And Molly laughed. ‘Oh, sir, I thought as you’d have known that. It’s my job.’
‘Then do it.’
Molly looked puzzled. ‘Shall I answer the door as well?’
‘Yes please, Molly,’ I said, ‘but you had better take your apron off first.’
‘Oh, miss,’ she clattered the bowls together, ‘Mr Grice would be very cross if I did that. It’s part of my uninform.’
And off she trotted, calling back up the stairs. ‘He’s bringing a tiger next year, the biggerest and fiererest tiger in the whole wide world and Anfrica.’
‘I wonder who that is?’ I took a potato from the bowl.
‘For once we are of one mind.’ Sidney Grice mashed two of the potatoes with his fork. ‘It is two people, one a female, but the other has not spoken yet. Here comes Molly doing her best visible elephant impression.’
Molly puffed her way back up. ‘That Goodsmell lady and a footman,’ she announced. ‘Oh, he’s ever so handysome. He’s tall and handysome and a bit wet with lovely nose holes, and I would marry him tomorrow if only he would ask but he hasntn’t not yet, even though I gave him my secret tickle.’
My guardian tossed his napkin on the floor. ‘Am I never to enjoy my dinner?’ He pushed his chair back.
‘Not unless you employ a cook who can cook,’ I muttered, glad to see the back of it.
I tried to check my hair in the mantel mirror but Mr G was in front of me, running a hand through his and primping up his orange cravat.
‘Tell them to wait there.’ He crammed his glass eye in and something about the way our reflections overlapped made me shiver. ‘If you are cold you should try eating more,’ he advised and whisked away.
Cherry Mortlock stood in the hall watching us come down. Behind her, with his head bowed, stood Easterly.
‘Oh, Mr Grice, March,’ she cried, before my godfather had reached the bottom step and I was halfway down. ‘You must help me.’
I waited for Sidney Grice to tell her that he had no such duty now, but he went up to Cherry, took both her hands in his and said, ‘Of course, dear Miss Mortlock. Do come through. How remiss of my maid to leave you standing like this and how thoughtful of you to bring your servant.’
Easterly had his outer coat over his shoulders, being unable to put his broken arm through the sleeve.
‘The world is going mad.’ Cherry paced about in great agitation. ‘They have arrested Hesketh now.’ She turned fiercely towards her footman. ‘Tell them what you told me.’
Mr G bent backwards in a limbo dance and peered up into Easterly’s face. Easterly tipped his head up and back and I saw that he was flushed.
‘They cannot charge Mr ’Esketh,’ he announced shakily in his native dialect. ‘’E’s a good, decent bloke. I thought I were being clever but should ’ave known better and I cannot let ’im suffer for my sins.’ Easterly looked at his mistress like a puppy caught chewing her slipper. ‘I am so sorry, Miss Mortlock, for you have shown me nothing but kindness.’ The tears welled in his eyes. ‘But I shall tell the police exactly what I told you and, on my mother’s grave, it is God’s truth. ’Esketh did not do it.’ He swallowed and had two attempts before he blurted out, ‘God ’elp me, Mr Grice, but I did it. I am the guilty man.’
60
✥
Ghosts in the Window
I DO NOT think I have been so taken aback by a confession before. I was well aware, as Sidney Grice never tired of telling me, that you cannot make judgements upon your impressions of people, but Easterly had struck me as such a gentle, even naive, man with his touchingly misjudged attempts to speak like a toff.
‘Stand still.’ The detective walked round the footman, inspecting him from every angle to end up in front of him again. ‘And not a single superfluous glottal fricative, though six were struck down dead before they quit your lingual articulator.’ He took another trip round the bewildered footman, in the other direction.
‘Hi am sorry, sir,’ Easterly sobbed, ‘but Hi do not know what you mean.’
‘When I wish you to know what I mean I shall inform you. Hold your tongue.’
Easterly folded in on himself and Mr G began to circumnavigate the servant again, but broke off for the window, wrenching the drapes as far apart as his reach allowed and standing holding on to them, arms horizontal, facing his street.
‘My next three enquiries are destined exclusively for the sublime Miss Mortlock’s attention.’ Shadows swept by beyond his spectral image in the glass. ‘First, who arrested your decorous valet, Austin Hesketh? I should prefer a one-word answer.’
‘Inspector Quigley,’ she replied.
‘A gallant effort,’ he commended her, ‘though one hundred per cent over budget. Let us make another attempt. On whose instigation?’
‘Cochran’s. I have dispensed with his services.’
My guardian sighed, ‘Sevenfold that time. I suspect, elegant Miss Charity Mortlock, that you are not really trying. However, I shall fall for your feminine wile and allow you to divert me from my third question by supplanting it temporarily with a supplement. Who are you hoping to employ now? You have dismissed the two most expensive detectives in London, though one of them does not merit that soubriquet – far be it from me to say which.’
‘I should like to re-engage your services, Mr Grice,’ Cherry said meekly, ‘please.’
‘We shall discuss that over a beverage presently,’ my godfather promised, ‘though I feel obliged to warn you that I find the prospect attractive. I do not like to leave cases unsolved. It makes my elbows itch. However, let us rejoin the flow of my interrogation: on what charge was Hesketh arrested? And you may be as profligate as you like in your response to that.’
‘Murder,’ Cherry said simply.
‘A rather more urgent enquiry springs to mind,’ Sidney Grice announced in the same leisurely tone. ‘Does one or both of you intend to prevent Mr Nutter from concussing himself on my almost circular rosewood table?’
I had been so intent on the ghosts in the window that I did not notice how pallid Easterly had become. He swayed back and took two steps forward. Cherry and I rushed and just managed to take hold of him on either side before his legs buckled, by which time Sidney Grice was behind him, hands under Easterly’s armpits and gently lowering the unconscious footman to lie upon the floor.
Easterly’s skin was clammy. I brushed aside Cherry’s suggestion that we sat him up and went to my handbag for my little blue bottle of sal volatile, taking off the stopper to waft the ammonia vapour under his nostrils, and could not imagine what Molly had found so irresistible about them.
‘It is just a simple faint,’ I diagnosed.
His pulse was slow and thready and his pupils dilated, though they responded to light when I opened them.
Easterly’s eyelids flickered and he tried to pull away with an incoherent word, but I held on to him and the bottle.
‘Murder?’ He opened his eyes. ‘I didn’t know ’e was arrested for that.’
61
✥
Brandy, Gin and Naval Slang
IT DID NOT take long for Easterly to regain consciousness, though he was still confused and shaky when we sat him in a chair. I opened the sideboard and poured him a brandy, something Sidney Grice only ever permitted as a recuperative measure.
‘Are you feeling lightheaded?’ I asked Cherry.
‘I am a bit,’ she admitted.
‘So am I.’ I poured two more glasses. ‘Not my favourite tipple but better than nothing.’
We all had a restorative drink.
‘What exactly were you confessing to?’ I gave Easterly a large tot more.
‘Well, the last Hi heard was Mr Cochran in the front sitting room accusing Hesketh hov stealing the gin because he caught him topping it up with water. Then he ordered me to wait downstairs and shut the door and we heard people coming and going and then Hi was called up and Mr Cochran said Hi had better tell my mistress what was happening, and Hinspector Quigley and
two constables was taking Hesketh away hin handcuffs.’
‘You silly fool, Easterly,’ Cherry scolded in a futile attempt to hide her relief. ‘Easterly sent me a telegram and I went straight to Gethsemane and told Cochran to sling his hook.’
‘What hook?’ my guardian asked.
‘It is a naval expression,’ I explained. ‘It means to weigh anchor and go away.’
‘I was not aware that Charlatan was a nautical man,’ Mr G pondered.
Cherry shook her head in disbelief. ‘I was about to rush straight to the police station when Easterly made his confession, so I thought there was only one man who could sort this out, the eccentric but ingenious Mr Sidney Grice.’
Mr G absorbed this information. ‘My terms remain unaltered and inalterable.’
‘And so do mine.’
Cherry held out her hand and Sidney Grice looked at it.
‘You have well-proportioned fingers.’
‘I meant one man and one woman,’ Cherry added, much too late to make me feel that I was anything but an unornamental appendage.
‘So was Hesketh stealing drinks?’ I enquired from the outskirts of their lives.
‘He was trying to cover up for me,’ Easterly admitted. ‘Hi am a bit too fond hov the liquid. Hesketh was beginning to notice and Hi tried to cut down, but it was too tempting with it sitting on display all the time. Hesketh had words with me and threatened to tell Mr Mortlock, but Hi knew he never would.’ Easterly held out his glass hopefully, but I pretended to misunderstand and took it off him. We did not need an inebriated footman to add to our problems. ‘Hi was feeling a bit nervy today with Mr Cochran snuffling about so Hi had a couple of stiff ones to steady my nerve. Hesketh was hiding the hevidence.’ He poked a pen handle under his plaster.
‘Green flag,’ Sidney Grice instructed me. ‘My client and I shall take the first cab. You and this pleasant but dull-witted servant will take the next.’
‘I ’opes we ’as the brains a’tween us to do that, sir.’ I mock-West-Countried.
‘Indeed.’ Sidney Grice hurried to the bell pull to order his tea.
62
✥
The Price of Ink
I COULD HEAR raised voices as I raced up the corridor.
‘This is scraping the scrapings of a scraped barrel even by your so-called standards,’ Sidney Grice was raging at Inspector Quigley when I arrived with Easterly at my heels.
‘Did your mother never teach you to knock?’ Quigley asked calmly.
He was sitting astride a chair, his arms resting on the back, about six feet away from Hesketh, who sat bolt upright facing away from us. Quigley liked to place his prisoners so that they could not see who had entered or quit the room.
‘At least I have a mother,’ Mr G stormed. ‘It is difficult to imagine that you even came from one.’
I paused to appreciate his quip, took in my surroundings, and said, ‘I understood from Inspector Pound that Superintendent Loch had issued instructions for all interviews to be conducted in the presence of at least two officers.’
This regulation was introduced following a complaint from a Member of Parliament about his son’s treatment at Inspector Quigley’s hands.
‘Section twenty-seven, subsection nine, paragraph eight, line three and a half,’ Quigley sneered.
‘We shall see how amused Loch is at your levity,’ my guardian growled.
The inspector rocked back. I was hoping he would forget that there was no support behind him but, disappointingly, he did not.
‘For your information,’ Quigley rocked forwards, ‘the entire interview was conducted in the presence of two constables – Harris and Bannister. It was only after they left that the prisoner became violent and had to be restrained.’
‘I have friends in high places,’ Cherry blustered. This was news to me and probably to her. ‘And I am telling you now, Inspector Quigley, this interview is at an end.’
‘Not so.’ Quigley picked at his inadequate beard. ‘The interview finished over half an hour ago.’
‘Good, then we can all go home and, if you wish to interview Mr Hesketh again, you can get a warrant and he can be questioned in the presence of my solicitor.’
‘Too late for any of that nonsense,’ Quigley jeered. ‘He has already confessed.’
I walked round Quigley – who was leaning so far back on two legs of his chair that it took every fibre of my willpower not to kick it from under him – and round the back of the desk.
‘Is that true, Hesketh?’ I asked as I stopped in front of him. ‘Bloody hell.’
Hesketh’s left eye was swollen and bruised all around, his nose was bleeding and his upper lip was puffy and split. His right ear was gouged, presumably by Quigley’s embossed ring from behind.
I rounded on the inspector. ‘I wish to God Mr Grice had let Molly kill you. Not a jury in the land would have convicted her.’
‘He’s a big man.’ Quigley forced an unconvincing smirk. ‘He took some restraining.’
‘I did confess, Miss Middleton,’ Hesketh admitted indistinctly, ‘but only to stealing the gin.’
‘But we know it was Easterly,’ I told him. ‘He has admitted it.’
I did not like the look of Hesketh’s eyeball. It was distorted and I was worried that, if it was haemorrhaging inside, he might lose his sight.
‘Hit’s true, Mr Hesketh,’ Easterly said.
‘Then this was all for nothing.’ Hesketh felt an upper incisor gingerly. ‘I am sorry, Miss Charity, I hoped that you would not dismiss me after so many years of service but, with Easterly having had warnings before, I was not sure his chances were as good.’
‘Oh, Hesketh,’ Cherry said, ‘as you well know, I used to steal Papa’s sherry myself. Did you really think I would be so harsh?’
Hesketh flopped his great hands. ‘The staff are all worried you will be cutting down on our numbers.’
‘You and I will speak to them all first thing in the morning,’ Cherry promised.
‘He ain’t going nowhere except the magistrate’s court in the morning,’ Quigley vowed. ‘You don’t walk off with this one so easily.’
‘Have I understood this correctly?’ I asked. ‘You are charging this man with murder on the grounds that he confessed to helping himself to his employer’s gin?’
‘That’s about the size of it.’ Quigley rocked forwards on his chair. ‘Coupled with two witnesses Mr Cochran will produce, who heard Nathan Mortlock saying that he wanted to sack Hesketh for his thievery but was so frightened Hesketh meant him harm that he had taken to locking himself in his room.’
‘That is a lie,’ Hesketh asserted furiously. ‘Mr Nathan would have trusted me with his life. He asked me to shave him every morning. He was like a son…’ The valet’s voice trailed away in emotion.
‘Hesketh played with my father when my father was a boy,’ Cherry protested. ‘He gave him rides on his back, as he did with me.’
Hesketh lightly cradled his face and began to shake.
‘How cosy.’ Quigley rocked the chair back with a bang and jumped up. ‘But evidence is evidence.’
‘But, as Mr Cochran has demonstrated many a time, a witness is not necessarily a witness.’ Sidney Grice clapped his hands. ‘I am bored with this now. If you persist with this absurdness, there are three people in this room who will swear that they saw you make an unprovoked attack upon this prisoner. I never tell lies but Miss Middleton is an accomplished prevaricator, Easterly Nutter has the face and manner of a cherub and who could not believe the enchanting, bereaved and beautiful Miss Mortlock in the witness box. Some women cannot wear black but she carries it off splendidly, do you not agree?’
Quigley kicked his chair aside. ‘I can still get him for theft. He made an unforced confession in the presence of two other officers.’
‘That is true,’ Hesketh conceded, wiggling the tooth experimentally.
‘Is this the confession?’ I asked and was about to pick it up when the inspector slapped a
hand over it. ‘What colour ink is that?’
‘Predominantly sooty,’ Sidney Grice decided, ‘though I should say there is more than a tint of Prussian blue in it.’
I picked up the inkwell and sniffed the contents. ‘And quite runny.’ I upended it over the back of the inspector’s hand. ‘Oh, silly, silly me.’
Quigley jumped back and the ink flowed over the confession.
‘Damn it, you will pay for this, girl,’ he swore, struggling to get a handkerchief out of his right trouser pocket with his left hand.
‘What does regulation ink cost these days?’ I enquired and placed two pennies carefully on a dry area of desk. ‘I think that should cover it.’
63
✥
Gypsy James and the Gentle Fist
ON THE WAY out we saw Inspector Pound coming in.
‘The forces are gathering against Quigley.’ He stepped over an old woman’s bundle of bedding. ‘And he knows it but that only makes him the more dangerous. He will do anything for results now.’
The woman was attacking a wall with her fists, knees and bare feet, while Perkins watched in amusement.
‘A cornered rat,’ Cherry said, and I saw the way Pound’s eyes dilated at the sight of her.
‘Slam-bricking scrumble,’ the woman cursed cryptically.
‘You could have flattened that pipsqueak, Mr Hesketh,’ Easterly conjectured and Hesketh managed a crooked smile.
‘Don’t think it didn’t occur to me when I heard my cheekbone crack.’
‘I am glad you did not,’ Cherry said. ‘A dozen constables would have come to his aid and you would be facing very serious charges then.’
‘I suspect that many would have turned a deaf ear to his calls for help.’ Mr G put on his gloves.
‘When I was a youngster I was quite handy with my fists,’ Hesketh admitted. ‘I did a round with Gypsy James Mace at a fair in Lambeth once and even knocked him down, but he got right back up and put me straight to sleep.’ Hesketh enjoyed the memory before admitting, ‘That was before he became famous.’
The Secrets of Gaslight Lane Page 28
