I stood: I shall certainly assist you with some sound advice. [I stepped back.] I strongly recommend that you make strenuous and urgent efforts to extinguish that inferno before it consumes your office and your obnoxious self.
[Rosewood began to stamp on the rug, the resultant draught dispersing the oil and flames with great efficiency.]
I added: Take off your splendid coat and drape it over the fire to starve the latter of oxygen.
He: This coat cost me twenty guineas.
I: And worth every shilling, I venture. The needlework is excellent.
He: What? [And proceeded reluctantly to follow my instruction, with the result that the flames were soon annihilated.] It is ruined. [He lifted the charred remains of his attire.]
I: Indeed.
[I lingered momentarily to draw his attention to an umbral likeness of Springheel Jack.]
He: [shouting in a thoroughly unprofessional manner, which certainly would not entice me to use his services again] It is a joint of gammon.
I departed for my appointment with Messrs Griffin and Sniff to make similar enquiries about the late Mr Ptolemy Hercules Arbuthnot Travers Smyth, and on the way I posted a letter to Saturn House.
87
Thursday Afternoon
HAVING BEEN THWARTED in my attempts to view Mrs Prendergast’s cadaver or the remnants of her servant, but buoyed by my discovery and decapitation of the pampered Albert and my successful solicitorial conclaves, I went home and, ignoring Molly’s enquiry as to whether the dog had bitten me, deposited the head in a sealable glass jar.
Pausing only to feed the mouse and drink a pot of tea, I went up to wash and change for what Miss Middleton so coarsely calls lunch, after which I settled down with a fresh pot and a copy of the Coroners’ Monthly Illustrated Journal.
Colwyn arrived three minutes early. He chuckled, having been announced by Molly as A man called Colin what can’t not pronunciate his own name.
He: Your letter was lucky to find me in, Mr Grice. I am in the unhappy process of closing down Saturn Villa.
[He was a tall, slim man – twenty-three and four or five months (I calculated), with a full head of peculiar black hair.]
I: What is your full name?
He: Colwyn Harold Blanchflower.
I: Do you have any employment?
[I took his hand. The way a man returns a handshake can tell me twenty-four things about him. His grip was firm and dry and his gaze direct, but he had the sense to avert it. A servant who holds your gaze for too long is trying to be defiant.]
He: Not yet, sir. I am disadvantaged by Mr Travers Smyth and my previous employer, Mr Fox, being unable to provide me with a written character.
[I sent Molly to fetch tea and, at my invitation, the valet took Miss Middleton’s chair.]
I: What happened to Mr Fox?
He: He was killed by a chicken. [Colwyn rubbed the back of his neck.] Most people find that amusing but it was a tragic accident. It ran out and startled his horse which threw him. He was a good man, as was Mr Travers Smyth.
I extracted my saffron notebook and asked: What took you to Gorizia-Tyrol?
Colwyn blushed and said: Foolishness. I was young and yearning for adventure. I joined a group of mercenaries – the Iron Brigade, we called ourselves, but we were the wet-behind-the-ears brigade really. We were led by a man calling himself Captain Hazzard, a veteran of the American Civil War, but he turned out to be Jim McAdam, a shoemaker from Canada, who had done three months in the army and deserted. We were going to offer our services to the king of the Russias. Lord only knows why we thought he would need us. By the time we got to Austria we had been robbed so many times we were lucky to have the clothes we stood in. Three of us got cholera and McAdam disappeared with what little money we had left. Baron Adler-Haussmann found me destitute and took pity on me. I think he thought I would fit one of his household uniforms.
I extruded one eighth of an inch of the lead of my Mordan mechanical pencil and asked: Did you speak the language already?
He: [ruefully] Not a word, sir, but luckily the baron was fluent in English and liked to practise it on me, and I soon picked up the language from the other servants.
Molly brought the tea and he winked at her, saying: I’m not used to being waited on by lovely young damsels.
Molly giggled: Get away. I know I’m young and lovely but I ain’t not no more a damson than you’re an apple.
I: Save your vulgar banter for the servants’ hall. [Molly hovered.] Go away.
[Molly left with lingering looks at our guest.]
He: After two months with the baron—
I saved him the trouble of continuing his account by remarking kindly: I am bored with that story. Where were you born?
He: In South Shore near Blackpool.
I: Indeed?
[I wrote S Shore down, followed by a symbol of my own devising meaning indeed?]
He: I have had a lot of time to think. [I had not broached the subject of how he whiled away the hours but he continued.] And I am sorry for what I said about Miss Middleton. I was upset and I do not think I was fair to her.
I was unaware that it was the place of a valet to be fair or otherwise to his betters, but I decided to exercise my usual tact and responded: Why do you say that?
Colwyn folded his hands in his lap and replied: When I heard my master cry out and heard the shot—
I interjected patiently: I know why you were unfair, but I wish to know why you have decided that you were. Kindly answer the question.
He: I have been thinking.
I: [not quite so patiently] You have already made that claim but you have yet to substantiate it.
[Colwyn reverted to rubbing his neck. People do that for one of eight reasons and I do not think the first – cervical discomfort – applied, for his upper spine seemed flexible enough.]
He said: Mr Travers Smyth was not a happy man. He was always anxious and getting himself upset about imaginary problems. He worried for weeks once that the neighbours might say the electricity was keeping them awake, though nobody had ever complained. He was in a terrible state about Miss Middleton’s visits. What if she wanted nothing to do with him? What if she hated him? Having his house searched was a dreadful shock. I don’t think he slept after that. He paced the house night and day mithering about whether he would be sent to prison. I was wondering if it is possible that he got himself worked up so much that it was all too much for him. He had such a nervous personality that—
I pounced: Say that again.
He left his neck alone, contracted his nostrils and asked: Which bit, sir?
I: From the second much.
I watched him search his mind before he said: I think I said—
I: Never mind what you think you said. Tell me again what you said.
He: I’ll try.
[He interlocked his fingers.]
I: Just do it.
[Colwyn cracked his knuckles, and I mentally flicked through the nine principal reasons people do that and leaned back to pull the bell.]
He: Too much for him. He had a nervous personality.
I: Once more, though you can omit the first four words.
His eyes flicked away: He had a nervous personality.
I clapped my hands and said: Excellent.
The valet tensed his lips and said: Shall I pour, sir?
I replied: You shall go.
He rose and hovered mid-air and said: Now, sir?
I: Indeed. Let me know where you are living.
Colwyn flashed defiance and said: I have been ordered to tell Inspector Quigley, but I am not obliged to keep you informed.
I felt the teapot with the tip of the fourth finger of my left hand and said: Yes, but he does not care about you as I do.
[Molly came in. Her bootlaces were untied.]
I: Show our visitor out, Molly.
She: Yes, sir.
Molly bobbed in her best effort yet, apart from the one she had spoiled by falling bac
kwards down the stairs.
88
Friday Morning, 26 January 1883
ANNIE, THE MAID, was a great deal more difficult to find. She had left Saturn Villa the day after her employer had died and she had not supplied a forwarding address. It was Inspector Pound, when I went to appraise him of my astonishing progress and chivvy him into getting out of bed, who made the suggestion to try Saint Zita’s.
I: Who, what and where is Saint Zita?
[I put on my pince-nez to inspect the foot of the middle-aged confectioner in the adjacent bed. It was black and hanging over the side, dripping wet gangrene.]
Pound: I think she is the patron saint of servants. They run a charitable house in Highgate for domestics who have lost their jobs.
I: A great incentive to idle their lives away.
[Pound had his hand over the Bible he had been reading.]
He said: I believe they have to earn their keep doing laundry for the nuns, but I don’t know much about it.
I: There is little to be gained by not knowing much. [I grasped his wrist and flipped open my hunter.] Your heart is contracting at an average rate of four thousand, nine hundred and twenty beats per hour, which is seven hundred and twenty more than I would have wished. Do something about it.
He shifted about and said: I cannot control my pulse.
[I took off my pince-nez and polished the lenses, and wondered why Miss Middleton had never suggested I used a monocle instead.]
I: No, I do not suppose you can. I shall send somebody to enquire at Saint Zita’s.
[We chattered amiably for four minutes about an old case of his involving a rusty button.]
He: If it wasn’t for the crossing sweeper’s sharp eye we would never have caught them.
I: Indeed. [I yawned, then, in case he had misinterpreted my action, hastened to explain.] I was not yawning because I am tired. It is just that I find your anecdote tedious.
Pound seemed cross about something but I had no time to worry about that and hurried away, pausing to reassure a plumber with nine broken bones that, whilst his medication was doing him more harm than good, it was unlikely to kill him if he ceased taking it immediately.
*
I was so busy and matters were becoming so urgent that I decided to forgo my pot of tea at the cleverly named Copper Kettle Cafe and have one at home instead.
Molly skipped about excitedly: There’s a special letter come.
I: The last letter you thought was special was an advertisement for a company offering to unblock my drains.
She: But this has a squashed red lump on it.
I groaned. If this was from King Ludwig II of Bavaria, wishing to abdicate in my favour, I had refused three times already.
I ordered tea and went into my study. There was a superficially nondescript communication from Messrs Griffin and Sniff, the financial investigators, with information regarding the estate of Ptolemy Travers Smyth. He had died in debt to an astonishing thirty-eight thousand pounds estimate with creditors still staking claims. That was more money than my mother had lost in a game of Baccarat punto banco against the Bishop of York.
The other letter was indeed special. It came from the Chancery division of the High Court and was addressed to Miss Middleton, and I was so angry that I marched out of the house without my tea, my flask or my satchel. I did not even wait for a hansom. I ignored the two street urchins shouting miserable old gizzard and walked.
89
Friday Noon
THE NEW IMPERIAL hotel was neither new nor evocative of empire. Major Gregory, I was informed by an oleaginous youth in the dreary lobby, was dining and could not be disturbed.
I: Do not attempt to deceive me, odiferous flunkey. Your resident may indeed be endeavouring to ingest this establishment’s unwholesome fare but it is perfectly possible to disturb him, as I am about to demonstrate.
A burly lackey disguised as the head waiter was partially blocking the entrance: Can I help you, sir?
I: You can inhale so that I may pass.
[But the impudent fellow merely stepped nine inches to his left, rendering ingress even more difficult. I had my swordstick with me and considered running him through.]
But instead I said: I have a ten shilling note. Do you think you could take care of it for me?
[The brute’s expression softened but his breath did not.]
He: Certainly, sir, but I may have to step to one side to do it properly.
He took the money from me with an alacrity which would have done credit to a judge and moved out of my way. The dining room was large, lofty, cold and almost uninhabited. Apart from two bored and misshapen waitresses, there was a camphorated lady so smothered in furs that she looked like she was being savaged by a skulk of foxes; and a gentleman in the corner, his fork poised over what he had been sold as veal but that had only recently seen the outside of a horse. I did not have to exhaust my deductive powers to calculate that this was the man I sought.
He: [without rising] Mr Grice, I presume.
I addressed him civilly: That is not the first presumption you have made, Major Bernard Samuel Vantage Gregory, but I grasp at the hope that it will be the last.
[He put down his knife but the fork still hovered.]
He: I told them to keep you away from me.
I retruded my eye and said: There is not a hotel employee in the British Empire, Europe or the allegedly United States of America who cannot be bribed for ten shillings.
Gregory: [prodding his meat aggrievedly] But I gave him a pound.
[He was the remnant of a man, shrunken by age and caved in by disease. His complexion was sallow and his eyes rheumy, with the lower lids wilting into dark purple bags.]
I: [sympathetically] Enough of your brainless chitterchat. [I pulled out the chair opposite his.] Why are you trying to abduct my ward?
He picked up his knife and sawed along the grain of his steak and said: If truth be told, March is not your ward. No court has ever made you her guardian.
[His moustaches were grey with yellowed ends from indulging in Puerto Rican cigars.]
I: She is my godchild.
He hacked a trapezium of flesh away and said: Then by all means feel free to give her spiritual guidance.
[I sat. Most men think being taller gives them an advantage. It only gives them neck ache and it is important to view people from different angles.]
I: She is under my protection.
Gregory’s pupils constricted: What protection? [He impaled his meat on the tines.] The protection which led to her witnessing murders and being accused of them? The protection that has sent her half-insane into a prison full of violent criminals and placed her in peril of execution?
[I had to admire his rhetorical technique but not the way he transferred a chunk of equine muscle into his mouth. I resisted an urge to force the rest of it down his windpipe as I had choked the Prussian Colonel with my eye at Charlottenburg.]
I: I will fight you over this. I made a promise to Miss Middleton’s father.
He covered his mouth with his napkin before saying: And I have a letter from him asking me to care for her if he should die or be incapacitated.
I: [arranging nine crumbs into a square on the tablecloth] I should be interested to scrutinize that missive.
He chewed another sixteen times and swallowed before telling me: The court has it.
I: [converting the square into an oblong with six more crumbs] Why did you not come forward when Miss Middleton’s father died?
Gregory’s head dropped: I was too ill.
I: I should not think it will be long before you are as dead as that meat.
[His head rose. There are some emotions I have never seen convincingly imitated and this was one of them. People always overplay it but Gregory was perfect – dignified suffering.]
He: At least you do not offer false sympathy.
[The backs of his hands were covered in bruises.]
I: I have only ever said one insincere thing an
d it haunts me to this day. What is your real interest in Miss Middleton?
Gregory tossed his napkin on to the table and said: I trust you are not implying any improper intent.
I: You should trust something more substantial, but it is fascinating that you propel yourself so rapidly to that inference. I was thinking more of the financial aspect.
Death Descends On Saturn Villa (The Gower Street Detective Series) Page 30
