‘You know my name.’
‘Name,’ he insisted and there was a crash. Three of the Irishmen had thrown the fourth under a bench and were trying to kick him with their clogs. ‘You stay there,’ the sergeant reached for his truncheon, ‘while I give those Murphies a headache to remember me by.’
He dashed round the desk and across the room with surprising agility for such a corpulent man, and I stood to one side while he and two constables flung the assailants aside and brought the affray under control.
‘We’ll get them in the cells first,’ the desk sergeant decided, ‘before they kill each other or we have to do it for them.’ His face glistened with triumph and sweat.
‘And they hanged him from a lamp post in the morning,’ a tousle-haired young man sang in a beautiful baritone as they dragged him to the desk. His nose, I saw, had old breaks in two different directions.
It took a long time to book the four men. They kept changing their minds about what their names were and arguing with each other about it.
‘Don’t you be calling me Seamus, Eamon.’
‘Don’t you be calling me Eamon, Seamus.’
And they were just being led away when the door was flung open and Molly rushed over in a long black coat. ‘Oh, miss, you ain’t not been killing people, have you?’
I ignored her question. ‘Where is Mr Grice?’
Molly looked up at the ceiling and crossed her fingers to help her remember. ‘Mr Grice has been called away on a matter of the outmost urgentiness and he has sented me to misrepresent him for you.’ She sighed in relief at having delivered her message to her complete satisfaction.
‘What matter?’
‘The matter is one of a delicious – no, delicate and conferential – something.’
‘Does he know I have been arrested?’
Molly was flushed like a child who had been holding her breath too long.
‘Do you want him to know?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes,’ she declared. She was hopping about and sucking her cheeks in.
‘Molly, what is going on?’
But Molly was proclaiming to Sergeant Horwich, ‘This woman is innocent and must be released immedantly.’
‘And you are?’ he enquired.
‘Molly,’ she proclaimed.
‘And how do you know that this woman is innocent?’
Molly scratched her head. ‘Because she ain’t not clever enough to kill people and she don’t not do lies except about smoking and drinking and her dress bill and we need her at home.’ Molly clearly thought that sufficient for she was about to usher me away when the sergeant guffawed and said, ‘We shall need a bit more than that before we can drop the charges.’
Something was bothering me. ‘That is my coat,’ I realized.
‘Well…’ Molly crossed her hands under her chin. ‘You won’t not be needing it if you’re going in the jug.’
I gave my attention back to Sergeant Horwich. ‘If you arrested me or Mr Grice every time we discovered a body we would never be out of your cells.’
Horwich sucked his pen. ‘That’s true,’ he conceded, a stain spreading from the corner of his mouth. ‘But Inspector Quigley was not very happy about you being released without questioning after your uncle died and he’ll be even less happy if I just let you go when we have witnesses.’
Uncle Tolly’s death was not Quigley’s case, but he had a grudge against me for making him look foolish in the past.
‘Is Quigley here?’ I asked. We may have disliked each other, but he was a logical man and might at least listen to reason.
‘No,’ the sergeant said, ‘but you’ll probably see him with his prisoners in the morning.’
‘She can’t not have done it,’ Molly piped up, ‘’cause I saw her murder somebody else dead.’ She folded her arms. ‘So you’ll have to let her go now and then you won’t not be able to prove she did the other thing what I made up and you’ll have to let her go for that too.’ She plonked her elbows on the desk, bedazzled by her own ingeniousness, and the sergeant regarded her balefully.
‘Get out before I charge you for wasting police time,’ he threatened, his lips bright blue.
‘If you do,’ Molly tapped the desk like a debater at a lectern, ‘will you let me share her cell?’
‘Let me put it this way.’ Horwich plucked at his mutton-chop whiskers. ‘No.’
And to my astonishment Molly burst into tears. ‘But there’s only her and Mr Grice what’s ever been kind to me, except Aunty Erica what didn’t cut my throat. You can’t keep her, not now of all times.’
‘Molly.’ I took hold of her shoulders as she sobbed uncontrollably. ‘What exactly is going on?’
Molly fought to calm herself. ‘I wasn’t not going to tell you,’ she managed at last with gasps between each word, ‘’cause you ain’t not no use in an emergency like me and Mr Grice,’ she made several horrible slurping noises, ‘used to be.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Oh, miss,’ Molly howled. ‘Oh, miss, oh, miss, oh, miss. Poor Mr Grice, the kinderest, gentlestest, sweetestest, kinderest man what ever ever lived, don’t not lived no more. Mr Grice is dead.’
60
The Flat Stone
I WAS GOING TO tell my father off. He had not written to me once since he had gone on his walking holiday and he was due home that evening. Cook had roasted a leg of mutton from one of our own sheep and I had his slippers by the fire and ordered in his favourite malt. And now he had missed the six o’clock train. It was too bad.
I knew he would be all right. We had been to India and Afghanistan together. Before that he had survived wars and all sorts of scrapes. My father was indestructible. Everybody said so.
Young Sam came with a telegram.
Daddy has met with some old comrades and is stopping in his club for the night, I told myself.
But Sam was crying and did not wait for a reply or even a tip.
REGRET TO INFORM YOU…
I ran out of the house and stood on the flat stone that looked across the valley and down the hill, and a howl that was hardly human flew out to the dipping sun. It bounced around the quarry looking for escape, but you can never escape the truth.
61
The Nun with a Hatbox
I COLLECTED MY thoughts. Molly was always getting things wrong. She had explained once that men button their coats the other way because they are all left-handed, and on another occasion had given me a breathless account of how Queen Victoria had tried to assastinate a madman in the park.
‘Dead?’ I mocked.
‘Bone dead,’ she told me and blew her nose on my coat lining. ‘Dead as a dormouse. Dead as water.’
I collected my thoughts. ‘Why do you think he is dead, Molly?’
‘’Cause I’ve seen him.’ Her eyes glowed with fear. ‘I’ve seen him scrawled on the floor – dead as glass.’
Sergeant Horwich was listening intently. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked. ‘I remember you coming in here saying that all London was on fire.’
‘I didn’t not know that was from a historitical book,’ she retorted. ‘But I seed Mr Grice screwn all over the floor and I took his plus in his wrist like Miss Middleton taught me and he was dead as a badger. So when the bluebottle came and said Miss Middleton – what we call old pan-face behind her back – was in trouble, I knew I had to come with my better cleverness to save her.’
The bald woman lumbered up, dragging the two youths with her.
‘Now see here, my good man.’ Her accent would not have gone amiss at a royal garden party. ‘How much longer am I to be kept waiting?’
Sergeant Horwich bristled. ‘For as long I choose.’ At which the woman let go of both her captives, grasped the sergeant by his jacket, pulled him towards her and butted him in the face.
‘One moment please, madam,’ he said, the blood streaming from his nostrils and through his moustaches. ‘Nettles, and you, Harris, go with these two women to Gower Street
at once and don’t be afraid. They aren’t as dangerous as they look.’ He pointed at me. ‘I put you on your honour to return. And you.’ He prodded a finger at the bald woman who towered over him. ‘Get up off the floor.’
‘I am not on—’ she began as he pulled back his left shoulder, feinted and knocked her clean out with one of the finest right hooks I have ever witnessed. And she fell as I have only seen an oak tree fall before, but with less grace.
‘That’s our mam,’ one of the youths howled.
We hurried outside.
‘Pity girls can’t run,’ Nettles said. ‘It’ll take forever in a cab.’ He tried to wave one down but it was occupied by a nun with a hatbox. ‘Hang on, wait for us,’ he called as I set off, with Molly left standing.
When women have the vote and I am the prime minister I shall pass a law making all men wear dresses for a day, and see how well they can get about with petticoats wrapping around their legs and bustles bobbing up and down behind them. I was in the lead all the way up Maple Street but on the straight in University Street, Harris, then Nettles, spurted past. Harris rang the bell.
‘You will have to wait for Molly,’ I gasped as she opened the door.
‘Got a ride with the nun,’ she explained. ‘Told her I was escapering from a prodingstant.’
The three of us stood fighting for breath in the hall.
‘Now,’ I managed at last. ‘What is this all about?’
‘He’s in there.’ Molly had taken off my coat and hung it up. There was a button hanging loose. ‘Dead as clockwork. Anyone for tea?’
The policemen assented enthusiastically as she went down the hall and I led them into the study.
‘Molly,’ I bellowed and she came galloping back, almost colliding into me.
‘I don’t not want to look again.’ She covered her eyes like a little girl playing hide and seek.
‘I think you should,’ I insisted and she slid her hands down reluctantly.
‘Lord love ’im,’ she said. ‘He’s descended into heaven.’
‘Is this a trick to get your mistress out of gaol?’ Harris demanded. ‘’cause it ain’t a very good one.’
‘He was here,’ Molly insisted. ‘I saw him dead as a pope.’
‘Well he ain’t ’ere now,’ Nettles said perceptively. ‘And where d’you fink you’re goin’?’
‘I am going to look upstairs,’ I said.
‘Not without me, you ain’t.’
He followed me up and I was nearly at the top when I saw the soles of Sidney Grice’s boots, toes down, then his trousers crumpled up, then him lying on his front in the corridor, arms and legs akimbo. His face was yellow and his eyes were open and misted over.
62
Flannels and Being Damned
I LEAPED UP the last few steps and threw myself on to my knees beside him.
‘Open that door.’
Nettles did so and some light came in from the sitting room. I grasped my guardian’s wrist. The pulse was thready and fast but definitely present and, when I brushed his eyelid with the back of my finger, he blinked.
‘Help me turn him on his back.’
The others were coming up.
‘See,’ Molly declared. ‘Dead as a cup.’
She ran her finger under the bannister rail and tutted as if it were somebody else’s job to clean it.
‘He is not dead.’ I loosened his cravat. ‘But he is having a severe bout of fever.’
‘Maralia.’ Molly crossed herself to ward off the evil miasmas.
‘I do not think it is malaria this time,’ I said. ‘He caught more diseases than he will admit to when he was searching for his friend in the jungle.’
‘Oh,’ Molly exclaimed, ‘if he wanted a friend he could have had me. I could have taken him ratting and taught him to play pinch-the-parson’s-bum.’
‘Haven’t played that in years,’ Harris reminisced as Sidney Grice shuddered uncontrollably.
‘We need to get him up to bed,’ I declared, and Nettles took my guardian’s shoulders while Harris grabbed him under the knees and lifted.
Sidney Grice closed his eyes. He was a dead weight, limp but shivering all the while. Nettles went backwards up the stairs with Harris struggling behind. Twice Nettles stumbled and the second time he cracked Sidney Grice’s head on a bannister spindle.
‘Be careful,’ I urged.
‘Yes,’ Molly scolded. ‘If that barrister gets chipped it’ll be me what gets the blame.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Harris pacified her. ‘’E probably won’t live to tell you off.’
‘I wish he would.’ Molly tangled her mop of red hair around her fingers. ‘I wish he would wake up and say Get out, you black-headed lumpy wrench in that soft-hearted way of his.’
‘Hello, Mother,’ Mr G murmured. ‘Shall we feed the snakes today?’
‘Oh, bless him,’ Molly burbled fondly.
The men reached the top and I hurried ahead to open the door. I had never seen or been in my guardian’s room before – no doubt he would not have thought it decent for me to do either – and I always imagined it to be austere and cell-like but it was actually quite a cheerful room. The walls were papered in Regency stripes and there was a thick Turkish carpet for him to step on to when he got out of the bed that the policemen dumped him on to. As might be expected his bedside table was piled high with books, all with multiple paper markers jutting out of them. They were mainly anatomy and chemistry, but were topped for light relief by a volume entitled Insoluble Mathematical Theorems and Conundrums Concerning the Algebraic Nature of Magnetism.
‘Oh, I’ve read one of those,’ Molly said.
‘Which one?’ I asked automatically as I struggled to undo my guardian’s bootlaces. They were tied in very complicated knots and my efforts only seemed to be tightening them.
‘No, not one of those.’ She wiggled her nose. ‘A book about a cat what came to London but I didn’t not understand it.’
‘Allow me,’ Harris said, unfolded a clasp knife and sawed through them.
‘He won’t not be happy about that,’ Molly predicted. ‘They were his most favouritest laces.’
I checked his pulse again. ‘How do you know?’ Usually I would find her chatter nearly as irritating as Mr G did but today – having been embraced by a woman impaling herself against me, arrested for her murder, been told that Inspector Pound had relapsed and seeing my guardian prostrate with a tropical fever – there was something reassuringly normal about it.
‘’Cause he never said he had any more favouriter,’ she reasoned.
‘I need some flannels and a bowl of cold water,’ I told her.
‘And what does Mr Grice need?’ she wondered.
‘Fetch his quinine from the medicine chest in the bathroom,’ I told her. ‘If he wakes up it will help get his temperature down.’
‘You could use the flannels for that too,’ Molly suggested.
There was a photograph on the dressing table of a young man. He was wearing a striped blazer, strumming a banjo and laughing, and it took me a while to recognize him.
‘I tried. I tried.’ Mr G stirred. ‘I tried.’ He clutched my wrist. ‘It startled me.’ He opened his eyes and focused on me. ‘It was too clean under the bed.’
He tried to rise but I restrained him.
‘Do not worry about that now,’ I told him. ‘You must rest.’ I mopped his brow with my handkerchief.
Molly burst in, announcing, ‘Hot water and quiline.’ And I checked the bottle. At least she had brought the right drug.
‘Throw that hot water away and get some cold water from the bathroom,’ I ordered, ‘and a cup or glass.’
‘Which?’
‘Either.’
‘It caught me off guard.’ Mr G’s hand shot in front of his face.
‘You are safe now,’ I told him and his eyes seemed to sink back into his head, and for a while he was lost in reverie.
‘Do you think it is my safety I am concerned about?’ He fumb
led for his watch.
Molly was hovering at my side, slopping water on his leg.
‘Take this tablet,’ I instructed and popped it in his mouth. There is nothing in the world more tongue-curlingly, mouth-shrivellingly bitter than quinine. It is the reason tonic was invented and the excuse we all needed in India to take more gin. ‘Have some water.’
Mr G waved away the glass. ‘Yum yum,’ he said and instantly fell asleep.
I checked his mouth and he had swallowed it all.
‘His eye needs to come out,’ I said. His socket was weeping.
‘Don’t worry, miss, I can do that,’ Molly volunteered and set to work.
‘The other eye, Molly,’ I told her hastily.
‘Silly me.’ She slapped the back of her own hand. ‘I thought it felt squidgy.’
Nettles humphed. ‘I am sorry, miss, but we need to go back now.’
‘I can’t leave him.’
‘Don’t worry, miss,’ Molly piped up. ‘I’ll look after him. I’ll take all his clothings off and throw pails of cold water over him. He’ll like that.’
And I wondered if my guardian was right after all when he swore she would be the death of him.
‘Do not do any such thing,’ I snapped. ‘Mop his brow to keep him cool. If he is awake in an hour give him another tablet. If he gets any worse run to the hospital and get help.’
Sidney Grice did not mind doctors experimenting on me, but he hated them coming near him.
‘Dear God.’ Sidney Grice clawed at his socket. ‘Dear God, how I loved…’
He settled again and I bent over him and kissed his brow – the first time I had ever done so.
‘Shall I do that?’ Molly asked.
‘Yes, please,’ I whispered, and I was damned for all eternity if I would cry.
63
The Diamond Dull in the Midday Sun
Death Descends On Saturn Villa (The Gower Street Detective Series) Page 20
