The Secrets of Gaslight Lane

by M. R. C. Kasasian

  The front door closed.

  ‘So you saw her reflection?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  Molly trundled in, her cap secured at a rather precarious angle. ‘That lady what aintn’t not Goodsmell any more,’ she announced.

  ‘Mortlock,’ Mr G snapped.

  ‘But I dontn’t know how to,’ Molly stammered.

  ‘Congratulations, Molly.’ Her employer ran his fingers back through his thick black hair. ‘You have redefined the zenith of ineptitude.’

  Molly blushed and when Molly blushed she went a very deep puce indeed. ‘Why, thank you, sir. I do my besterest.’

  ‘Show… her… in,’ he said.

  ‘So I don’t need to mort-clock?’

  ‘Not today, thank you, Molly,’ I said and she wandered confusedly away.

  Sidney Grice leaned, his elbow on a filing cabinet in a rather theatrical study of casualness, and Molly returned, bellowing in fine parade-ground fashion, ‘Miss Charitable Morgue Lock.’ Her voice dropped to a stage whisper. ‘That’s a bit like what you was trying to get me to do, sir.’

  ‘Tea,’ Mr G barked and she scuttled away.

  Cherry Mortlock marched in and refused my offer of a chair as I got out of it. ‘I shall not be staying.’

  ‘You will,’ my guardian argued, ‘though possibly not for long.’

  Cherry’s manner was brusque. ‘I have had no communications from you, Mr Grice.’

  ‘I am delighted to hear it,’ Mr G breezed, ‘for I have sent you none.’

  Cherry lifted her veil back. ‘Most private detectives send their clients daily progress reports.’

  ‘So I believe.’ Sidney Grice straightened up. ‘Indeed, Charlatan Cochran has been known to send three or four in as many hours, but I imagine that you are labouring under many misapprehensions, Miss Charity Clair Caroline Mortlock, two of which are of immediate significance, and I shall therefore enumerate them.’ He took a step towards his client. ‘First, I am not, nor ever have been, nor ever shall be, a private detective. My services are without equal and they are personal.’

  Cherry tugged at her gloves. ‘You are playing with words.’

  ‘I never play.’ He touched his eye.

  ‘He does not,’ I confirmed.

  ‘Second –’ my guardian took another step, his feet in line like a tightrope walker – ‘I have no progress to report to you.’

  Cherry ripped off her left glove. ‘You have made no progress?’

  ‘Have I not?’ Mr G opened his hands in a gesture of surprise.

  Cherry gaped. ‘You have just admitted it.’

  Sidney Grice looked at her pityingly. ‘I merely remarked there was none I ached to report.’

  Cherry Mortlock looked askance at me and I shifted awkwardly. ‘Mr Grice does not like to discuss his methods.’

  ‘But I am paying him to keep me informed.’

  ‘To be fair,’ I reasoned gently, ‘you are not paying Mr Grice anything at present and, when you do, it will be for capturing your father’s murderer.’

  She gripped her glove in her right hand. ‘But I want to know what you are doing to achieve that end.’ She looked down at my godfather, standing before her, the image of hurt innocence. ‘What are you going to do tomorrow?’

  Mr G toyed with the patella of Charlie Peace that he used as a paperweight. ‘We shall be doing something I detest doing and quitting this splendorous, squalid metropolis.’ He weighed the patella in his hand. ‘On a journey to Crowthorne in the expectation of interviewing Senorita Angelina Innocenti.’

  This was as much news to me as it was to our visitor.

  ‘I am not interested in the lies and fantasies of a raving lunatic about a crime she committed eleven years ago,’ she fumed, and, if Cherry’s glove had been a living thing, she would have squeezed the life out of it in her blanched fist.

  ‘And I am not especially interested in what interests you.’ Sidney Grice selected the jawbone of Captain Johns, the Droitwich Diabolist, as a counterweight and inched towards her, arms out wide for balance. ‘Which is one of the fourteen reasons we shall never go shopping together. I am interested in the truth and that is what I shall discover.’

  ‘Perhaps the same person who killed the Garstangs attacked Angelina and killed your father,’ I tried to justify our plan.

  ‘I do not necessarily subscribe to that theory.’ My guardian swayed.

  ‘Then why in heaven’s name are you going?’ Cherry demanded and Mr G frowned.

  ‘I am not altogether sure,’ he admitted.

  Cherry banged on the round central table with the side of her fist.

  ‘I knew I should have gone to Mr Cochran.’ She banged again in frustration.

  Sidney Grice stepped off his imaginary rope. ‘That is a meritorious scheme,’ he concurred with alacrity, ‘if you wish to squander your inheritance and let your father’s murderer roam free, and if you wish to dismiss all your servants or spend the rest of your life uncertain if one of them slaughtered him and will do the same to you. At least Cochran will supply you with plenty of reading material for those long, lonely and impoverished winter nights.’

  Cherry raised her chin defiantly. ‘You cannot frighten me, Mr Grice.’

  ‘Oh my dear, young and not unattractive Miss Mortlock,’ my guardian blinked slowly, ‘I promise you that I can, but that is not my intention. I merely wish to keep you out of the clutches of an incompetent fraud. You would be better off giving your money to my maid.’

  ‘Oh yes, please.’ Molly struggled in with a tray. ‘Is it a lot? Please say yes and I can buy a cottage in the sea.’

  ‘What on earth is that?’ I pointed to Molly’s stomach, bulging and writhing as if she had swallowed a live python.

  ‘It’s a nice house,’ Molly enlightened me. ‘I thought you might have known that, but then you don’t refine the zenits off neptitude like I do.’

  The side of Molly’s apron exploded in a streak of white as Spirit sprang free and on to our client’s breast, almost knocking her over.

  ‘What in the devil’s name?’ Cherry rocked the round table with the swing of her bustle. ‘You have no need to go to Broadmoor, Mr Grice.’ Cherry shook with rage as she disentangled Spirit’s claws from her scarf. ‘Shall I enumerate?’ she mocked. ‘First, you are in a madhouse already – home sweet home for you, Miss Middleton – and, second, I have taken you off the case. And you can whistle for your bills or expenses.’

  My guardian pondered briefly. ‘Even on a good patch I should have to do an awful lot of whistling to collect that amount of money.’

  ‘Bahhhhh!’ Cherry Mortlock flung Spirit away and barged past Molly, who up until then had done sterling work in keeping her tray horizontal.

  ‘Oh no!’ Molly wailed as our periwinkle tea service shattered on to the floor. ‘That’ll all come from my wages what I dontn’t not never get.’ She hurled the tray into the pile, smashing a previously undamaged sugar bowl, and rolled up her sleeves. ‘I’ll knock your crudding dong-faced face off your crudding head,’ she roared.

  ‘Molly!’ I put out my arm but Molly was beyond reason. She charged into the hall as the front door slammed, but even that did not give Molly pause for thought. She flung the door open and leaned out.

  ‘And dontn’t not come back, you ugly old grotch, only you aintn’t not really old.’ Molly’s voice suddenly sweetened. ‘Oh, good evening, Pruffelia. How clement it is for this time of year.’

  Molly stepped back into the house.

  ‘Oh, Molly, what have you done?’ I cried, and her knuckles went into her mouth.

  ‘Oh lor’, miss. Whatever it is, I’ve been and done it good and unproper this time.’ Her face drained as her employer limped grimly into view.

  ‘You had better go and pack your bag,’ he said, with a quietness that chilled us both.

  Molly crumpled and when the blood returned to her cheeks it was in flared vertical streaks.

  ‘We have a long journey ahead of us tomorrow.’
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br />   ‘Oh…’ I said.

  ‘And you, Molly, had better get a brush and dustpan.’

  ‘Oh…’ Molly said.

  ‘You did well tonight, but for future reference I believe the expression is dung-faced,’ he told her.

  ‘But—’ I said and he waved his right arm high in fury.

  ‘Nobody – not Alexandrina Victoria, Her bovine Majesty the Queen; not her son, Albert Edward, the corpulent Prince of Wales; not her Prime Minister, that vile egalitarian, William Ewart Gladstone; not the doubtless tedious man who disappears elephants, who, incidentally, you may have an afternoon off to see, not the meddlesome Miss Florence Nightingale with all her demon army of nurses – nobody is allowed to throw my cat around like that.’

  I did not mention that Spirit was supposed to be my pet but when Molly had disappeared in a daze down the steps, I went up to my guardian as he stood surveying Spirit, none the worse for her experience and lapping at the milk and sugar, and, to his undisguised disgust, I gave Sidney Grice a kiss on the cheek.

  *

  I read my Bible as always that night. Mr G had been right about the number, of course. It was Psalm 118.

  Give thanks to the Lord for he is good. His love endures forever.

  I closed my eyes and prayed, Let it be true. Please let it be true.

  37

  ✥

  Trails and Snails

  SIDNEY GRICE WAS down to breakfast before me as usual the next morning, scribbling such copious notes in the margins of his dog-eared book that the printing was almost obliterated. He had cancelled his usual stack of newspapers that morning after an argument with the newsagent about the delivery coming five minutes early and disrupting his routine.

  ‘Drabden’s Biochemical Analysis of the Mucoid Trails of Terrestrial Pulmonate Gastropod Mollusca,’ I read when he grudgingly showed me the cover.

  ‘Snail slime,’ he interpreted, though I could have worked that out myself.

  ‘And snail slime to you, dear guardian.’ I did not trouble to look under any of the three silver domes on the sideboard, but sat at my end with a rack of pale toast. ‘Have you had any more thoughts about that woman who attacked you yesterday?’

  ‘Yes.’ Sidney Grice crumbled his charred toast into a bowl of prune juice.

  ‘Do you think she might have been somebody, or connected to somebody, you helped convict of a crime?’ I put the egg in a silver cup.

  He stirred the mixture with his knife. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Or a dissatisfied client?’ I cut the top off my egg.

  ‘Did she look like a woman who could afford my outrageous fees?’ He sipped from his soup spoon, creating a rather dashing thin pair of sepia moustaches.

  The locket was still in my other handbag and I resolved to fetch it the next time I went to my room.

  He turned back a page to underscore a word and broke some more toast into his prune juice.

  ‘Did you write this book?’ He jabbed at it with his pencil. ‘You might as well have, for it is riddled with feminine illogicalities.’

  ‘Are you angry because Cherry Mortlock has taken us off the investigation?’ I spread the conserve.

  Mr G gaped. ‘When?’

  ‘Last night.’

  He ran a hand over his brow. ‘I wish I had known that before I put my travelling stockings on.’

  ‘But you were there.’ I gaped back at him. ‘In your study, just before Molly nearly gave her a right hook.’

  ‘Molly’s most favoured punch is actually her left jab,’ he informed me, then tapped the table as a toastmaster might for silence. ‘I think I know where your stupid misinterpretation of events was created.’ My guardian dabbed his mouth with his napkin. ‘You have created a silly fantasy that, when Miss Mortlock said she had taken us – to quote her peculiar turn of phrase – off the case, she was empowered to do so, whereas once I accept an investigation it is in my written terms that only I can decide whether to abandon it or not.’

  ‘But if we carry on anyway,’ I cut my toast in half, ‘surely she will refuse to pay us.’

  ‘Not necessarily –’ he stood up – ‘for I shall discover the identity of her father’s murderer.’ He checked his watch. ‘Come, March, we leave in thirty-seven minutes.’

  ‘But that gives us plenty of time.’ I reached for another slice of toast.

  ‘Not if you are to put on something presentable to wear.’ Mr G wandered to the window.

  It was a new indigo-blue dress with puffed sleeves and a tatted collar, and I thought I looked rather smart in it but, apparently, I was wrong.

  38

  ✥

  The Menace in the Mist

  OUR TRAIN SET off at eight o’clock, but it was almost noon by the time we reached our destination.

  We began with a seemingly interminable cab ride to Waterloo, then there was a delay while a reported bomb in the waiting room was investigated. It turned out to be a wrapped dolls’ house, forgotten by a harassed mother, but since the Fenian dynamite attacks at Paddington and Westminster Bridge stations the previous October, the authorities could not afford to take any chances.

  We disembarked at Crowthorne and took a fly through the pretty village and out on to the country lanes, winding through the tightly packed pines of Bracknell Forest and up an incline to the hospital.

  Broadmoor Hospital rose menacingly through the mist, a huge mass of red-bricks, every window barred and towers flanking a massive arched gateway.

  My guardian watched me closely.

  ‘I am afraid I do not recognize anything,’ I told him as we disembarked. ‘I was very confused at the time.’

  ‘I have never seen the point in being confused.’

  A jolly attendant checked our papers against his register and signed us in.

  ‘She don’t get many visitors,’ he said and passed us on to the deputy director, Dr Whelkhorn, an equally jolly man with a drooping left eyebrow and an arched right, who told us, ‘She doesn’t get any visitors, not one, and I was here before her.’

  Whelkhorn was a tall grey man with long arms hanging loose almost to his knees. His bony wrists projected at least an inch below his cuffs and there was something odd about his hand that I could not immediately identify when he took mine.

  ‘Welcome back,’ he greeted us both expansively.

  We followed him down a long well-lit corridor, the tall windows on our right looking straight across the grounds towards the opposite wing. Most of the doors to our left were wide open, revealing the empty cells.

  ‘Where are the occupants?’ I asked.

  ‘Most of them are in the recreation rooms around now,’ our guide replied.

  ‘Recreation?’ My guardian puffed indignantly and the doctor chuckled. ‘This is a hospital, not a gaol, Mr Grice. We have patients not prisoners.’

  ‘Dear lord.’ My guardian shook his head in disbelief. ‘I have helped put three men and two women in here. I might as well have booked them tours with Thomas Cook.’

  ‘But they are ill,’ I protested.

  ‘They are mad,’ Mr G insisted.

  Dr Whelkhorn’s grizzled eyebrows separated.

  ‘We have suspended the playing of croquet,’ he admitted, ‘since our Supervisor Mr Orange was attacked by the Reverend Dodwell with a mallet, in 1882.’

  Sidney Grice tossed his hair. ‘I have long ruminated on my Great-Aunt Drophsilla’s hypothesis that insanity is contagious.’

  Dr Whelkhorn frowned as he chewed the thought over.

  ‘I have never met your Great-Aunt Drophsilla,’ he declared at last, thereby dismissing her theory. ‘But what a beautiful name. Was she pretty?’

  ‘I have heard her compared,’ my godfather tugged his waistcoat down as if preparing to meet his relative, ‘unfavourably to a fruit bat.’

  Somebody was whistling close by – ‘Lily Bolero’ – and I remembered a military band playing and a young man in uniform, the sun beating on his golden hair and catching his spurs, and his eyes flooded with love
as he kneeled in the dust before me.

  A rosy-cheeked young woman appeared through an open doorway as we approached. She smiled prettily.

  ‘Then you shall die the rather for that,’ she told me conversationally.

  ‘Good old Blossomy.’ Whelkhorn wiggled his strange fingers at her as we passed by. ‘She’s a laugh.’

  For once I joined my guardian in failing to see the joke.

  We stopped at a locked door where a muscular middle-aged attendant was leaning against a wall, humming ‘Jimmy the Fish’ and, on Dr Whelkhorn’s instruction, he got out his keys.

  ‘I should tell you that Angelina has not been herself lately,’ Dr Whelkhorn warned as the warden put a key in the lock. ‘She was always a gentle soul until about a week ago when she became subject to sudden tantrums.’

  ‘Do you know what set her off?’ I enquired.

  Sidney Grice put his left eye to the spy hole.

  ‘It was around the time that Miss Grebe from the next cell along –’ Whelkhorn pointed to another open door – ‘escaped. They used to be friends but they had a fight in this corridor on the last day, a real rough-and-tumble it was, and it unsettled Angelina a great deal.’

  ‘How did she get out?’ I tried to ignore the man with a broom who winked and leered as he passed by us.

  ‘We do not know,’ Whelkhorn confessed.

  ‘Stupid man,’ Mr G muttered, pausing to examine a pencilled message on the wall.

  ‘Are you not worried that somebody else will use the same means?’ I asked and his eyebrows lurched towards each other.

  ‘But,’ the doctor fiddled with his right eyebrow, ‘if nobody else knows how she did it, then nobody else can.’

  ‘I was overly kind with my last remark,’ my godfather said.

  ‘She has never attacked me or any of my colleagues, but I cannot vouch for how she will react to strangers,’ the warden said and pulled open the door.