Death Descends On Saturn Villa (The Gower Street Detective Series)

by M. R. C. Kasasian

  I: [pulling my foot away before he reversed on to it] There is little cold-blooded about Miss Middleton. She is a creature of instinct, though I have never known her impulses to be cruel. To the contrary, she is often distressingly and indiscriminately kind.

  He: Pretty little thing.

  [I was about to contradict him when I realized he was referring to the heel bone on my bookshelf.]

  I: Indeed. That calcaneus is all that was left of Pirius Freeman, apart from some fatty sludge which is on display at the Royal College.

  He: I read about that. [O’Brian poured himself another liberal brandy.] Didn’t he believe that the River Styx was made of oil of vitriol and that if he dipped himself in it he would be invincible like Achilles?

  I: So his brother claimed, but I believe I could have proved otherwise had anyone employed my services. Whilst we are on the subject of the human skeleton [I took the lid off the cardboard box that Pound had brought with him], what do you make of that?

  O’Brian took it out and declared: I have never lost my sense of awe when I hold a human skull. To think this once contained all that was a man, this bony case of consciousness, this osseous dome, this—

  I: Quite so. [There are six types of men when it comes to brandy. Some become bawdy, some maudlin, some aggressive, some docile, some silent. But the very worst kind become poetasters and the Hibernian surgeon was teetering obesely on the brink of the Shakespearean.] But what can you tell me about it?

  [I have found that few people can answer a question until it is put to them in at least two different ways, Molly’s record being twenty-nine before I defeated her.]

  He: It was a man, to judge by the prominent glabella, supraorbital ridges and temporal lines. The smoothness of the interior indicates that he was a creature of normal appetites.

  I: Do you have any evidence for that last remark?

  [O’Brian swirled the brandy in his glass as men do when trying to convince themselves they have not yet had enough. His pupils were of unequal sizes, I noted, but saw no opportunity to introduce the topic into our conversation.]

  He: Professor Loredan of the University of Venice dissected the skulls of nearly a thousand effeminate men, of which there is no shortage in the Italian peninsula, and found it to be invariably the case that the surface of their skulls was corroded by the impure thoughts harboured within.

  I: I believe that Loredan’s diagnosis of effeminacy encompassed all men who use soap.

  He: A good rule of thumb, wouldn’t you agree?

  I had no wish to offend my guest so I only remarked mildly: You are talking utterly inane drivel.

  At which, no doubt because of the alcohol he had consumed, O’Brian took offence and snapped: Damn your eyes. [He grasped my decanter again.] Anyway, you would be better asking my colleague, the oral surgeon Mr Weybridge, for this is almost certainly one of his former patients.

  I decided to exercise a little tact and said: Explain that deduction before you storm off in a childish sulk.

  He: [taking yet more unintended offence] Ask him yourself. I will see myself out.

  [Yet again Miss Middleton would have indulged in some repartee at this point, but I have striven all my life not to be witty and I flatter myself that I have succeeded.]

  *

  I had met Weybridge at a party. I hope this does not give the impression that I am a sociable or pleasant man. The hostess had received a death threat and employed my services to protect her, which of course I did to my complete satisfaction.

  It interests me that surgeons, whom one might expect to have long thin fingers to perform delicate procedures, often have hands that would be useful for laying bricks. This goes some way to proving my contention that surgery is not a profession but involves the same skills of chopping and hacking that are required by a lumberjack. I said none of this to Weybridge, however. If Miss Middleton has had any effect on my behaviour it is that her lack of tact has illustrated the importance of invariably exercising it myself.

  He: Grice. [Weybridge enveloped my hand in his black-haired fist.] I hear you upset O’Brian. Good for you. The man is a bully, though I would choose him every time to amputate my leg.

  I: It is not an operation you can have more than twice.

  [His voice was high for such a massively constructed creature and I wondered how smooth was the inside of his cranial vault.]

  I showed him the skull and said: O’Brian was under the impression that you might know something about this.

  [Weybridge put on his spectacles and hobbled across his laboratory to the window.]

  He: Interesting. The upper-left dog tooth is displaced and completely buried, so much so that the first premolar has drifted forward to close the gap.

  I: [to see if he knew the answer] Is that rare?

  He: It occurs in perhaps one in two hundred people.

  I: [crouching to examine a pickled baby Cyclops] Did you cause the bone damage?

  He: I prefer my actions to be called surgery, but yes, it does look like one of my cases.

  I: Can you be certain?

  He: Fairly. It is not a common procedure as it involves cutting through the hard palate and most patients decline to have it done unless I make them.

  I: Why would a man want it done?

  [I scrutinized the severed head of an able seaman, which was suspended in a large jar. So much of the face had been eroded that the nasal turbinate bones and the meninges were exposed.]

  He: [placing the skull fragment on a set of scales] Sometimes they are associated with cysts, which can become painful.

  [It was apparent that Weybridge had been walking in Fulham within the last three days, though I doubted he would admit as much.]

  I: You cannot be the only surgeon to carry out these operations?

  He: I am the only man I know who does them in this way. [He ran a straight probe around a shallow concavity.] The rest of my colleagues chisel the bone away, which leaves straight lines, but I use a new electrical drill that is less destructive and leaves a rounded scar like this.

  I: [admiring a foot magnificently encrusted with that delightful fungal disease, South American blastomycosis] How many of these procedures have you carried out?

  He: About a dozen. Give me an evening to go through my case notes and I can give you a list. [Weybridge sniffed the skull.] Found in a fire?

  I: I am interested in the condition of the dental pulps.

  He: How so?

  I took a probe from the marble work surface and indicated the areas I was talking about: These incisors are freshly fractured. There is no evidence of any time for repairs and the pulp has not bled into the dentine. There are still remnants of soft tissue in the depth of the chambers, as I ascertained with a fine wire. So the pulp had not the time to die. Also, the pattern of fracture corresponds with the shape of these lower incisors.

  [I delivered them to him.]

  He: As you say, they fit quite neatly into the upper teeth. [He handed the skull back to me.] This man died grinding his teeth in agony.

  I: Splendid.

  83

  Wednesday Late Evening

  I REVISITED UNIVERSITY college Hospital, a massive edifice reminiscent in its grandiosity and long passageways of my parents’ summer residence in Hampshire, which we had not visited since that unfortunate event which my mother ever after referred to as the incident.

  The matron gave me no trouble this time. Indeed she escorted me to the bed where Inspector Pound lay sleeping.

  I: Wake up, Pound.

  [She glared at me, but I have only ever been interested in the emotions of nine matrons and she was not amongst that number.]

  Pound: [with a start] I have already done it, Lucinda. Oh hello, Mr Grice.

  I: Miss Middleton has gone mad.

  He: Mad?

  I: You are familiar with the word, I take it?

  Pound edged up his pillows, making no end of an embarrassing fuss with his grunts and grimaces, and said: In what way mad?


  I: She is almost in a trance and has an emerald complexion.

  He untangled a sleeve of his nightgown and said: You think she has been poisoned again?

  I: It would seem likely but I do not know for certain how, yet. I shall get Dr Villeroy of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society to examine her. His knowledge of toxicology is even more extensive than my own.

  [Pound pulled his sheet down and I pulled it up.]

  He: What can we do?

  I: [charitably] You can do even less than usual.

  He: I have been wracking my brains [Pound parted his moustaches], but I cannot understand why all this has happened. [He rasped at his stubble.] The first incident at Saturn Villa was more like a bad practical joke – pretending to be dead and making Miss Middleton believe she had done it. But why go to all that trouble to play such a prank on a complete stranger?

  [I extracted my insulated bottle.]

  I: We should consider the matter from a different perspective. [I poured myself a cup of tea.] What was achieved by such extravagant mischievousness?

  I re-corked my flask and Pound pinched his cheek, saying: Nothing much, that I can see. Miss Middleton was upset and confused and—

  I: Perhaps that was what they hoped to do… confuse her. Obviously she was drugged to abet them in that purpose, but why would you want to confuse anybody?

  [I tried my tea and was pleased to find it still steaming.]

  He: To distract them. [He stopped scratching.] But from what?

  I put the cup on his side table and said: I do not know yet, but can it really be a coincidence that all this took place whilst I was away?

  The inspector frowned and said: You are not suggesting that your abbot was killed just to get you out of the way?

  He was not my abbot. Indeed I have never possessed one, but I let that pass with: Possibly but it seems unlikely – to risk being caught for murder to get me out of town. If it was just a practical joke why not just make up a story to lure me away?

  He: But you think the two events might be linked. [Pound looked at my flask.] I don’t suppose you’ve got any of that to spare?

  I shook my flask and said: I have quite a lot to spare, but I never spare it.

  He: What about the will? [He reached for his glass of water with another great show of discomfort.] Why make out a will in Miss Middleton’s favour? It could only provide her with a motive for a crime that never took place.

  I: Since you and Miss Middleton are fond of untrammelled speculation, I shall venture a little into that intellectual hinterland myself. [Something was annoying the inspector but I did not enquire what it might be.] What if they planned to put another man’s body in the bed and claim that Miss Middleton had killed him, believing it to be her uncle from whom she stood to inherit a fortune?

  Pound clicked his tongue annoyingly and said: The skull in the furnace.

  I: Which Mr Weybridge, a surgeon in this dreary establishment, thinks he should be able to identify. [I drained my cup.] He also concurs with me that it is likely that the victim was pushed into the furnace alive.

  Pound whispered: My God, what a way to die.

  I: I can think of eleven worse.

  [I flicked the cup dry and replaced it on my flask. Pound put his water to his lips and the dusty meniscus vibrated.]

  He: But why not go ahead with the plan?

  I: A germane point. By her own account, when Miss Middleton escaped from Saturn Villa the attempts to recapture her were so feeble as to be moribund. That could be because her pursuers were unfit; she can move quite quickly for a girl; or stupid, though they seem to have exercised some ingenuity in planning and executing their scheme; or that—

  Pound broke in: They wanted her to escape.

  It is bad enough that I interrupt people without them doing it to me.

  84

  Wednesday Late Evening, Continued

  A NURSE ARRIVED to change Pound’s dressing. I would have been interested to watch as I have written a light- hearted paper entitled ‘A Few Thoughts on the Healing of Abdominal Lacerations’, but the inspector was feeling coy and so I ambled up the ward, diagnosing conditions and assuring a wailing young man that his sufferings would not last much longer.

  When I regained his company Pound looked distinctly the worse for his experience.

  He: The wound is clean now [though I had not mentioned it], but Lord, that carbolic acid stings.

  [It irritated my eye and sensitive nostrils just to stand near him.]

  But I consoled him with a cheery: Pull yourself together, man [and prodded him jovially in the ear with my cane].

  He: I’ve been thinking about motive. [Though, again, I had not asked for his thoughts.]

  I: There is a lot of gibberish talked about the reasons people kill other human beings. Weighty tomes have been devoted to misrepresenting the subject but, as often, the more words people use, the less they say. [I slid the chair eleven inches further back and sat upon it.] There is only one motive for murder and that is resentment.

  He: Resentment?

  [There was the desiccated corpse of a house fly by the skirting board, and it had five stripes along its back instead of the usual four. I wondered if this might be a new species – Musca Domestica Gricea had a pleasant ring to it.]

  I: By which I mean the wish to deprive someone of what he or she has, either because the killer wants it for him or her self or does not want the victim to have it.

  He: I can see that for robbery but what about anger?

  I: Is that not resentment?

  He thought about it, his dark-rimmed eyes swivelling to the right, and said: What about revenge?

  I: Revenge is surely based on undistilled resentment of an act performed or neglected.

  [The fly’s primary wings were so truncated that I wondered if it had ever flown.]

  He: [tentatively] Lust.

  I: We are men of the world. What is lust other than the desire to have what somebody else has, that is, their body? Possessions, carnal knowledge, status, religious beliefs. It is all as one. [A patient was trying to get out of bed and the matron was forcing him back by his throat. I crouched.] If the detective can work out what is wanted and who wants it from whom, his job becomes embarrassingly simple. [I popped the insect into an envelope and stood up.] If he cannot calculate these things he should not be a detective.

  He: Do you know the answers?

  I: Not yet, but I shall. [I scrutinized the fly through a small magnifying glass. It appeared to have enjoyed a natural death.] I never believe coincidences unless I can prove them to be so, and I have no reason to suspect that any are instrumental in leading to Miss Middleton’s unhappy situation. [My right eye was drifting but I decided to ignore it.] It would therefore seem likely that the death of Dom Ignatius Hart, the imagined death of Mr Travers Smyth, the actual death of Mr Travers Smyth, the deaths of the over-excitable Mrs Prendergast and her reputably pretty maid were all linked by the same resentment. A person or persons unknown wanted something that one or all of them had, or was anxious that they should not have it.

  He: If Miss Middleton is guilty as accused – and I can’t believe that she is – what could she be resentful of?

  I informed him: That is the ninetieth most difficult question you have ever asked me. Her interests go little beyond her five major vices – to wit, smoking cigarettes, drinking gin, devouring animal flesh, annoying me and being kind to people.

  [Pound let out a little snigger. If he had some private joke I had no wish to participate in it.]

  I sealed the envelope and pencilled the time and date upon it, then said: But let us create a mirror image of that thought. If Miss Middleton is, as I am secretly contemplating, innocent of any crime what might she have that was of interest to the murderer or murderers? It is unlikely that anybody should desire her in a physical sense.

  Pound opened his mouth, but evidently changed his mind about what he was going to say and asked: What about her money?

  I sto
od up and said: Colonel Middleton was a remarkable man, a skilled physician and surgeon, a courageous soldier, a cultured scholar and the husband of one of the twelve most beautiful women in Europe. [I went behind the chair. It had been constructed in Ipswich.] He was also irresponsible to the point of imbecility. He left his daughter to fend for and educate herself; he took her on perilous voyages to dangerous foreign climes when she was little more than a child; he exposed her to the horrors of war at an age when other girls are fretting over their flounces and eyelashes; and he gambled away – in that notorious casino known as the stock exchange – the considerable fortune generated by his own forebears and his union with the Stopforth dynasty. As a result of this the only real asset Miss Middleton had, when I tended my offer to be her guardian, was me.