‘I have not heard that one before,’ Dr Crystal conceded as a furnace ignited in my chest, my heart fluttering in a futile attempt to beat out the flames.
‘You have killed me,’ I cried and my guardian frowned.
‘The very fact that you can say that is evidence that he has not,’ he argued as I toppled forward. And the last thing I remember was Sidney Grice adding, ‘Yet,’ and Dr Crystal stepping smartly aside so as to avoid having to catch me.
27
Anthrax
I WAS BACK in bed when the door opened.
‘Feeling better?’ Sidney Grice came into the room. He had a canary waistcoat on with bright silver buttons and an immaculately arranged yellow cravat.
‘I think so.’
‘Good.’ He clapped his hands. ‘Get up then.’ He made to leave.
I started to rise but my left arm was stiff and sore.
‘Who undressed me?’
‘Why, Molly, of course,’ Mr G called over his shoulder.
‘No, I meant…’ But the door closed. ‘Uncle Tolly,’ I whispered.
I looked at my bedside clock. It was ten o’clock so I would have missed breakfast. I put on my peach dressing gown and went across the landing. The bath water was warm as I lowered myself stiffly into it.
I dried myself and went back to my room, and saw myself in my dressing-table mirror. My face was that of an unsuccessful prizefighter. My hair – never my crowning glory – was dull and straggly and it stubbornly resisted my attempts to brush the knots out. I had lost many battles in my life but I was determined not to lose this one. Once, as a child in Parbold, I had got so cross with the tangled mess that I took Cook’s bone scissors to it. My father chuckled and said I reminded him of a fox terrier after a day’s ratting. Today I scraped at it doggedly and pulled it back with a navy ribbon.
The doorbell rang. I dressed and went downstairs, and before I had entered the room I heard voices.
‘Leave the magistrate to me,’ Sidney Grice was saying, ‘and I will see you there at noon.’
‘Miss Middleton.’ Inspector Pound rose to greet me, wincing with the effort, and I took his hand and remembered.
‘You are supposed to be convalescing,’ I scolded.
‘I could hardly stay idle in Dorset once I knew you were in trouble,’ he said reasonably. ‘Besides, grateful though I am, I have had enough of being treated like a spoiled child and admiring the view. Never saw the point in scenery, myself. What can you do with it?’
I laughed. ‘You sound like Mr Grice. He is never interested in anything that is not a clue.’
‘Not true,’ Mr G grunted. ‘I have sixteen other interests. Shall I enumerate?’
‘Perhaps after I have gone,’ the inspector put in hastily, and eyed me with concern. ‘But never mind my health. Are you well enough to be out of bed?’
‘That does not matter,’ my guardian pronounced. ‘It is sufficient that she is here.’
The inspector saw me into my chair. I was glad to rest my legs for they felt quite weak.
‘Thanks in part to the attentions of Dr Crystal,’ I said.
Pound tipped his head back. ‘Dr Grant Crystal?’
‘The very same,’ my guardian confirmed. ‘You know him?’
‘I came across him when our mounted branch thought two of their horses had anthrax.’
I turned to my guardian. ‘Dr Crystal is a veterinary surgeon?’
‘The second best,’ he confirmed.
‘You had Miss Middleton treated by a horse doctor?’ Inspector Pound asked indignantly.
‘We can all sleep easy,’ Sidney Grice smoothed back his thick black hair, ‘knowing how rapidly the police can establish a fact.’
The inspector bristled.
‘Whatever he is, he seems to have done the trick,’ I said hastily.
‘What trick?’ Mr G glanced about suspiciously.
Inspector Pound went carefully down on his haunches and gazed into my eyes. ‘Miss Middleton, there is something I must say.’ His face was pale and for a moment I thought he had requested my guardian’s permission and was going to propose marriage, so I was both disappointed and relieved when he continued, ‘Mr Grice has asked me to tell you one thing and made me promise to tell you nothing else. It took a little longer than I expected because it is not known locally as Saturn Villa, but we have discovered the residence of Mr Ptolemy Travers Smyth.’
28
Umbrellas and the Double-headed Fox
SATURN VILLA WAS not such a welcoming sight this time. It loomed grey at the end of the long drive, dissolving into the thick morning air.
‘It might have speeded the police search if you had told them about the electrical lighting.’ Sidney Grice clinked a lamp post with the ferrule of his cane.
Did I not? I thought about it as we set off up the drive.
‘It was quite beautiful last time,’ I recalled.
‘I have no interest in beauty other than the foolish things people do when they think they perceive it.’ Sidney Grice rooted through the gravel with the toe of his boot.
‘Why only think?’ I wrapped my cloak tighter around myself.
‘Because there is no means of measuring beauty and that which has no dimensions can only exist in the imagination and therefore not at all.’
Nonetheless, the dewdrops glistening on cobweb veils in the rhododendron bushes seemed very pretty to me.
We reached the end of the drive and I pressed the bell button. ‘It is operated by electricity also.’
‘How foolish,’ Mr G muttered. ‘Is it not enough that we run poisonous, explodable gases into our homes without streaming highly charged particles of atoms into them as well? Imagine the carnage if it leaked into the street.’
A moment later the door was opened and Colwyn stood before me. I stepped back warily.
‘Miss Middleton!’ His face broke into a boyish grin. ‘How good it is to see you. We have been so worried.’
‘Why?’ My guardian shouldered his cane.
‘Because Miss Middleton was so distressed when she left us.’ Colwyn peered out into the gloom. ‘Mr Grice,’ he said. ‘I recognize you from your portrait in Foul Murder Monthly.’ He stepped aside. ‘Please come in.’ The fog followed us a little way into the hall, condensing on the marble floor.
‘Wie lange haben sie im Gorizia-Tyrol gewohnt?’ my guardian rattled out.
‘Dreieinhalb Jahre,’ Colwyn replied without a blink.
‘Sie sprechen aber gut Deutsch.’ Mr G inspected himself in the mirror.
‘Merci Vielmol.’ Colwyn bowed. ‘You are as observant as your reputation, sir.’
I looked at the footman closely and he returned my gaze with untroubled eyes.
‘I shall tell my master you are here.’
‘You have a master?’ I asked and he grinned.
‘As you can see for yourself, I have not been dismissed yet, miss.’ Colwyn went into the library.
‘I do not understand,’ I told my guardian. ‘The last time I saw that footman I was a suspected murderess.’
‘Never mind that for the moment,’ Mr G said and swept his arm. ‘What has changed?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Now you are being obtuse.’ He tapped his toe. ‘Were those muddy footprints there last time?’
‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘We have just made them.’
‘Then look more carefully,’ he urged, ‘and tell me one thing that is different.’
I surveyed the walls and ceiling and the dissolute marble god reaching for the heavens. ‘The lights are off.’
‘We have already established that.’ He whipped off his wide-brimmed, soft felt hat and tossed his gloves into it.
‘It is all the same.’
‘Nonsense.’ Mr G leaned towards the hallstand. ‘Everything changes all the time. Were there the same number of umbrellas,’ he supressed a shudder for he had a fear of such devices, ‘when you first arrived, and are they in the same order now?’
‘I did not notice.’
Mr G huffed. ‘If there were prizes to be had for not noticing or comprehending, your display cabinet would be the envy of all London.’
‘Just to demonstrate my ignorance further,’ I said, ‘what were you talking to Colwyn about?’
‘I asked how long he had been in Gorizia-Tyrol and he told me it was three and a half years. I said his grasp of German was good and he thanked me.’
‘But how on earth did you know that he had been there?’
‘Simplicity itself.’ Mr G gave his attention to the statue rising before us. ‘His accent has a faint Germanic tinge and he wears a signet ring with the double-headed fox that is the Adler-Haussmann insignia and was only given to trusted retainers.’
‘I noticed something odd about the way he spoke,’ I said, ‘and he has a blister on his left hand near the knuckle.’
‘Undoubtedly a clue.’ He walked round the plinth. ‘Filth.’
‘Some might say it was art,’ I objected and he shrugged.
‘I am referring to its upturned hand.’ He unscrewed the spherical brass handle of his walking stick and deposited it into his pocket. He inverted the cane and a corked test tube slid out of the hollowed core, followed by five more which he slipped one by one into his waistcoat top pockets where they jutted out in two rows. ‘The Grice Patent Specimen Storage Stick,’ he announced.
‘Would it not be easier to keep the tubes in your satchel?’ I wondered.
Mr G tutted impatiently. ‘The additional bulk of padding required would leave little space for other important items such as my flask of tea. Apart from which I could not patent that idea.’ He stretched up and scooped some dust into one of the tubes, resealed it and inserted it back into his cane.
‘Who is Colwyn’s master now?’ I wondered aloud. But I did not have to wait long for an answer as the library doors burst open with a violence that made me jump and Sidney Grice raise his hat like a shield.
‘My dear, dear March!’ Uncle Tolly rushed into the hall, his arms outstretched, his face aglow. ‘How wonderful to see you, wonderful. I have been beside myself.’ He grasped my hands, almost dancing with delight as he repeated, ‘Absolutely beside myself, with anxious anxiety.’
29
The Death of Hope
SIDNEY GRICE SURVEYED my relative coldly.
‘And you are?’
‘This is Uncle Tolly,’ I burst out in astonishment.
‘Who can, as he has already demonstrated, speak – though rather annoyingly – for himself.’
Uncle Tolly let go of my hands and straightened his blue smoking cap, which had slipped forward during his exuberant greeting. ‘Forgive me, Mr Grice, but I am so thrilled to find your ward safe and well, though naturally I am distressed to see her so battered and bruised.’ He thrust out a hand which Mr G took suspiciously. ‘I am Ptolemy Travers Smyth, though my friends call me Tolly as I hope you will too.’
‘How easily the hopes of fools are dashed,’ Mr G retorted, but instead of releasing Uncle Tolly’s hand he bowed as if to kiss it, in reality scrutinizing the fingerplates. ‘Your skin has been discoloured by Fretwell’s Lime Ink and you are wearing differently coloured stockings. Why are you not dead?’
Uncle Tolly laughed uneasily. ‘Your guardian has an unusual sense of humour,’ he told me.
‘My dog is livelier than my sense of humour and I do not even keep a dog,’ Mr G told him. ‘Kindly answer the question.’
Colwyn was still hovering in the background and his jaw jutted forward.
Uncle Tolly exuded bewilderment. ‘I am not dead because I am alive. What more can I tell you?’
Mr G released the hand and wiped his own on a big white handkerchief. ‘Do you have or have you ever had an identical twin brother?’ He glanced at the handkerchief. ‘Or even a brother whom fate has cruelly formed to resemble you?’
‘I have never had any siblings,’ Uncle Tolly replied. ‘Have you?’
Sidney Grice snorted. ‘It is my place to ask pertinent questions and yours to answer them.’
Uncle Tolly twitched like a nervous mouse. ‘They seem more like impertinent questions to me, if I may make so bold.’
‘You have already done so.’ My guardian turned his back on him and inspected me. ‘It would appear that you have deceived me.’
‘I do not understand.’
And Mr G sniffed. ‘Your display cabinet is stuffed to bursting – speaking of which,’ he leaned towards a glass-fronted cupboard, ‘where did you get that Liu Song jade belt clasp?’
‘You know your jade, sir.’ Uncle Tolly simpered like a proud father.
‘It is not mine.’
‘Xining, in China,’ my relative recalled dreamily. ‘It—’
‘And did you visit the Longgong Caves whilst you were in that area?’
Uncle Tolly clasped his hands. ‘Oh yes, indeed, indeed. They were magnificent. The—’
Sidney Grice put up a hand and addressed me. ‘Speak.’
I looked again at Uncle Tolly and there was no doubt that it was he. His appearance, his voice and his manner were all exactly as I remembered them. ‘I saw you dead.’
Uncle Tolly gawped. ‘I do not know what to say.’
‘Tea,’ my guardian said.
And Uncle Tolly fiddled with his tassel. ‘A capital idea,’ he murmured. ‘Yes, tea. Please take our visitors’ overcoats, Colwyn, and then we shall have tea.’
‘In the library,’ Mr G added firmly.
‘Indeed,’ Uncle Tolly agreed weakly.
Colwyn took my cloak and hat.
‘This hallway was polished this morning,’ my guardian observed, keeping hold of his satchel and cane.
‘It is polished every morning, sir,’ Colwyn informed him and Mr G raised one eyebrow.
‘Remember that, Miss Middleton, if that is not demanding too much of your faculties. It is the most important clue so far.’
‘Clue about what?’ Uncle Tolly asked as he guided us into his library.
‘Your murder,’ Mr G replied and Uncle Tolly shivered.
‘But I have not been murdered.’
‘Nobody has been murdered until they are,’ Sidney Grice assured him. ‘Tell me what happened, Miss Middleton.’
‘Uncle Tolly was up his ladder,’ the steps were still in the same place, ‘getting a book down.’
‘My Interesting Life and Interesting Times, a biography with inspirational verses,’ Uncle Tolly confirmed. ‘It was written by—’
‘Samuel Travers Smyth,’ my guardian broke in, picking the book up to leaf through a few pages. ‘What next?’ He replaced the book with great precision.
‘We sat by the fire and had sherry and then we went to that map table for Uncle Tolly to show me the family tree, and he spilled ink over it.’
‘Why?’ Mr G demanded.
‘It was an accidental accident,’ Uncle Tolly quavered, raising his hand for inspection. ‘I have tried scrubbing it.’ The stain had faded but was still visible, an old treasure map stretching from the side of his little finger and curling on to his palm, the creases transformed into a river delta. ‘I am not sure why I am being asked these questions.’
Sidney Grice strolled round my relative. ‘I take a dim view of the obscurance of evidence.’ He tucked his handkerchief to flow foppishly from his breast pocket, ‘Proceed, Miss Middleton.’
‘And then Uncle Tolly got me to write a will in which he left me everything,’ I recalled. ‘Colwyn and Annie, the maid, witnessed it.’
‘The same Annie who clubbed you with a fire iron?’
‘Surely not,’ Uncle Tolly protested.
‘It seems very like,’ Mr G told him, ‘you wanted to be murdered.’
‘Why on earth would I want that?’ Uncle Tolly fingered his beard nervously.
‘That is what I intend to find out.’ Sidney Grice kneeled to peer under the table as Annie came in with the tea.
She put the tray down stiffly and looked at me with concern, but did n
ot speak as she left the room, blushing under my guardian’s open stare.
‘Am I going mad?’ I asked and Mr G gazed at the hearth.
‘Of course not,’ he reassured me, ‘though it is possible that you have already done so.
30
The Six Dwarves of Streatham
WE SAT AT a games table, the top inlaid to create an ivory and ebony chessboard, and I poured our teas.
‘Dear March,’ Uncle Tolly said, ‘I am at a loss as to what happened when you came here last. We were getting along famously, I thought, famously, and then you became unwell. Perhaps you were unused to consuming alcohol.’
My guardian snorted. ‘Miss Middleton is more unused to not consuming alcohol.’
‘I helped you upstairs and you passed out on the bed. I checked you an hour later and you had changed into your nightgown and were fast asleep on top of the bed, so I went back to my study.’
‘What time did you go to bed?’ I asked.
‘At about five of the clock.’ Uncle Tolly blinked. ‘I am a creature of the night and work best when the rest of the world is quiet.’
‘What species of work?’ Mr G touched all the uncovered black squares.
‘I study and I scribble,’ Uncle Tolly told him. ‘Botany is my great love. I grow exotic flowers in my conservatory. It is a separate building in the grounds.’
‘Why?’ Mr G snapped.
‘To keep it out of the shadow of the house,’ Uncle Tolly replied. ‘Many of my plants require maximum sunlight. I can shade those that do not, but I cannot create sunshine for the ones that do and they do not like artificial light. I have asked them.’
Sidney Grice ran his tea around his mouth, sucking air over it before he swallowed.
Uncle Tolly held out a plate and pulled a face. ‘Would you like a biscuit, March?’
‘What is wrong with your arm?’ Mr G asked. ‘You are holding it oddly.’
‘I fell and sprained my elbow,’ my relative told him.
Death Descends On Saturn Villa (The Gower Street Detective Series) Page 9
