The Curse of the House of Foskett

by Kasasian, M. R. C.

  ‘Mr Grice,’ she said as if I had not been mentioned and was cleverly camouflaged. ‘I was beginning to think that you were not coming.’

  ‘We are only five minutes late,’ I pointed out as we walked down the aisle towards her.

  She struck three middle C’s. ‘Try holding your breath and tell me five minutes is not a long time.’

  ‘Wait until you are told that you have five minutes to live and then tell me that it is,’ I riposted and her right eye met mine in open hostility.

  There was an etched glass saucer of champagne on an oval loo table at her side and a folded fan beside it.

  ‘Very few women are blessed with brains and beauty.’ Her voice was jagged and brittle. ‘It would appear that you have neither.’

  ‘There is more to beauty than looks,’ I said and she emitted an amused bark.

  ‘Whoever told you that?’

  My father did, and Edward, but I was not going to expose them to her ridicule.

  ‘I know ugliness when I see it,’ I said as we stopped a few feet away from her.

  ‘You only need a mirror.’ She looked me up and down. ‘Did you make that dress yourself?’

  ‘You—’ I began, but Sidney Grice touched my wrist.

  ‘I am sorry about your dog,’ he said, and she struck a clashing chord.

  ‘How did you know about that?’

  ‘Its image is in your locket. Nobody wears the picture of a living pet and the clipping of hair has not had time to fade, hence its loss was recent. Plus few people mourn an animal for more than five months.’

  Primrose McKay inclined her head a fraction. ‘You are very observant.’

  ‘It is my job,’ he said, and she responded scornfully, ‘Ah yes, I almost forgot – you work – how inexpressibly vulgar.’ She sipped her champagne.

  ‘I suppose you think a life of self-indulgent idleness is ennobling?’ I said, and my guardian put a finger to steady his eye.

  ‘I am not completely idle.’ She tossed her head but in an oddly careful way. ‘I have invested in a number of racehorses and a stud farm in somewhere called Suffolk.’

  At least that was one interest we had in common, though I could only afford to follow the sport with small wagers. ‘And have you had any winners?’

  ‘Not yet.’ She pursed her pale pink lips. ‘But they shall win because I wish them to. Besides’ – she blew me a kiss – ‘the noble do not need ennobling.’ She played a trill.

  ‘I shall refrain from commenting upon your father’s beginnings as a swineherd,’ my guardian said, and she slammed the palm of her hand on to the keys. ‘What happened to the other figurine?’

  ‘What?’ she snapped and he made a flourish towards the yellow, green and white statue of a Chinaman in robes, standing on a black-and-gold oriental table in front of a mirror on the wall.

  ‘Sui dynasty from Henan,’ he pronounced. ‘I have only seen a dozen dancing mandarins before and never one in such a pristine state, but no lord would dance without his lady and I cannot believe you could not afford the pair.’

  ‘Oh, that old thing.’ Miss McKay did not trouble to follow his hand. ‘I would not know. Papa collected curios on his travels. I believe we had the lady until a stupid maid smashed it. I had her beaten, of course.’

  ‘You had your maid beaten?’ I half thought I must have misheard.

  ‘You could hardly expect me to do it myself.’ She rose from the stool in one smooth effortless movement. ‘Besides which Thurston is so enthusiastic about his work and knows how not to inflict visible damage.’

  Primrose McKay was tall and slender, pale and finely featured, and her hair was combed over the left side of her face, hanging almost to her breast. As if I did not dislike her enough already, I hated her for that hair. Mine is brown and frizzes at the ends. Hers glinted in the light like threads of gold.

  My guardian took one step towards her before he spoke. ‘The Last Death Club.’ He watched her closely.

  ‘What of it?’ She picked up the fan.

  ‘Why did you become a member?’

  She gazed coolly back at him. ‘Why should I not have some fun?’

  ‘Because such fun can gain you nothing but money – which as sole heiress to the McKay fortune you surely cannot need – and may very well cost you your life.’

  Miss McKay flipped her fan open to reveal a jade-coloured carp swimming beneath pink blossoms. ‘I am sorry to contradict you, Mr Grice, but it gives me an interest in life which has been lacking since my dear papa was taken from me.’ She peered down at him over her fan. ‘Besides, it is unlikely to result in my demise since I am under your protection.’

  He separated his hands by a few inches. ‘I am not employed to be your bodyguard, Miss McKay.’

  She brushed a fly off her forehead with the fan, and the waft of air lifted her hair. At first I thought it was a shadow, but then I realized that she had a birthmark, a dark stain around her left eye spreading over her cheek to her ear and on to her upper lip, which was swollen to her nostril.

  ‘I am aware of that.’ Her voice hardened. ‘But the fact that you would be certain to capture whoever killed me is surely deterrent enough for any sane man.’

  Her hair sank back but was still parted.

  ‘Assuming that the killer is sane and a man,’ I pointed out, unable to take my eyes off her blemish. It was as if an expensive porcelain doll had been dropped into mud. ‘But surely you know that you have made your death profitable to every other member of the club.’

  Miss McKay blinked slowly. ‘My death will always be profitable to someone, Miss Middleton. My detestable younger sister stood first in line until I had her committed. A cousin in Canada was next before a wounded grizzly bear tore him asunder.’ She swatted the fly off her sleeve and it arced into her glass. ‘Beyond that’ – she turned languidly to watch its death struggles – ‘the surviving McKays may strip my fortune like piranhas with a dead horse.’

  ‘You are very young to be a member of such a club,’ Sidney Grice observed. ‘What reason could the other members have for expecting to outlive you?’

  Miss McKay stretched tiredly. ‘The walls of my heart are like tissue paper.’ She pushed the fly under with the tip of her finger. ‘And they are liable to burst at the slightest exertion. The finest physicians in London have signed certificates to that effect.’

  ‘Then it should be a simple matter to finish you off.’ Sidney Grice strolled over to a cello propped on its spike against a beechwood rack.

  ‘You might imagine so.’ Miss McKay gave him a sugary smile. ‘But I have evolved a clever plan.’

  ‘Clever plans are rarely clever.’ Sidney Grice plucked the A string. ‘If an idea has occurred to you, it will have occurred to a million other minds. If you had an original thought in your head you would not be wasting your life away, lolling like a solitary basking seal.’

  Miss McKay’s mouth tightened and the right side of her upper lip blanched. ‘I have a good mind to tell Thurston to thrash you for your impudence.’

  ‘Your footman tried to hurt me once before.’ He turned the tuning peg and retried the string. ‘And you would be inconvenienced were I forced to disable him again.’

  Miss McKay stared at my guardian. He had the string tuned to a B flat now.

  ‘May I ask what your plan is?’ I enquired as she picked up the saucer.

  ‘It is clever because it is simple.’ She looked at the ceiling. ‘I shall wait until every other member but one of the club is dead and he has been arrested. At this rate I shall not have to tarry long.’

  ‘There were other members who probably thought they could sit it out,’ I told her, ‘but they have paid dearly for their mistake.’

  She turned her face away. ‘They were all sheep.’ Her neck was long and white, but I saw another dark stain appear from just above her collar. ‘They sat and awaited their fates like tethered ewes, whereas I have made a pact with the wolf.’

  ‘Do you imagine Thurston will keep you
safe?’ Sidney Grice twanged a C sharp and seemed quite satisfied with the result. ‘He would sell you tomorrow if he thought he would be a farthing better off.’ He selected a bow and twisted the key to straighten the ribbon.

  ‘That is where you are wrong, Mr Grice,’ Primrose purred. ‘You see, I give Thurston rather more than mere money.’ Her body undulated and my guardian looked nauseous.

  ‘What pleasure can you get out of the club?’ I asked and the surface of the champagne trembled in her left hand.

  ‘It is difficult for you who have nothing in the way of looks, style or money to know what life is like for one who was born to everything. Beauty, wealth, taste and intelligence are such a burden, such a bore.’

  ‘How do you bear it?’ I asked and she replied with no apparent irony, ‘It is a duty, but even I must relax and death amuses me.’ She dipped her finger and thumb into her drink and took out the fly.

  ‘Let us hope you die laughing,’ I said and she blew my words away as if they were cigarette smoke.

  ‘Harbour no fears on that account, Miss Middleton, for I have no intention of dying.’

  ‘Everybody dies,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, but I am not everybody.’ She popped the fly into her mouth, chewed twice and swallowed. ‘I do not want to die and I never do anything that I do not want.’

  Sidney Grice replaced the bow and said without raising his voice, ‘You may see us out now, Thurston.’

  The footman joined us at once and led us out with an insolent swagger. ‘Put you in your place,’ he remarked to my guardian as he opened the door.

  ‘At least I know mine,’ Sidney Grice retorted and Thurston turned puce.

  ‘How are the mighty fallen,’ I said as I got to the front step. ‘From criminal mastermind to grovelling lackey.’

  Thurston Gates jabbed his finger under my nose, livid with fury. ‘It is you who will grovel one day, girl.’

  ‘But not to you,’ I said as the door slammed.

  ‘There was a time that Thurston would have broken your neck for speaking to him like that,’ my guardian told me, ‘but he has to keep a lower profile these days. I imagine Miss McKay rewards him handsomely.’ He waved to a cab, but it was already pulling over for two men in the Campbell tartan kilts. ‘Few will gainsay her with Thurston Gates at her side.’

  ‘What a horrible woman she is,’ I said as a line of occupied hansoms passed by.

  ‘For once I quite agree with your assessment.’ Sidney Grice waved his cane at a vacant cab but the driver ignored him. ‘But I wish there were more like her.’ Another cab went by as if we were invisible. ‘A quarter of the problems of this world are caused by rich women pretending to be useful and getting in everybody’s way. Oh, dash it, there goes another.’

  I put my first and second fingers between my lips and blew a good piercing whistle. My guardian stared. ‘The word washerwoman springs to mind,’ he said.

  ‘It did the trick, though,’ I told him as the driver tipped his battered bowler and wheeled sharply back to us.

  26

  Melton Mowbray and Lucinda

  The corridors were crowded as I made my way to the Liston Ward of University College Hospital. I had heard of Robert Liston from my father, who had seen him at work. He was a surgeon who boasted of being able to amputate a leg in less than thirty seconds. He was a great showman but his speed was not just theatricality. The quicker the operation in those days before anaesthesia, the less likely the patient was to die of shock. It was a pity, though, that he held hygiene in contempt, for a great many of his patients died later of infection.

  There were about thirty beds on either side of the long ward and most of them were surrounded by visitors. Some patients lay glumly alone and some slept, oblivious to their weeping families.

  Inspector Pound was in the end bed on the left-hand side under a window. There was a woman sitting at the head of the bed and a man standing with his back to me.

  ‘Miss Middleton.’ The inspector was grey. ‘May I introduce my sister, Lucinda?’

  My first impression was one of sourness. I went to her and we shook hands. ‘Your brother speaks very fondly of you,’ I said and she stretched the corners of her mouth briefly, a tiny, pointy-chinned woman with pink cheeks and hair pulled severely back.

  ‘But he has not mentioned you,’ she said warily.

  ‘That is because there is nothing to tell,’ I assured her and turned to Inspector Pound. ‘I have brought you a little whisky for your pain.’

  ‘You should not have troubled,’ he said tiredly.

  ‘Oh, it was no trouble,’ I assured him. ‘I found it in my handbag.’

  He snorted in amusement and his sister drew in her thin lips. ‘The devil’s brew,’ she said and I decided that my first impression was correct.

  ‘Did Christ not make alcohol for his first miracle at Canaan and bless it at the last supper?’

  ‘I must be off,’ the man said, and I looked across to see that it was Inspector Quigley.

  ‘Good morning, Inspector,’ I said. ‘And what is your conclusion – attempted suicide or accidental stabbing?’

  Inspector Quigley reddened. ‘You are getting quite a reputation in the force, Miss Middleton.’

  ‘A good one, I hope.’

  ‘Hope springs eternal.’ He picked his hat off the bed. ‘Good day, Pound, Miss Pound, Miss Middleton.’

  ‘I suppose it was nice of him to visit you,’ I said as he passed into the corridor, and Inspector Pound frowned weakly.

  ‘Much as I admire his detection record, there is not much nice about my colleague.’ He put a hand over his stomach and winced. ‘He came to make sure I would be out of his way for the next few weeks, and I think he is going away satisfied.’

  A child’s wails cut through the general chatter.

  ‘I must go, George,’ Lucinda said and looked at me sideways.

  The sheet was being lifted over a young man’s head across the ward.

  ‘I am sure I shall be quite safe with Miss Middleton. You will come again tomorrow?’

  ‘If I can. There is so much to do in the house.’ She bent and pecked his forehead. ‘Goodbye, Miss Middleton.’

  We shook hands.

  ‘You mustn’t mind Lucinda,’ Inspector Pound said when she was out of earshot. ‘My sister had to be a housekeeper for our uncle and a mother to me when she was fourteen. He was a demanding man and I was not the easiest of boys.’

  I sat on the vacated chair and leaned towards him. It was difficult to hear above the babble of conversations. ‘I do not suppose she will be very fond of the woman who nearly got her brother killed.’

  ‘I haven’t told her that bit.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ I said. ‘It was stupid of me not to realize that you were doing your job.’

  Inspector Pound put his finger to his lips. ‘You fought to protect me when you could and should have run away. You staunched my bleeding. You got me to hospital and gave me your blood.’ He winced. ‘I think that more than makes up for it.’

  ‘Does it hurt very much?’

  ‘Not in the least.’

  ‘You have more colour in your cheeks.’

  ‘The doctor has prescribed two pints of stout a day to put iron back in my blood. I would prefer a pint of bitter from the Bull, but it seems to be doing the trick and this will help.’ He slipped the bottle of Scotch under his blanket.

  A nurse came by with a bowl of broth and I took it from her. ‘I will give it to him.’

  ‘Please don’t,’ he said. ‘They moved me here because they thought I would be safer away from the East End, but to go by the food I am not so sure.’ And I looked at the greasy globular mess.

  ‘Oh, I see what you mean – but you must eat something.’

  ‘You try it.’ He shifted uncomfortably. ‘What wouldn’t I give for a Melton Mowbray!’

  ‘There is a pie shop down Judd Street. I will bring you something tomorrow – if you do not mind me visiting again.’

  ‘
I will be still here – I hope.’

  The rain rattled on the windowpane.

  ‘I shall take that as a formal invitation.’

  A nurse rang a handbell, shaking it so violently that an old man sitting dozing nearly fell off his pillow.

  ‘Sounds like visiting time is over,’ I said.

  The ward was emptying swiftly as I stood. Nobody wanted to risk the wrath of Matron. The inspector raised his hand and cleared his throat. ‘May I ask you a favour, Miss Middleton?’ He spoke haltingly. ‘If my men ever found out that you came to my aid in a fight or that I have a woman’s blood in my veins…’

  ‘It will be our secret,’ I said, and for the first time I wished I was Lucinda and could kiss his forehead. ‘Goodbye, Inspector.’ I touched the back of his hand.

  I glanced back as I reached the exit. His eyes were screwed up and his face was drawn.

  ‘Is there anything more to be done for him?’ I asked the matron, who was marching in.

  ‘Everything is being done,’ she told me.

  ‘I just wondered about the food.’

  ‘The Queen of England does not dine better than the patients here.’

  ‘No wonder she is so skinny.’

  Her jaw tensed. ‘Goodbye.’

  I had lived long enough with Sidney Grice to know when there was no point in arguing.

  *

  ‘I have received a correspondence from Mr White Senior of White, Adams and White,’ my guardian told me over a parsnip soup, ‘and he has confirmed that the terms of the Last Death Club are contractually binding. The only way to quit the society is to quit this life.’

  ‘So your friend the baroness will have to take her chances.’ I shook more pepper into my soup but it was not improved.

  Sidney Grice lowered his spoon into his bowl. ‘Lady Foskett is not my friend,’ he informed me coolly. ‘Her husband saved me and she did me a great kindness once, but I am trying to forgive them.’

  He turned back to his soup and the conversation was at an end.

  *

  Edward loved his writing box and we had great fun watching him trying to find the hidden drawer. Eventually he too gave up. My father showed him and left. Edward and I were allowed a little time alone together now that we were engaged.