‘One hundred and eighty-two pounds.’ Horwich filled the pause. ‘I just wanted to clear my debt, not a penny more,’ he burst out.
‘And for that you released a man to murder an entire household.’ I shook with disgust.
All at once the sergeant aged. ‘I didn’t know. I swear to God. He told me he was getting married – I didn’t know he already was – and that he was staying with his future in-laws who didn’t approve of him, and the engagement would be broken off if they found his bed had not been slept in.’ He wiped his nose with his sleeve. ‘He made it sound romantical and a bit of a joke. Then when I found out – what could I do? I couldn’t say I had released him. That would make me an accomplice. Even if they didn’t hang me, how long do you think a peeler would last in Pentonville with the animals he helped put in there?’
‘I believe six and a half days is an average.’ Mr G clapped the book shut. ‘You will not attack us or try to make an escape.’
Horwich nodded dumbly. I unlocked the door and swung it open, and there was a clatter on the steps.
‘Two duffers and a roller to book in, Serg,’ Nettles called down.
‘Card cheats and a professional woman,’ Mr G interpreted, though I probably knew more slang than he.
‘Just deal with it,’ Horwich ordered.
‘What, by myself?’
‘Yes,’ I said, as Horwich fought to catch his breath.
‘Fropping liberty,’ Nettles muttered as he climbed back up.
75
✥
Blood in the Gaslight
SERGEANT HORWICH CAME out of the cell and, though he still towered over us, he was physically diminished.
‘What now?’ he mumbled.
‘You shall sit on this bench.’ Sidney Grice tapped it with his cane. ‘And we shall sit on that one.’
We faced him across the hall, perhaps ten feet away.
‘I meant no harm by it,’ Horwich burst out. ‘I swear it.’
‘But you still took the money even when you knew what he had done,’ I pointed out.
‘He had no more right to it than me.’ Horwich’s voice broke. ‘And I only took what I needed to make a fresh start.’
‘As an accessory to murder,’ I reminded him.
‘I didn’t know,’ he vowed.
‘You may have been an unwitting dupe before the act,’ Mr G granted him. ‘But afterwards you sheltered him for four thousand, one hundred and fifty-nine days and nights, one of the most notorious murderers of this century, and he was not short of competition for that title. That makes you an accessory after the fact.’
‘Do you think it hasn’t haunted me?’ Horwich looked over his shoulder as if he had heard a noise. ‘You can’t imaginate how many nights I’ve lain in bed thinking about those poor people, and if handing myself in would have undone what I did, I would have done it like a shot, I swear it, Mr Grice.’ His breath was short and fast now and he jumped again. ‘Somebody is coming.’
‘Nettles and his prisoners,’ my guardian said. ‘Delay them.’
Horwich’s eyes shot side to side. ‘Take those suspects to interview rooms one, two and four, Constable Nettles, and make sure they are kept there. And do not interrupt us again.’
I could not catch exactly what Nettles muttered to that, but I think I got the gist.
‘Mortlock led a respectable life after that,’ Horwich pleaded.
‘Tell that to Mrs Rachel Samuels, the widow who lived and died at number 4 Burton Crescent,’ I challenged and Horwich’s jaw clacked shut.
Sidney Grice went back to the journal. ‘In the latter pages, Mortlock does not even pretend he is dreaming.’
She saw me climbing out, the nosey prying bitch. She was walking the dog. Who in God’s name does that at three in the morning? She kept walking but she hesitated, just enough for me to know. I tried to tell myself that she couldn’t have recognized me in that light and, after a few weeks of sweating every time the doorbell rang, I almost convinced myself that I was right. But she was biding her time.
Two months later she came to me. Her son was having money problems. I said I was sorry to hear that but so are thousands of others.
‘You WILL help him,’ she said. ‘There is a loose brick on the path outside your front door. You will put five pounds there in ten-shilling notes on the first day of every month.’
She had thought it through. She must have been prodding about outside my house. For two pins I would have strangled her there and then, but she must have seen what I was thinking because she said, ‘And if anything happens to me I have written it all down.’
For six years I paid that bitch. Then one day she calls me round and says her son needs more money. Ten a month should do it. What choice did I have? Somebody comes to the door. He is delivering a chair. I can’t be seen there, so I hide in the parlour, but I watch through a crack in the door. The furniture man wants a signature. People have been claiming things never arrive. He hands her a docket and she goes to rest it on the table. I can see it there. She takes his pencil and makes her mark – an X. The old bitch lied to me. She can’t even write her name, let alone an account of what she saw, and what exactly did she see anyway? A shape on a dark night. My alibi would hold against that. The help comes and I turn my back. Mrs Samuels tells her I am looking for lodgings and sends her out to get a bloater. There is a rolling pin on the draining board. I hold it behind my back. Mrs Samuels is trying out her chair. I go behind as casually as I can and bring it down on her head as hard as I can. I hear a crack but it’s the rolling pin. She must have a skull of stone. She jumps up and rubs it and I can see blood on her hand. It gleams in the gaslight. And she says, ‘You’ll pay for that. Fifty pounds a month.’ And that was the last she ever said apart from moans and groans and a ‘no’ right near the end, and when I had finished her head was caved in and her ugly leering face was raw meat. I rinsed the pin in the sink and myself as best I could. I think about the help, but she didn’t get a proper look at me so I will let her be. I don’t want to hang around anyway, in case one of her lodgers turns up. I cannot kill all the Crescent, though I sometimes think I would dearly love to.
Horwich was a man in shock. He stood up.
‘Sit down,’ Sidney Grice commanded, but the sergeant did not hear him. He started to walk. ‘We are not finished yet.’
‘What else can there be?’ he asked dully.
‘The truth,’ I answered simply. ‘Did you murder Nathan Mortlock?’
76
✥
The Wounded Tiger
SERGEANT HORWICH SWAYED and if he fell I was not confident of being able to catch him. He clawed at the wall to steady himself and slumped on to the next bench with us standing over him.
‘How can you even considerate that, Miss Middleton?’ he appealed. ‘I’ve knocked a good few heads together in my time but to cut a man’s throat? You know me better than that.’
‘I thought I did,’ I agreed.
‘You made fools of us both, Sergeant,’ Sidney Grice said forlornly. ‘It is not difficult to deceive my assistant, but the only reason I did not refute Nathan Mortlock’s alibi immediately was because I did something I am always warning Miss Middleton not to do – I took a man at his word and that man, as you are probably becoming dimly aware, was you.’ My guardian’s eyes darkened. ‘I trusted you, Ezekiel Trueblood Horwich. I placed some of my most interesting murderers in your care, falsely secure in my misplaced belief that you would not be letting them out of the back door the moment I went off for a well-earned pot of lapsang souchong.’
Horwich’s eyes twitched alternately. ‘I would never have done anything like that, but I know you will not believe me now.’
For some reason I did believe him, but Sidney Grice was a wounded tiger and his voice soared with the emotions he always claimed to despise. ‘For heaven’s sake, man, I would have trusted you with a little of my very money.’
Sergeant Horwich sagged back, a boxer on the ropes taking blows when
he no longer had the strength to raise his arms.
‘I did not kill Nathan Mortlock,’ he whispered.
‘You had a motive,’ I pointed out. ‘If he was ever arrested or decided to make a clean breast of it, you would be implicated in his crimes.’
‘I didn’t. I just didn’t.’
‘Then tell me this.’ Sidney Grice brought his cane under the sergeant’s chin and I saw he had a spike extended from the tip. It was only three or four inches long, but I had seen what it could do. ‘Why did you go to Gaslight Lane ten days before he died?’
77
✥
The Fallen Woman
SERGEANT HORWICH CHEWED at the insides of his cheeks.
‘You have seen the report, I assumptionize.’
‘That did not, does not and never will even begin to launch the ship of truth,’ Sidney Grice said coldly.
I sat down.
‘It wasn’t a secret.’ Horwich tugged at his mutton-chop whiskers. ‘I wrote it in my report that I returned Mortlock’s watch.’
‘You have not even broken a jeroboam on the bows yet.’ Mr G extended his metaphor testily. ‘I did not ask what you did. I want to know why.’
‘I wanted to see him, I suppose.’ The sergeant wiggled his whiskers side to side. ‘I had not set eyes on Nathan Mortlock since the day he went to court and I had never been in that house. I don’t know what I expectorated. I wanted to know… if he had repented – I think – but I never got the chance to ask him. He was very nervous but his butler said he was always like that.’
‘Did you tell him about the body?’ I shifted about.
Horwich brought out his old briar pipe. ‘He said he knew nothing about it and that part of the house had been empty since the Garstangs’ time. Before he bricked it up, they had a few vagrants try to set up home there. It must have been one of them fell into the old cesspit. Some of the roof tiles were pinched and it got wet rot before anyone noticed.’ He found a box of Lucifers. ‘The servants confirmed all that.’
‘I think we know the real reason why he could not let workmen into that part of the house.’ I wished I could stretch my legs comfortably apart like men are always doing.
The sergeant struck a match, but Sidney Grice leaped up, dashed over and blew it out. ‘You may poison yourself but you may not poison me.’
The bench was hard and, with my bustle jutting into the wall behind me, I could only just perch on the edge of it.
‘Was he pleased to get his watch back?’ I turned to sit at an angle.
‘Not really.’ The sergeant broke the matchstick and dropped it on the floor. ‘He just took the watch, stuffed it away and said, So you have found him.’
‘And what did you make of that?’ I asked.
Mr G tsked. ‘Apparently we need suspects to interpret evidence for us now.’
But I nodded at Horwich and he released his whiskers. ‘That we had found the pickpocket, I supposed. I don’t know.’
‘But why would he think the pickpocket would still be in possession of the watch a decade later?’ I queried.
The sergeant rubbed his throat. ‘Maybe he thought the pickpocket had liked the watch and kept it. I don’t know, miss.’
‘One of the few things I cannot do is to enjoy sterile speculation.’ Mr G retracted the spike and sat beside me.
‘Perhaps he knew that the man with the watch was dead,’ I suggested. ‘Perhaps he knew that the man was not a pickpocket but his professed friend, Daniel Filbert.’
Sergeant Horwich chewed that over. ‘I did sort of wonder if he knew more than he was letting on, but I suppose I didn’t want to believe it.’
I slipped off the bench, grabbing at the slats behind me, but ending up sprawled inelegantly on the floor.
‘Good grief,’ my guardian groaned, but the sergeant was on his feet.
‘Are you all right?’ He offered me his hand in genuine concern and I took it.
‘Oh, Horwich,’ I cried out. ‘Why did it have to be you? I liked you. I respected you. I bought you a drink in the Cat and Dragon.’
The sergeant answered automatically. ‘Don’t look like I’ll be buying you one back now.’
Sidney Grice stood up, regarding my struggles with disgust.
‘I have done all I wish to do today.’
Horwich heaved me up.
‘Might I ask one favour, sir? I know I have no right.’ He let go of my hand. ‘But could the arresting officer be Inspector Quigley?’
‘But he is so brutal,’ I protested.
Sergeant Horwich drew himself to attention. ‘I know, miss. But Inspector Pound would be kind to me and I could not bear that.’
I looked at this man, so strong and decent at heart, and he met my eye and we both burst into tears.
78
✥
The Price of a Life
I FOUND A handkerchief and gave it to Horwich and he took it and gave me his and I took it and used it, though it was quite grubby. My guardian, I knew, would berate me severely for such unprofessional behaviour, but Sidney Grice had his back to us and was inhaling heavily.
He walked slowly to the end door, rested his cane against it, and took hold of the posts to either side.
‘I have not made my mind up yet,’ he said slowly.
‘I will run up and tell Quigley and that will decide it,’ I threatened.
My godfather made no attempt to stop me, but rested his forehead on the woodwork as if trying to cool his brow. I brought my tears under control.
‘Thank you, miss,’ Horwich managed.
‘But I have not made my mind up yet,’ Mr G objected.
‘Then I will make it up for you,’ I insisted.
‘Whether to have him arrested at all.’ Sidney Grice spun round. His face was drained. ‘I will sleep on it but on one condition.’
‘And that is?’ I asked.
‘That Sergeant Horwich gives me his word that he will not try to flee.’
Horwich gaped. ‘You have it, Mr Grice. On my daughter’s life.’
Mr G caught his eye mid-fall. ‘Her life is of no use to me but I live in hope – against all reason and experience – that your word still is.’ He put on his left glove, a startling shade of Grice’s Lilac. ‘Do not attempt to make a fool of me again, Ezekiel.’
Horwich chewed his moustaches. ‘No, sir.’
‘You will come to my house at precisely ten o’clock tomorrow morning for my decision.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The sergeant and I swapped handkerchiefs back.
‘You will not do anything silly, will you?’ I asked.
‘The sergeant has already done something very silly, four years ago.’ Sidney Grice paced smartly to the end of the corridor. ‘He voted for a liberal candidate in the last election.’
‘I was talking about suicide,’ I clarified reluctantly.
‘So was I.’ Mr G put on his other glove. ‘The political suicide of the foolishly enfranchised.’ He put a foot upon the first step. ‘Come, Miss Middleton, if you have quite finished snivelling, we have work to do.’
79
✥
The Lilac Finger
WE HARDLY SPOKE in the hansom.
‘Are—’ I began, but my godfather put a lilac finger to his lips.
Molly came to the door.
‘I require two things,’ he told her. ‘Tea and as near close an approximation to silence as is mortally possible.’
Molly threw me a warning glance, certain that the remark was aimed at me, pinched her nose to hold her breath and slid along the chessboard tiles, a proud nail in the sole of her left boot making a faint screeching noise and, to judge by her employer’s flinch as he went to his study, I was not the only one to be suffering physical pain. Molly gurgled like a drowning man as she reached the stairs to the basement.
‘I hope I dontn’t not have to do that all the time,’ she meditated at the top of her voice.
Sidney Grice was already in his chair, eyes closed, the r
ight lid sunken into his empty concavity, the glass prosthesis watching me from between his thumb and forefinger, a thick bloodstained drop hanging from the inner corner.
I went to his desk.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I am going to clean your socket.’ I opened the bottom drawer and found the small pine box.
‘I am quite capable of doing that myself.’
I pulled a wooden chair over and hinged back the lid. ‘Open.’
Not for the first time I envied him those long curling lashes.
The lids parted obediently and I dabbed as gently as I could at the socket with a ball of cotton wool. Sidney Grice willed himself not to pull away. The foramen where the optic nerve would have passed never completely closed and I often worried that the infection would track back up it, but my guardian was of the opinion that his brain was more than a match for the craftiest bacterium. I threw the stained cotton wool into the low fire and swabbed three times more until it came out almost clear.
‘This will sting.’
‘For reasons which may have escaped you, I am fully aware of that.’
I unstoppered and upended the tincture of iodine bottle into a fresh ball.
My guardian flinched involuntarily. ‘How pleasant it is to find you have spoken the truth for once.’
For once he could not hide the pain and I had a sudden powerful urge to kiss him better, but I only prised open his now-clenched fist and said, ‘You should soak them in alcohol every night.’ I took the eye, wiped it and wrapped it in a clean square of gauze before he was permitted to put it into a new felt pouch.
The Secrets of Gaslight Lane Page 35
