. He is trying to bag every known species of antelope before he dies. Mother isn’t so keen, but I don’t really mind one way or another. Perhaps if it wasn’t hanging from its perch like that …’

  A silence fell, broken only by an occasional sniff from Miss Wolstenholme.

  ‘But …’ Martin said, looking round the room again, ‘if all this paper isn’t to test my powers of observation, what is it for, may I ask?’

  Grand and Batchelor looked at each other. Miss Wolstenholme refused to meet anyone’s eye. Eventually, Batchelor tried to answer.

  ‘It’s not … for anything, really. It’s old bills, invoices, notes taken of interviews, surveillance records, that kind of thing.’

  ‘So,’ Martin brightened up a little, ‘that pile is invoices,’ he pointed to another, ‘and that one is interviews. Is that it?’

  ‘Nooo …’ Batchelor looked hard at Grand and Miss Wolstenholme, but they had their eyes firmly elsewhere. ‘They are all those things. Mixed. Um … random.’

  ‘Random?’ Martin could hardly force the word through lips gone suddenly pale and dry. ‘Random? You mean …’ He put a hand to his forehead and took a deep breath. ‘You don’t know where anything is?’ He looked from one of his new employers to another, desperate to be told that it was otherwise.

  Grand spoke with the voice of authority. ‘Of course we know where everything is,’ he said. ‘It’s in these piles. It has never stopped us from closing a case, I can assure you.’

  ‘There was that one …’ Miss Wolstenholme was a child of the manse and was honest to a fault.

  ‘That was never going to be solved,’ snapped Grand.

  In the ensuing silence, Martin had an idea. ‘While I’m new,’ he suggested, ‘perhaps I could do some filing. Where are your filing cabinets?’

  Telling him they didn’t have any was a little like kicking a puppy, but Matthew Grand could think as fast as the next man. ‘Miss Wolstenholme,’ he said, ‘nip down to Tottenham Court Road – better take a cab – and see what Heal and Son have in the way of filing cabinets. Immediate delivery. Put it on my account.’

  Miss Wolstenholme was on her feet and donning her walking cape like lightning. The atmosphere in the office was getting a little edgy.

  ‘May I go?’ Martin asked, politely. ‘Only, I bought some for the Telegraph offices the other day and if you’re not careful,’ he looked at Miss Wolstenholme and smiled kindly, ‘they’ll fob you off with inferior rubbish. Mr Lebus of Hull builds the only filing cabinets worth having, though they do cost a little more.’

  James sighed and nodded to Miss Wolstenholme. ‘You can both go,’ he said, pulling out his chair from under his desk. ‘Miss Wolstenholme because she deserves some fresh air and you because … well, just because. We’ll see you both later. Have some lunch, why not? Get to know each other. Talk office stuff. We may not be here when you get back.’

  When the sound of clattering feet died away from the landing outside the office, Grand looked at Batchelor. ‘James,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘What have you done?’

  Mrs Rackstraw was surprised to see her gentlemen home in the middle of the morning, but also, relieved. The peculiar gentleman in the drawing room was beginning to get on her wick and Maisie had been in the kitchen in hysterics ever since she had opened the door to him. He had refused to give his name or his business, but when Mrs Rackstraw had been appealed to, he had offered, in very cultured but rather definite tones, to fetch a constable if he was refused entry. Mrs Rackstraw was almost certain that refusing someone entry to your home wasn’t a crime within the meaning of any Act she had ever heard of, but the gentleman was very smartly dressed – over-dressed, if anything – and what with one thing and another, it was just easier to let him in. He had given a little cry of distress when he had seen the décor of the drawing room, and had shied like a spooked horse when she had offered him coffee in the best famille rose cups, but apart from that, he had been no trouble. Even so, she had to keep coming up from the kitchen to check he wasn’t stealing the silver, and tripe pie didn’t cook itself. She was all behind like the cow’s tail, as she told her gentlemen as she encountered them in the hall, and she was relying on them to get rid of the annoying thing as soon as they could. Apart from anything else, his perfume was making her sneeze.

  ‘Perfume?’ Grand was ready to take this as a bit of Rackstrawian hyperbole, but Batchelor’s nose was twitching.

  ‘She’s right, there is a funny smell in here.’ He looked like a bloodhound, testing the air. ‘Lilies, is it?’

  ‘I think it must be,’ the housekeeper said. ‘The flowers make me sneeze and I have been snuffling all morning since he arrived. I’ll have to air the room once he’s gone.’

  Despite their conversation having been largely sotto voce, the ears of the sensitive gentleman must have matched their owner, because the door was flung open and he stood there, quivering with annoyance.

  ‘Must you?’ he cried. ‘If there is one thing that shreds my nerves it is people talking behind doors. I can hardly bear these curtains as it is, and now you mutter. Either go away, or speak up.’ He leaned forward and peered at the two men. ‘Are you Grand and Batchelor, by any remote chance?’

  The enquiry agents looked at their uninvited visitor. He was a distinguished-looking gent with swooping hair and, indeed, a penchant for lilies. The smell seemed to be emanating from the luxurious, if greying, locks which were swept back from an intellectual brow. His full lips were set in a sneer of distaste below a nose which seemed to dominate the room, and his spade-shaped beard was combed to pe
rfection. His clothes were immaculate, though not in the highest fashion. He leaned heavily on a stick.

  Grand took a wild guess.

  ‘Mr Ruskin?’

  The man smiled, which transformed his face. ‘So you are an enquiry agent,’ he said. ‘But which?’

  ‘I am Matthew Grand,’ Grand said, extending a hand, which Ruskin took for just the briefest moment.

  ‘And so you,’ Ruskin said, turning to Batchelor, ‘must be Mr Batchelor.’ Again, the merest touch of the fingers into the palm. He looked at Mrs Rackstraw in a way that made her feel superfluous, so she scurried off back to the kitchen and the now almost catatonic Maisie.

  ‘I don’t really think we should be talking to you, Mr Ruskin,’ Grand said, as they went back into the drawing room, heavy as an undertaker’s with the scent of lily. ‘Conflict of interest.’

  ‘I see no conflict,’ Ruskin said.

  ‘Well, we are being instructed by James Whistler,’ Batchelor offered. ‘I believe that you and he are—’

  ‘At war, Mr Batchelor,’ Ruskin said. ‘At war! I merely expressed my opinion of his ghastly daub and he took offence. So now, lines have been drawn, solicitors appointed; the whole thing has gone completely too far. All I said was—’

  ‘We know,’ Grand said. ‘But really, Mr Ruskin, we can’t—’

  ‘Have you seen the daub?’ Ruskin leant forward on his stick, his nose like the prow of a Viking dragon ship.

  ‘I haven’t,’ Batchelor said, ‘but I know Mr Grand has seen it several times.’ He glanced at his partner. ‘I believe he rather likes it.’

  Grand nodded. ‘I do,’ he said. ‘It has a certain … something.’

  Ruskin straightened up and rapped his stick several times on the floor. ‘I suppose I should not be surprised,’ he said. ‘Any man who can live in equanimity with these drapes cannot be completely in his right mind.’ He sighed. ‘I am not a well man, you know. The strain of this is …’ He sat down heavily in a chair, glancing only briefly to assess the pattern of the fabric and finding it just passing muster to receive his buttocks. ‘The strain is taking its toll. I wondered … could you ask Mr Whistler,’ he forced the name out through clenched teeth, ‘to perhaps withdraw his suit?’

  ‘That isn’t for us to do,’ Grand said politely. ‘Have you approached his lawyers? Perhaps that would be a better place to start.’

  Ruskin gave a grimace of distaste. ‘Approach his lawyers? Keen and Griswold? God, no. I barely approach my own. I just thought …’ He leaned heavily on his stick and the arm of his chair and hauled himself upright. ‘I just hoped that common sense could be made to prevail.’

  Batchelor had a ground-breaking idea, leaving aside that he had already met Mr Keen on another matter. ‘Have you considered apologizing?’ he asked, with a diffident shrug.

  Ruskin’s eyes nearly fell out of his head. ‘Apologize?’ His voice sounded like that of a choirboy on the turn from the bottom of a well. ‘Never! I stand by what I said.’

  ‘Then we must bid you good day, Mr Ruskin,’ Grand said, ushering him out. Over his shoulder, he added to Batchelor, ‘Open a window, for heaven’s sake. It smells like a tart’s boudoir in here.’

  Batchelor, who had more recent experience of the same, couldn’t agree, but opened the window anyway.

  Out on the street, Ruskin looked a little older, a little greyer, a little more likely to attract the sympathy of a jury. Grand was not at all sure how any lawsuit between him and Whistler would turn out. It wasn’t as if Ruskin had taken a soapbox at Speakers’ Corner and told the world through a megaphone that Whistler couldn’t paint, that he lived in sin with a woman called Maud, that he called his children by rather bizarre names … his comment had been criticism for the sake of criticism, words for their own sake rather than an honest opinion. How would a jury of twelve solid Londoners pick the bones out? It was in the lap of the gods, as far as Grand could tell. He looked back at the house, where Batchelor was wafting the curtains to and fro at the open window, sending gusts of lily down the street to follow Ruskin as he made his slow way west, towards Chelsea, where curtains and upholstery fabric in general were not so upsetting. Taking a deep breath of fresh spring air, Grand bounded back up the steps and shut the door with a resounding bang.

  It seemed only minutes before a rather flustered Maisie scuttled into the drawing room with a carte de visite.

  ‘There’s a soljer at the door,’ she said, and although, clearly, the visitor wasn’t a patch on the soljer who was already inside, he did tend to make a maid’s heart flutter a little.

  ‘Willoughby Inverarity,’ Grand read aloud. ‘This is intriguing, James. My opponent’s second at the Army and Navy Club the other night. Show him in, Maisie. But check for weapons first.’

  ‘Sir?’ Maisie’s eyes were wide. She rarely understood what he was talking about at first go, what with the accent and the all-round gorgeousness. And sometimes, as now, it didn’t make any sense anyway.

  ‘Never mind,’ chuckled Grand. ‘Show him in anyway.’

  She bobbed and left.

  ‘Think he wants to carry on where Peebles left off?’ Batchelor asked.

  ‘Time will tell,’ Grand said, and Maisie was back, with a large, square lieutenant of hussars, sombre in cavalry frock coat, his French grey pillbox at a jaunty angle on his head.

  ‘Lieutenant Peebles,’ Grand stood up, looking beyond him to find somebody else. ‘I was expecting Lieutenant Inverarity.’

  ‘I know.’ The officer swept off his cap. ‘That’s why I’m here. My comrade and I were guilty of a little subterfuge the other night. I am Willoughby Inverarity. He is Anstruther Peebles.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Grand said. ‘And, by the way, how did you find me?’

  Inverarity smiled. ‘You are not the only one able to sleuth when push comes to shove. I asked around. This must be Mr Batchelor.’

  ‘If you say so,’ Batchelor said. ‘I’m beginning to wonder who anybody is.’

  ‘My sleuthing,’ Inverarity explained, ‘led me to your office around the corner where, in a scene of unbelievable chaos, a rather cultured young man told me where to find you.’

  ‘Alexander Martin,’ Grand said. ‘Known to his friends as Gan, for some unknown reason. He’s our gofer, as I think you guys have it.’

  ‘Guys?’ Inverarity frowned.

  ‘Men,’ Batchelor translated, jerking his thumb in Grand’s direction, ‘as his guys have it.’

  ‘I hope Mr Martin didn’t exceed his authority,’ Inverarity said, ‘sending me to your domicile.’

  ‘House,’ Batchelor muttered to Grand from the side of his mouth.

  ‘Thank you, James,’ the American said. ‘I have been living in this blasted country for thirteen years now, on and off. I think I can manage. Have a seat, Lieutenant.’

  Inverarity did. ‘This is highly embarrassing,’ he said, not quite able to look Grand in the face. ‘You remember the sarn’t major, the one at the door of the Rag who showed you in?’

  ‘Vaguely,’ Grand nodded.

  ‘Well, he had a word with a corporal who brought word to Anstruther that an American officer wanted to see him.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I’ve known Peebles for a couple of years now and I’ve never seen him so flustered. He told me he’d lost money in a game of baccarat and that he still owed a certain amount to an American officer. He asked me to change places with him.’

  ‘Wouldn’t the American officer in question have known Peebles by sight,’ Batchelor asked, ‘having played cards with him?’

  Inverarity shrugged. ‘Drink had been taken, as I understand it, and baccarat is never played in broad daylight. So, comrade and all that, the honour of the regiment, I agreed. The rest you know, Captain Grand.’

  ‘Yes and no,’ Grand said. ‘I’ve never knowingly played baccarat in my life and I’d certainly never met either of you gentlemen before. You know why I came calling.’

  Inverarity looked suitably shamefa
ced. ‘I do,’ he nodded, ‘and believe me, I am disgusted. After the general stepped in, before I was blackballed from the Club, of course, I had it out with Peebles. He admitted the baccarat story was a fabrication and that he knew this girl … what was her name?’

  ‘Mabel Glossop,’ Grand reminded him.

  ‘Quite. It appals me that an officer of the Twenty-First Hussars should stoop so low as to entertain a lady of ill-repute.’

  ‘It was his peculiarities that appalled me,’ Batchelor said.

  ‘I don’t follow,’ Inverarity frowned.

  Batchelor glanced at them both. Men of the world all, but Maisie may have chosen that moment to glide past on some domestic business, and it would never do for her to hear such things. He got up and stooped, whispering in the officer’s ear. Inverarity’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped. ‘Good God!’ he said. ‘That makes it ten times worse!’

  ‘At least,’ Grand nodded.

  ‘For what it’s worth,’ Inverarity said, ‘I have officially sent Peebles to Coventry.’

  Batchelor opened his mouth to explain, but Grand held up his hand. ‘I’m all right, thank you, James,’ he said.

  ‘And also, for what it’s worth, he assures me that he had nothing to do with the girl’s death. I am inclined to believe him, despite his obfuscation over baccarat.’ He stood up, extending a hand. ‘Captain Grand, I behaved badly the other night and I can only apologize, as one officer to another. May I at least pay the doctor’s bill for your cut hand and the cost of a new shirt.’

  Grand stood up and took the man’s hand and his apology. ‘I believe it was I who struck the first blow,’ he smiled. ‘As for the cut, just a scratch; and the shirt … well, the maid who showed you in works wonders with starch.’

  ‘We will have to talk to Mr Peebles again,’ Batchelor said.

  ‘Do what you like with him,’ Inverarity clapped on the pillbox. ‘He’s dead to me.’

  It was business as usual for Sergeant Simmons of the Park Police. He was patrolling in a westerly direction as the Chinese lanterns of the Cremorne swung above his head. The breeze was stiffening from the river and a skein of geese honked its way across the deepening purple of the sky. Night was coming to Chelsea as it did every twenty-four hours or so and all was right with the world.