Dark Dawn Over Steep House

by M. R. C. Kasasian

  ‘Schlangezahn,’ I breathed. ‘The man who attacked Geraldine Hockaday.’

  Sidney Grice put down a stone paperweight with which he had been toying. ‘Possibly the prince who was allegedly the man who allegedly committed that alleged crime.’ He whisked up a paperknife.

  ‘We have one more piece of evidence that makes one of those allegedlies a bit less alleged.’ The inspector took a rectangular taupe envelope from the letter rack on his desk and emptied out six torn pieces of stiff white card.

  Sidney Grice flipped two blank pieces over with the knife to show the elaborate printed letterforms.

  ‘A customer picked it up,’ George Pound explained. ‘Harry Stewart – he used to be in the force.’

  ‘London is becoming devoid of men who did not used to be policemen but are not now,’ Sidney Grice commented labyrin-thically.

  ‘He became concerned when he saw the man trying to drag her out of the door but, when he intervened, the man became so menacing that Stewart backed off.’

  ‘So he just sat back and let it happen?’ I said incredulously.

  ‘The whole pub let it happen.’ Pound clearly took my disbelief as a slur on his force. ‘Step into the White Unicorn any time and you’ll see a dozen women being mistreated. Most of them earn their living that way.’

  ‘Is it the same Harry Stewart who was attacked by the Axminster Axeman?’ My guardian clinked his right eye with the tip of the knife. ‘He lost both hands and his left leg above the knee.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ I said.

  ‘If there are any conclusions to be jumped at,’ my guardian explained, ‘Miss Middleton is a regular Springheel Jack.’

  George Pound brought out his meerschaum pipe. ‘Do you like jigsaw puzzles, Miss Middleton?’

  ‘Not since I was a child.’ I stepped to the desk. ‘But I think I can manage this one.’

  Two of the pieces were upside down but I did not need those to work out the name. Ulrich Schlan . . ..

  ‘Have you spoken to him?’ Sidney Grice enquired.

  ‘They don’t send a lowly inspector to interview a Prussian nobleman.’ Pound watched my guardian’s antics cagily. ‘The Chief Constable had a word and came away none the wiser.’

  ‘The Germans owe Mr Grice a favour,’ I recalled. ‘So the prince might speak to him.’

  ‘He will be speaking for himself tomorrow.’ Pound slipped the keys away. ‘He has volunteered to appear at the inquest.’

  ‘Volunteered?’ I echoed.

  Pound nodded. ‘You don’t subpoena a cousin to King Wilhelm.’

  ‘Kaiser,’ Sidney Grice corrected him.

  ‘Really?’ The inspector raised his eyebrows. ‘I thought his name was Wilhelm.’

  And, turning from my godfather, George Pound gave me a wink.

  26

  The King of Kings and the African Sun

  I WENT TO CHRIST the King. Peter Hockaday had taken a job researching the family history of the elderly Reverend Zedobiath Darwin, who was anxious to prove that he was not even remotely related to the infamous Charles. For a small monthly stipend Peter would go to the vicar’s house in Byng Place and trawl through an enormous, disorganized collection of papers, many of which had no bearing on the gentleman’s ancestry at all, but Zedobiath was adamant that they had to be checked and filed before he would be satisfied.

  The Reverend Darwin always attended an afternoon liturgy at the Church of Christ the King, a few dozen yards away, and Peter would escort him there and walk briskly round the square for twenty minutes before collecting him. For once my timing was perfect and I was just in time to witness Peter handing his enfeebled charge over to a verger before making off.

  Geraldine’s brother was a tall man, and his military training showed in his erect gait and the way he carried his cane tucked under his arm as a swagger stick.

  ‘Good afternoon, Miss Middleton.’ He lifted his hat. ‘Are you attending the service?’

  ‘I do not need to go in there to find God,’ I said, and he let his hat drop back.

  ‘You are lucky to find him at all,’ he told me. ‘I lost him under the African sun and I have never quite found him again.’

  That was the first time I had known Peter Hockaday to refer even obliquely to his time in the Sudan. I knew from Geraldine that he had been present at the battle of El Obeid, a terrible slaughter with eight thousand Egyptian troops killed by the Mahdists and only a handful of their British officers surviving. He was lucky to escape with only part of his left earlobe missing.

  ‘Perhaps he will find you again one day,’ I suggested.

  Peter Hockaday did not look convinced. ‘But I must not talk like this on hallowed ground.’ He tried to look abashed. ‘Will you take a short walk with me?’

  ‘It is you I have come to see, Mr Hockaday.’ I took his proffered arm. ‘I am worried about your sister.’

  ‘You are right to be.’ He paused to tickle a stray dog’s ear. ‘Oh, Miss Middleton. . .’

  ‘Please call me March,’ I urged. ‘It saves three syllables.’

  ‘If you will do the same,’ he told me and became flustered. ‘I mean, call me Peter, of course.’

  I laughed and then remembered. ‘You were about to say something.’

  ‘Only that I wish you had known Geraldine before. . . all this.’ We turned left into Gordon Square, a pleasant rectangle of greenery surrounded by superior soot-dabbled houses, the dog ambling at Peter’s heel. ‘She was so alive,’ he continued. ‘Her eyes, I cannot tell you, March. If they could have been mounted they would have graced the Crown jewels. Oh. . .’ Peter stopped and his new friend stopped too, sitting obediently at his feet. ‘I hope you do not think I was making fun of Mr Grice’s eye.’

  ‘I shall not mention it to him,’ I vowed, and we set off again.

  Peter had long strides and, though he tried to accommodate his pace to mine, I found myself almost breaking into an intermittent run.

  ‘I hope you do not mind me saying that Geraldine does not like your guardian,’ he told me, as we skirted a group of boys kicking a rag ball. ‘And, if truth be told. . .’

  ‘Neither do you,’ I broke in. ‘Not many people do.’

  Peter hesitated. ‘Would it be impertinent to ask. . .’

  ‘When I was imprisoned Mr Grice came to see me.’

  ‘I should hope so.’ He patted the dog.

  ‘He was my one comfort,’ I said. ‘I know that is difficult to believe.’

  Peter squeezed my arm with his. ‘He does not seem the most sympathetic of men.’

  ‘He asked me to marry him.’ I glanced up and saw that my companion was shocked. ‘But that was only so that he could control my money.’

  I shut my mouth. It had not been exactly like that, had it?

  ‘Is he making any progress on my sister’s case?’ Peter asked.

  ‘Very little.’ I reached towards the dog but it shied away. ‘I did make an offer to Geraldine to refund your money if she wanted us to drop our investigations.’

  Peter crushed my arm against him. ‘You will not abandon her? You cannot.’

  ‘I do not know what else to do,’ I confessed.

  ‘And Mr Grice – has he given up?’

  We stepped on to the road to get round an artist chalking a good likeness of Lord Nelson on the pavement.

  ‘Mr Grice never gives up,’ I asserted, though I sometimes believed he had given up on me.

  We turned right, along the short side of the not-very-square square.

  ‘I shall give him a week,’ Peter declared.

  A hurdy-gurdy man was jigging wildly as he cranked his instrument. Some of the strings were broken, I noticed, but he still managed to produce such an ear-splitting wailing noise that the dog darted in front of Peter, hackles raised, ready to protect its new master.

  ‘And then you will want your money back?’ I clarified.

  Peter puffed. ‘I shall have no use for money then and neither shall the man who hurt my sister.’


  The dog jumped backwards, nearly tripping us both over it.

  ‘What will you do?’ I asked in alarm.

  ‘I think you can guess.’

  ‘Stop thief!’ We turned to see who was yelling. ‘Those two,’ an elderly man in a tattered naval uniform bawled from across the road. ‘They be stealing my barker.’

  The dog, on hearing his true master’s voice, cowered and tried to hide behind my skirts, but the old seaman came rolling over, miraculously avoiding being run over by a phaeton weaving round a covered cart.

  ‘I assure you,’ Peter began, but the man was reeling a length of rope out of his pocket and looping it around the dog’s neck.

  The dog crouched.

  ‘How do I know it is yours?’ I demanded.

  ‘Well, it ain’t yours,’ he replied and dragged the dog away, its claws trying desperately to anchor it to the spot.

  ‘You are choking it,’ I protested, but the dog gave up the fight and slunk miserably beside him.

  I knew this was a trick to make us buy the animal, but neither of us could adopt a dog.

  ‘You will not take the law into your own hands?’ I asked anxiously, but Peter did not reply at once.

  A cat ran by with a flapping grey pigeon in its mouth and a clock bell sounded far away.

  ‘Geraldine left it in the hands of the police and I placed it in Mr Grice’s.’ His clear blue eyes darted away from me. ‘And what good has it done her, March? If we cannot have justice, we shall have revenge.’

  ‘I may have a better plan.’ I saw the pigeon’s beak open and close in a silent plea for the mercy it would not receive.

  He checked his half-hunter. ‘I am sorry. I must return to my employer, but can I meet you to discuss it?’

  ‘Do you know where the Empress Cafe is? Tomorrow at ten?’ ‘I shall be there. Will you be all right if I leave you here?’

  ‘I came alone,’ I reminded him, and Peter Hockaday inclined his head.

  I stood for a minute, watching him march away, a good head above the crowd, so tall and strong that I was frightened for him.

  27

  The Count and the Coroner

  I HAD SEEN MORE imposing edifices than Limehouse Town Hall, but there was a modest dignity in its square two-storey exterior with high arched windows and matching pillared portico. The entrance hall was pleasant enough, mahogany fittings and a rosewood grand piano showing that it was not built only for bureaucratic functions.

  The inquest was held on the first floor, up a wide, iron, grand staircase, rising to a mezzanine before splitting to continue upwards and back on itself. At home my guardian had a habit of trudging up the stairs like a condemned man to the gallows but, as so often when we were out, he sprinted and was up the right arm two steps at a time, leaving me to climb the left as quickly and elegantly as my garments permitted.

  The Grand Assembly Room seemed too cheerfully lit for the occasion by its full-length windows and it was a pity that nobody had seen fit to open them and let in a breeze from the river for, even with no more than a couple of dozen people present, the air was oppressively stuffy.

  Sidney Grice brushed by a dark-blue uniformed elderly usher – who was trying to enquire as to his business there – and settled on the front row, dwarfed by the figure of Inspector Pound to his left.

  ‘If miss would care to sit with sir she will be out of the direct sunlight,’ the usher told me, his voice rustling like autumn leaves, and I was tempted to follow his suggestion but I slid into a reddish-brown morocco-covered chair in the back corner behind a hefty fellow who looked and smelled like a cowman. If I craned my neck I could just about see the proceedings, but was confident that I was unobtrusive under my wide-brimmed bonnet.

  The room itself was pleasant enough, with huge Persian rugs on the polished oak floor. A low dais had been constructed at the front with a desk, behind which sat the coroner, a plump, jollylooking man, with his clerk, a thin specimen of his sex, whose general demeanour might have led one to believe that it was he who had been bereaved. The clerk’s skull fascinated me with its patchworked geometrical shapes like the papier-mâché puppets I used to make as a child.

  The coroner gave a preamble about why we were there and the scope of his hearing, and called upon his first witness, Father Roger Seaton, the blonde-haired cherubic curate who had seen and spoken to the girl answering Albertoria Wright’s description, on Westminster Bridge. He said little that I had not previously read in the Daily Telegraph, expressing his devout hopes for her immortal soul and reiterating that he could not say for certain whether she had fallen by intent or accident. Strangely, for a man used to preaching to hundreds, his voice was low and indistinct and he had to be urged courteously three times to speak up.

  Sidney Grice appeared next, very distinguished in his charcoal frock coat with matching cravat. He concisely summed up the reasons for believing the body in all probability to be that of Albertoria and was gracious enough to acknowledge my role in the examination. The coroner expressed his shock that a lady should have performed such a task and I was not called upon to give my account.

  Sergeant Hewitt of the Thames River Police could not be present, as he had been crushed when he slipped between his launch and a barge he was about to search for contraband. The coroner expressed his hopes for a speedy recovery and allowed the clerk to read out a short statement about how the body had been found.

  Inspector Pound came next, smartly besuited, his moustaches – which I had once ravaged in an attempt to tidy them whilst he was ill – neatly trimmed, his lips full red, his eyes clear blue, his strong square features beautiful in the sunlight.

  He gave his evidence clearly and concisely and, though I no longer had any right to be, I was proud of my onetime-almost fiancé. George Pound recounted what he had been told by the customers of the White Unicorn. He was at once authoritative and yet so vulnerable that I wanted to rush up and hug him.

  The last witness was a tall, well-built man, stately in his deportment and dressed in a frock coat, and it was no surprise to me when he introduced himself as Prince Ulrich Klaus Sigismund Schlangezahn, Colonel of a regiment of Prussian Hussars. He was a striking man, with close-cropped hair so black that I suspected he encouraged the coloration. His face was precisely and symmetrically carved, with a long, slightly hooked nose, immaculately waxed, upturned military moustaches, pale lips pulled down a little severely and eyes so deep-set under a prominent brow that they flashed almost jet as he directed them round the room. His left face was divided by a clean white scar, running from above his eye and down his cheek to just above the corner of his mouth.

  He spotted Sidney Grice and inclined his head a fraction in formal recognition, but my godfather was too intent on the witness to consider what he rarely worried about – social niceties – and his posture remained rigid.

  The prince’s voice was loud and unfaltering with the authoritative ring of a man used to commanding others. He did not attempt to deny meeting a girl who he now believed to be Albertoria Wright, nor that he had spoken to her, but he declined to reveal what they had spoken about. Yes, he had given her his card and, yes, she had torn it up and, yes, he had taken her arm to lead her from that public house. He called it a bier keller, which gave rise to some merriment amongst the scant audience for which the coroner gently admonished them. He had taken her outside, but she had run away and he had not followed. A gentleman does not chase girls along the streets.

  His manner was aloof and spoken as if we were all unpleasant aromas.

  The coroner listened with polite scepticism. ‘Is there anything else you can tell us, Your Highness?’

  ‘No.’ Schlangezahn bowed stiffly to the coroner and marched away.

  *

  ‘Cold fish,’ Pound murmured afterwards. ‘Makes you seem the picture of charm, Mr Grice.’

  ‘Charm,’ Sidney Grice pushed me out of his way, ‘is like a beautiful woman – superficially attractive but, beneath the surface, there is always gristle and
offal.’

  ‘What a horrible image,’ I objected.

  ‘I see no mirrors,’ he said laconically.

  28

  The Breath of Angels

  THE ROOM WAS dark, lit only by four tiny oil lamps, brass with stumpy glass chimneys. I had seen their like before – those long nights in Cabool. The flames were so short that they hardly broke the darkness enough to cast shadows on the low tables where they stood and I could barely make out the two men already reclining on the other couches. One of them leaned forward, dipping his bleached face into the yellow pool. He was a young man with straw-coloured hair and Prince Albert moustaches, and he did not even glance at me with his drooping eyes as he set about his task.

  The boy showed me to my couch, velvet-covered with a tartan blanket. ‘You need help, mistress?’

  ‘No.’ I gave him a shilling and he left. Already my eyes were gathering the gloom. The basement ceiling was low and the walls much as I remembered them – garish scenes of corpulent men and their impossibly curvaceous concubines in awkward and unappealing poses.

  A lacquered tray had been set up with its lamp and paraphernalia. I lifted my veil and, turning my attention to a white porcelain dish, selected a tablet from the six arranged round a rampant dragon on the base. The paste was too damp. I impaled it on a long silver needle from an ivory thimble and held it well above the flame, watching the steam rise as I rotated the tablet. It reminded me of cooking potatoes on a bonfire when I was a child in Parbold so impossibly long ago.

  I lowered the tablet and watched it turn from light to dark brown to rich gold. It should be sticky enough now. The pipe lay beside the tray, about two-foot long and made of dark-stained bamboo, ornamented with stamped copper rings. I pressed the softened tablet into the doorknob-shaped clay bowl and lay, propped up on one side, putting the bowl on to the flame, just long enough to vaporize the resin without burning it.