‘Agostino Cristiano Montanari?’ Sidney Grice dabbed a grain of sugar off the tray and, noting her assent, added, ‘I have long admired his work.’
‘But you do not like art,’ I objected.
‘I loathe art and anything posing as it,’ he agreed, without taking his eyes off our guest. ‘Where are the happy couple now?’
Cherry Mortlock grimaced. ‘In a village on the shores of Lake Geneva.’
‘Switzerland.’ The very word tasted bad to Mr G. ‘A vile country crammed to bursting with unnecessary mountains and superfluous valleys infested with odious lactating ruminants, republicans and cuckoo clocks.’ He brought out his Mordan mechanical pencil from his inside coat pocket. ‘But I see your mother is not the only one to associate with artists.’
Her head jerked back. ‘Now I know that you have prior knowledge of me.’
Sidney Grice scribbled a note. ‘As you sauntered with great gracility through my study you deposited three specks of partly dried oil paint from the soles of your Andalusian cow-skin boots on to my inadequately polished Hampshire oak floor.’ He pointed with his pencil. ‘Two Prussian blue and one burnt umber. Where else could they have come from other than a studio?’
And that is when Spirit made an appearance. She must have been hiding under the desk – where she loved to play with the balls of paper my guardian was always tossing towards his bin – because the first I saw was a bundle of white streaking across the room, under my chair and launching itself on to our visitor’s lap.
Cherry jumped.
‘I am so sorry,’ I said.
‘I told you to keep that offensive beast upstairs, especially when we have clients,’ Mr G scolded.
‘I forgot she was here.’ I made to shoo her away but Cherry laughed.
‘Please do not worry. I love cats.’ Her face darkened. ‘But my father never allowed me any pets.’ She stroked Spirit’s back. ‘What beautiful hair.’
‘We rescued her from a factory where they bred cats for fur,’ I said and she winced.
‘How savage.’ She ran a thumb under Spirit’s throat and it was only then that I noticed what extraordinarily long fingers our visitor had. ‘Have I annoyed her? She is not purring.’
‘Nor will she meow,’ I said. ‘She is mute.’
‘For which you more than compensate,’ Mr G informed me and turned to his client. ‘When did you last hear from your mother?’
‘Not since she wished me a good night the day before she ran away.’ Cherry allowed Spirit to nuzzle her knuckles.
‘Have you ever tried to contact your mother?’ I asked and Cherry paused.
‘She knows where I am but I do not have that advantage regarding her.’
‘Is it possible that she has returned?’ I suggested.
‘To kill her husband?’ Cherry frowned. ‘She was terrified of him.’
‘What about the sculptor?’ I slid the milk jug towards our visitor.
‘I only met him once.’ She tickled behind Spirit’s ear. ‘He was a gentle person. I imagine that is why she fell for him.’
‘How pleasant it is to wile away the hours with sterile speculation,’ Mr G commented. ‘What happened on Christmas Day?’
‘You have a talent for getting to the point, Mr Grice.’ Cherry exhaled heavily through her little nose. ‘I joined an art class last summer, if for no other reason than to escape the oppressive atmosphere at home. My teacher was a painter of the Pre-Raphaelite school, Fabian Le Bon. We fell in love. He is poor. My father violently – and I mean violently – disapproved and I left. Maria Feltner, a fellow student, let me share her lodgings in West Grundy Street. That was in October. Fabian had a small but quite successful show in November and was getting several commissions. I hoped that with this knowledge and a little seasonal goodwill, my father would soften his stance.’ She patted Spirit’s back. ‘The only concession he made was to come to the door after Easterly, our footman, could not bring himself to turn me away.’ She sighed. ‘My father did the job for him and with relish. He slammed the door and left me standing in the snow.’ She nibbled her lower lip. ‘The next time I saw him was in the morgue.’
‘And where was Mr Le Bon while this abortive reunion was taking place?’ Mr G enquired.
The mantel clock struck the quarter hour.
‘He was waiting in the gardens out of sight.’
I watched Cherry Mortlock closely. ‘Did your father ever hit you?’ I thought I saw a tic under her right eye.
‘Never me.’ Our visitor leaned back as Spirit’s tail waved under her nose. ‘But he slapped my mother not long before she left and he pushed our housekeeper, Mrs Emmett, over when he found a mistake in her accounts. She struck her head on the hearth fender and was knocked unconscious. When she awoke she thought she had had an accident.’ Cherry stroked the tail away. ‘I am not sure that she has ever fully recovered.’
‘How did you learn that your father was dead?’ I asked.
‘Hesketh sent me a telegram. Regret to inform you that your father passed away in the night.’ She shivered. ‘He made it sound so peaceful.’
‘Perhaps it was quicker and less painful than you imagine,’ I suggested, ‘especially if your father was asleep.’
Cherry Mortlock’s shoulders rose. ‘It was a bungled killing.’ Her shoulders fell. ‘My father must have been awake and struggling.’ She struggled to compose herself. ‘The police told me there were several cuts on his neck.’
‘I have seen many cases where the razor has been drawn tentatively over the throat or wrist many times before the suicide steals himself to administer the fatal laceration,’ Sidney Grice remarked.
Our visitor closed her eyes. ‘His neck was severed to his spine. Was that self-inflicted?’
Mr G tugged his earlobe. ‘I was merely observing that there are other possible interpretations of multiple incisions.’
‘He was hacked to death,’ Cherry cried. ‘What more do you want?’
‘To apprehend his killer or killers and collect my fee.’ Mr G held his pencil horizontally and peered at her under it. ‘Who is in charge of the case?’
‘Inspector Quigley.’ Cherry grimaced. ‘A horrid man.’
‘I will not argue with that,’ I told her. ‘The last time I was involved with Quigley he tried to force me to sign a confession for the murder of a client.’
‘A great pity you did not comply,’ Sidney Grice lamented. ‘It would have been evidence of his corruption. But I shall bring him to book sooner or later.’
‘He strikes one as being quite thorough,’ Cherry conceded. ‘But I do not think he has made any progress.’
‘He is less incompetent than most of his so-called profession.’ My guardian rubbed his shoulder. The old wound troubled him more in the damp weather. ‘But he is not as ready as I to tolerate the foolishnesses of the weaker sex.’
Cherry and I exchanged glances.
‘Have you seen your father’s bedroom?’ I asked and she shook her head.
‘I could not even bear to go into the house without it being thoroughly cleaned.’
Mr G shot a hand to his eye. ‘You have not had it scoured?’
‘Not yet,’ she assured him. ‘Though, when probate is granted and it is my house, I shall do so at the first opportunity. The police have already searched it. Should I leave my home looking like an abattoir?’ Her voice rose. ‘For heaven’s sake, that room must be full of my father’s blood.’
Cherry Mortlock’s breast spasmed.
‘No.’ Sidney Grice slapped his notebook shut. ‘It is full of clues and you shall not touch anything without my permission.’
‘Your…?’ Our visitor lifted Spirit and put her gently on to the rug. ‘I cannot work with you, Mr Grice. You are the most unpleasant person I have ever met.’
‘Give me fourteen days and I shall introduce you to at least one a great deal more unsavoury than I.’ My guardian pushed the lead back into his pencil.
Cherry Mortlock blinked twice. ‘Very wel
l,’ she agreed at last. ‘But not a day longer.’
‘Is the house occupied at present?’ I enquired.
‘Hesketh and the other servants are looking after it.’ She put her spectacles back on. ‘The police have sealed my father’s bedchamber.’
‘And may I ask where your father is now?’
‘In heaven, I trust,’ she replied, ‘but his earthly remains are at Snushall and Sons, the undertakers on Gordon Street.’
‘Instruct your father’s valet to anticipate and admit us.’ Mr G sprang up and hurried back to his filing cabinets. ‘I shall communicate with you at my convenience.’
Cherry Mortlock looked at me in confusion.
‘Are we…?’
‘Our business is complete for today.’ He opened two drawers at once. ‘But you may drink your tea so long as you promise not to distract me with your inane gossip.’
‘Well, really!’ Cherry Mortlock banged the arm of her chair and got to her feet.
‘Farewell, Miss Charity Mortlock alias Goodsmile.’ Mr G gave her a cheery wave as I saw her to the door.
‘I am sorry about his behaviour,’ I said and she took my hand.
‘I am sorry for you having to live with him,’ she retorted as she stepped outside.
*
‘What a delightful young lady,’ Sidney Grice enthused when she had gone. ‘I am sure we shall get along famously.’
‘I do not think she liked you,’ I said and he smiled thinly.
‘You should know by now, March, that I do not want clients’ affection. I want their money.’
‘And what do you intend to do with all this money?’ I asked in disgust.
‘The wealthy do not do things with money,’ he retorted. ‘They have it. But that is not all that interests me. This is the most delicious murder that has come my way in months.’
I did not ask whether he had found the death of my Uncle Tolly quite so delightful.
7
✥
The Nine
THERE ARE NINE demons. Sometimes they come to me all at once, but usually one at a time and in the wrong order. Eight of them are victims. I see their faces and I know their names. I see their terror and I hear their screams.
The ninth is their destroyer and I cannot speak his name.
I see him, usually from above, often from behind, and, in the worst dreams, the ones that crush the heart in my breast, I see his face and it is a mask of mine, and their blood stinks hot on my hands.
8
✥
Gouging Eyes and Gauntlets
WE HAD A hurried lunch and it was unappetizing as usual – over-boiled sliced carrots and cold butter beans strewn over whole under-boiled potatoes. Sidney Grice separated the constituents into three piles, sowed lines of salt up and down his fare and tucked in with gusto. He spoke little but occasionally waved his left hand around in an animated discourse with himself. Once he whipped out his pencil and made a note on the tablecloth, but two minutes later he scribbled it out.
‘I see,’ he said loudly to his carafe, but did not reveal what it was that he saw.
With the tip of my knife I gouged the eye out of an old King Edward, before I broke the silence. ‘Where shall we start our investigations?’
A year last May he had balked at the very idea of me being involved in his work, but after the Ashby case I do not think it occurred to him to exclude me, provided I was well enough to accompany him.
My guardian shook a grey cloud of pepper over his plate and the surrounding area. ‘Perhaps you would like to answer that question yourself.’
My dissection had exposed a boggy brown crater and I pushed the potato to one side. ‘Nathan Mortlock’s body,’ I suggested, knowing that he would pour scorn on whatever I suggested.
‘Justify your decision.’
‘The site of the murder has been closed off and the witnesses, including the guilty party, will have rehearsed their accounts by now,’ I reasoned, ‘but any evidence the body can give us is deteriorating all the time.’
‘Quite so.’ He mashed his beans with the back of his fork, formed them into a square, shovelled them into his mouth and washed them down with a tumbler of water. ‘Come along, March. You cannot spend your entire life indulging in epicurean excesses.’
We went down and, whilst Mr G gave the bell rope three tugs, I turned the brass handle in the hall to run a green flag up outside and summon a cab.
‘What on earth is keeping that lumpen sloven?’ He lifted his Ulster overcoat from the rack and slipped it on.
‘You have only just rung.’ I put on my favourite moss-green cape with a matching hat.
‘I have told them ninety-two times to keep a kettle constantly two degrees below the boil.’ He donned his wide-brimmed soft felt hat and riffled through his collection of silver-topped ebony canes in the old oak stand. ‘At last.’
Molly’s boots came clattering up the stairs and she appeared, racing down the hall clutching his flask of tea in one hand and a shrivelled apple in the other.
‘Two minutes and fifty-two seconds,’ he reprimanded her.
‘Sorry, sir,’ she panted. ‘I rememberered what you said about one ring for come immediantely, two for a tray of tea and three for your insularated bottle.’ She struggled for breath. ‘Only Cook thought she heard four rings and said that could mean two trays of tea or come immediantely four times.’
‘Tell Cook that I do not employ her to do anything other than cook.’ He snatched the flask from Molly’s hands and rammed it into his scratched leather satchel. ‘If there is any thinking to be done I will do it.’
‘She aintn’t got our intelligentness, has she, sir?’ Molly said wisely and her employer looked at her.
‘Your cognitive incapacity is balanced only by your mental vacuity,’ he replied and Molly grinned.
‘Don’t worry, miss,’ she told me. ‘He thinks the same about you.’
‘I believe he does,’ I assured her.
There was a knock on the door and Molly opened it to reveal Gerry Dawson on the step.
‘Morning, miss,’ he greeted me merrily. ‘What is it today – felons or frippery?’
Gerry had been a police sergeant before he was thrown out of the force for being intoxicated on duty and, by his own admission, was on the road to destitution until Mr G helped him get work as a cabby.
‘Business,’ I told him.
The stink of methane was overwhelming.
‘Pity.’ He clapped his leather gauntlets. ‘There’s a new line of dresses from Paris in ’Arrods. Suit you down to a T.’
‘Nothing would suit Miss Middleton up or down to any letter of the alphabet, thank you, Dawson,’ my guardian told him severely.
‘I did not know you followed the fashions, Gerry,’ I said as I stepped out. Workmen were digging a hole, piles of wet earth all around and spilling on to the pavement, a heavy drizzle turning the mud into an adhesive sludge.
‘I don’t.’ He put out his canvas-cloaked arm to help me aboard. ‘But I ’ave a regular lady from Endsleigh Gardens what goes there every day and she keeps me informed of all the new fancies. What’s goin’ on ’ere then?’
‘A collapsed sewer,’ I told him. ‘They have to go carefully because it runs next to the water mains and gas supply.’
‘Indeed.’ Mr G clambered in after me. ‘It is quite a three-pipe problem.’
A group of urchins had been playing with a rag ball but they quit their game for the better sport of running after our hansom, chanting.
‘Gricey ricey pudding and pie
Killed the girls and made them cry
When the boys came out to play
Gricey locked them all away.’
I laughed. ‘I haven’t heard that one before.’
But Mr G was not amused. ‘A pity they do not expend their energies on something more useful.’ He scowled.
‘They cannot find work,’ I countered.
‘One does not find work; one does it,’ he decreed as th
ey fell back.
Two men staggered out of number 129, dragging an upright piano.
‘I saw an old man carry one of those on his back in Bombay,’ I remarked.
‘We mollycoddle our lower orders in this country,’ he commented, ‘allowing them to lounge about in workhouses when they should be building railways across the wastes of Berkshire.’
We passed the great neoclassical portico of University College to our right and the red-brick turrets of the hospital on our left, before crossing the traffic into Gower Place and turning right again into Gordon Street.
‘’Ere we are,’ Gerry announced. ‘Nice quick one for Cleo.’
We could easily have walked but Mr G did not care to mingle with hoi polloi and, when we stepped down, I gave Cleo the apple. In truth she was getting too old for the job, but we all knew that the day she retired would be her last. Gerry had neither the space nor the money to keep her as a pet.
‘Snushall and Sons,’ I read on the discreet highly polished brass sign.
9
✥
The Stone Sarcophagus
SIDNEY GRICE MARCHED through the entrance and I followed him into a dusky, black-draped office, where an elderly male figure sat in a murky armchair. He rose, his movement slow and stately, as I closed the door.
‘Crepolius Snushall at your service.’ His voice was low and husky and his features so cadaverous that he looked in need of his own firm’s attentions.
‘Mr Grice and Miss Middleton,’ my guardian announced.
‘I am sorry for the loss of your loved one.’ Mr Snushall bowed deeply, the flicker of four tall, thick candles nestling in his hollowed cheeks. ‘May I enquire if I should be merely sad or prostrate with grief?’
The Secrets of Gaslight Lane Page 3
