The Mermaid in the Basement

by Gilbert, Morris

  “Why, Inspector Grant.” Dora came toward him. She was dressed in dove grey, a simple dress that did not flaunt her youthful figure, but he was much aware of the young woman’s lissome quality. “Are you here to see my father?”

  “No,Miss Dora, I need to see the viscountess.”

  “I’m sure she’ll come quickly.” She hesitated, then gave a nervous laugh. She stepped closer to him and said in a confidential tone, “Do you know what, Inspector Grant? I was very afraid of you when you first came to our house. Very much so. You terrified me.”

  Grant was disappointed but shrugged, saying, “I guess a lot of people are afraid of me. I’ve got the name of being a hard man.”

  “No, that’s not so,” Dora said gently. “You’re not hard, Inspector.” She stepped forward impulsively and reached down and took his hand. She held it for a moment and said, “You’ve been so very kind to me!”

  Matthew Grant, by his own admission, was a hard-driving man. He had come up hard and whetted his skills on the worst element in London society. The woman who stood before him was the antithesis of all that he had learnt about women. Most of the women he contacted were of the criminal order—tough, loud, and without a thread of morality. This young woman seemed to exude an air of goodness and purity. Her lips were full and wide and were now turned up in a smile, and her eyes were fixed on him. He admired the smooth joining of her neck and shoulders, and her auburn hair glowed under the room lamps. There was a slight flush in her cheeks, and as it had before, her beauty hit Grant intensely. She had managed to stir his deepest and most reckless emotions, something that had happened against his will.

  “I’m glad you feel that way,Miss Dora.”

  “I do.” She held on to his hand, and at that moment something passed between them. She pulled back and gave a half laugh. “You must think I’m awful, being so forward.”

  “No, I would never think you were awful. I—I’ve never known a woman like you,Miss Dora.”

  “Really?” Dora took that as a compliment, which it was, and then she looked directly into his eyes and said, “And I’ve never met a man like you, Inspector Grant.”

  At that moment Grant’s quick ears caught the sound of footsteps on the marble floor of the hallway. He turned from her, and as soon as Serafina entered, he nodded and said, “I apologise for coming at this unseemly hour, Viscountess.”

  “Not at all, Inspector Grant. Is there something I need to know?”

  Grant hesitated, and both women were watching him. He seemed to see himself standing on the top of a thin wall high in the air. If he fell on one side, that meant one thing. If he fell on the other, it meant another.He knew well that for a policeman to give information to the relative of a suspect went against all the tenets of Scotland Yard—and against his own inclination. Still, his eyes went to Dora, and he knew he had no choice. He had never given up anything to a woman before, but now her gentleness had touched a part of him that he had not known he had.

  “You went to Superintendent Winters about the books in Kate Fairfield’s room.”

  “Yes, I wanted to look at them.”

  “Why?”

  Now it was Serafina who was distressed. The man who stood before her represented the forces of law. She had thought he was a rigid adversary against whom she must throw her whole might, but as she watched him, she could not make up her mind. “I don’t know how much I can trust you, Inspector.”

  At once Dora reached over and took Serafina’s arm. “You can trust him, Sister. He’s a good man.”

  Usually Serafina would pay no attention to such a recommendation. She would have said simply, “You think everyone is good, Dora.” But there was something in the light of her sister’s eyes, a light of hope and excitement she had not seen for some time.

  She turned to face Grant and said, “I’m going to place myself in your power, Inspector. I trust you will not misuse it.”

  “I will not,” Grant said firmly, and both women saw his jaw tighten as if he had made a vow.

  “Some time ago a diary of Kate Fairfield’s came into my possession.” She very carefully did not tell how, although she saw that Grant wanted to know. “I can’t explain how I got it. It might involve another person. In any case, it’s written in a very complicated cypher. I can’t read it, but I’m convinced the answer lies in one of her books. If we could find that book, Inspector, I think it might be the key to finding who really killed her.”

  Grant stared at Viscountess Serafina Trent. She was a strong woman, and he knew it had cost her greatly to put her trust in a policeman. His eyes shifted to Dora, who was watching him and smiling at him confidently. He cleared his throat and said, “I have orders to confiscate the books and take them down to the Yard. If they’re there in the morning, my duty will require that. I’ll say no more about it, and I’ll bid you good day, Viscountess—and you,Miss Dora.”

  Dora put out her hand, and he took it. “Thank you so much, Inspector,” she whispered.

  Grant could only nod and make a quick farewell. As soon as he was outside, he stopped and looked up at the sky. It was all blue except for the large billowy clouds drifting with the breeze. A bird sang, and he looked up into a pear tree and saw a nightingale. He listened to the bird’s song and then suddenly shook his shoulders in a gesture of annoyance. Well, here I am listening to birds sing and giving away departmental information to a relative of an accused killer. I must be losing my mind! But then he thought of Dora’s soft eyes and her warm smile, and a smile touched his own lips. He walked down the path then, got into the carriage, and quickly drove away from the house.

  “I need your help, but I can’t ask you to do it. Clive’s not your brother.”

  Dylan stared at Serafina. “You do ask a lot of a man.” He suddenly smiled, and when Serafina saw that smile, she understood how women would respond to it as she found herself doing.

  “We’ll have to wait until after midnight like we did last time. Besides, we can return the other items, as you said.” He paused. “You know,” he continued, “if we’re going to burgle houses on a regular basis, I’d better buy myself a new set of burglar tools.”

  Serafina knew he was making light of the difficulty, and she said quietly, “Thank you, Dylan. It’s like you.”

  “Is it now? A man will do anything for a beautiful woman, I suppose.”

  Serafina had heard compliments from men who pursued her, but there was a tone in his voice that caught at her.

  “What is beauty, Dylan?”

  “It’s not in a pleasing form or smooth skin or beautifully shaped eyes. No indeed. It goes deeper than that. A man looks on a woman, and it’s like she’s the right woman for him. And when that happens to a man, he can’t just walk away from it, or if he does, he carries it with him.”

  “As you carry the memory of Eileen,” she said softly.

  “You haven’t forgotten that?”

  “Indeed, no. It’s beautiful to me that you can carry your love all this time, even when she’s not there to receive it.”

  Dylan did not speak, and she saw that he was moved. He studied Serafina and saw the shape of her shoulders and the shining of her blonde hair, and moved by an impulse that was stronger than he, he stepped forward. He saw her eyes widen, but he reached out and pulled her to him. He put his arms around her and felt the firmness of her figure as she pressed against him. “A man finds beauty,” he said, “and when he finds it, he has to respond to it or else he’s no man at all.” He bent his head, and she looked up. He let his mouth fall upon hers, and she did not resist. Her mouth, indeed, was soft and yet firm. Half of her came through, and half of her held off, and he did not put any more pressure on her. For the one instant while they were joined in that embrace, they were on the edge of a mystery that every man and woman faces, and neither of them knew at that moment what would come.

  He stepped back and saw that her breath had quickened, and he said, “I’ll be back for you after midnight.” He waited for her to speak but
saw that she had no intention of doing so. She was watching him, her eyes wide with something like shock, and he left without another word.

  Serafina stood absolutely still. She had never been stirred by a man’s kiss as she had by Dylan’s. Something strong and unsettling had been stirred by his kiss, and she had felt something in herself crying out for surrender, softening her. Her stillness as she stood there was deceiving, for in her breast a turmoil was brewing. She had not known love in her marriage, for Charles had not been a loving man. He had taught her, if anything, to hate men, and for the first time in her memory, a man had stirred the deeper part of her that made her a woman. She looked down and saw that her hands were trembling. She held them together to still them, dropped her head, and closed her eyes. She knew she would be thinking of this moment for weeks.

  Serafina stood close beside Dylan, her nerves stretched tight. They had entered the house of Kate Fairfield, Dylan having been extra careful that no one was on the street. It was a little after one, and the streets were deserted. Still, they had moved cautiously into the house, which was still sealed off. They had ascended the stairs, and now they stood in the centre of Kate’s bedroom. Serafina looked over to the bed where the woman had died and felt a coldness.

  “There’s the bookcase,” Dylan said. He moved toward it, and she joined him. It was a small bookcase, no more than four feet square. It sat on a mahogany table so that the books were at eye level.

  “We went through these once before,” Serafina said, “but we were looking for the wrong thing.”

  “What kind of books are they?”

  Serafina scanned the books. “They’re novels, most of them. Some romance. Some detective-type novels.”

  “They’ve got strange titles.”He pulled one out and said, “The Canary That Cried Wolf.” He opened the front page and said, “Written by somebody named Regis Stoneman.”

  “I’ve never read one of his books, but my sister gave me this one as a present—The Mermaid in the Basement, remember?” she said with a slight chuckle.

  “He must be popular, as many as there are. We don’t even know if this is all.What do we do now?”

  “It has to be one of these books.” Serafina stood by the feeble light that he held and said, “How would the book she used be different?”

  “I don’t think she’d write on it ‘This is the book that’s the key to my code,’” he said wryly.

  “No. Let’s look at them individually.”

  Dylan set the lantern down, and the two of them began examining the books. They went through them page by page trying to find some connection, and finally Serafina said in despair, “We’ll have to take them all.”

  “We can’t do that. Grant would get into trouble.”

  “That’s right. I forgot. Then we have to find which one is the key.”

  The two stood there before the books, and finally Serafina said, “Wait a minute. Something is odd about one of these.”

  “What is odd about it? They all look alike to me.”

  “Believe it or not, it’s the book my sister gave me.” She opened the book and looked up with excitement dancing in her eyes. “This must be the one.”

  “Why do you think so?”

  “All the other books are very slightly used, as if they had been read once, but look at this one, Dylan. The spine is almost broken on it, and some of the print is smudged. Pages are turned down. It’s been used a great deal.”

  “You’re right. Here, how can we test it?”

  “I made a copy of Kate’s diary and brought the first page with me.” She reached into the pocket of her dress and pulled out a paper. She pointed at the first line of numbers, “123-16-4 210-10-2 323-5-6 98-7-1 269-21-5 322-18-3.”

  “We can test it like this. I’ll call out the numbers, and you find the page numbers and the lines and the word. All right?” She looked down and called out the first number. “One twenty-three, sixteen, four.”

  “No.”

  “You mean k-n-o-w?”

  “Just n-o.”

  “Try the second one.” She called out the second number. “Two ten, ten, two.”

  Dylan looked at the book. “One.”

  “No one.” Her voice quickened. “Here’s the next number. Three twenty-three, five, six.”

  Dylan quickly found the page. “Will.”

  “No one will.” They both felt the glow of excitement. They worked out the next few lines, and when they did, she looked up and reached out and seized Dylan’s arm as she read: ‘No one will ever be able to read this journal.’ This is it, Dylan! This is the key!”

  “It is. You’re a smart woman, Serafina Trent. Do we take it with us?”

  “No. Dora gave me a copy of this book, so now we won’t have to worry about the police discovering this one missing. And we can put the other items back too.” Serafina moved over to the doghouse while Dylan put the books back in order.

  “Let’s hope we can get out of here without being caught,”Dylan said.

  She turned to him and said, “It’s hard to believe that we found it.”

  “Why, it almost seems like we had help, doesn’t it?”

  She saw Dylan’s smile that he tried to hide, and knew what he was thinking. “You think God had something to do with it?”

  “He could. I don’t think we ever would have found it without a little help. Look at it. The diary falls into our hands—that’s a miracle. Secondly, you’re a woman that knows how to do cyphers. That’s a miracle. And then the greatest miracle of all, an inspector from Scotland Yard betrays his trust to give us a chance to find this book, which your sister already gave you. I’d say that God is helping us.”

  The Viscountess Serafina Trent bit her lip and saw that he was waiting for her reply. She discovered that all of her scientific training had no answer for this. She cleared her throat and said, “I—I can’t explain this, Dylan.”

  He laughed softly in the darkness and took her arm. “Come along. You’ll be able to someday.” The two left the house, and as they did, Serafina felt a hope being born within her, a hope that this would lead to the freedom of her brother.

  TWENTY

  Dylan stepped into the Trent mansion and started to speak, but one look at Serafina’s face gave him pause. She looked unhappy, which surprised him. She had sent him word to come, saying that she had made a discovery, and he had assumed that it was one that would be helpful in freeing her brother.

  “Come into the library where we can be alone, Dylan.”

  The two went into the library, and as soon as she closed the door, she turned to him, saying, “I’ve translated all of Kate Fairfield’s code.”

  “Well, God love the day, that’s good news!”He saw that her full, composed lips were tight, and her eyes mirrored an unhappiness that ran deep. “What’s wrong, Serafina?” he asked.

  She hesitated, and in that moment the barrier she kept between herself and Dylan fell, and he became aware of the mystery that cloaks a woman. She finally said, “Come and sit down, and let me show you what I’ve done.”

  The two sat down at a table, and she spread sheets of paper out, saying, “At first the translation was slow, but then I got accustomed to it, and it went much easier. Certain combinations occurred over and over, so common words like and and the I didn’t have to look up.” She pulled over a sheaf of papers and removed the first sheet. “Here’s the copy of her diary. Look at the first page.”

  Dylan took the sheet and read what she had written aloud: “No one will ever be able to read this journal, but it gives me pleasure to keep a record of the fools who chase after me. How pitiful they are! They come to me with lust in their eyes, promising me all sorts of wonderful things. At first I scorned them, but then it became a game to me. The first fool was a member of the House of Lords. I called him the Worm, which is what he was.” Dylan looked up and said with some surprise, “She didn’t give his proper name?”

  “No, she didn’t. She made up nicknames for them.”


  Dylan nodded and then began reading again: “He was disgusting, but I let him think I was in love with him.He was easy enough to handle. I got him to write me some letters, which would have been the ruin of him if they were made public.When I threatened to turn them over to the press, he curled up and begged.How I loved it! I bled him dry, then I taunted him with the threat that I was going to turn the letters over to his wife anyway. He got down on his knees and begged me with tears running down his silly face! I simply laughed at him and left him thinking I would have done that. Maybe I would, too, but the next day I read in the papers how he had died.

  Dylan read the words quietly, his watchful eyes half hidden behind their lids. His mouth was drawn into a tight line, and he looked up to meet Serafina’s eyes. “A good woman I will leave my dinner to see, but a bad woman puts some kind of dread in me. I knew she was a bad woman, but I never thought she was this evil.”He studied the page and said, “Mr. Worm. That doesn’t help us much.”

  “She gave nicknames to all her victims,” Serafina said. “I think it’s probably because the names wouldn’t be found in the novel. She was a clever woman to think of a code like this, but she made a mistake. Remember the list of names I found on the brown paper,Dylan? We put the paper back in Kate’s room, but I made a copy first.”

  Serafina took out her copy. Beside each name was what was obviously a nickname. Dylan read the first entry again: “James Fitzsimmons Hartwell, a member of the House of Lords. Is he the Worm?”

  “I remember reading about his death in the Times, but the paper never did say anything about suicide.”

  Dylan stared at the paper, then shook his head. “Is the rest of the diary as bad as this?”

  A slight smile turned the corners of Serafina’s lips up, and something like amusement touched her eyes. “You’ll like one entry she made.” She gave him a sheet and touched an entry. “Read that one to me.”

  Dylan read the passage: “I’ve always said I could get any man I want, but Apollo is different. He’s the best-looking man I’ve ever seen, and the women fawn over him. But he resists them all.He’s religious. I’ve tried all the things that lure men, but Apollo just smiles and ignores them. But I’ll get him into my bed yet!”