‘Get on to the bed,’ Mr G instructed.
Uncle Tolly twitched. ‘This is most irregular.’
My guardian stuck his thumbs into the lower pockets of his waistcoat. ‘If the matter were regular I should not be here. Hop on.’
And Uncle Tolly, with an ever greater air of bewilderment, clambered on to his bed.
‘You were huddled back into the corner,’ I told him and he leaned back obligingly. ‘The lower third of your face was smashed.’
Uncle Tolly shrank. ‘I hope you are not going to re-enact that.’
‘The top of your face was odd,’ I said, ‘but I cannot remember why.’
‘Odder than it is now?’ Uncle Tolly chittered.
‘It moved oddly,’ I recalled.
‘An odd face is doubtless of paramount importance.’ Sidney Grice rubbed his hands. ‘It was crucial in the case of the snub-nosed submariner. What next?’
‘The curtains,’ I said. ‘They were closed but Mr Travers Smyth grasped hold of this one.’
‘Do so,’ Mr G commanded and Uncle Tolly started to shuffle over.
‘You were still in the corner,’ I said and he slid back. Uncle Tolly put out his arm, but no matter how much he stretched he could not reach the curtain.
‘I do not understand.’
‘Your lack of comprehension is of vital significance.’ My guardian scribbled a note in his yellow book and indicated towards my relative. ‘You may disembark now.’
Uncle Tolly scuttled off the bed and watched bemusedly as Sidney Grice fell to his knees. Mr G ran his hands over the square Persian rug and scrutinized his palms through a magnifying glass. He lifted the rug, sniffed the undersurface and let it fall.
‘Was this revoltingly lurid example of Persian wool here that night?’
‘That or one very like it,’ I said.
‘It has been there for eight years,’ Uncle Tolly told him, ‘except when it is beaten every spring. And it is a remarkably fine example of tight-weave turkbar.’
‘Nonsense.’ Mr G lay on his side. ‘The knotting is farsbaf.’ He lifted the blue striped counterpane to inspect under the bed and swept his cane to and fro.
‘Not a speck of dust,’ he commented.
‘Why, thank you, sir.’ Annie glowed with pride.
‘That was not a compliment.’ He picked at something with his tweezers. ‘Indeed it may indicate a staggering degree of carelessness.’
‘I do not see how,’ I objected.
Mr G shuffled out and sat up. ‘What do you make of those?’ He held out his palm.
I bobbed down to get a better view of his find. ‘They look like two eyelashes.’
Mr G snorted. ‘Even your bristly lashes are not that coarse.’ He deposited them into one of his test tubes.
Uncle Tolly bent over. ‘What have you found?’
‘Perhaps the most important thing I have found was a silver pig,’ Mr G replied, ‘but that was many years ago.’ He pointed. ‘There are three scuff marks on the ceiling which could not possibly have been caused by you being murdered in the manner described by Miss Middleton.’ My guardian got on to his knees. ‘They are therefore of inestimable value.’ He bounded to the wall and began to tap it with the silver handle of his cane. ‘As clues.’
‘Have a care with the paper,’ Uncle Tolly protested and Mr G spun round, his face inches away from my relative’s.
‘You need have little fear on that account, Mr self-proclaimed Ptolemy Travers Smyth,’ he hissed. ‘I am about to pay very close attention to it indeed.’ He pirouetted away again and rested his nose on a flower, inhaling deeply as though the print might have a fragrance. His hand plunged into his satchel and drew out an intricately carved ivory handle. ‘The paste smells old.’ He pressed a button and a blade shot up.
‘Goodness!’ Uncle Tolly jumped backwards.
Sidney Grice ran his finger down a seam and slipped the point of his knife underneath it, lifting an inch of paper away from the wall. He wiped the blade on his handkerchief and inspected the white cotton.
‘Please do not do that any more,’ Uncle Tolly reproved mildly.
My guardian waved the handkerchief in a fond farewell. ‘This room was decorated more than six months ago.’
Uncle Tolly counted on his fingers. ‘Seven months,’ he concurred.
‘Which most competent mathematicians would calculate is greater than six.’ My guardian went to the window, bent and sniffed the sill and brought out his knife.
‘I trust you are not going to damage my paintwork,’ Uncle Tolly ventured and Sidney Grice flicked the blade out.
‘Your trust is not misplaced.’ He ran the edge of the blade around, scraping some white flakes into a test tube. ‘Tell your man to bring me a candle.’
Colwyn coughed politely. ‘I do not believe we have any in the house, sir.’
‘I cannot think that we do,’ Uncle Tolly concurred. ‘We have more than a sufficient number of oil lamps for use in the event of a concurrent electrical and gas failure. I find they give a much stronger light and are not extinguished so easily by draughts.’
‘I shall provisionally accept your word for that.’ Mr G tested the window catch. ‘Where is the passepartout, maid?’
Annie’s eyes drifted about blankly.
‘The key,’ I translated.
She moved to the dressing table. ‘There should be one in that.’
‘Deliver it to me,’ Sidney Grice commanded, ‘without delay or subterfuge.’
Annie took the lid off the onyx box and held out the key. He snatched it from her, inserted and rotated it, his ear close to the lock as it clicked open. He reached up and heaved the lower sash, which slid smoothly up. Mr G stuck his head into the chill air.
‘Curious,’ he proclaimed. ‘This window has not even been tampered with.’ Sidney Grice stepped back into the room and tidied his hair. ‘Remarkable.’
‘What is?’ I asked.
My guardian tilted his head a little to the right. ‘I have never been in a house in which there is so little evidence of a criminally induced death having occurred.’
Uncle Tolly beamed. ‘I am delighted to hear it.’
‘So am I.’ Sidney Grice returned his jubilation blankly. ‘For it gives me hope that a murder took place or shall take place very shortly.’
33
Billy, Danny and Exotic Plants
ANNIE EMITTED a tiny squeak, shut the window and locked it again.
‘We shall continue our tour now,’ Sidney Grice announced, ‘since you appear to have no intention of offering us any more tea.’
‘I am not sure I feel very hospitable,’ Uncle Tolly admitted and my guardian snorted.
‘I am quite sure that you do not.’ Mr G put an ear to the wall and tapped the chimneybreast with his knuckles. ‘Why have you no fireplaces in the bedrooms?’
‘I like to be cold, especially at night.’
‘I rarely sleep well unless I can see my own breath,’ Mr G enthused. ‘Where would you like to show us next? The choice is yours, Mr Ptolemy Travers Smyth.’
Uncle Tolly brightened. ‘A man with your scientific bent should find the electrical generating machines of interest, of very great interest indeed, indeed.’
‘My thoughts precisely.’ Mr G clapped his hand. ‘It is strange – is it not? – that Miss Middleton and I can occupy the same house and investigate the same crimes without having anything whatsoever in common, and yet I can come into your home and find so many shared interests that I scarcely know where to begin.’
Uncle Tolly beamed and fluffed up his beard. ‘I knew we should be friends.’
‘And I knew immediately that we should,’ Mr G smiled, ‘not. Lead the way, my good fellow.’
Uncle Tolly flinched at the slight but meekly obeyed, and we followed him out of the room, down the stairs and back along the hallway to a small side door which led along a low passageway – windowless except for two skylights – to an end door.
Inside was pitch-dark but the heat hit
us immediately. Uncle Tolly reached in, pulled something, and a dazzling light came on immediately, flickered and dimmed.
‘Bother.’ Uncle Tolly tisked. ‘One of the globes has expired and I have no spares. I shall have to contact Mr Swan for another.’
The remaining light source was still bright enough for us to see as we entered a large brick building where a massive furnace stood, cast iron and sprouting several levers and dials. It reminded me of the time I was allowed to stand in the cab of the train to Wigan and help the fireman shovelling coal into the blazing fire. I ruined my best frock but it was great fun. This time the door to the firebox was closed. The boiler was connected at the side to some sort of steam engine with pulley belts running down to another machine in the far corner. Judging by the piles of rubbish against the wall, the floor had been swept but it was still carpeted in ash and pieces of clinker.
‘Why is the generator not turning?’ Mr G banged a pipe with his cane.
Perspiration mushroomed on my forehead.
‘We turn Danny on intermittently to charge the cells which store the electricity and release it when required,’ Uncle Tolly said.
I hoped I was not as purple as I felt. ‘Then why do you have the boiler going?’ I asked.
‘An intelligent question,’ Uncle Tolly commented and, unusually for a man, did not add for a girl.
‘Then answer it.’ Mr G crouched and tugged at his bootlace.
I fanned myself with my hand.
‘It takes a long time to build up heat and pressure.’ Uncle Tolly’s visage glowed with pride. ‘Any excess steam is vented off to heat my exotic plant house.’ He patted a gauge affectionately. ‘Also, we had some rubbish to get rid of.’
Mr G, who seemed unaffected by the heat, was shuffling his feet side to side through the ashes, like a novelty dancer. ‘And if I wished to put out the furnace in an emergency?’ He executed a half-twirl, sending clouds of dust over his trouser legs.
‘Why, you would close this valve here to cut off the oxygen supply.’ Uncle Tolly touched a red-painted iron wheel which had a black handle projecting from it. ‘The fire would go out quite quickly then… What are you doing?’
Mr G strode over and pushed him aside. ‘Following your advice.’ His face was still pale and dry as he vigorously rotated the wheel.
‘But really there is no need,’ Uncle Tolly assured him. ‘In fact I would prefer it if you did not. The fire can be difficult to reignite once put out, very difficult indeed.’ He waved his arm anxiously, almost mirroring my guardian’s action.
Colwyn hurried up in concern. ‘Shall I stop him, sir?’
‘You will not be able to.’ Mr G crouched to adjust his bootlace. ‘I am trained in the ignoble Oriental arts of offence and have had recourse to them on twenty-nine occasions, always to my opponents’ shame and chagrin and, in three instances, permanently extinguishing their vital signs.’
‘I think you had better not try, thank you, Colwyn,’ Uncle Tolly decided nervously.
Sidney Grice jumped up. ‘If any one of you attempts to interfere with that valve I shall have him or her charged with obstructing the police in the course of their duty.’
‘Police?’ Uncle Tolly quavered.
‘Police,’ my guardian repeated. ‘You may expect them in,’ he made a great display of checking his hunter watch, ‘three minutes.’
Colwyn addressed Sidney Grice. ‘I am sorry to speak out of turn, sir.’ He glared indignantly at the little man before him. ‘But Mr Travers Smyth has shown you nothing but courtesy since you arrived uninvited at his home and you have persisted in taking advantage of his kind-hearted and – if I may say so – timid nature.’
‘I am timid,’ Uncle Tolly confessed.
Annie placed herself protectively in front of her master. ‘You are a bully, Mr Grice.’ Her voice quavered.
My guardian wiped his hands on a handkerchief. ‘I flatter myself that I am. Unlike most bullies, however, I am not a coward and I never bluff.’ He shook the handkerchief out vigorously.
‘But why should the police be coming here?’ Colwyn braced himself as if expecting them to hurtle through the door at any moment.
‘To investigate the murder, of course,’ Mr G explained impatiently.
‘But whose murder?’ Uncle Tolly asked anxiously and my guardian glared at him.
‘Have you not been paying any attention?’ He jiggled his hand in irritation. ‘Your murder, of course.’
‘Oh my goodness.’ Uncle Tolly covered his mouth with the fingertips of both hands. ‘Whatever—’
‘Hark.’ Sidney Grice leaned towards a distant sound and put his hand to his ear as if in a melodrama.
‘The front door.’ Annie hesitated, uncertain if she should answer the faint shrill ring.
‘Ask not for whom that bell tolls, Mr Ptolemy Hercules Arbuthnot Travers Smyth,’ my guardian proclaimed.
Uncle Tolly trembled. ‘They will probably go away.’
‘They are more likely to break your door down,’ I warned.
‘I had better go and deal with them,’ Colwyn decided.
Sidney Grice held up his hand. ‘We shall all go,’ he declared and marched jerkily out of the room with the rest of us in his wake.
34
Soppy Girls and the First Baron Lytton
THE RINGING HAD become insistent and piercing by the time we reached the hall.
‘Perhaps you should wait in the library, sir,’ Colwyn suggested solicitously.
‘Library?’ Uncle Tolly dithered. ‘Yes, indeed, thank you, Colwyn.’ And he wandered away uncertainly.
Annie smoothed down her apron and put a hand to her hair.
‘You go downstairs,’ Colwyn instructed her. ‘I’ll deal with this.’ He stepped smartly forward and opened the door.
Inspector Pound was on the top step in his second-best suit, looking very businesslike. ‘Mr Travers Smith, if you please.’
There was a Black Maria on the drive with the back door open. Three constables and a balding sergeant were milling round it.
Colwyn stood to attention. ‘My master is not at home.’
Pound’s mouth tightened. ‘He is at home to this.’ He held up a folded sheet of paper and Colwyn put out his hand but the inspector kept a firm grip on the document. ‘I shall not hand this to anybody other than your master.’
Colwyn frowned. ‘One moment.’ And he went to close the door.
But Pound put out a foot. ‘It is an offence in law to shut out or attempt to shut out a police officer in the execution of his duty.’
‘Very well, but you may not enter until you have shown Mr Travers Smyth your authority.’
‘You know your law,’ the inspector remarked. ‘Been in trouble with it, have you?’
‘Not yet.’ Colwyn marched off into the library.
We heard low voices and a moment later Uncle Tolly appeared, his velvet cap tilted forward and to one side.
‘Mr Ptolemy Travers Smyth?’ the inspector asked.
Uncle Tolly went to the threshold and cleared his throat. ‘I am him, that is, of course, to say he.’
‘I have here a warrant signed by a Justice of the Peace, authorizing me to enter and search the premises and grounds of the property known as Saturn Villa for the purposes—’
‘An Englishman’s home is his castle,’ Uncle Tolly said with a fire I had not witnessed in him before. ‘His castle.’
‘No man is above the law,’ Inspector Pound told him, ‘and I must advise you that it is an offence—’
‘Yes, yes,’ Uncle Tolly broke in. ‘I suppose I have no choice, no choice in the matter at all.’ He stepped aside and Colwyn, who was hovering behind, whispered something in his ear. ‘Quite so.’ Uncle Tolly walked his fingers up his jacket front. ‘Does your warrant authorize Miss Middleton and Mr Grice to ransack my house also?’
‘No, it does not,’ Inspector Pound admitted and glanced down at me. ‘I am sorry, but he has every right to ask you to leave.’
�
�Oh, I would never turn my own flesh and blood away.’ Uncle Tolly folded his arms. ‘But I shall not extend any more hospitality to her horrid godfather today.’ The long black cap tassel fell over his right eye.
Sidney Grice considered the situation. ‘I shall wait in the police van and rattle my halfpennies.’ He pointed his cane, rapier-like at my relative’s throat. ‘But I warn you, if anything happens to my ward whilst she is under your roof I shall hunt you down and slay you like that man in the stupid book by the man that she was wittering on about the other week.’
‘Edward Bulwer-Lytton,’ I clarified.
Mr G edged sideways to the door as if unwilling to turn his back on them. ‘I am fascinated by the contents of the generator furnace,’ he told the inspector, handing him the last test tube from his waistcoat. ‘And any small items of hardware in particular.’
Sidney Grice whirled on his heel. He did it elegantly as always – whereas I should probably have fallen down the steps – but he cut a forlorn figure hobbling alone down the gravelled path.
At a signal from his superior officer the sergeant donned his helmet and the men lined up behind him.
‘You know what to do,’ Pound told them. ‘Sergeant Mahoney will take Constable Lovell to check the contents of the boiler. Constable Brierley will go round the back to make sure nobody tries to sneak anything out. Constable Perkins and I will search the attic.’
I recognized Perkins as one of the men who had dragged the canal for a body in the Ashby case. He had called me a soppy girl and then been made to look foolish because of his efforts with a grappling iron, but I bore no ill-will and, from the hint of a wink he gave as he came in, neither did he.
Inspector Pound addressed Uncle Tolly. ‘We shall try to disrupt your household as little as possible, sir. Perhaps your servants could show us the way.’
Uncle Tolly ran a hand over his brow. ‘Very well, but I do not know who will make Miss Middleton’s tea.’
‘Unlike Mr Grice, I can probably survive without,’ I assured him.
‘Sherry then,’ he said as the policemen dispersed and he went into the study. ‘Or Colwyn told me you like gin.’
Death Descends On Saturn Villa (The Gower Street Detective Series) Page 11
