‘How did you travel there?’ I asked.
‘On the quarter past seven train from Euston on the Tuesday night, and the seven o’clock train from Nuneaton the next morning. I still have the ticket.’
‘Why?’ Mr G demanded.
‘The barrier was unmanned on my return, but the ticket was clipped by the guard on both journeys.’
‘We shall want to see that,’ I told him, ‘and a list of your witnesses.’
‘Written in two ways.’ Sidney Grice folded the razor pensively. ‘Chronological order and black ink. I am increasingly disinclined to read anything in blue these days.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Hesketh tapped his cheekbone. ‘The ticket seller might remember Veronique buying it for me. She had an argument with him about the cost of the ticket,’ Hesketh admitted ruefully. ‘But that was my fault. It was so long since I went by train I did not realize the price had gone up.’
Sidney Grice blew his nose.
‘Do you still need me, monsieur?’ Veronique asked and Mr G looked at her long and hard. Veronique averted her gaze.
‘I have only one more question for now and fourteen for another occasion,’ he told her. ‘Did you know any of the members of this household, other than the as yet elusive housekeeper, before you took employment here?’
‘No, monsieur.’
‘Not even by sight?’ I clarified.
‘I do not think so, mademoiselle.’
‘Good.’ Sidney replaced the razor and closed the lid. ‘You shall stay where you are.’ He looped a thread round her left wrist and the arm of her chair. ‘And finish your tea. And you,’ he pointed at the valet’s chest with the silver box, ‘shall conduct our tour.’
The maid looked about anxiously.
‘Do not worry,’ I told her. ‘He has unusual ways.’
‘Mon Dieu, c’est vrai,’ she said to herself.
18
✥
Noises in the Night
SIDNEY GRICE WENT to the window. An ornate copper vase stood as high as the sill. He lifted it to one side and opened the shutters. The bars, I saw, were set into a gate, designed to hinge open in the middle but secured by two hefty padlocks. He tugged at each of them experimentally before clicking them open with one of the keys he had taken from Quigley.
‘Though the catches on the windows are self-locking, these,’ he lifted the padlocks off, ‘are not.’
‘No, sir.’
‘That was not a question.’
‘No, sir.’
‘Neither was that.’ Sidney Grice swivelled back the brass catches and pushed up on the lower sash, then down on the upper. ‘These slide easily enough and – as has become your wont – you may treat that as what it was not, id est, an invitation to make a comment.’
‘Mr Mortlock always kept them in working order,’ Hesketh told him. ‘He was worried that he could be trapped in a fire if the windows jammed.’
‘This,’ Mr G tapped the lower pane, ‘has been replaced within the last month.’
‘Indeed, sir,’ the valet acknowledged. ‘We had a few things thrown at the window, mainly – excuse my language, miss – horse droppings, but a few stones, and one pane was smashed.’
‘By whom?’ I stood up.
‘Street urchins,’ Hesketh told me. ‘The dirty devils. Excuse my language, miss.’
‘Was it just this house?’ I went over to peer out.
The day was clearing and I could make out the outline of a governess strolling between the copper beeches in the Burton Crescent gardens.
‘Mainly us, I think, miss.’
I thought about what Inspector Pound had told us. ‘Was this the room that Kate Webb, the maid, was found in – when the Garstangs were murdered?’
‘I fear it was, miss.’ The valet touched his Adam’s apple.
In the pale light I tried to imagine it.
‘There was so much blood,’ George Pound struggled to whisper his next words and I could hardly hear them above Mr G’s throat clearing. ‘That her nightdress and hair were glued to the floorboards.’
And I wondered what Angelina Innocenti, the deranged lady’s maid, could have been thinking as she stood over the body, clutching the killing knife.
Hesketh came over and raised his hand to wave to the governess, I thought, but in reality to brush something away.
Sidney Grice grasped his wrist. ‘I shall not permit you to interfere with evidence.’
‘But surely it is just a cobweb, sir.’
I waited for my guardian to explain how crucial cobwebs had been in the Foskett case or in tracking down the Camberwell Witches, but he let go of the valet and said, ‘Very well.’
‘I am wary of touching it now.’ Hesketh’s hand fell away.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake.’ Mr G ripped the strands off. ‘It is only a cobweb.’
Hesketh tapped his leg nervously.
‘I have never seen a private home so heavily fortified,’ I remarked and Hesketh touched his chin.
‘Mr Mortlock was even more concerned about his safety than Mr Garstang,’ he said, ‘especially as it was never proved that the killer of the household was indeed Angelina Innocenti, since she was unfit for trial. If it was not her, Mr Mortlock wanted to be certain that the murderer could never regain access to his house. All the windows are secured in the same way.’
‘Including the attic?’ Mr G relocked the bars and went to the wall that separated us from the north wing of the house.
‘Yes, sir,’ Hesketh said.
‘What about the basement?’ I asked.
And the valet’s eyes dropped as if he were looking straight into it. ‘There was a back door leading up a flight of steps to the yard when the Garstangs lived here, but it has been bricked up. In addition to the usual spring-loaded bolt, the coal-hole lid has an extra bar welded on with one of those padlocks, and the coal cellar entrance is also padlocked.’
‘Who has the means to open them?’ Sidney Grice asked mournfully.
‘Only me, sir.’ Hesketh reached inside his coat and produced a ring. ‘The police took the only other full set and I look after these.’
‘What are they for?’ I asked and he held them up.
‘These two are for the front door and this one is for the windows and coal cellar.’
‘Give them to me.’ Sidney Grice took the ring and clipped on his pince-nez. He peered closely at each key through his magnifying glass. ‘They have not been copied recently.’
‘To the best of my knowledge, they never have been,’ Hesketh informed him. ‘Mr Mortlock kept them locked in a drawer in his bedroom and the key to that on his watch chain. I have not let them out of my sight ever since.’
‘That is a lie,’ Mr G declared, ‘for though we are dissimilar in many ways and there is a chasm between us which you shall never traverse, we have fourteen defects in common, the one pertinent to my diatribe being an inconvenient requirement for sleep.’
Hesketh stiffened. ‘And, when I do, they are on a string around my neck.’
‘Could somebody have sneaked into your room and taken them from you?’ I asked, not sure why it mattered after the murder, but Hesketh dissented.
‘I have always been a light sleeper. A valet learns to be.’ He fingered the fine gold thread on his coat lapels. ‘Besides which we have all taken to using wedges under our bedroom doors when they are shut at night.’
‘Whose idea was that?’ I asked.
Sidney Grice gave him back the keys.
‘Mine, miss.’ Hesketh’s eyes clouded. ‘Only the murderer knows if he or she is still in our midst.’
‘Assuming that the murderer is not suffering from one of the four major or nine minor known causes of episodic amnesia.’ Mr G put his ear to the wall and rapped with his knuckles. ‘There are two parallel vertical depressions under the wallpaper, approximately fifty-four and a quarter inches apart,’ Sidney Grice said accusingly. ‘I have six theories about that, one of which I find especially appealing since the underlyin
g plaster has a different resonance to its surroundings.’ He eyed the valet. ‘Enlighten me.’
Hesketh leaned towards the faint lines. ‘It used to be a passageway, but Mr Nathan had it bricked up when the house was divided, sir.’
‘Thus it was so.’ My guardian picked at a tiny tag of loose paper.
‘Why did your master not simply move home?’ I enquired as my godfather wandered away.
‘Mr Mortlock did place Gethsemane on the market before he found out that the terms of his inheritance forbade him to sell the Garstangs’ home.’ Hesketh distractedly watched my guardian work his way along the wall. ‘But its reputation attracted only ghoulish sensation hunters or ghost trackers.’
‘Is the house haunted?’ I dodged away as Mr G hauled a small bookcase from the wall and peered behind it.
‘We have had a number of staff quit over the years after claiming to hear noises in the night, but most were excitable and some sold accounts of their imagined experiences to the newspapers,’ Hesketh said wearily. ‘But I have never heard anything that could not be put down to a creaking floorboard or the wind over the chimney tops.’
‘Who else is infesting this garishly ornamented and biblically dubbed house upon this vaporous day?’ Mr G pushed the bookcase back.
‘Only Mrs Emmett, the housekeeper.’ Hesketh stepped aside as my guardian ran five paces backwards. ‘She is below stairs.’
‘Are there no other servants?” I asked.
‘There was a new young scullery maid, who took fright and ran away when she heard the news. I have not heard from her since, though she is owed a week’s wages.’ The valet pursed his lips. ‘We have still not replaced Cook, who went elsewhere at the end of last year.’
‘From whom did this fugitive, juvenile and anonymous maid receive the tidings?’ Mr G sprang to the drinks cabinet.
‘I am not sure, sir.’ Hesketh rubbed the nape of his neck. ‘I would guess from an onlooker. There was a large crowd outside.’
Mr G extracted the stopper from a broad-based port decanter. ‘This is not the dingy parlour of Miss Middleton’s childhood hovel, convenient for the arctic circle, where we might unhappily engage in guessing games while your lost last master lies at room temperature upon his nicely trimmed Edinburgh granite block.’ He replaced the stopper and hurried to the hearth.
The servants looked at him, me, then each other blankly.
‘Which of you live in?’ I raised my voice to be heard above my guardian’s stamping across the room towards the hearth.
‘Myself, Easterly, Mrs Emmett and Veronique,’ Hesketh listed as Mr G bent over the unlit fire to peer upwards. ‘There are bars set into the chimneys, sir.’
‘That footman must be getting lonely.’ Mr G emerged, miraculously free of soot.
Easterly was still in his chair, the lilac thread intact, and he made to rise, but Sidney Grice halted him with a gesture and ambled down the hall. It was a rectangular space, about twelve feet by twenty, with a carpeted staircase to the left. Mr G walked past the stairs and disappeared round the back of them. A door opened and closed.
‘I take it this leads to the servants’ hall,’ he called.
‘Indeed, sir.’
Sidney Grice sneezed. ‘Are there any other ways down there?’
‘None, sir.’
‘I doubt Her Majesty has better security,’ I remarked.
‘She has worse,’ my guardian informed me. ‘I have locked that door.’
Hesketh raised his eyebrows. ‘Would you like to see round the house now, sir?’
And my guardian perked up. ‘Do you know, Hesketh,’ Sidney Grice said happily, ‘I believe that I would.’
19
✥
Flesh and Blood
THE HALLWAY WENT the length of the house. It had three doors coming off to the right side and the trace of a blocked doorway on the left, at the foot of the staircase beyond Easterly’s chair.
Behind the front sitting room was a similarly sized dining room, the table surrounded by twelve chairs. Because of the way the house had been partitioned, this room had no natural light source apart from a fanlight above the door, but there were two gas mantles on each of the four walls.
‘Mr Mortlock never used this after Mrs Mortlock left,’ Hesketh told us. ‘He ate from a tray in the study.’
This next room was entered from beside the staircase and extended to the back of the house. It had a rear window, also barred of course. The walls were lined with glass-fronted bookcases, packed with heavy brown-backed tomes. An ancient globe stood between the two leather armchairs.
‘It must be like living in a prison.’ I slid a book off a shelf, bound copies of Punch or The London Charivari.
‘Your master had a sense of humour then?’ I flicked through a couple of pages and came across a cartoon with a laboured pun on the words here and hear.
‘Mr Mortlock was more interested in philosophy and the spirit world,’ the valet told me. ‘That was one of Mrs Mortlock’s journals.’
‘It was probably all she had to laugh about, living with him,’ I conjectured and Hesketh did not demur.
‘Most of the other books were inherited from Mr Garstang,’ he said.
‘I cannot see anything about art,’ I remarked and, seeing that Hesketh did not catch my drift, asked, ‘Did the drawing found in Mrs Emmett’s room belong to Mr Mortlock?’
Hesketh gave the world a spin. ‘Mrs Seagrove, the housekeeper, overheard Mr Nathan telling Easterly he had won it playing cards. She told Mr and Mrs Garstang, who were so shocked by the subject matter and the sinful way it was acquired that they instructed Mr Nathan to quit this house immediately.’ India drifted behind his fingers. ‘It was only when Mr Nathan swore that he had burned the picture and promised never to gamble again that they relented.’ India re-emerged. ‘I believe there were threats to disinherit Mr Nathan at the time.’
The world stopped turning.
Across the hall from the library were two doors I had not seen from the other end. One was in the back of the staircase and presumably led to the basement. The other door to the rear of it entered a music room, with a medium grand piano, its music rack holding something by Brahms.
‘Mrs Mortlock is an accomplished violinist.’ Hesketh touched a dusty harp. ‘Miss Cherry played that piano but under sufferance, I fear.’
‘And Mr Mortlock?’ I asked, though I feared I knew the answer.
‘Not very interested in music, miss.’
Mr G stamped on the floor and tapped at the green-friezed wallpaper.
‘That once opened into the south wing of Gethsemane,’ Hesketh volunteered and Sidney Grice shrugged.
‘When did you first meet Mr Mortlock?’ I played a one-fingered scale on the keyboard. It was badly out of tune.
‘I knew Master Nathan as a boy, miss. His father, Mr Garstang’s brother-in-law, drowned at sea when Nathan was a baby and his mother’s nerves collapsed. She spent most of her life in private hospitals. Mr and Mrs Garstang sent Nathan to school and he stayed here for most of the holidays.’
Sidney Grice bent lower than seemed possible without support, to look at something on the floor. He sighed loudly and straightened up.
In the corner furthest from the back window was a sewing area.
‘I am surprised they could see their needles,’ I commented.
‘When the gas was on and the candles lit, this could be a lovely snug room in winter,’ Hesketh said.
My guardian ran his fingers over the oval table and lifted the circular rug on which it stood, to peer beneath.
‘The Garstangs certainly did their duty to their nephew.’ I opened the split lid of a wicker box, still packed neatly with cotton reels, and a deeper sadness filled the valet’s face.
‘I believe it was more than a duty to them, miss. Master Nathan was their flesh and blood, the closest they ever had to a son, and for him they were the parents he never knew.’
‘What about Lionel Engra?’ I pricked my finger
on a pin that had been used to hem a never-to-be-finished handkerchief.
‘They were his godparents, but only because his father was a junior partner in the printing business.’ Hesketh closed the lid and slipped the peg back through its loop.
‘Were Mrs Mortlock and Cherry ever guests here?’ I sucked off a drop of blood.
‘Miss Charity came several times as a child.’ Hesketh looked wistful. ‘But Mrs Mortlock was a Roman Catholic and they would not have her under their roof.’
‘It must have come very hard to Mr Mortlock when they were murdered,’ I suggested.
‘Cushioned by a considerable bequest,’ Mr G murmured, but Hesketh did not appear to hear him.
‘It broke his heart, Miss Middleton. He worshipped Mr and Mrs Garstang, and their money brought him nothing but misery.’
‘Money never brings misery,’ my guardian asserted, ‘only the misuse of it.’ He closed his eyes briefly. ‘I have finished.’
The hallway felt light and airy after the desolation of the abandoned chambers. There are few things more melancholy than a house that has lost those who loved it.
Easterly perked up as we rejoined him.
‘Stay,’ Sidney Grice commanded, striding round the back of his chair to stand at the front door. He brought out the keys and tried the lower of the two locks. ‘A little stiff.’ He tested the door and it would not open, then repeated the process with the upper lock. ‘Less stiff. Explain,’ he commanded Hesketh, who had come to stand close by.
‘I imagine—’
‘Kindly do not do so.’
‘The lower lock is older, sir.’ Hesketh stood as erect as a soldier on parade. ‘The upper was only fitted when Mr Mortlock came.’
‘That is an interesting and possibly candid answer,’ Mr G acknowledged.
‘I think you will find that I always speak the truth, sir.’
‘Then you belong to a highly exclusive club of which I am the only other member,’ Sidney Grice told him, ‘though, as founder, I have appointed myself lifetime president and chairman at any meetings.’ He looked up at the valet sharply. ‘Do I amuse you?’
The Secrets of Gaslight Lane Page 10
