Bucket's List

by Gary Blackwood

  Charley isn’t all that keen on Shakespeare, but he did see a production of Twelfth Night a few years ago. He’s even kept the playbill, for, curiously enough, the part of Viola/Cesario was played by none other than Miss Fairweather. How can anyone take Mr Dickens to task for relying too much on coincidences when the world is so full of them? Dressed in men’s clothing, the actress looked quite fetching.

  ‘I didn’t learn much at that first séance,’ says Miss Treville. ‘I thought I’d just sit tight and see what you came up with. Like you, I assumed that Sledge was controlling the spiritual telegraph somehow, and when it operated independently of him, I was set back a bit. Obviously, you were, too – especially when it seemed that your friend’s spirit was speaking to you.’

  ‘Seemed? You don’t think it was genuine, then?’

  She lays a sympathetic hand on his arm. ‘I’m sorry to say so, Charley, but I’m sure it was just another of the Professor’s tricks. You see, after the séance, I did some investigating. You remember Mrs Morley, the woman who believed her dead husband was communicating with her? Well, I talked to several of her friends, and it turns out that, a few days earlier, one of them – the neighborhood gossip, I gather – was contacted by a man claiming to be an old sweetheart of Mrs Morley’s. He didn’t want to intrude upon Mrs Morley, he said; he only wanted to know what had become of her, whether she was happy and so on. The woman was glad to give him an earful.’

  ‘Clever. Naturally he asked her to say nothing to Mrs Morley.’

  ‘Right. And naturally her description of the “sweetheart” matched the Professor’s, right down to the Scots accent. So, now that I had evidence that he was a sham, I tried to get a seat at another séance. It wasn’t easy.’

  ‘I know,’ says Charley. ‘I tried, as well.’

  ‘Apparently the Professor doesn’t like repeat customers. After all, once that initial sense of awe has worn off, a person might start asking questions. But I kept pestering him until he gave in. Now, here comes the interesting part. There was one other repeat customer besides me. Who do you suppose it was?’

  ‘Mrs Morley?’

  She shakes her head. ‘Mrs Joliffe.’

  ‘The sweet old lady who seemed so flustered?’

  ‘That’s the one. I got to wondering whether she was a regular, and if so, whether she might be the one running the telegraph. In order to get a better look at the mechanism, I accidentally dropped my handkerchief and spent a good thirty seconds retrieving it from beneath the table. For some reason that setup with the wires and the weights put me in mind of a sewing machine treadle, and how you operate it by pressing with your feet. And then I noticed that the weights had small holes near the bottom of them.’

  ‘Hmm. I saw that, too. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but I suppose if a person had, let’s say, little hooks in the toes of their shoes …’

  Miss Treville grins broadly. ‘Exactly! So clumsy me, while we were having tea I dropped my spoon, right at the feet of sweet old Mrs Joliffe. And guess what? Her practical shoes turned out to be far more practical that anyone could have guessed.’

  ‘They were equipped with hooks.’

  ‘They were. Very tiny ones, to be sure. It must have taken a good deal of practice to master the technique of snagging those weights. I’m afraid that, as the séance got underway, I did something even clumsier.’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ says Charley, tongue in cheek. ‘Don’t tell me: you knocked over the candle.’

  ‘I did – right onto the carpet. Naturally, I lunged for it and, in the process, got a good look at what was going on beneath the table. Mrs Joliffe was frantically trying to unhook her shoes, but she wasn’t quite quick enough.’

  Charley guffaws and claps his hand appreciatively. ‘Well done, Miss Treville!’

  She smiles and gives a modest shrug. ‘I’m sure that, if you’d had a second go at it, you’d have figured it out. Speaking of which, have you learned anything more about your friend’s murder?’

  He shakes his head ruefully. ‘Nothing. But of course, if the message from Rosa was a fake, then so was the business about Hubbard, and I’ve been chasing after a wild goose all this time.’

  ‘Where do you suppose Sledge learned about him, and about your friend – what was her name? Rose?’

  ‘Rosa. I don’t know,’ says Charley. ‘But I’m about to find out.’

  It would be useless, of course, to ask Sledge for a seat at another séance. Charley’s best bet is to just barge in on the man and demand an explanation. As it turns out, there’s no barging or demanding necessary; apparently he’s expected. The Professor hasn’t even bothered telling the housekeeper to say that he’s not at home. Charley finds him in the parlor, dismantling the spiritual telegraph. Without even looking up, Sledge says, ‘Good afternoon, Inspector.’

  ‘Not so good for you, it looks like.’

  ‘Nae, I’m afraid that, once Miss Treville’s story appears, my credibility will disappear, along with my clientele – except for the ones who take me to court, of course, in an attempt to recover the money they donated.’

  ‘Donated?’

  ‘To the Foundation for Spiritual Research.’

  ‘Ah. I wondered what was in it for you.’

  The Professor sighs and turns away from his task. ‘You may consider me a mountebank, Inspector, but I assure you, my intentions were good. I’ve spent half my life working to further our knowledge of the spirit world and how to communicate with it, and I’ve had some success. But “some success” is never good enough, is it? Look at it from your perspective: If someone hires you to take on a case, they dinna want you to find a clue, or to offer a theory, do they? They simply want you to solve the case. By the same token, very few people are content to sit silently for hours, waiting – usually in vain – for a spirit to make its presence known. They want results, and they want them now.’

  ‘Even if it’s a lie?’

  ‘Dinna tell me, Inspector, that you’ve never lied to a client, told them what they wanted to hear?’

  Only a hundred times or so – not as a private enquiry agent, perhaps, but certainly when he was a copper. It went with the job. What wife, after all, wants to hear that her beloved husband succumbed to his heart attack while in the arms of another woman? What mother wants to know that her daughter died, not as the result of a miscarriage, but as the result of a botched abortion? What son would have you tell him that his father, the constable, was knifed not by a criminal he was apprehending but by a fellow card player who caught him cheating?

  Charley says none of this, of course. ‘You invited me to that séance,’ he says, ‘in order to prove you were legitimate. Or so you said. I take it that was a lie, too.’

  The Professor considers a moment, then reluctantly nods.

  ‘In reality,’ says Charley, ‘you brought me here to feed me false information about Rosa’s murder. Now, that may have been just a trick on your part, a way of convincing me that we were communing with the spirit world, but I don’t think so. I think someone paid you to do it – someone who knew details about Rosa and her daughter. Someone who was aware of Hubbard, and my connection to him. Someone who wanted to get me off his tail for good and all, send me in another direction altogether. There’s only one cove I can think of who fits the bill. I don’t expect you to give me his name. In the first place, it’s probably not his real name. In the second place, if you do tell me, and he finds out, he’s likely to come after you.’

  ‘He may have a wee bit of trouble finding me,’ says Sledge. ‘I’m off to Europe, to try my luck there. In any case, he never said his name. But nae doubt you know him by his appearance – a tall, thin skyte with black hair and bulging eyes and something wrong with his neck.’

  Always before, when the law began breathing on him too hot and heavy, the nasty Mr Neck just hooked it for some other shire where his face and reputation weren’t so well known. Since Charley has had no luck at all locating him, he assumed that the villain used th
at same strategy again, that after the narrow escape at Mrs Bramble’s he went off somewhere safe to lick his wounds.

  But if he’s gone to all this trouble and expense to throw Charley off the scent, it must mean that he’s still hanging about London. The scheme he so rashly spoke of to Rosa must be profitable indeed, to be worth that much risk. It’s unlikely that he’s just engaged in the same sorts of mischief and mayhem that have been his specialty all along – burgling, mugging, fraud, arson; Charley’s informants would surely have got wind of those. He must have ventured into new territory. Apparently he’s found himself a new hidey-hole as well, somewhere very out of the way, somewhere Charley would never think of looking – a church, for example, or maybe a monastery. Well, no; even Neck would never stoop to that.

  Inspector Bucket’s Private Enquiry Agency still has a bit of a backlog, but the jobs are all pretty mundane and minor; he should be able to make time for some more pavement pounding. That’s the plan, anyway. But, as everyone knows, making a plan is like making a pie crust; it’s always stickier than it should be and very often it falls apart altogether. The very next day, he’s presented with a case that can’t be postponed or refused or solved with one hand tied behind his back.

  He almost wishes he could refuse it. When investigating a crime, he’s always done his best to remain detached, objective, to assess the situation in an unbiased, clear-eyed fashion. Rosa’s murder, of course, is the exception; he has a personal stake in that one, and he suspects that it’s clouded his judgment, made him overlook some crucial bit of evidence, made him snatch at straws such as the phony spirit message. He certainly doesn’t need another case like that one.

  But whether he wants it or not, he’s stuck with it. As he’d be the first to admit, he does have a certain tendency to play Sir Galahad; he’d have a hard time turning down a plea for help from any woman at all, let alone from the enchanting, perplexing Miss Julia Fairweather. To make it even harder to say no, she doesn’t present her appeal through the post, or by ticket porter. She shows up at his office in person.

  It’s late in the day, and Charley is debating whether to do his duty and spend the evening with his wife, comforting and consoling her insofar as he’s able, which isn’t really very far. Well, even Galahad was a bit lacking in that department; a suit of armor is all very well for rescuing maidens, but when consoling is required, it gets in the way. Just as Charley has resigned himself to his fate and is heading for the door, it flies open and Miss Fairweather makes a dramatic entrance. For once, though, it’s obvious that she’s not playing a part. She has the distracted, desperate look of someone who’s seriously troubled, or in trouble, or both.

  ‘Oh, Charley!’ she cries. For the second time in the space of three days, a woman wraps her arms about him and buries her face in his chest. Though he feels guilty admitting it, Charley enjoys this embrace a good deal more than the last.

  ‘What is it? What’s happened?’

  ‘It’s Monty! He’s had an accident!’

  ‘What sort of accident?’

  ‘He lost his balance on the stairs, and – and—’ She breaks off, sobbing.

  ‘He fell? Good lord. Did you call a doctor?’

  She moves her head slightly – a nod, Charley supposes, though it’s hard to be sure, with all those layers of silk waistcoat between them. ‘It was no use. He said – he said Monty’s neck was broken. And then – and then he called a constable.’

  ‘Oh. Well, that’s not unusual, if there’s any chance …’ He trails off.

  She looks up at him, her dark eyes wide and filled with tears. ‘If there’s any chance it wasn’t an accident. That’s what you were going to say, isn’t it?’

  Charley doesn’t reply. He doesn’t have to; he’s certain she can read the answer in his face.

  ‘They think … they think that I caused it somehow, don’t they?’

  ‘They may think it, but they can’t accuse you or detain you, not unless there’s some evidence, some clear motive. You certainly had no reason to want him dead; after all, you depended – that is—’

  ‘Go ahead and say it, Charley; it’s the truth. I depended upon him, for everything I had.’ She leans her forehead against his chest once more. ‘And what in god’s name am I going to do now?’

  TWENTY-THREE

  When Charley returns to the town house with Miss Fairweather, Lord Bainbury’s body is gone. There’s nothing mysterious about the fact; the doctor and the constable have simply laid him out the coolest spot available – the cellar – where he will await a viewing by the coroner and his jury, a process that’s unlikely to happen for a day or two. It’s the house girl’s night off and, as most people would be, Miss Fairweather is spooked by the prospect of sharing the house with a corpse. ‘Would you stay with me?’ she begs Charley.

  Now there’s a proposition that’s difficult to refuse. There’s nothing he’d like better, of course, and yet it doesn’t seem entirely proper. ‘Hmm. I’m not sure that—’

  ‘Please, Charley. I’m asking as a friend, but I’m also asking as a client.’

  ‘A client?’

  ‘Well, I thought that if you did a bit of – what do you call it? Poking about? – you might be able to prove that it was an accident.’

  ‘Oh.’ Though he would have preferred to be cast in the role of friend rather than detective, he’s ready and willing to help however he can. ‘I’m not sure it’ll do any good, but I’ll give it a go.’ He takes out his notebook. ‘First, I’ll want to ask you some questions, if you’re up to it.’

  ‘I think so – if we do it over drinks.’

  It’s brandy she has in mind, but Charley settles for tea; he doesn’t want his objectivity compromised any more than it already is. ‘All right. First off, I’m assuming that, when the accident happened, the house girl was already gone?’

  ‘Yes. In fact—’ Miss Fairweather seems close to breaking down again, but she takes a deep, ragged breath and starts over. ‘In fact, if she had been here, it might – it might never have happened.’

  ‘We don’t have to do this now, Julia, if you’d rather not.’

  ‘No, no. I want you to get it all down in black and white, in case they try to force a confession out of me later.’

  ‘I won’t let them,’ he assures her. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Monty was always trying to do things for himself; he didn’t like feeling helpless. When we dined together, he insisted on coming down here – it’s more civilized, he said. He wouldn’t let me help him on the stairs. I always walked ahead of him, though, so that, if he did stumble, I could catch him. But this evening, I was … I was reading to him, and I – I fell asleep in my chair. I suppose he got hungry and didn’t want to wake me, and he couldn’t ring for the maid, so he …’

  ‘I understand. I’m sorry if it seems rude to ask, but had you given him his dose of laudanum?’

  ‘No. He always took it as late in the day as possible; he said it spoiled his appetite, and he was afraid that, if he didn’t eat well, he’d lose what little strength he had.’

  ‘But he’d had a drink or two, I’m guessing.’

  She nods. ‘Lately, he was never without a drink in his hand. It didn’t help much with the pain, he said; it was more just to calm him, to help him forget.’

  ‘Forget?’

  ‘The horrors of that battle. He seldom spoke about it, but I know it tormented him.’

  ‘Again, I apologize, but I have to ask this: You don’t suppose it could have been a … well, a deliberate accident?’

  ‘You think he might have done it on purpose?’

  ‘Perhaps not consciously. But sometimes when people are careless, it’s because they don’t care; it doesn’t matter to them whether they live or die.’

  ‘I suppose it’s possible. I did my best to make him happy, Charley, but it got more and more difficult with each day that passed.’

  ‘I’m sorry it turned out this way.’ Charley closes the notebook. ‘Well, I’ll do my po
king about now; there’s no need for you to come. Just sit there and try to calm yourself; everything will be all right.’

  ‘You promise?’

  Charley turns away, pretending not to hear; he doesn’t like making promises he’s not certain he can keep. Donning his spectacles, he goes over every inch of the stairwell, like a miser searching for a dropped farthing. But even before he does that, he’s discovered his first piece of evidence: Monty’s whiskey glass, which somehow survived the tumble down the stairs and came to rest against one of the walls in the entryway. It’s empty, of course, but by sniffing about in bloodhound fashion he determines where it fell; there’s no mistaking the peaty scent of a good Scotch whiskey. The spot is only four steps from the top, which means Monty had the glass in one hand as he started down the stairs – not the best idea even with two good legs.

  When Charley examines the bannister, he notices that the glossy finish has been scraped by something hard, and recently, too, judging from the tiny flakes of varnish that still cling to it. Whatever made the scratch left behind a trace of something dark red. No, it’s not dried blood. Charley’s guess is that it came from the Indian mahogany cane he saw on his previous visit, leaning against Monty’s armchair. So: The man has a bum leg; he’s under the influence; he has a cane in one hand and a whiskey glass in the other, which means he’s not holding onto the bannister, at least not tightly – it would have been remarkable if he hadn’t fallen.

  Unfortunately, Charley can’t seem to find the actual cane. Nor can Miss Fairweather. ‘Well,’ says Charley, ‘that’s curious. Perhaps the constable took it, as evidence. I don’t suppose it matters, in any case. It’s pretty obvious what happened.’ He only hopes it’ll be as obvious to the coroner and the jury.

  Charley gets very little sleep that night – not because he’s concerned about how the crowner’s quest will go, nor because he’s curled up in an armchair in the sitting room, nor even because of the corpse in the cellar. Dead bodies don’t bother him particularly; it’s the thought of the live one lying only one room away that keeps him awake.