The Secrets of Gaslight Lane

by M. R. C. Kasasian

  ‘Nathan Mortlock,’ I waited for the name to sink in, ‘was a patient of yours.’

  Critchely reeled back, as if I had landed that punch after all and followed it with a jab to the solar plexus.

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘He did.’ I shadowed him. ‘In his ledgers.’

  ‘What of it?’ Dr Critchely adopted a hunted expression. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Looking through your confidential patients’ records,’ Sidney Grice told him from across the room. ‘And please do not be so ridiculous as to tell me I cannot.’

  ‘You are wasting your time,’ the doctor told him. ‘He is no longer in those files.’

  ‘Goodness, I had no idea that the minister of war was a patient of yours,’ my godfather exclaimed. ‘Is his mother aware that he harbours such feelings for her?’

  ‘Put that back.’ Ottorley Critchely rushed towards him.

  ‘Gracious, he is of the opinion that his mother reciprocates and, if I know—’

  Critchely leaped across and rammed the drawer shut just as Mr G whipped his fingers away.

  ‘Get out.’ Critchley screwed himself up and grabbed the nearest thing to hand.

  ‘I fear we have made an unfavourable impression upon you, Dr Critchely,’ I said, so sweetly that he lowered the ebony rule he had in his fist and replied, ‘I fear you are correct, Miss Middleton.’

  ‘What if we start again?’ I suggested.

  ‘With that tussle at the door?’ Critchely’s face lit up at the prospect.

  ‘Perhaps not this time,’ I demurred.

  ‘With me saying I have taken an intense dislike to him?’ my godfather suggested hopefully.

  ‘Just for once, why do we not try doing it my way?’ I proposed. ‘Politely.’

  ‘What a ridiculous idea,’ Sidney Grice declared. ‘But – ever the gallant gentleman – I shall, as oft, accede to your wish.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Grice.’ Dr Critchely put the rule down to shake his hand and guide us into a small sitting room which also served as a study, and which managed to be grey without actually being grey.

  ‘What can you tell us about Mr Nathan Mortlock?’ I settled into the larger of the two leather armchairs. No woman would have arranged them so that they were not round anything – a table or a fireplace, for instance.

  ‘Nothing.’ The gaslight on Dr Critchely’s face cast it into a gibbous moon, cratered and jaundiced in complexion. ‘For I am constrained by the Hippocratic oath from revealing any details of his consultations with me.’ He took the other armchair.

  Sidney Grice’s glass eye glinted with malicious intent.

  ‘If you think you can shelter—’

  ‘You promised,’ I reminded him sternly.

  ‘The fog must have seeped into my brain.’

  ‘I am sure you do not need me, Doctor,’ I continued pleasantly, ‘to remind you that the duty of confidentiality dies with the patient, especially when his records are required as part of a criminal investigation.’

  Critchely pulled on the fingers of his left hand one by one as he spoke. ‘And I am sure you do not require me to refresh your weak, girlish memory with the fact that you are not policemen.’ Apparently satisfied that the fingers were firmly attached, he gave his attention to the other hand.

  ‘If you think…’ Mr G began again, but silenced himself this time and settled for pacing up and down, inspecting certificates and testimonials on the walls.

  ‘Miss Mortlock is most anxious that we proceed with this matter,’ I urged gently.

  ‘If she were to instruct me in writing, perhaps I might be of more assistance,’ Dr Critchely reflected.

  ‘We have no time for that twaddle.’ My guardian fumed and glared at me. ‘I did not promise to be mute.’

  ‘Are you familiar with the journalist, Mr Trafalgar Trumpington?’ I shifted in my seat and the leather cracked like the boards of a ship.

  ‘That awful scoundrel who exposed Mrs Eagleby-Wisedom’s past as a harpoonist?’

  I did not tell him that Traf, as he liked to be known, also tried to besmirch my reputation.

  ‘The correct term is harpooneress,’ Mr G asserted, standing back to check if he had straightened the portrait of a military man to his satisfaction, and I remembered Mrs Emmett trying to spear an onion just before she died.

  ‘I should hate Mr Trumpington to get the idea that you were withholding information that would help Miss Mortlock to apprehend her father’s murderer.’ I creaked noisily.

  Sidney Grice lifted the portrait off the wall.

  ‘But where would he get that idea?’ the doctor asked blankly.

  My guardian untied the cord.

  ‘He has proved disconcertingly ingenious in extracting information from me in the past,’ I confessed.

  Critchely chewed that information over.

  ‘And if the murderer were to strike again,’ I drove the point home, ‘especially if his victim were the sweet and innocent Miss Charity Mortlock herself, I would not put it past that wretch to depict you as having harboured him or even been an accomplice.’

  Sidney Grice shortened and retied the cord.

  The doctor made his mind up. ‘I shall tell you what I can.’ He got up and went to a small filing cabinet beside his desk.

  ‘Miss Mortlock is sweet,’ Mr G concurred after much consideration, ‘but whether she is innocent remains to be established.’

  Mr G rehung the picture and surveyed his work with satisfaction.

  ‘Here we are.’ Critchely lifted something out.

  ‘Where else could we be?’ My guardian nipped to the doctor’s chair but only to look cursorily under the cushion, letting it drop like an unclean thing.

  Dr Critchely returned with a cardboard box the size of a beer crate and sat back with it on his knees. ‘These are the records of my deceased patients.’

  ‘You have disappointingly few of them,’ Sidney Grice commented.

  ‘Forty-eight.’ The doctor lifted a number of brown envelopes before withdrawing the one he wanted. ‘Nathan Mortlock.’ He pulled out a thick sheaf of papers. ‘I can tell you the dates I saw him.’

  ‘We already know them, fool,’ my guardian snarled. ‘If that is all you are willing to divulge, you might as well put those notes away.’

  ‘Very well.’ Critchely huffed and stuffed them back.

  ‘Come, Miss Middleton,’ Mr G rapped. He swung his cane; there was a click and the end shot out again, this time punching into the box and sending it flying off the doctor’s lap, scattering its contents over the floor.

  ‘You maniac,’ Dr Critchely yelled. ‘You could have killed me.’

  ‘That thought did occur to me,’ Sidney Grice said regretfully and, laying his cane down, went round the chair to pick the records up.

  ‘Leave them alone,’ Critchely shouted. ‘You have done enough damage already.’

  ‘Some men might say too much,’ my guardian chatted, then sprang up and backwards, knocking into an ornamental pedestal. The column wobbled and almost recovered, but somehow Mr G caught it with his arm and a blue vase flew off, shattering on the hearth.

  ‘That was certainly too much,’ I said as the doctor leaped up to see if it were salvageable.

  Sidney Grice’s foot twitched and I saw a shape skid under the chair, emerging the other side as an envelope. I did not need to read the name printed on it.

  ‘Can I help?’ I wandered over.

  ‘No, you cannot.’ Critchely was trying to fit two pieces together and, from the way he was setting about it, I guessed that he had never been much good at jigsaw puzzles.

  I fell to my knees. ‘Your floor is very slippery,’ I complained. ‘Small wonder you have had forty-eight patients die in this very room.’

  ‘They did not die in here,’ Dr Critchely bawled. ‘Well, only two of them and they were twins.’

  ‘Well, that is all right then,’ I riposted.

  ‘Miss Mortlock will reimburse you for the cost of repl
acing that garish miscreation,’ Mr G promised as I tried to cram the notes into my handbag, but the envelope was jutting out of the top. I took it out but it was too thick to fold.

  ‘Your satchel,’ I mouthed.

  ‘Is full,’ he replied loudly.

  ‘That was an irreplaceable Ming vase,’ Critchely wailed.

  ‘Made in Staffordshire,’ my godfather corrected him, ‘by Turner and Bantam. The glaze is hopeless; it is completely the wrong blue and, now that I have divided it for you, you may see the poor quality of pottery, fired at much too high a temperature. I am relieved that it did not explode under the weight of its own shoddiness and kill yet another of your patients.’

  ‘Just get out, the pair of you,’ Dr Critchely shrieked. ‘What are you doing, girl?’

  I was stuffing my handbag under my cape.

  ‘Nothing.’ I started guiltily and something repulsive slithered over the doctor’s lips. I think it was a smile.

  ‘You are imagining yourself bearing my child, aren’t you?’ he leered.

  ‘Not until this moment.’ A clammy finger crawled down my mind.

  ‘Lots of my female patients do that and some of them are even uglier than you.’ The loathsome thing migrated into his eyes as they flickered over me. ‘Why not come back without this man and we can discus it more… comfortably?’

  And for the first time, when it came to intimate matters, I felt as nauseated as Sidney Grice looked.

  And, had I not hustled him away, I believe that the personal detective might have broken something else – the neurological doctor’s jaw.

  71

  ✥

  The First State

  SIDNEY GRICE SKIMMED through the notes.

  ‘We have committed a criminal offence,’ I declared.

  In the excitement of the moment it had felt like a prank, but in calmer reflection, I realized that what we had done was theft.

  ‘Not so.’ Mr G flattened the sugar with the back of his spoon. Any untidiness was inclined to distract him. ‘The act of gathering illegal material for the purposes of an investigation constitutes the upholding rather than a flouting of the law.’

  He separated the top half dozen sheets.

  ‘In what way illegal?’

  ‘Judge for yourself.’ He held them out and I tipped forward to take them, flopping back into my chair.

  The first page had Dr Critchely’s heading printed along the top with his claim to be a Specialist in Diseases of the Nervous System and Disorders of the Brain.

  Beneath was written in commendably neat handwriting that looked like small block capitals but was just about joined-up:

  Patient: Nathan Roptine Mortlock

  Address: Gethsemane, 1 Gaslight Lane, Bloomsbury

  Date of birth: 25/08/1837

  Profession: Gentleman

  Date of first appointment: 15/02/1874

  The patient complains of: severe headaches / prolonged and prostrating / constant feeling of intracranial pressure building to a climax where he feels he has to clutch his head to stop it bursting / shooting pains between the temples / ocular problems especially blurring of vision and bright flashing white lights / Occasional loss of consciousness twice witnessed by manservant with no convulsive episodes reported.

  I had to give the doctor full marks for diagnostic note-taking.

  On examination the only abnormalities detected were: a cardiac rate of one hundred and sixty and a pressure of two hundred and forty.

  I resolved to look the latter figure up. Manometers had not been in use when I assisted my father.

  The patient’s hearing was exceedingly acute and his response to epidermal needle and feather applications sensitive in the extreme.

  Provisional diagnosis: neuralgic neurasthenia with chronic inflammation of the cerebral cortex.

  Recommended Dr Lestrade’s Nerve Tonic, Gregson’s Cocaine tablets and to double his dose of Mycroft’s Extra Strength Laudanum.

  Paid five guineas.

  I slipped the sheet to the bottom and started on page two.

  29/02/1874

  On his second appointment the patient reported a worsening of his symptoms. He complains of recurrent nightmares but is unable or unwilling to recount them.

  My tests with lodestones indicate a very sluggish movement of his cerebrospinal fluids and I have recommended galvanization to remagnetize his cerebellum and improve the flow. The patient felt disinclined to be subjected to that treatment on this occasion.

  Paid five guineas.

  I perused page three. ‘Apart from his eccentric methods and excessive bills I cannot see anything illicit so far,’ I commented, and turned to page four – more of the same.

  An entry on page five attracted my attention.

  The patient permitted me to inject him with 5 ml of opiate solution. This relaxed him enough to submit to mesmerization, under the influence of which he began to recall some of his nightmares. They were of such a distressing nature to him that I was forced to curtail the session and instructed him to cast all memory of it from his mind before bringing him out of his trance.

  And on page six, where he described another visit from Nathan Mortlock, ending with:

  I shall attempt to organize these dreams into a journal wherein his feelings about the deaths of each member of the Garstang household may be expressed more coherently.

  ‘Dr Critchley is something of a Mr William Wilkie Collins,’ Sidney Grice said. ‘He likes to set the scene before he reveals the plot.’

  I yawned. ‘I do not think he would have made much money writing like this.’

  ‘If you are looking for something to suit your taste for the sensational, try this.’ My guardian passed me an ultramarine journal.

  ‘His log of Nathan Mortlock’s dreams?’ I guessed.

  In the same small handwriting but less tidily, scattered with crossings out and underlinings, the physician had recorded his patient’s words.

  I no longer know if I am dreaming or awake. The first state seems so real and the second so unreal that they are indistinguishable.

  I read on.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ I blurted and waited for my guardian to berate me for my unladylike language.

  ‘That sums it up quite accurately,’ Sidney Grice concurred.

  72

  ✥

  The Lanes of Logic

  I READ A few more pages before I burst out, ‘We cannot tell Cherry that her father was a murderer.’

  Sidney Grice tilted the top rim of his pince-nez down and looked over it.

  ‘Unless we are incapacitated, we can, but we may not have to. As Miss Mortlock is fond of reminding us, she is not paying us to investigate those deaths.’

  ‘But I still do not understand how he could have done it. Nathan Mortlock was locked in a cell all that night.’ I clicked my fingers, to my guardian’s chagrin. ‘It was not Nathan in that cell but somebody that looked very similar – a twin or close relative.’

  ‘And what impels you to hurtle unchecked towards that conclusion?’ He tipped his eyeglasses back again.

  ‘My reasons are twofold.’ I imitated my guardian so badly that it is unlikely he realized I was doing so. ‘First, there is no other possible explanation. He could not be in two places at once. Second, Inspector Pound commented that Nathan Mortlock was a tubby little man when he saw him in the police station but the photograph showed that the real Nathan was quite an athletic-looking man, and he was not corpulent when we saw his body.’

  Sidney Grice shuddered. ‘You have a special gift for finding and taking wrong turnings on your journey from premise to conclusion.’ He hugged himself with crossed arms. ‘And with your usual generosity of spirit you cannot resist sharing that gift with all and sundry at every opportunity.’

  I wandered round the back alleys and lanes of logic for a while before coming up with, ‘What is your explanation?’

  He pulled his mouth down in his way of demonstrating assent.

  ‘We know where the r
ope that was used to tie and strangle Lionel Engra came from,’ my guardian said. ‘But I have my suspicions about where the rest of it went.’

  He closed his eyes.

  ‘And are you going to share that idea with me?’

  ‘Consider those two simple facts.’ Mr G brought out his halfpennies. ‘A coil of rope goes missing and a thin man looks tubby.’

  He clacked the coins.

  ‘Of course!’ I realized. ‘Nathan wrapped it round his waist.’ I remembered Sidney Grice’s trick with the bolts on his bedroom door. ‘Which is why you were so excited about your fingers being fat with the ribbons.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Mr G threw the coins into the air where they disappeared.

  I forced myself not to ask how he did that. ‘But...’ I tried to clear my thoughts. ‘But you have already proved that Nathan Mortlock could not possibly have got in and out in the time available.’

  ‘If that is the case I must be going prematurely senile,’ Mr G put his fingertips together, ‘for I have no recollection whatsoever of doing so.’

  ‘But you went through all those timings.’

  ‘I remember that as clearly as if it were recently.’ He separated his hands to support a large invisible bowl. ‘Which it was. Come, March, let us make a sentimental journey to the scene of our former triumphs and resolve that matter for once and for all.’

  Sidney Grice snapped his fingers and the coins fell into his hands.

  73

  ✥

  The Empty Harness and the Black Maria

  THE LOBBY OF Marylebone Police Station was quiet, the only signs of life being a greyhound sprawled snoring over one of the benches, with no sign of its owner, and, at his usual post, Sergeant Horwich, who looked almost ready to fall asleep himself.

  ‘Which one of you has arrested which one of you today?’ he joked. ‘Plenty of room in the cells for you both.’

  ‘Mr Gladstone’s moral crusade must be paying dividends,’ I observed. ‘The police may have to start committing crimes to keep themselves in work if business stays this slack.’

  ‘Just wait for Saturday night.’ Horwich primped his moustaches with the back of his crooked first finger. ‘It’ll be standing room only with space for one more on top.’