‘You have such a beautiful house. Did you build it yourself?’ I asked and he twisted his lips thoughtfully.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘and no. I designed everything from the roof tiles to the cellar floor but other men carried the bricks and placed them one upon the other, and then another upon the other and so on and so forth, until we had run out of bricks, except for three thousand and twenty with which we built the base of a greenhouse in the back garden.’
I unfolded my napkin. ‘How long have you lived here?’
‘I was born here.’ He spooned a hill of mustard on to his plate. ‘Or on this site, for I had the old house pulled all the way down – before this house was built, of course. So I have always regarded it as my home, but I have been abroad so much that I cannot truly say that I have lived anywhere for long.’
‘Where have you been?’ I asked.
‘China mainly.’ He sawed at a thick slab of tongue. ‘Yes, China. I spent a great deal of time in Hong Kong and some in Peking. The Empress Dowager Cixi was very keen to purchase modern British weapons to maintain law and order and the borders of her son’s vast realms.’ He put down his knife. ‘Oh, I am sorry, March. Does that seem too terrible to you?’
I took a sip of wine. It made such a change to be able to consume meat and alcohol in company when my guardian forbade both. ‘It is not that,’ I said. ‘Forgive me, but you seem so gentle a man for such a brutal trade.’
Uncle Tolly blinked rapidly. ‘Oh but March, if you had seen some of the terrible wounds caused by pikes and swords, you would regard rifles and explosives as much kinder options.’ His empty fork hovered in mid-air.
I saw a man without a face. It had been blown to a pulp by a musket ball at close range. I see it in my dreams and it haunts my waking hours.
‘I should not judge you too harshly,’ I admitted, ‘for a part of my income comes from my late father’s investments in armaments.’
My host raised his eyebrows quizzically. ‘What a strange coincidence. May I ask which field you are involved in?’
I swallowed a pickled gherkin and hastily washed the flavour away. It was far too bitter and acidic for me. ‘It is a company called Swandale’s Chemicals. They started by making pesticides, which my father thought very worthwhile after witnessing the devastation and famine caused by locusts. Unfortunately, they did not have much success with that and moved on to other things. The bulk of the business in Parbold was closed down, but there is a small subsidiary which makes a constituent for cordite, I think. I am not happy with that but I cannot dispose of my shares until I reach the age of twenty-five.’
‘Swandale’s,’ Uncle Tolly repeated thoughtfully. ‘I have heard of them. They made some acidic bombs as I recall.’
‘Something like that,’ I agreed and he shuddered.
‘How ghastly,’ he said. ‘I wonder…’ But his voice began to reverberate and I was lost for a moment in the unhappiness of his eyes and the images taking form between us.
9
Pigs and Portholes
THERE WAS A row of portholes along the far wall of the meeting room. They were so high that I had to stand on a wooden crate to see through one, my breath misting the thick glass. I found myself looking down about ten feet into a white tiled laboratory where the gas mantles had been turned off, leaving it lit by only the portholes on the outer walls and four closed skylights.
There was a large iron-barred cage in the middle of the laboratory, containing eight pigs. I counted them, black-and-white saddlebacks contentedly chewing turnips from a trough or resting in the sun streaming through the glass. We watched them idly. One was scratching her side on a post with as great an expression of bliss as a sow is capable of.
Jonathon Pillow was standing near me. He was the chief scientist and the gas was the child of his inventiveness. His waistcoat was splashed with bleach and his hands discoloured by chemical spills. There were two brass levers in front of him at waist level. He pulled the left one down.
The pigs hardly glanced over as a metal hammer rose and fell and one of two jars suspended from the ceiling shattered. A liquid sprayed out of it over a weaner. The weaner screamed. The other pigs looked up in concern. A yellow cloud rose from the floor, mushrooming rapidly to surround them in a thick fog. And all at once they were squealing – long grating screeches, almost human, disintegrating into choking coughs. Some of them tried to run away. One crashed blindly, shrieking, into the bars and two into each other, and a piglet was crushed beneath its tumbling mother. But none of them managed more than a few staggering steps before they collapsed, desperate for breath like old consumptive men, wheezing bloody mucous froth from their snouts and gaping mouths. They went into convulsions, legs kicking, bodies thrashing, muscles knotting in violent spasms that eased into twitches before relaxing into the final limpness of death.
‘Bravo,’ Horace Swandale crowed. ‘We could have killed a hundred times as many with that one bottle… probably a thousand. It will take a while to ventilate the area.’
The skylights and outer portholes were being opened. I climbed down and we went from the windows. Glasses were produced from a tall cupboard and there were brandies and sodas all round and I had a lukewarm lemonade. I leaned against a steel support column.
Major Gregory was there. Normally he would have made a fuss of me, but he looked gaunt that morning and kept in the background, sitting quietly at the big oval conference table after everyone else had quit it.
Jonathon Pillow had watched the proceedings with great satisfaction. He checked his stopwatch. ‘One minute forty-five seconds from release to complete immobilization.’
Horace Swandale applauded. ‘Imagine what a carboy filled with sulphur mustards could do just by smashing it on the deck of an enemy ship!’ He was clapping his own words now. ‘The gas is heavier than air and would sink down through the decks, poisoning the entire crew in moments. What price the heaviest ironclad then, eh, Colonel Middleton? Britannia could continue to rule the waves without ever firing another shot.’
My father was quiet as we waited for the mist to clear and the area to be pronounced safe. He looked at me and I inclined my head. I was afraid of what I would see, but even more afraid to let him see it without me.
‘Bring the drinks,’ Horace Swandale instructed a clerk, as if we were passing through for dinner.
The door into the laboratory opened and one of the workers provided us with wet scarves to clamp over our mouths and noses. His face was burnt as if by a fire and his eyes bloodshot and streaming. We went down a flight of steps. It was bitterly cold despite a huge stove glowing in the corner and there was still a strong, sharp smell of horseradish in the room, mingled with the stench of fresh excrement. For perhaps five minutes we gazed at the sad distorted carcasses, their skins blistered into weeping sores. Their mouths were agape and clogged with purple-black slimy spume. Their eyes were eroded and white with terror. Excrement oozed over the floor.
‘Never know when we’ll be at war with the Frenchies again,’ Horace Swandale pronounced. ‘But with a fleet of balloons over Paris you could wipe out the entire population in an afternoon. And the beauty of it is not a building would be destroyed, not a sculpture or painting damaged. Once the fog had lifted we could walk in and take their capital undisturbed.’
My father changed his spectacles and leafed through a sheaf of documents on a workbench. ‘Are these your notes?’
And Jonathon Pillow rushed over. ‘Be careful, Colonel. That is my only copy of the formulae.’
‘Excellent.’ My father swept them up.
‘What are you doing?’ Jonathon Pillow hovered anxiously.
My father marched to the stove and picked up a fire iron. ‘Putting a stop to this… obscenity.’ He knocked the latch up.
‘Give me those back,’ Jonathon Pillow cried. ‘I must complete my work.’
But my father smiled grimly. ‘Over my dead body,’ he said – a phrase he used often and I hated it – and pulled on the big double
doors of the stove. At that the gates of hell might have opened to spew out a demon. Jonathon Pillow became a man possessed. He hurled himself at my father, white with fury, lips pulled back in a slavering snarl. My father was a powerfully built man but he was taken by surprise by the suddenness and venom of the attack. He pitched forwards, his spectacles flying off into the burning coals and bouncing out again, one lens smashed, the papers scattering over the boarded floor as Pillow clawed at my father’s face, gibbering incoherent filth and clutching at his throat.
I grabbed a whisky bottle from the clerk and ran to help, but Gregory and four other men dragged the attacker, spitting and cursing, off my father.
‘I am all right,’ my father said a little shakily. ‘Pick up the papers, March.’
My father’s collar was ripped off and his cheek bleeding. He took the bottle from me and had a long draught while I scooped them up – sheet upon sheet crammed with figures and diagrams – and handed them to him.
‘No, damn you, no!’ Jonathon Pillow struggled and kicked at those who restrained him.
It was then that Major Gregory came forward. He spoke quietly – I made out ‘sleep on it’ – and my father said, ‘Very well,’ and crossed to the safe in the wall, whirring the dial of the combination lock clockwise and anti-clockwise.
‘We shall discuss this at the next board meeting,’ he announced and deposited the documents inside. Only he and Mr Swandale knew the numbers for that lock.
There was a terrible shriek and for a moment I thought that another pig was being slaughtered. But it was Jonathon Pillow being dragged from the room.
10
Meat, Charles Dickens and Murder
THE REVERBERATIONS STOPPED and the images vanished, as if a magic lantern had been switched off, and I was aware that my relative was looking at me expectantly.
‘I am sorry,’ I said. ‘I was daydreaming.’
‘A life without dreams is not a life,’ he said a little fuzzily.
The meat lay heavy in my stomach. It was a long time since I had eaten so much of it in a day.
‘Why have I never heard of you?’ I asked and Uncle Tolly made a wry face.
He put down his cutlery. ‘I do not know how much you have been told of your mother.’ His voice became clear again.
‘Very little,’ I said. ‘But I am anxious to learn more.’
Uncle Tolly ran his fingers through his whiskers. ‘Constance Stopforth was the most wonderful woman I ever met.’ He stopped as if that were all I needed to know before repeating, ‘Ever.’
‘I have one picture of her,’ I told him, ‘and my father said it was a good likeness.’ I unfastened the chain from behind my neck and we both half stood as I passed him the locket. We sat back and Uncle Tolly’s hand trembled as he pressed the catch to spring open the lid.
‘Gracious,’ he murmured, holding it up to the light. ‘It is a very good likeness, March, very good indeed.’ He placed the locket still open on the table.
‘I believe it was painted for her eighteenth birthday,’ I said, and a wistfulness came over him.
‘How well I remember that occasion.’ His fingertips stroked a quarter of an inch above the picture. ‘Lord, how she glittered.’
‘The trouble is that, whilst the portrait may be a good reminder for those who knew her, it can never bring her to life for me,’ I mused. ‘It does not tell me how she spoke or moved or what it felt like to be hugged by her.’
‘Dear March.’ Uncle Tolly’s pupils contracted in the bright lights. ‘I cannot hope to do justice to your mother. She was a famous beauty and at least a dozen men had approached her father for permission to court her. She rejected any that he had not agreed to. She stood out in a room in a way that only the rich, famous and titled do normally – such poise, such sparkle. She had a quick wit too. Why, once, when Mr Dickens was bullying his hostess at a party, your mother told him it was a wonder Oliver, Nell and Pip had not died from blandness before they had the chance to be suffocated by the weight of coincidences heaped upon them. I have never seen such an inflated man deflated so quickly.’
I laughed. ‘I wish I was more like her.’
Uncle Tolly gazed at me. ‘Great beauty is a curse,’ he told me. ‘Be grateful that you are not afflicted.’
‘I must be very blessed indeed,’ I said, and he clamped a hand over his mouth and nose in horror.
‘Oh, my dear March, I did not mean—’
But I raised my hand. ‘Please,’ I said. ‘I know I am no society beauty and I am not sure that I would want to be. You are probably right and I should be grateful.’
‘Oh my gracious me – gracious is not too strong a word, is it?’ Uncle Tolly fluttered about. ‘Have some more of this.’ He picked up the dish of pickles at random and held it under my chin, and I took another slice of gherkin reluctantly so as not to hurt his feelings.
The dish tipped alarmingly. ‘Mind you do not spill vinegar on her,’ I cried. Uncle Tolly put the pickles carefully aside and clipped the locket shut, and I took it back.
‘You have not told me your story yet,’ I reminded him.
‘It is one that does me little credit,’ he said. ‘You see, I behaved rather badly with your mother, March. I was always devoted to her and she was very kind to me, and I am afraid I took her generosity of heart as a reciprocation of my feelings. I – and I shudder to recall this now – took it upon myself, without even consulting her father, to press my suit.’ Uncle Tolly blushed. ‘She was very nice and listened politely, but she had the grace to interrupt before I made a complete ass of myself and explained that, whilst she was very fond of me and hoped we should always be friends, she had an understanding with an Oxford undergraduate that once he took his degree she would ask her father to look kindly upon his approach.’ Uncle Tolly finished his wine and I refilled it for him, dripping a little on the white cloth. He slid a plate of ham over the stain and whispered, ‘Perhaps Annie will not notice if I turn the lights off.’
‘And did you stay friends?’ I asked.
He lifted his glass a few inches and gazed deep into the ruby darkness of its contents. ‘I never saw her again.’ He sighed. ‘You see, March, there is no end to my asininity. In the shock of my rejection I sought affection with another young lady, the daughter of a high court judge. It was all perfectly innocent, but she pretended to believe that we were betrothed and told several of her friends so. When I tried to put matters right she sued me for breach of promise and, with her father’s connections, I was ruined. I fled the country that very day on the first booking available – a schooner to Buenos Aires – and worked my way up to Boston where I found myself working in a theatre for three years, before I realized that the world of entertainment held no place for me. I sold my share in the business to an Irish woman and moved on again.’
‘You have seen a great deal of the world,’ I remarked enviously.
‘A great deal too much… too much.’ Uncle Tolly fell into a reverie.
‘Do you know what happened to the undergraduate?’ I asked and he put his glass down.
‘I only know,’ he took up a fork, ‘what an old friend wrote to tell me two years later, that your father saved your mother’s life – though I do not know how – took her home that day, spoke to her father, proposed, and they were married within the month. The rest you know.’ Uncle Tolly trembled. ‘A terrible, terrible loss. Your father, I believe, was inconsolable.’
‘Even by me,’ I whispered, and Uncle Tolly harpooned a slice of ham with his fork.
‘My dear child,’ he said so gently that I forgot to take offence, ‘you must be absolutely exhausted.’
‘It has been a long day,’ I agreed.
‘So thoughtless of me,’ Uncle Tolly said. ‘So very thoughtless.’ He jumped up. ‘Come, March. I shall show you to your room.’ He folded his napkin. ‘But first I must acquaint you with the measures I have taken to prevent us,’ he rolled the napkin into a silver ring, ‘from being murdered.’
11<
br />
The Night Ritual
I WAS ABOUT to laugh when I saw that Uncle Tolly’s expression was deadly serious.
‘Are you expecting us to be murdered?’ I asked, and he swivelled from side to side as if not certain that we were alone.
‘I am not expecting you to be murdered, dear March,’ he replied. ‘Or I should never have invited you to stay under my roof, indeed I would not, indeed.’
He rose from the table and I followed him out into the hall.
‘But you think you might be killed?’
Uncle Tolly chuckled. ‘I do not think it. I have no doubt about it – no doubt at all.’ He opened a small oak cupboard on the wall and took a bunch of keys off a hook.
‘But why and by whom?’
‘Two very good questions.’ He inserted a key to lock the dining-room door. ‘Very good questions indeed, and I only wish I had the answers. There is a secret door in the panelling, leading into a passage which goes down to the kitchen so that the servants can clear the table without entering the body of the house. The only other means of ingress is now secured.’ We crossed the hall and went down a short passageway to a green-painted door, which Uncle Tolly locked with a larger key.
‘Do you not trust your own servants?’
Uncle Tolly cocked his head, as if listening, before he whispered, ‘With my life. Otherwise I would have my food tasted and a bodyguard.’ We went to the front door, which he locked and bolted top and bottom. ‘All the windows are closed with little padlocks,’ he told me, ‘but in case of fire there are keys in the onyx boxes on almost every window ledge. Allow me to show you to your room.’ I was more tired than I thought, for the sweeping stairs were hard work and I stumbled as we reached the half-landing. ‘My dear child, I fear I have overtaxed you with my chatter-chatter-chatter.’
Death Descends On Saturn Villa (The Gower Street Detective Series) Page 4
