The Secrets of Gaslight Lane

by M. R. C. Kasasian

  I was halfway to sitting down when I remembered I did not have a chair behind me. I stood up.

  ‘An ancient Chinese exercise,’ I pretended. ‘Did you see him after the funeral?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Were his clothes expensive or cheap, old or new?’ Mr G took his hat off the stand with a scowl. ‘And do not pretend you did not notice. You feed your greed by assessing people’s fiscal worth and adjusting your accounts accordingly.’

  ‘Middling,’ the skilled assessor decided.

  ‘What sort of accent did he have?’ I asked.

  ‘Foreign,’ Mr Snushall reminisced. ‘He said his words all like I ’ear you ’aves zuh body off a man.’

  Sidney Grice’s face was inscrutable.

  ‘Exactly like that? And I mean exactly? You would stake a man’s life on it?’

  ‘I am a mimic without equal,’ Mr Snushall avowed proudly. ‘I often imitate clients behind their backs.’

  ‘Imitate Mr Grice,’ I challenged.

  ‘Exactly like that? And I mean exactly? You would stake a man’s life on it?’ Mr Snushall recited and, though it was not uncanny, it was astonishingly true to life.

  ‘That will be all for today.’ Mr G swept his hat off the rack.

  ‘That will be all for today.’ Snushall’s miming was spot on that time, including my godfather’s toss of the head, and I could not help but laugh.

  ‘We have finished that game.’ Sidney Grice flopped his hat on and pulled down the brim frigidly. ‘Shall I demonstrate how my cane operates?’

  ‘No need for that.’ The droplets sprang into pools, spreading and merging until the undertaker looked as if he had just rinsed his face.

  ‘Yes, please,’ I urged.

  Sidney Grice put his cane to his shoulder and took careful aim.

  ‘I meant no harm by my imitation, sir, only the young lady instructed me to.’ Crepolius Snushall ducked and fell awkwardly behind his desk.

  My guardian pressed a button in the handle and there was a distinct click.

  ‘Mother!’ the undertaker cried, almost drowning out the sound of ‘Oh, for the Wings of a Dove’.

  ‘I have died,’ Mr Snushall sobbed.

  Sidney Grice lowered his cane and twisted the handle, and the tune changed.

  ‘I told you it confused people,’ he said as he crossed the room and flicked up the blind.

  It was raining heavily outside, but we stepped out smartly to the chimes of Mendelssohn’s ‘Wedding March’.

  58

  ✥

  Monkeys, Cats and Dragons

  GORDON STREET WAS blocked and, looking along it, the traffic on Euston Road was at a standstill too. The music box wound down.

  ‘Why do we not walk?’ I suggested. ‘It will do us good to stretch our legs.’

  Sidney Grice’s mouth looked as if he had popped a rotten oyster in it.

  ‘Men have legs,’ he informed me. ‘Ladies, when they are obliged to refer to them, have extremities.’

  We skipped on to the road, the gutter swirling with brown water and clogged with droppings. The salt man’s mare tried to chew my hat, but I tapped it on the nose with the pair of gloves I carried at my guardian’s insistence but hated wearing.

  ‘Why were you surprised when I told Sir William that Daniel Filbert was the pickpocket?’ I shouted above the wail of a hurdy-gurdy.

  An occupied hansom rolled back, crushing the tip of my left boot but just missing the extremity of my extremity.

  ‘Watch where you are going,’ Mr G castigated both the cabby and me, and he waited until we were on the other side before continuing the conversation. ‘Because I have few reasons to suspect that he was.’

  ‘But he was in possession of the stolen watch and we know he was short of money because Nathan paid his fine,’ I reasoned with decreasing confidence.

  ‘The policeman who returned the watch to Nathan Mortlock was in possession of it and ill-paid.’ Sidney Grice sidestepped, snarling, ‘Out of my way,’ at a girl who held a tray of ribbons.

  ‘I take your point,’ I conceded.

  ‘They ain’t points, they’s ribbons,’ the girl explained. ‘Nice yeller one to brighten up yer ’air, miss?’ She held a pretty daffodil length out enticingly and I gave her a penny.

  ‘What on earth are you going to do with…’ Sidney Grice turned back. ‘How much for that pink one?’

  ‘Penny a yard.’ The girl smiled appealingly. She had nice white teeth.

  ‘How much for the reel?’

  ‘There’s eight yards.’ She sucked her thumb briefly. ‘So that’s a shillin’s wurf.’

  ‘As even you, ragged, inarticulate and ill-educated as you are must know, there are twelve pennies in a shilling.’ Mr G picked it up. ‘And I doubt there are more than seven yards and four inches here.’

  ‘It stritches longer,’ she told him, ‘and you’re gettin’ the reel for free.’

  ‘If I had the rest of the day I could argue that out with you.’ A shilling appeared between his fingers. ‘My logic would be irrefutable but still I doubt that I should win.’ He paid her the coin and pocketed his purchase.

  ‘I would have thought blue was more your colour,’ I teased.

  ‘The colour of the material is immaterial.’

  We shouldered our way past the barrel organist, churning out a barely recognizable rendition of ‘Moonlight Mary the Girl from Tipperary’ while his monkey bit a little boy in a sailor suit who had tried to stroke its tail.

  ‘’E’s jest bein’ friendly,’ the grinder told a distraught mother as the child screamed and clutched at his bloodied fingers.

  ‘Dangerous animals, children,’ Sidney Grice commented, stepping over a beggar lying sprawled on the pavement and waving imperiously at an unoccupied cab.

  ‘The Cat and Dragon,’ he directed the driver as he climbed aboard.

  *

  ‘This is a public house,’ Sidney Grice disclosed, though he had taken me in a few before. ‘Keep a tight hold of your absurd handbag and a tight control of your behaviour, by which I mean no flirtatiousness with the customers.’

  ‘I have never flirted with a stranger in my life,’ I retorted, outraged and suppressing a few embarrassing memories.

  ‘You bought one a drink in the Duke of Marlborough.’ He pushed open the door.

  ‘That was Sir Randolph Cosmo Napier.’ I stepped smartly through the door as he let it swing after him. ‘Who turned out to be an important witness,’ I told his back.

  Sidney Grice surveyed his surroundings, cane raised as if prepared to fight a duel but, apart from the publican, the saloon was empty. It was quite a small pub, only five tables and about three times as many chairs, but it was clean and had a welcoming air. The barman looked up, an oak tree of a man, tall and broad and solid.

  ‘Good afternoon, miss,’ he greeted me. ‘A bit earlier today.’ He put a great paw to the gin bottle. ‘And Mr Grice, I wasn’t expecting you in here, sir.’

  Mr G’s masseter muscles bunched. ‘I was not aware that this was yet another of your haunts.’

  ‘I’m terribly sorry, miss. I mistook you for a countess who frequents this establishment,’ the barman retracted, but we both knew the damage was done.

  ‘You might as well pour me one, Jim.’ I rested my bustle on a stool.

  ‘Why did you not tell me this when Pound mentioned Constable Dutton’s name?’ My guardian grasped the brass rail with his left hand.

  ‘I only know Jim as Jim.’

  ‘And for you, sir?’

  ‘What do you have that is not poisoned with ethanol?’

  ‘Sherry,’ Jim replied. His hair was shaved in the Prussian way that became fashionable after Waterloo but was now more associated with an attempt to get rid of lice.

  ‘I knew you were an ex-policeman.’ I raised my glass. ‘But I have never heard you called Mutton.’

  ‘The first man that does will be straight out the door. I ’ate that name.’ Jim recorked the bottle.

>   ‘Do you have any orange squash?’

  ‘Three species of beer; gin, whisky, rum, sherry, port,’ Jim Dutton listed. ‘Oh, and we have lemonade for ladies what like a port and lemon.’

  ‘I will have a lemonade.’

  Jim polished a half-pint glass and filled it from a stone jar with a murky off-yellow liquid. ‘Go easy, it’s got an ’ell of a punch.’

  ‘And one for yourself, Jim,’ I offered when it became obvious that Mr G would not.

  ‘Don’t mind if I do.’ Jim pulled himself a pint.

  He and I raised our glasses but Sidney Grice left his on the counter.

  ‘So what’s George Pound been sayin’ ’bout me?’ Jim smacked his lips in enjoyment of his own bitter.

  ‘That you arrested Mortlock and Filbert the night before the Garstang murders,’ I said.

  ‘Still not solved that?’ Jim eyed Mr G over the rim of his pewter tankard.

  ‘I have never been asked to,’ my godfather replied starchily.

  ‘I ’eard about Mortlock,’ Jim commiserated, as if the loss were ours. ‘Sounds like a rum affair.’

  Mr G rotated his glass ninety degrees, though it looked the same from every angle to me. ‘I cannot bring myself to thank you for your professional insight,’ he muttered.

  ‘Never made it to those politeness classes, did you?’ Jim responded.

  ‘Which ones were they?’ Mr G asked with interest. ‘I generally take every opportunity to improve myself.’

  ‘I think Jim means—’ I began.

  ‘I know what ex-Police Constable James Mary Dutton means,’ my guardian burst out. ‘He means that I missed an opportunity for education about which I was never even notified. Give me the dates and I shall investigate this further.’

  Dutton rolled his eyes.

  ‘Mary?’ I queried.

  ‘It was meant to be Murray.’ I swear that the constable blushed. ‘But the registrar was deaf or daft or both, and my parents would have had to go to court to change it.’ He quaffed his beer while Mr G sniffed his drink suspiciously.

  ‘So what can I do for you, Mr Grice?’

  ‘You could give me a cleaner glass.’ He replaced it on the bar.

  ‘Are you going to drink it if he does?’ I asked.

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘Then there is no point in him doing so,’ I pointed out.

  ‘I shall not pay for—’

  ‘My treat,’ I said. ‘Do you remember that night?’

  ‘As if it was yesterday,’ Jim replied, ignoring Mr G’s mutterings of were yesterday, ‘but only because of events the next day. Probably saved young Nathan’s life taking him into custody, not that I got any thanks for it.’

  ‘Where and why did you arrest him?’ Mr G pushed his lemonade away.

  ‘Outside the Blue Witch, drunk and disorderly.’ Jim rubbed some froth from his mouth with the back of his hand.

  ‘I know the charge.’ My guardian produced a red striped handkerchief. ‘But there must have been many an inebriate in that area at the time. What attracted you to this pair?’

  ‘The Right Honourable Sir Nicholas Canning-White,’ Jim Dutton answered simply. ‘Minister for something important.’

  ‘Almost every governmental department you could think of and a great many you could not,’ Sidney Grice filled in. ‘The man is such an ass, but with such powerful connections that they never sack him but move him on.’

  ‘’E and a friend were taking the air—’

  ‘Nobody takes the air in Percy Street. There is not any to take,’ my guardian declared.

  ‘Where was I?’ Jim had a drink to remind himself. ‘Oh yeah, taking air – or whatever it was – when Mortlock attacked Sir Nicholas, grabbing ’im by the throat and swearing that Sir Nicholas had stolen his clock, and trying to search ’im. Needless to say the minister resisted; ’is friend tried to drag Mortlock away. Filbert came out of the White Lady a bit later, having mislaid ’is coat, saw two men laying into ’is pal and launched himself into them. I pulled ’em apart and I’d ’ave been ’appy to send ’em on their ways. There was no real ’arm, none, though Filbert got a nice shiner.’

  ‘He still has,’ I said.

  Jim was taken aback. ‘Must ’ave ’ealed in ten year. Same again?’

  ‘Just a small one.’ I slid my glass over, but Jim only ever poured one size and that was large – one of the attractions of the place for me.

  Sidney Grice viewed my actions sourly but I decided that, if I was to be reprimanded, I would face it better with another drink inside me and it would take a good few to match that whisky he had made me drink.

  ‘Daniel Filbert died very shortly after he was released,’ I told Jim Dutton as he accepted my invitation to join me. ‘He still had paint from his cell under his nails.’

  ‘Your powers of observation knock mine into a cocked hat.’ Mr G tucked his handkerchief away and left me puzzled as to why he had brought it out in the first place. ‘For I only noted the presence of decorative pigments under the plate of one digit, his sinister forefinger.’

  ‘Sinister?’ Jim sloshed his beer down his arm but did not appear to notice.

  ‘He means left,’ I interpreted. ‘So why did you not let them go?’

  ‘I would’ve but Sir Nick was ’avin’ none of that. He wanted them booked and cooked and ’e was the big smell, so booked and cooked they ’ad to be.’

  ‘Did they put up a fight with you?’ I asked.

  Sidney Grice brought out his pince-nez and examined the grease marks on the brass pole.

  ‘Quiet as cushions they was at first.’ Jim moped his sleeve with a towel. ‘Then we saw two blokes running off – nuffink unusual in that when you wear my uniform – but Mortlock swore blind they ’ad bumped into ’im in the pub, and ’e shouted they must ’ave been the lifters. But we’d never ’ave got them in those alleys with the locals all waitin’ to accidently trip me up or block the way, and I didn’t know if it was just a ruse to let ’im go, so I ’eld on to ’em both.’

  Jim Dutton took a long draught.

  ‘Who took them to Marylebone?’ Mr G blew a dead fly along the bar top towards me.

  ‘Me.’ Jim was not the size of a man with whom you could easily argue. His hands made fists the size of footballs when he pulled on a pump handle or picked up a glass, and I would not want to make contact with them in an argument. ‘They weren’t no trouble after I’d banged their ’eads together a couple of times.’

  I blew the fly back but it skidded off the bar into a slop bucket.

  ‘And did you see them in court the next morning?’ Sidney Grice pushed an ashtray away with his cane.

  ‘I was called to give evidence,’ Jim confirmed. ‘My super didn’t want Sir Nick on ’is back if they was let off but, in the end, they pleaded guilty anyway.’

  ‘And they were definitely the same men? You would swear to it?’ Mr G’s eye drifted out as if he were signalling to somebody behind me.

  ‘Not a crud of doubt abart it.’

  ‘Ladies.’ My guardian slid his eye inwards but it floated back again.

  ‘It was this particular lady what taught me the word.’ Jim finished his drink and I mine.

  ‘Put it on my slate, Jim.’ I gave up my half perch on the stool.

  ‘Getting a bit big,’ he warned.

  ‘I shall settle next week,’ I promised.

  My godfather pulled his upper eyelid down. ‘What depths you have sunk to.’

  ‘You cannot sink to a level you have always been at.’ I pulled my cloak around me and opened the door.

  Mr G’s cane clicked as he came towards me. He tried to turn it off but the clockwork whirred and the music plinked out – ‘Oh, for the Wings’ again.

  ‘Oh, I like that one,’ Jim said. ‘Sumfink to do wiv pigeons, isn’t it?’

  59

  ✥

  Calvary Swords and Limbo

  DINNER WAS INEDIBLE and I was glad I had a store of chocolate in my bedroom.

 
; ‘How did you know that there was an elephant there if you could not see it?’ I asked as Molly deposited a bowl in front of me.

  Sidney Grice threw up his hands and returned to his drawings for a tunnel to transport worthless people’s bodies far out to sea to be consumed by the fishes. He was occupied in designing sealed double doors and pumps to enable the corpses to be ejected without causing flooding. This would save hundreds of acres of valuable land for worthwhile people to build houses or business, he calculated.

  ‘All these six or half a dozen men came along leading it with ropes.’ She tipped a bowl, dribbling the dregs down her apron. ‘You could see the collar bobbing up and down in the air like a tea cosy and the leg irons moving with the legs. Oh, it was marvelsome.’

  ‘It was not possible that the ropes had wires through them?’ I suggested.

  Molly’s mouth fell. ‘Oh, I never even thought of that. You must be right, miss. It was not possible that the ropes had wires through them and after they marched it about and about, somebody stupid asked why the grass wasntn’t not getting bent under it and the man with the big solid gold hat had to explainate that elephants is very light on their paws. Then some other peoples started being stupid and saying it was a swinzle, so the man with the big solid gold hat fed the elephant an apple, only it fell accidently down the man’s sleeve and people started throwing things and they went straight through, but the man explainated that elephants is very good at ducking and the elephant was getting cross and might charge them at any minute, and it had horns – no I mean rusks – the size of calvary swords so he was going to take it away to save lives, so they turned it about and it made off through the undergrown and all the bushes was bending and shaking like Mrs O’Gonnery when she needs a brandy, and you could see that was real because there was men hiding in the undergrown with strings trying to hold the bushes still. Oh,’ Molly clutched a dirty bowl to her stomach, ‘it was marvelastical.’ She panted for breath. ‘Oh, who’s that at the door?’

  Her employer was sketching busily. ‘Whose job is it to find out?’