I still lie about it now. It is the only way I can be taken half-seriously – and most of the time I believe it. Sometimes I feel I am an old, old woman – the things I have known – but in my heart all I want is to dance, to waltz with you under those huge Delhi moons, to hold you close and count the countless stars and to be so happy that it hurts.
I damped down the fire and put up the guard and we went to bed, but I could not sleep, so I went down the wooden stairs into the cellars and through the dripping arches, past the wine racks to where Sarah Ashby stood waiting for me. She smiled happily and stepped forwards to greet me, but there was a shadow behind her, Eleanor Quarrel with a knife in her hand, its wicked blade shining, the burnished steel tapered to a lethally fine point, and the edge wavy and razor-thin. I tried to cry out but the hand going over Sarah’s mouth somehow gagged me and I saw the blade sweep over and up, plunging into Sarah’s chest, and the gush of black blood from her burst heart, and I too doubled up as Eleanor Quarrel rushed towards me, hissing, clawing at my hair and gouging at my eyes.
I jolted out of bed and went to the window to look out at the moon over Hunger Hill. My father had owned this land, and his fathers for over three hundred years, and what had I done with it? My heart was still pounding so I had another gin, and I must have fallen asleep in my chair because the front bell was clattering and I went out to find young Sam Vetch breathlessly presenting me with a telegram.
MARCH RETURN AT ONCE STOP I NEED YOU STOP SIDNEY GRICE
I found a piece of paper and printed in pencil Will arrive tomorrow stop March. This left hardly any time even to think about what I had to do, so I crossed out tomorrow and wrote today.
And so, four days after I had set off for Lancashire, the process was reversed – George Carpenter and Onion, keys to Mr Warwick, then the train, changing at Wigan and disembarking at Euston. London was still quite new to me then – the biggest and wealthiest city on earth, capital of the greatest empire the world had ever known, the noise and bustle crashing around me as I walked towards Gower Street.
I saw a girl, probably no more than ten years old, the skin of her naked limbs tight around her bones, with a sunken-faced baby tied in front of her in a sack. She was crouching in the gutter picking at a rotting fish head, chewing the morsels and feeding the pap to her sibling. I went over to offer her a few coins but she saw me approach and scuttled away, snatching a ride on the back of a coal wagon before the carter saw her and stung her off with his whip.
It was quieter in Gower Street. Two men were carrying a rough pine coffin out of University College Hospital and across the wood-blocked road into the Anatomy Building – another person that no one cared to bury and would get more medical attention dead than he or she would have had while alive. I crossed myself and walked on.
Molly let me in.
‘Oh thank Gawd.’ She was still snuffly with her head cold and had boot blacking on her hands. ‘I’ve been so worried about him, miss, stuck up in his room, most likely indulging in his secret vice.’
‘What is his secret vice?’
Molly scratched her neck. ‘Why, miss, it is so secret I doubt as even Mr Grice knows and he knows everything.’
‘Is he still up there?’
Molly looked at the ceiling as if checking. ‘Still is the word,’ she said. ‘I haven’t heard so much as a scamper from him for ever so long and, oh, miss, he hasn’t eaten for days. He must be ravished.’
‘He certainly must have been desperate to have sent me that telegram,’ I said.
‘Well—’ she began.
‘What telegram?’ Sidney Grice appeared at the top of the stairs.
He had his paisley dressing gown on and Persian slippers, and a tasselled red velvet fez.
‘I came back,’ I called up.
‘Why?’ He adjusted his black patch. ‘Where have you been?’
I looked at him and then at Molly who was screwing her apron into a black ball in front of her.
‘Nowhere special,’ I said, and my guardian humphed and drifted away. I heard his bedroom door close and the four bolts slotting into place.
Molly’s face was a fashionable Perkin’s mauve.
‘You,’ I said and she blinked.
‘And Cook.’ She smudged her hat with four fingerprints. ‘She helped with the spelling and grammaticals.’
‘I did not know you could be so duplicitous,’ I said and she grinned. There was blacking on her nose now.
‘Why, thank you, miss.’ She attempted a curtsy and scurried away.
40
French Blood and Commodore Bracelet
I did not see Sidney Grice – though I thought I heard him cry out once – until he joined me for dinner. He had his patch on and a smoking jacket, which struck me as a peculiar choice for a man who abhorred tobacco.
‘Molly was worried about you,’ I told him, ‘locking yourself away.’
‘It is the only way I can get any peace.’
‘But you did not eat.’
‘It has long been a habit of mine to fast intermittently. It cleanses the liver and hence the mind.’
‘But you are eating tonight?’
My guardian rubbed his hands together. ‘Indeed I am. I told Cook, when you wandered off, that you were bored with our usual fare and she was as taken aback as I was. Nevertheless, she has manufactured a special treat in honour of your return.’
‘How exciting,’ I said uncertainly and added, ‘I did not think you knew I had gone.’
He slipped his napkin out of its ring, an ornately carved cross-section of femur from the first man he had brought to the gallows. ‘Did you seriously think that I do not know who is or is not in my own home, or that the servants could connive to send a telegram without my knowledge?’
‘Not really,’ I said. ‘Have there been any developments whilst I was away?’
‘Very few.’ He unfolded his napkin. ‘But I have not been entirely idle. After you left I paid three visits, first, to Horatio Green’s shop where I made sixty-two observations, three of which may be significant. The shelves were quite high, presumably to stop bottles being accidentally knocked off them; second, the poison book lists strychnine as having been sold the day before he so inconsiderately died, though the name of the person he sold it to is clearly fictitious.’
‘How can you be sure of that?’
Mr G shook the napkin vigorously. ‘People creating names tend to be a little too creative for their own good. They often give themselves knighthoods or even peerages. This person was a little less ambitious and settled for a commission in the Royal Navy. There are no acting or retired Commodore Bracelets on the naval list.’
‘And third?’ I inquired.
‘Mr Green did not stock prussic acid, making it unlikely that he accidentally gave it to himself. Other than that, it has been very quiet.’ He laid the napkin on his lap. ‘Perhaps it is you and not I who attracts disaster.’
‘Quite possibly.’ I certainly brought it on you, my darling Edward. ‘Where did you go for your second visit?’
‘To St Jerome’s Rectory.’ He corrected the alignment of his cutlery. ‘And there I interviewed Reverend Jackaman’s old housekeeper – a delightful lady who makes a splendid cup of tea. She told me the rectory was evacuated an hour before we arrived because of a gas leak from the road works.’
Molly came puffing up the stairs, her face still smudged, opened the dumb waiter and brought out two covered plates.
‘Can I stay and watch?’ She plonked mine in front of me.
‘I do not see why not.’
‘No,’ her employer said and she shuffled away. I saw my face squashed wide in the silver dome. ‘Feeling nervous?’
‘Yes.’ We whipped off the covers and I surveyed the offering. ‘It looks very like another vegetable stew to me.’
Sidney Grice was actually smiling. ‘What is it on?’
I forked some of the washed-out, grey-green porridge to one side. ‘Rice pudding.’
He waited. ‘Do you still not know what it is?’
‘Vegetable stew on rice pudding.’
‘Curry.’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘We thought it would remind you of your days in India.’
I need no reminding of those. I carry India like your unborn child.
‘Curry has spices.’
‘Exactly.’ He dug into the mound on his plate. ‘So Cook put pepper and nutmeg in it.’ He chewed a forkful appreciatively. ‘And I detect a very generous pinch of mustard powder. Tuck in.’
I speared a flaccid carrot peeling. ‘It was a kind thought.’
Sidney Grice swallowed. ‘Dr Berry said you needed a more varied diet.’
‘She is right about that. Have you seen her since…?’
He waved some sludge around on his fork. ‘She is taking advice about their aspersions on her professional qualifications,’ he said. ‘But she has suffered worse libels than that. She tried to tell me I was harsh with you.’
‘I cannot imagine why she would think that.’ But, as always, my irony was wasted.
‘Exactly what I said.’ The sludge splotched back on to his plate. ‘You have not asked about my third visit, but I shall not allow that to deter me from describing it to you.’ He replenished his fork. ‘On the morning you fled this house, I made a call on the last member of that abominable society, the splendidly styled Mr Warrington Tusker Gallop.’
‘And did you discover anything?’
‘I always discover something.’ A sticky brown liquid was dripping between the tines. ‘Mr Gallop is allegedly away in France’ – his mouth curdled at the last word – ‘buying supplies for his snuff shop. According to his housekeeper, he has been absent from our shores since the day before Mr Green died. Do you find that suspicious?’ He took another mouthful.
‘Not necessarily.’ I sniffed my food and wished I had not. ‘Though he may have been killed, or he could be in hiding and committing the murders, using the trip to provide him with an alibi.’
He swallowed. ‘You know, March, your excursion seems to have done you some good. You have constructed an entire sentence of rational thought.’
‘You are the only man I know who can turn a compliment into an insult.’
He looked quite pleased at that remark, but only wiped his mouth and said, ‘I am always wary of anyone or anything connected to the land of revolution, infantile paintings, bad cooking and slipshod tailoring, and so, for the time being, I am more inclined to classify Gallop as a suspect than a victim.’
I laughed. ‘Because you do not like the French?’
‘Because nothing good has come from there since Charles Le Grice in 1066.’
‘So you have French blood in your veins.’
Mr G winced. ‘Norman blood before it was contaminated by breeding with the French.’ He ate some more and smacked his lips. ‘I am not partial to this modern fad for giving food flavour, but I shall certainly get Cook to make this again.’
I tasted a sample and wished I had eaten my steak when I had the chance.
41
Pikestaffs and Telegrams
Sidney Grice was at the table before me the next morning, engrossed in volume one of Clarke’s Physiognomy of the Criminal and Imbecilic Classes and huffing to himself.
‘Tosh.’ He ripped out a page, screwed it up and threw it down. ‘Balderdash.’ Another page followed. ‘These people think you can detect a murderer by the shape of his ears and the length of his nose. Why, Richard Batty had the face of Apollo but he still took a pikestaff to the bridesmaids at his own wedding.’ He ripped out two pages at once, quickly rechecked something and threw them away. ‘If these sham scientists were correct, then all I should need is a serviceable tape measure and I could round up every ne’er-do-well in London before he or she had even dreamed of transgressing. Molly is on her mettle today – only twenty-eight seconds to answer the summons.’
‘How can you be so precise about the time?’ I had not heard the bell ring and he had not taken out his watch.
‘Because I have a built-in clock.’
‘Does it tick?’
‘Yes.’ He ignored my facetiousness. ‘And I am discouraged to learn you have not heard it. It is built into the cabinet behind you.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I had forgotten about that.’
‘There is no point in observing things if you do not remember them.’
Molly came in, her hands and sleeves grey. ‘Telegram, sir. ’ She held out the tray.
‘Lower the tray,’ her employer told her. ‘Raise it.’ He scrutinized the undersurface through his pince-nez. ‘Why is it covered in scratches?’
‘Well, I have to put the ashes on something,’ she said.
‘What is wrong with the dustpan?’
‘Nothing much, sir,’ Molly said, ‘’cept that it was downstairs and I was up.’
Sidney Grice whipped off his pince-nez and said, ‘That tray is worth more on the open market than you are.’
‘Then perhaps it would like to run up and down with the tea things, make the beds and clean the hall,’ I said. ‘Perhaps it could answer the bell.’
‘And sweep the stairs,’ Molly prompted in a stage whisper.
Her employer seized the telegram and ripped it open. ‘Tell the boy there is no reply.’
Molly put her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh sorry, sir. I told him to go when he came. Do you want me to run after him and tell him not to wait?’
Her employer gazed fixedly at her. ‘You have put the cause of female suffrage right back where it belongs,’ he told her and she grinned again.
‘Thank you, sir. I do my best.’
He opened his mouth but I broke in. ‘You had better go now, Molly.’ And she wandered uncertainly away.
‘What do you make of this?’ My guardian passed me the telegram.
I wiped my fingers on my napkin. ‘It was sent from—’
‘Clearly.’ He pushed his plate away. ‘But I refer to the content. What do you think it means?’
I read it.
MR GRICE YOU ARE LACKING VITAL INFORMATION COME FACTORY THREE EXACTLY NO LATER OR INDEED ANY EARLIER YOU SHALL GET INSTRUCTIONS BY NEXT POST YOU MUST OPEN LETTER UP IMMEDIATELY RECEIVED KEY HAS BEEN ATTACHED TO NOTE LEFT DOOR LOCKED SECURELY I SHALL NOT OPEN SO NEED TO OPEN YOURSELF HOPE OBEY ORDERS FROM PROMETHEUS PIGGETY ESQUIRE DONT FORGET KEY OR YOU REALLY CANNOT MAKE AN ENTRY
I spooned some sugar into my tea. ‘It is very jumbled but it would appear that Mr Piggety wants—’
He raised his hand. ‘How can you possibly make any assumptions about what the odious Piggety does or does not want?’
‘Well, his telegram—’
Sidney Grice slapped the table. ‘Stop it, March. You are giving me a headache. If you received a telegram signed by the king of the moon would you unquestioningly accept that it came from his lunar majesty?’
‘No, but—’
He clutched his forehead. ‘No, but there are no no buts. The last thing one can do is assume that any telegram was written by the person it purports to be written by. That is part three of my sixteenth law. What is the most utterly dazzlingly manifest thing about this telegram? What is the hyena in the room?’
‘Well, it is very long…’ I began, and my guardian clapped his hands sarcastically.
‘At last,’ he said. ‘At sixty-seven words it is the third longest telegram I have ever received. Countries have declared war more tersely. What particular word makes it so singular?
‘Esquire,’ I said, and he threw up his arms.
‘Precisely. On average I receive thirteen telegrams a day, which is…?’
‘Four thousand, seven hundred and forty-five a year,’ I said, and was gratified to see an impressed eyebrow lifted. I did not tell him I knew the figure already because I had done my father’s accounts and one of his tenants had paid thirteen pence rent a day.
‘And this is the first time I have ever seen anyone use the title. Why pay an extra penny for an unnecessary frill? How woul
d you paraphrase the message?’
‘Well, to start with there is no need to use your name,’ I said. ‘Have vital information stop come to factory three o’clock precisely stop will send key to get in.’
‘Which is fifty words less and four shillings and two pennies cheaper,’ Sidney Grice said. ‘Did Piggety strike you as a man with no regard for money?’
‘I would have thought he was almost as careful as you,’ I said.
Sidney Grice crushed his toast to powder. ‘And what word did you use twice in your seventeen words that the alleged Piggety did not use even once?’
‘Stop,’ I said. ‘Why would anyone be so extravagant with the words and not want to pay for punctuation?’
‘I think we can assume – and I loathe to assume anything – that the cost was not a consideration.’ He stirred the crumbs into his prune juice with a knife. ‘For some reason stops would have interfered with the true import of the message. So who wrote it?’
‘Either a lunatic or an inebriate,’ I said as he pushed a piece of crust under the surface with the tip of his first finger.
‘On the contrary.’ He wiped his finger on his napkin. ‘I would say it was composed by a highly organized mind. It conveys instructions but conceals a deeper meaning.’ He held his spoon to the light. ‘It is a riddle wrapped within a riddle.’
I lifted the teapot but it was empty. ‘It came from the Copper Lane office. Shall I go and see if they remember who sent it?’
‘Oh, they will remember.’ He swirled his juice vigorously. ‘No clerk would forget that message in a hurry, which leads us to conclude?’
‘Whoever sent it wants to be remembered,’ I said.
‘Or?’
‘Got somebody else to send it on his or her behalf.’
‘Well done. I am slightly concerned about sending you to such an area unaccompanied, though.’
‘I did not know you cared,’ I said and his eyebrow fell.
‘March, how could you doubt it? You know I shall always care.’ His tones were tender. ‘Think how my professional standing would suffer were I unable even to look after my ward.’
The Curse of the House of Foskett Page 20
