The Secrets of Gaslight Lane

by M. R. C. Kasasian

  ‘Don’t listen,’ I protested, but Mr G was elbowing me aside.

  ‘Listen very carefully,’ he directed. ‘You are almost certainly going to die very soon.’

  ‘Whash?’ The housekeeper tried to rise again but her strength was ebbing. ‘Shwu.’

  ‘If the Christian apologists are to be believed – and I am sceptical about some of their claims,’ Sidney Grice carried on, ‘you may be about to meet your creator and you would be well advised to do so with a good conscience.’

  ‘Ish… Ish?’ Mrs Emmett flailed, panic-stricken, but my guardian ploughed on regardless.

  ‘Did you kill or help to kill Nathan Roptine Mortlock?’

  Mrs Emmett’s head went slowly side-to-side in desperate jerky denial.

  I tried to silence him. ‘For pity’s sake.’

  ‘Do you know who did, or anything about the crime that you have not revealed thus far?’

  But a great calm fell upon Mrs Emmett. It entered her all at once. I forced my way between them and took her pulse.

  ‘It was probably of great consolation to her primitive brain,’ Sidney Grice commented in satisfaction, ‘that she died whilst I was putting her in mind of her God.’

  My guardian swept the remains of her last meal clattering and smashing away. He grasped the dead woman under her armpits, lifted her high and laid her on her back on the table. I tidied her clothes as best I could, crossed her arms and closed her eyes.

  ‘God rest your soul.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ my godfather murmured, ‘if he exists and unless she was the murderer or an accomplice.’

  We went back upstairs.

  ‘After he killed Nancy Seagrove, the murderer went upstairs,’ George Pound told us, ‘but then he came down again.’

  ‘How do you know?’ I asked.

  ‘There were bloody footprints on the servants’ stairs, some very clear going up, but fading, and some very faint going down before they disappeared.’

  ‘Do you mean that literally?’ Sidney Grice fiddled with the jackal ring on his watch chain. ‘Footprints?’

  ‘Yes.’ The inspector flicked off a stray spark that had jumped on to his trouser leg. ‘The murderer had taken his boots off.’

  ‘Hesketh, come,’ my guardian called, as one might a dog, when we emerged, and the valet appeared.

  Hesketh viewed us with concern. ‘I am not sure if miss is aware that she has a few smudges…’

  I did not trouble to check.

  ‘I am sorry…’ I tried, but Sidney Grice spoke over me.

  ‘So am I,’ he declared, ‘for I intended to ask Mrs Emmett fourteen more questions and now she is a corpse.’

  *

  The fog had lifted a little more but I could still see no further than ten or fifteen yards. The roof at the end of the north wing looked in very poor condition, sagging in the middle with many tiles missing.

  ‘Why did Nathan Mortlock not repair it?’ I mused.

  ‘A moot question.’ Sidney Grice waved down a cab. ‘Which we shall never be able to put to him.’

  The hansom pulled over and the driver leaned out. ‘I don’t take blackamoors.’ He cracked his whip and shot off.

  34

  ✥

  The Axeman of Oxford Street

  TWO MORE HANSOMS ignored us and only by virtually throwing myself at the horse of the fourth did I manage to get it to stop and persuade the driver to take us home for a triple fare in advance.

  ‘Oh no,’ Molly wailed as she opened the door. ‘You aintn’t not dead, are you?’

  ‘Of course not.’ I glanced at my reflection and understood her alarm. Streaky-faced, starry-eyed and seaweed-haired, I would not have liked to meet myself in a graveyard. My lip curled disapprovingly and, for a fraction of a second, my guardian’s face looked through the glass back at me. Good grief, I thought. I am turning into Sidney Grice.

  ‘You will take this overcoat to the laundry,’ Mr G unbuttoned his Ulster, ‘along with all the other items of my apparel, which I shall deposit in a brown paper parcel outside the bathroom door.’

  ‘You could do with being sented to the laundry yourself, miss.’

  I deposited my sack on the floor and Molly skittled back as if she knew what it contained

  ‘Sent,’ I corrected shortly, for I did not need anybody else to tell me what a mess I looked.

  Molly wrinkled her nose. ‘Don’t smell like scent to me.’ And I was not sure if she meant me or my find.

  Sidney Grice started up the stairs.

  ‘So you are bathing first?’ I put my hands on my hips, but took them straight off again because I knew he would think the pose indecent.

  ‘Of course,’ he responded over his shoulder. ‘There might only be enough hot water for one bath.’

  ‘A true gentleman,’ I muttered.

  ‘Where?’ he enquired without pausing in his ascent. ‘You had better deal with him, March.’

  I dropped my cloak and hat on to the doormat and followed him up, holding my skirts in to avoid touching the wallpaper.

  ‘I am sorry,’ I called back. ‘I am getting dirt on your clean carpet.’

  ‘Is it mine?’ she crowed. ‘You aintn’t not died and I get a stairs carpet. What a dead lettuce day this is turning in to be.’

  Forty minutes later I had a bath. The soap would not dissolve properly in cold water and I had to scrub very hard to get clean. My guardian was gleaming and finishing his tea when I went down.

  ‘I have been waiting for twelve minutes,’ he complained. ‘Really, March. You are getting very selfish.’ He put his cup down and sprang up just as the doorbell rang. ‘Come along, God-daughter. We have work to do.’

  Some girls were skipping outside, two of them turning a length of laundry line, while three of them jumped over it chanting.

  ‘Lizzie Shepherd got the chop

  Right above the drinking shop.

  Janie Donnell got chopped too.

  Turn around. (They spun in the air) It could be you.’

  I shivered. Real murders did not strike me as something to be made a game of.

  ‘Rivicenta,’ Mr G mused.

  Neither of us would forget that message in blood on the backroom wall of the hardware shop on Mangle Street.

  A girl on crutches came by. ‘Come and join us, Dotty,’ one of the girls called out as we climbed into our cab.

  She hobbled over and a smiling redhead held her crutches while two bigger ones held Dotty under the arms and jumped with her.

  ‘How kind.’ I reached into my purse for some pennies.

  ‘They will get a shilling for the pair if they are lucky,’ Sidney Grice predicted and I looked back to see the redhead running down the street, the crutches tucked under her arm.

  ‘How desperate they must be to do such things,’ I pondered.

  ‘Indeed,’ Mr G agreed. ‘Desperately wicked.’

  Marylebone Police Station was almost empty apart from a short stubbly man in a faded checked jacket with a ragged-edged sandwich board advertising:

  THE

  QUEEN

  MUST

  DIE

  He stood forlornly by the desk, Constable Perkins keeping a tight hold on his collar.

  ‘I keep trying to tell the officer,’ the man objected to me. ‘It said The Queen must diet and, when people asked me why, I direct them to the new gymnasium on Tott’nham Court Road, only some bleedin’ likkle bleeders chopped the end bit orf when I was ’avin’ an ’am san’wich.’

  The bottom right corner of the board was certainly chewed away.

  ‘Just get out,’ Sergeant Horwich said wearily.

  ‘But, Serg,’ Perkins protested.

  ‘Out,’ Horwich pointed to the door and the man scuttled gratefully off.

  ‘But, Serg,’ Perkins said desperately. ‘’E nearly caused a riot on Oxford Street. ’Ave you seen the back board?’

  The stubbly man had reached the main door now. At his back, scrawled in fake blood were the words:
/>   I WILL KILL

  HER MYSELF

  WITH A

  AXE

  ‘Oy! Come back,’ Horwich bellowed, but the man lifted his boards off and flung them at the pursuing constable, striking him hard on the right knee, and raced off down the street. Perkins howled.

  ‘Wet bleedin’ blanket,’ the sergeant mocked. ‘You run like a fropping girl – no offence, miss. Couldn’t arrest my granny in a wool shop.’

  ‘Can and did,’ Perkins muttered as he rubbed himself better.

  ‘Quigley,’ Mr G rapped.

  ‘Out on a case,’ the sergeant fired back.

  ‘Pound,’ my guardian tried.

  ‘Out on a case and may be some time.’

  ‘How could he not be?’ Mr G screwed up his face and his lip curled in that way. ‘But, as there is nobody I wish to speak to, you will have to do.’

  Horwich’s massive military moustaches waggled. ‘I am touched by your faith, Mr Grice.’

  ‘You cannot be touched by what does not exist,’ my guardian affirmed.

  I placed the sack on the desk. It had leaked coal dust on to my once-blue dress and seemed to have no intention of stopping as it showered over the register.

  ‘Fropping heck.’ Horwich brushed the powder with the side of his hand, smudging it over the morning’s entries.

  ‘First, watch your language and, second, remanded usually contents itself with one m.’ Sidney Grice blew a speck off his glove.

  ‘Please tell Inspector Quigley that I found this in the coal cellar of Gethsemane,’ I announced.

  Perkins was hobbling dramatically around the lobby.

  ‘Guess-so-many? That’s the Garstang place,’ Horwich realized.

  ‘I know,’ Mr G said. ‘I was there when it was pronounced properly.’

  ‘So I’m supposed to tell the inspector you found an old coal sack in an old coal cellar?’ Horwich wiped his hand on a crumpled sheet of paper.

  ‘Tell him to look inside it,’ I advised. ‘And, in case he is wondering, that is the part not on the outside. Tell him I would like his opinion as to whether or not it is a clue.’

  Horwich received the command uneasily. ‘Inspector Quigley don’t apprecionate being told what to do.’

  ‘I know.’ I looked down and wondered if I could claim a dress allowance on expenses. ‘I only wish that I could be here to watch you tell him.’

  The door flew open and a man shouted, ‘Gotcha, you bleedin’ rascal.’ There were sounds of a scuffle and then, ‘Come ’ere, you bleedin’ tyke.’

  ‘Harris.’ Horwich threw up his hands in despair as the door slammed.

  ‘You were here when Nathan Mortlock was arrested for being drunk and disorderly, weren’t you?’ I asked and Horwich tapped his register, though it could not have been the one in question.

  ‘Booked him in.’ He mimed writing with an empty hand. ‘Booked him out.’

  ‘And you saw him during the night?’ I stuffed my gloves in my pocket.

  ‘You are nearly as good as Quigley at writing people’s statements for them,’ Mr G complained, but I ploughed on.

  ‘Did you not?’

  ‘Three times,’ Horwich confirmed. ‘I remember that particularly because I don’t usually go down, but Mortlock’s friend was causing trouble.’

  ‘What kind of trouble?’ I ploughed on.

  ‘At last, a non-leading question.’ Sidney Grice leaned over to pick up a charge sheet, but Horwich slapped his hand away.

  ‘Shouting and screaming, and he got his belt round the door bars and was threatening to hang himself.’ Horwich chuckled. ‘Some of the others was yelling to get on with it and let them get some kip.’

  ‘He was not in the same cell as Mortlock?’

  ‘They were kept separate after their fight.’

  ‘I thought they were fighting the constable who arrested them,’ I objected.

  ‘We could stay comfortably at home while you write this out,’ Mr G complained.

  ‘According to Dutton, the arrestin’ officer, they were fighting everyone and anyone.’ Horwich pulled at his mutton-chop whiskers. ‘The joke being that the real criminals, the pickpockets what stole his watch, got clean away.’

  ‘If that is your idea of a joke,’ Mr G turned his attention to a pencil shaving on the desktop, ‘you would be wise not to bother pursuing a career on the stage.’

  ‘You would probably be better at that than me,’ Sergeant Horwich retorted. ‘We often have a good laugh when you’ve been in.’

  Mr G’s expression was serene. ‘Fools often laugh at the wise. That is why they are fools.’ He put the shaving back where he had found it.

  ‘Did you see Nathan Mortlock actually in his cell that night?’ I asked.

  Horwich chewed on his pen. ‘I do remember Mortlock sticking his face to the bars and shouting out to his friend to have some sense.’

  ‘At what time?’ Mr G licked his finger and held it up as a man might check the direction of the wind.

  ‘It was a long time ago and it didn’t seem important ’til afterwards.’ Horwich shrugged. ‘But I think I said in my report, about four.’

  ‘O’clock.’ Mr G completed the sentence when it became obvious that the sergeant thought he had already done so.

  ‘Is there any way he could have got out in the night?’ I asked and Sergeant Horwich took a gulp from his enamelled mug of cold tea. ‘You’ve spent a night there,’ he reminded me. ‘Those cell doors could withstand a battering ram.’

  ‘What about the back door into the yard?’ I persisted.

  ‘Withstand two rams, that would, and I…’ he tapped his right breast pocket, ‘keep the key on me the whole time I’m on duty. I check ’em in and I check ’em out, and nobody goes strawberry-picking in the meantime.’ The door opened. ‘What the hell is it now?’ he roared as Constable Harris struggled in with a small boy under his arm.

  ‘Nabbed ’im stealing a gent’s hankychief, Serg.’

  ‘Name?’ Horwich sighed.

  The boy wriggled frantically. ‘Oliver Frippin’ Twist.’

  ‘One P or two?’ Sergeant Horwich picked up his pen.

  ‘Home,’ said Sidney Grice.

  35

  ✥

  Crushed Flowers and Hearts

  AN ELDERLY WOMAN was sitting bent over on the top step when our cab deposited us outside our front door. She was clad in ragged mourning, her clothes unevenly dyed black and her veil so heavy that I doubted she could see through it. A bouquet rested on her lap, no more than a big bunch of wilted weeds.

  ‘Clear off,’ Sidney Grice poked at her stomach with his cane.

  ‘She is not a piece of rubbish,’ I objected.

  ‘She smells like one,’ my guardian retorted, with no attempt to lower his voice.

  The woman started as from a deep sleep. She looked up but I could still see nothing of her. She grasped her bouquet in a gloved hand and struggled to rise.

  ‘Let her rest,’ I said. ‘She is not doing any harm.’

  The woman wheezed with the effort of getting to her feet.

  ‘If I let her stay she will frighten off clients,’ Mr G reasoned, ‘and the next thing you know, she will have invited her family and friends to join her and be letting out the top step to lodgers.’

  The woman was swaying now, though she did not appear to be intoxicated. The odour of sewage about her almost made me retch.

  ‘Was that you under the tarpaulin the—’ I began, but the woman stumbled and fell forward.

  Sidney Grice stepped aside, but she snatched at his coat with her left hand and her right swung up, crushing the flowers against his breast. Sidney Grice grunted and pushed her away. The woman pulled at her bouquet but for some reason it stayed stuck to my guardian’s coat. She let out a small cry and released her weeds, but still they stayed suspended.

  Mr G put his hand to the greenery and it flew into the woman’s face. She squealed and pushed him and he, taken off balance, toppled back against the railings that s
eparated him from the moat.

  ‘Stop her,’ my guardian gasped, but I was transfixed by the sight of a carving knife sticking out of his coat.

  The woman ran. She dodged behind a milk cart and round a furniture van.

  ‘Mein Gott!’ Sidney Grice surveyed the end of the blade projecting from his chest and the worn wooden handle. ‘She has stabbed me through the heart –’ he coughed three times in rapid succession – ‘of my notebook.’

  He jumped down the steps and looked about, just in time to see his attacker dropping under a brewer’s dray twenty yards up Gower Street and disappearing from sight.

  ‘What the hell—’ I began.

  ‘Language.’ My guardian put a hand to his chest to hold his book and heaved the knife out. ‘Though hell may very well be from where she came.’

  And as he rang the bell I bent to pick something up – a tiny silver locket that she must have dropped. Perhaps it had a name inside.

  ‘Stop dawdling,’ Sidney Grice said as I stuffed it away.

  36

  ✥

  The Prince and the Patella

  MOLLY’S MOP CLATTERED in the hall and I refrained from speculating who could be at the door, having been subjected to my guardian’s sarcastic responses in the past.

  ‘Who on earth can that be,’ he pondered, ‘other than the entrancing Miss Mortlock?’

  He whisked off his patch.

  ‘How can you tell?’

  Molly opened the door.

  ‘At five thirty every evening Jarvis Thripple, the gentle beadle of University College, checks the windows of the lecture theatre in the anatomy building, which even you must have observed is opposite our happy home. Academics often fling them open in futile attempts to stop their students from falling asleep.’

  Sidney Grice strained to insert his new eye, but I knew better than to offer assistance.

  ‘But that was…’ I checked the mantel clock, ‘two hours and forty-two minutes ago. What of it?’

  ‘He was six minutes late this evening as Dr Morrianty the gastrologist has a slight speech impediment.’ Mr G frimped up his pink cravat. ‘However, the end result was the same. Thripple lowers the roller blinds, thereby doing me the great service of converting the window into a serviceable mirror.’