‘At the same time,’ Lucy said.
‘As if he were making his mark,’ I conjectured.
‘It was probably the only signature he could manage.’ Freddy’s voice hardened with contempt, but her friend was lost in that room now, eyes searching the night for what she could not see.
‘Did he speak again?’ I asked and Lucy jolted back into the living world.
‘Twice. First it was Had enough? And I think I said Yes. I was too stunned to really know what I was doing. Then he ripped open my dress at the top and said Scream and so I did, again and again. By then I was on the floor.’
‘You were still on the sofa when he kneeled on you?’ I asked. That was not how I had imagined it.
‘Yes.’ Lucy closed her fringe like the curtains of a puppet show. ‘And I still have the bruises to prove it.’
Mr G perked up. ‘I should very much like to see those,’ he said again.
‘You shall not,’ Lucy repeated even more firmly.
‘For what it is worth, I have seen them,’ Freddy volunteered, but Sidney Grice did not even acknowledge her.
‘At what stage did you quit the comforts of the sofa?’ He printed, as he spoke, over two entire pages I DO NOT REMEMBER and shut his book smartly.
Lucy dabbed her eyes. ‘I do not remember falling, just being kicked and stamped on and curling up, trying to cover my face.’
‘You have had enough for today,’ I said firmly and prepared to do battle with my guardian, but Sidney Grice was swivelling in his chair to face Freddy. A beam of sunshine scattered from his glass eye, the spectrum caressing on his cheek.
‘Whereas you,’ he rotated his wounded shoulder which had benefited little from the hot weather, ‘have been what some might regard as suspiciously quiet.’
17
The Pipes and the Pendulum
FREDDY JUTTED HER jaw, but it was so delicate that she looked more like a little girl pouting than an angry woman. ‘What an impertinence.’
Sidney Grice intertwined his fingers. ‘Let us begin, Miss Wilde, with Miss Bocking’s possibly slanderous assertion that it was you who suggested visiting an opium den.’
‘I suppose I did.’
He inverted his hands to create a bowl. ‘Why?’
‘I had taken opium before,’ Freddy admitted. ‘It helps me forget.’
‘Forget what?’ my guardian asked, and she chewed her lips and burst out, ‘How much of my life do you imagine I wish to remember?’
‘Had you used the Golden Dragon opium house before, Freddy?’ I asked hurriedly.
‘Never.’
Mr G peered, mystified, into the bowl.
‘Why did you not use a previous haunt?’ I asked and Freddy touched her amulet.
‘Two of them had tried to fob me off by mixing talcum powder into the resin.’ She looked abashed. ‘The third had evicted me after I . . . misbehaved.’
‘With a gentleman?’ I asked, as tactfully as I could and before my guardian could be more direct, but he was occupied in pulling his bowl apart.
Freddy blushed. ‘I thought he would be as . . . affected as I was and so . . .’ She swallowed. ‘I tried to kiss him. He opened his eyes.’ She bowed her head at the memory. ‘And he screamed.’ She exhaled. ‘There – now you have it. I am humiliated and how does it help your enquiry?’
I did not have an answer for that, but Sidney Grice patted his left knee twice to comfort himself and said, ‘All truth is important and Miss Middleton has accessed information of which I was previously and dismayingly in ignorance.’
‘How many pipes did you smoke, Freddy?’ I took hold of my saucer.
‘Three.’ She gingerly touched her inflamed left eyelid. ‘And then I fell asleep.’
‘You saw nothing suspicious before that?’ I tried my tea but it was too cold to drink with any pleasure.
‘Nothing.’
‘When did you wake up?’
‘When somebody put a bag over my head and I heard him saying That’s an improvement – though it was more like zats or dats – and I felt a drawstring being pulled round my neck so tight I thought I was being strangled.’ Freddy put a hand to her throat. ‘Then I was pulled to my feet.’
‘How?’ Mr G took hold of his elbows.
‘By the cord.’ Freddy massaged her neck. ‘I was dragged backwards and hauled up so that I had to stand on tiptoes.’ She pulled at the front of her collar. ‘I found out later that the drawstring had been looped over a hook and I was turned to face the wall and my hands were tied behind me. I could not see anything. I could hardly breathe.’ Panic darted around her eyes. ‘It was so hot. I thought—’
‘I am not very interested in what you thought.’ My guardian hugged himself. ‘Could you hear anything?’
Freddy worked her fingers under her collar. ‘Everything was muffled. I heard bumps and crashes and Lucy screaming.’
‘Does Miss Bocking have a unique scream?’ Mr G’s arms flew apart and the notebook disappeared into one of his numerous inner coat pockets.
Freddy scrunched her brow. ‘I do not think so.’
‘Then am I to take it that you assumed that the screams, which you claim to have heard, came from her?’
‘Of course.’
‘Of course.’ He savoured the sound of the words before adding, ‘Most people would agree that it was a reasonable assumption to make.’ He puffed out his cheeks. ‘However, I have yet to formulate the desire to enter into concord with you about anything. Proceed.’
‘I could not struggle for fear of choking. I tried to call out.’
‘What?’ Sidney Grice dangled his watch on its chain. ‘And why?’
Freddy flushed. ‘Just Lucy’s name. I do not know exactly why.’
‘People do call out to each other in crises,’ I interpolated.
My guardian greeted that statement quizzically. ‘Do you have personal experience of such a situation?’
Edward! I heard it as clearly as the day I cradled his bloodied face.
‘Yes.’
The watch swung like a pendulum.
‘Then you may expand upon that remark when you are solitary for nobody else is interested.’ Sidney Grice pointed at Freddy Wilde. ‘Resume your unusual account.’
‘I do not know how long I was hanging there . . .’
‘Then do not devastate my time with conjecture.’ My guardian slipped his hunter back into his waistcoat pocket. ‘I can calculate for my own secret purposes that it was more than a second and less than a decade.’
Freddy clearly struggled to suppress a retort. ‘Eventually I was aware of somebody untying my wrists,’ she said as evenly as she could. ‘The—’
‘Wrists?’ Sidney Grice pounced on the word like a snake on a rabbit, chewing it over in his mind before digesting it. ‘You told me your hands were tied and I transcribed your statement. Am I to believe—’ he produced his notebook and rustled though the pages, jabbing a slopping line of squirls with an accusatory knuckle—‘that I have sullied my black, cloth-bound, three-hun-dred-and-eighty-four-ounce quality paper notebook with,’ his voice took on a tone of moral outrage, ‘a falsehood?’
Freddy slipped her right fingers under her left cuff as if to check the truth of her own statement. ‘I meant my wrists.’
Sidney Grice closed his notebook reverently and clutched it to his heart. ‘I once met a woman who was capable of saying what she meant.’ His expression became dreamy. ‘Though, of course, she never did.’ He stroked the smooth spine. ‘Discontinue your discontinuance.’
‘I—’
‘You were rudely interrupted after voicing the definite article,’
my godfather reminded her gently.
‘The,’ Freddy recommenced uncertainly.
‘Well done,’ he encouraged her.
‘The blood rushed back into my hands.’ Freddy eyed him uneasily. ‘They were burning.’
My guardian balanced his notebook on the tip of his left thumb.
‘It was me,’ Lucy
said.
‘You were burning her hands?’ Mr G gaped in astonishment.
‘No, I mean I untied Freddy.’
‘Her hands or her wrists?’ He leafed through his notes until he came upon an elongated ampersand taking up an otherwise blank sheet of paper. ‘Miss Wilde has given scant evidence of being capable of distinguishing between them.’
‘Of course she can,’ I snapped, tired of whatever game he was playing now.
‘For her sake I hope – though not with any great solicitude – that you are correct in that assertion, Miss Middleton.’ Sidney Grice drew a second ampersand inside the first. ‘For, if she cannot, she must suffer many varieties of inconvenience. How,’ he tipped his Mordan mechanical pencil towards our hostess, ‘how did you travel to Miss Wilde?’
‘I managed to crawl over.’
‘On your knees, or your hands and knees, or forearms and knees, or elbows and knees?’ Mr G wagged his pencil almost in time with his words. ‘And do not distress me by asking why that matters.’
‘Hands and knees,’ Lucy replied crisply. ‘And I wish you showed the same concern about distressing us.’
‘I rarely feel, let alone exhibit, empathy and you have taken centre stage for long enough.’ Mr G rubbed his hands together vigorously. ‘Kindly be quiet and let your strange housemate hold our attention a while longer.’
‘I shall not be silenced in my own house,’ Lucy protested angrily.
‘But dear, nice Miss Bocking, do you not comprehend that that is exactly what is happening,’ he explained nicely. ‘Pray recommence your narration, Miss Wilde.’
Freddy looked uncertainly at her companion, who threw up her hands in surrender.
‘Lucy put a footstool by my feet and I managed to get one foot and then the—’
‘Other.’ Mr G covered his mouth in an ostentatious yawn. ‘And now, pleasant Miss Bocking, since you are so keen to dominate the proceedings, perhaps you would explain why you have lied to me since the marvellous moment that we met.’
18
Dressing Up and the Dissembleologist
I AM NOT SURE which of the three women in that room was most outraged by Sidney Grice’s last remark, but it was Freddy, of course, who sprang to her friend’s defence. ‘Lucy has told you nothing but the truth.’
‘Quite possibly.’
‘Then how. . .?’ She stumbled for words.
‘Mr Barf Regal.’ Mr G’s fingers set off on a ramble around his palm. ‘The dissembleologist has it that there are ninety-eight varieties of lies, but I have invented – though never utilized -another three. Fortunately for Miss Bocking – since she shall be paying excessively for my time – they can be divided broadly into two classes. The first is a deception based upon a false statement – exempli gratia if I ask your sex and you tell me you are a man: that is a lie by commission. The second is a deception based upon concealing the truth – exempli gratia if you were in fact a man in disguise and neglected to grant me that information: that would be a lie by omission.’ Sidney Grice waited for his information to be absorbed before concluding, ‘Miss Bocking stands – though seated – accused of the latter offence.’
‘I do not know what you are talking about,’ Freddy blustered and he tugged his scarred earlobe.
‘I am not fascinated by your inability to comprehend unexacting statements,’ my guardian told her. ‘What is important is that your delightful companion knows exactly what I am talking about. Do you not,’ his cane lashed out, stopping a quarter of an inch from Lucy’s neck, ‘Miss so-called Lucy Bocking.’
Freddy and I jumped at the swiftness of Mr G’s movement, but Lucy only blinked and said, ‘I wanted to test your powers of observation.’
‘And I your candidness,’ he rejoined.
‘Would one of you like to explain?’ I asked tetchily.
And Lucy’s hand went to her throat. ‘Your guardian is referring to my choker.’
‘You always wear it,’ I recalled and crinkled my eyes. ‘What did that button come from?’
Sidney Grice lowered his cane. ‘You may answer the question.’
And Lucy shifted to take the weight off her right side. ‘I trust you are not accusing me of anything else, Mr Grice.’
Sidney Grice’s eyes crinkled like those of a kindly uncle playing with his niece. ‘Oh, Miss Bocking, pleasant young Miss Bocking, wealthy yet wounded Miss Lucinda Seraphora Bocking, if only you knew how many splendid men and gorgeous women had said that to me just before I handed them over to the Metro-pol-it-an Police.’
‘You go too far.’ Freddy slammed her fist on the table, rattling the crockery and splashing the milk on to the cloth.
My guardian looked at me as if I had made the accusation, but said, ‘For once you are right, Miss Wilde, but it is only by going too far that one can hope to come back to one’s destination.’
‘I think I ripped it off his waistcoat,’ Lucy burst out.
‘How do you know it was not his coat or his shirt?’ Mr G crossed his arms on his chest like a corpse in a wake.
‘Because my thumb caught on his watch chain.’ Lucy Bocking sucked her finger. ‘Besides, look at the size of it.’
‘Wonderful.’ Mr G whisked his feet apart and the knot he had created earlier separated, leaving his laces tied in their customary neat bows. ‘Miss Middleton would do well to take note of your observational processes.’
I resisted the impulse to empty the teapot over his head, and addressed Lucy. ‘At what stage was this?’
Lucy rubbed circles just above her hairline, as if to ease a headache, and said huskily,‘I think. . . as I was falling. I grabbed hold of what I could to try to save myself, and when it had ended I found it clenched in my fist.’
Sidney Grice shot to his feet and, for a moment, I thought he was going to take the button by force, but he only said, ‘Cross my palm with dentine.’ and Lucy obediently withdrew the four gold pins which she had passed through the holes in the button and dropped it into his hand.
‘Please, if it is not too much trouble, might I ask if there was any thread attached?’ my guardian enquired meekly.
‘I wonder at your sanity,’ Lucy said, incredulous at the sea change in his manner, and Sidney Grice looked wounded.
‘It was a civil and pertinent question,’ he pointed out mildly.
‘The answer is no,’ Lucy told him.
‘Do you mean no, I may not ask, or no, there was no thread?’
‘The latter.’
‘Not yes?’ he pressed hopefully.
‘No.’
‘Oh,’ he mulled quietly. ‘A short word but redolent with meaning. I shall retain this carved and perforated disc.’
‘Nobody has given you permission,’ Freddy objected.
‘I did not seek permission.’ He lurched across the room some nine limping paces, to stand between two portraits. ‘Therefore it cannot be refused.’ His head swivelled from one to the other like a tennis umpire. ‘Mr and Mrs Clorence Bocking, your putative progenitors. How—’ he spun back— ‘did they die?’
‘Why are you so determined to upset Lucy?’ Freddy Wilde raged.
Sidney Grice posed like a blackbird listening for a worm. ‘My thirst to bring this matter to a conclusion is unquenchable.’ He took one pace to his right. ‘And so I must insist upon an answer, and please – for I am ever eager to avoid giving offence – do not ask me to explain why my question is pertinent.’
Lucy clenched her needlework. ‘I am sure you know the answer already, Mr Grice.’
The detective stretched out his arms to either side until they were parallel to the floor. ‘I have perused the police and newspaper reports and am at a loss to know which to disbelieve the most.’
Lucy picked distractedly at the end of a loose red thread. ‘My parents were murdered.’ She gazed at him steadily. ‘It was an act of revenge by Dester Green, the father of Jocinda, a maid.’
‘Revenge for what?’ I asked and Lucy looked about for an escape route.
; ‘She was caught stealing from Freddy’s home and, when her room was searched, it was found that she had taken a lot of our things too, silly trifles really – a napkin ring, silver but not a valuable one, a brass candlestick, one of a matching pair, a hairbrush, lots of little things over a few months. My parents would have let Jocinda go without pressing charges. She had been almost a part of the family, and Freddy’s parents agreed – they were kind-hearted people – but her father came to the house and made threats and would not leave, and so the police were called. Jocinda was sentenced to eighteen months in prison and her father was given four months hard labour.’
‘But why did he wait so long to retaliate?’ I asked.
Mr G was examining Mrs Booking’s mouth in her portrait with his pocket magnifying glass.
‘Dester Green attacked a warder in a failed escape bid and was sentenced to another seven years.’ Lucy passed her needle up though the fabric.
‘Not very bright of him,’ I commented.
‘He was from the north of England.’ My guardian swivelled to meet my glare guilelessly.
Lucy closed her eyes. ‘The day after he was released, Dester Green got a skinning knife and attacked my parents on their evening constitutional.’
‘I do not remember reading about that,’ I puzzled, for I had devoured accounts of gruesome crimes since I was a child, and a double killing like that would normally fill many a yard of newspaper.
Mr G peered into Mrs Booking’s ear. ‘The news was swept aside by the floundering of the Eurydice.’
And it was not difficult to understand why, for that disaster had dominated the minds of the public for months. A ship manned mainly by young trainees had sped without incident across the vast Atlantic Ocean only to founder off the Isle of Wight in a snowstorm with over three hundred lives being lost.
‘So close to home,’ Freddy breathed, and I was not sure if she meant the Eurydice or the Bockings.
‘And, because the investigation was left in the hands of the almost fabulously incompetent Chief Inspector Grundaway,’ Sidney Grice turned his glass on to Mr Booking’s neck as if searching for the fatal wound, ‘Dester Green was acquitted.’
Dark Dawn Over Steep House Page 8
