Dark Dawn Over Steep House

by M. R. C. Kasasian

  ‘But,’ I protested, ‘this is criminal damage.’

  ‘Exactly one of the nineteen objections the Patent Office made to my invention.’ He set to work vigorously, stopping to reverse and pull his drill out. ‘One day I shall design a clockwork motor small enough to perform the rotations for me.’ He pulled it out again, showering sawdust on to the floor, and put his eye to the hole.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘A hole,’ he told me.

  ‘Can I look?’

  Sidney Grice scratched his chin. ‘Very well.’ He dismantled his device.

  ‘What’s going on up there?’ The clerk’s voice rose querulously.

  ‘We are looking for the way out,’ I called over the bannister as he tramped up.

  ‘The way you came.’ His head appeared.

  ‘Thank you.’ I went meekly down.

  ‘Our investigations seem to have hit a brick wall,’ Sidney Grice grumbled as he refixed the handle.

  *

  ‘So how did you know about his sister?’ I asked, as the eighth occupied hansom trotted by.

  Mr G raised his cane to no avail. ‘He had a letter from her in his coat pocket.’

  ‘When you patted him? But that was a personal letter,’ I protested and blew a shrill blast between my fingers.

  ‘It is just as well that I am a personal detective then.’ Sidney Grice growled as another cab ignored us. ‘At this rate you shall have to walk home and send a hansom back to me.’

  ‘If I have to carry out the first instruction, I shall not be doing the second,’ I warned.

  My guardian put out his hand and nearly had it taken off by a speeding empty cab. ‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child,’ he quoted, readying himself to do battle with a tiny elderly lady in a red dress for the next vehicle to appear.

  48

  The Message and the Street Fighter

  MOLLY WAS OUT on some errands and there was a telegram on the hall table.

  ‘Open it,’ Sidney Grice commanded so peremptorily that I was tempted to shred it in front of him, but I complied, not from obedience but nosiness – a useful trait in my future profession, I told myself.

  FREDDY OUT PLEASE COME QUICKLY BEFORE SHE RETURNS DO NOT TELL HER ABOUT THIS LUCY

  ‘I like a client who does not waste money on punctuation,’ Mr G remarked, and I saw that he was reading it from the hall mirror behind me. ‘It leaves them all the better equipped to imburse me.’ He slipped his gloves on. ‘The flag,’ he commanded, and I set to work on the wheel.

  *

  Lucy sat in the library at a simple birch escritoire. She wore a pretty powder-blue dress, respectably high-collared, and with a thin black belt laced at the front to emphasize her wasp waist. Her hair was tied back, the fringe not entirely hiding the X carved so crudely into her flesh. The lower left arm of it gleamed white with reddened margins.

  ‘Lucy, what has happened?’ I hurried to kiss her, and it was obvious that she had been crying. Her eyes were dark and the lids puffy.

  ‘Oh, March, thank you for coming.’ Lucy hugged me and returned my kiss. ‘And you too, Mr Grice.’

  ‘I trust I am not expected to indulge in such displays of affection.’

  ‘Does he ever?’ Lucy asked, though it was clear that her mind was not on what she was saying.

  ‘He is fond of my cat,’ I answered automatically. ‘Are you all right?’

  Lucy laughed hollowly. ‘Do I look all right? I look like a street fighter.’

  ‘Which one?’ Sidney Grice regarded himself in the mantle mirror.

  ‘The bruising is going down around your eye.’

  ‘And the shattered cheekbone is becoming all the more obvious,’ she said bitterly. ‘I am sorry. I should not be looking for sympathy.’

  ‘Rest assured that you will get none from me.’ Mr G flipped open his empty snuffbox. ‘So, rather than await it, you may regale us with a response to Miss Middleton’s first and uncharacteristically pertinent enquiry.’

  Lucy took a breath.

  ‘You are aware, since I have appraised you of the fact, that I charge by the hour.’ Mr G tapped his hunter, still tucked into his waistcoat pocket. ‘But, though I hire out my services, my time is worth more than money. Every unused one hundredth of a minute is a wasted tick of my brain.’

  ‘Your brain ticks?’ Lucy managed a smile.

  ‘Indeed, though you cannot hear it,’ he told her gravely. ‘Though, of course, it does not tock. That could drive a man insane.’

  ‘One is tempted to wonder if it has succeeded,’ she said mildly.

  ‘Unlike you I rarely submit to temptation.’ He slipped his thumbs into the upper pockets of his waistcoat and Lucy’s mouth tightened.

  ‘Just when I thought we were beginning to get on.’

  ‘Get on what?’ Mr G deposited his satchel on what had been Freddy’s chair.

  I leaned towards her. ‘Why did you telegraph us, Lucy?’

  ‘I teased your guardian,’ she conceded, ‘but you may wonder if I am the one who is demented.’

  ‘Without my wishing to hurtle precipitously to a definitive and possibly erroneous diagnosis, it may be that what you diagnose as madness is just yet another example of your overly emotional feminine irrationality,’ Sidney Grice told her kindly.

  I reached out and took her hand. ‘What has happened, Lucy?’

  ‘And I think I speak for both of us when I tell you that we would appreciate an answer this time.’ Mr G’s eye twinkled encouragingly and Lucy chewed her lower lip. ‘We have nothing to appreciate yet,’ he observed mildly.

  ‘It is Freddy,’ Lucy said at last.

  ‘Do you think she has come to some harm?’ I squeezed her hand.

  Lucy brought out a handkerchief and unfolded it. ‘I am not frightened for Freddy. I am frightened of her,’ she said hesitantly.

  ‘Why?’ Mr G leaned so far forward that I thought he might topple off his chair.

  ‘Excuse me.’ Lucy blew her nose. ‘Freddy has changed of late,’ she said reluctantly. ‘Or perhaps I am seeing her as she has always been.’ She took a breath. ‘I have always thought of her as my one true friend, the only person who truly . . . loves me.’

  ‘I have certainly gained that impression,’ I agreed.

  ‘Impression,’ my guardian snorted.

  ‘Based on my observations of you both together.’ I justified my remark more for his benefit. ‘And the way she talks about you.’

  Lucy crumpled her handkerchief. ‘Oh, she always knows the right things to say. Poor Lucy. You will be better soon. You must rest now.’ Lucy closed her eyes briefly as if about to do so, but when she opened them they were close to tears. ‘But I am beginning to think that she hates me.’

  ‘Surely not,’ I protested. ‘But why would you think that?’

  ‘Little things at first.’ Lucy wiped her eyes. ‘Silly things like the other night.’

  ‘Which one?’ Sidney Grice pressed her. ‘All previous nights can faithfully be described as the other?

  ‘Oh, I do not know.’ Lucy shook her handkerchief out. ‘It does not matter.’

  ‘It does to me,’ he assured her. ‘I cannot vouch for Miss Middleton, but you are talking to a man who cares.’

  ‘A day or two before I met March,’ she guessed. ‘I know it sounds trivial but Freddy had just come into the pink room.’

  My godfather shivered. ‘It sounds very trivial indeed.’ He crossed his legs. ‘Is that all you brought us here for?’

  ‘Miss Bocking has not finished,’ I snapped, and Lucy nodded gratefully.

  ‘I was in the low armchair looking out. It was getting dark.’

  ‘So, more evening than night,’ he corrected her.

  ‘What? I suppose so.’ Lucy waved her left hand in frustration. ‘For a man who is in a hurry to get an answer, you are an expert at delaying its arrival.’

  ‘There is nothing to be gained by hurtling towards an incomplete or inaccurate resp
onse,’ he informed her. ‘Pray continue.’

  ‘I was talking – some inconsequentiality about the glorious sunset we had seen over London once when my parents took us to Primrose Hill. Freddy was behind me, but I saw her reflection in the window pane and she was mimicking me, mouthing my words and copying my hand movements in an exaggerated way – you know the way you do as a child when a grown-up annoys you.’

  ‘No, I did not,’ Mr G denied hotly.

  ‘I used to,’ I remembered. ‘There was a Sunday school teacher in our village who I detested.’

  ‘There you are,’ Lucy cried. ‘You only do it to people you hate. If it was a joke she would have done it in front of me and I would have thrown a cushion at her.’

  ‘Perhaps she knew you could see her,’ I suggested, but Lucy demurred.

  ‘When I asked quite amicably what she was doing behind me, she snapped Nothing and stormed from the room.’

  ‘Perhaps you had done or said something unintentionally that annoyed her,’ I proposed. ‘We all annoy each other sometimes.’

  ‘You are fortunate that you do not have to share a house with Miss Middleton,’ my godfather agreed wholeheartedly. ‘She once threw her soup at me.’

  ‘It was rotting parsnips and I was trying to demonstrate how it stuck to the bowl,’ I defended myself, and turned back to our client. ‘There must be more than that.’

  Lucy folded her handkerchief. ‘Lots of little things,’ she said, ‘but they mount up. Hiding things that I know I put down in one place and then pretending to find them somewhere else. And breaking things – favourite ornaments – on purpose, or pretending she cannot hear me so I have to keep repeating myself.’

  ‘It all sounds very childish and annoying, but why are you frightened?’ I asked.

  ‘A few weeks ago I would have trusted Freddy with my life.’

  ‘I have never completely understood that species of claim.’ Mr G slumped back in his chair.

  ‘I meant I thought she would have died for me.’

  ‘Oh.’ Sidney Grice put a finger to his eye. ‘So you could not have trusted her with her own life.’ He folded his arms left over right. ‘But we shall adjourn briefly whilst you meditate on how best to justify your asseveration that you have been stricken with a species of friend-who-was-like-my-sister-phobia.’

  My guardian bowed his head as if it were he who had provided an explanation.

  Lucy drew a breath. ‘I tried to pretend that Freddy and I were equally at fault for what occurred that night.’ She shifted uncomfortably. ‘Partly because I did not want you to judge her badly.’

  She held a frilled handkerchief, dyed to match her dress.

  ‘I never judge anyone or anything badly.’ Sidney Grice refolded his arms with great precision, right over left. ‘It is my job to judge all things well. More than that . . .’ He leaned to his right as if travelling round a sharp corner. ‘It is my self-given mission, some might describe it as my mania. What was or were the other part or parts to your motives for withholding or distorting information yet again, Miss Lucinda Seraphora Bocking, daughter of Mr and Mrs Clorence Bocking, late of New House, Abbey Road?’

  He rocked to his left.

  Lucy screwed her handkerchief between both hands. ‘I did not want to believe it. I kept telling myself that I was being unfair, but . . .’ She braced herself against her own words. ‘It was Freddy who persuaded me to go to Limehouse. I had heard enough to be frightened of going there, especially at night, but she kept on and on about what fun it would be and what a stick-in-the-mud I was. I had never even thought to try opium before.’ Her fingers were blanched with the strength of her twisting. ‘And it was Freddy directed the driver and told him where to stop, and who suggested that we went into the Golden Dragon.’

  Lucy stopped, her face filled with horror at the accusations she was levelling. I thought about what they implied and could not quite believe it, not of the Freddy who I was getting to know.

  ‘So.’ Sidney Grice unfolded his arms and crossed them over his chest. ‘Tell us about the lead-crystal posy vase.’

  I was about to ask what he meant but Lucy had no doubts. ‘It was something Freddy said.’ She tugged at her handkerchief.

  ‘I think Miss Booking has had enough of your outrageous behaviour; Mr Grice, and so have I,’ my guardian quoted from memory. ‘And the reason you dropped the vase was?’

  ‘It brought it back to me and this is why I fear I may be going mad.’ Lucy let go of her handkerchief and touched the scar on her forehead. ‘But it occurred to me that the voice that said Had enough? in that cellar was not my attacker’s . . .’ Lucy coughed. ‘But Freddy’s.’

  49

  Bedbugs and the Gettysburg Address

  SIDNEY GRICE WHISTLED three notes very softly. ‘I think this might be an opportune moment.’

  ‘For what?’ I asked and he clacked his teeth together.

  ‘For Miss Bocking to show us the evidence.’

  ‘What evidence?’ I looked at him and then at her.

  Lucy hesitated. ‘I know I should not have—’

  ‘Then why did you?’ He appeared to be miming the shuffling of a pack of cards.

  ‘I had to be . . . to be certain.’ Lucy stumbled over her words. ‘I searched Freddy’s room.’ She puffed her lips. ‘I would never dream of doing such a thing normally.’

  ‘Are you telling us that you dreamed of doing it abnormally?’ He dealt us three imaginary cards each on to an invisible table.

  ‘I meant that I would not think of doing it under normal circumstances,’ she clarified, lifting a stray lock of hair back behind her ear. ‘Why do you keep interrupting me?’

  ‘Because I have yet to hear anything to which it is worth listening.’ Mr G turned his cards over expressionlessly.

  ‘You have hardly given me a chance to speak yet,’ she complained.

  ‘You have been permitted to manufacture ten sentences.’ My guardian dealt himself another card. ‘Which is as many as so-called President Lincoln required one score years and one ago for his address at the Soldier’s National Cemetery in Gettysburg.’

  Lucy had quite pointed ears, I noticed, and they had gone rather pink.

  ‘What did you find, Lucy?’ I asked gently, and Lucy leaned backwards to open a drawer of her desk.

  ‘This.’ She placed a red-backed book on the flat surface.

  ‘May I?’ I picked it up and opened the first page.

  The diary was printed in gold lettering on the flyleaf and on a glued-in plate was handprinted This book belongs to Freda Wilde and beneath that If found please return to Steep House, Abbey Road, London.

  All the pages were blackened around the edges. ‘Was this rescued from the fire?’

  ‘I assume so.’ Lucy locked her fingers. ‘This is the first I have known of it.’

  ‘Freddy never mentioned it?’

  ‘If she had done so Miss Bocking would be foolish indeed to have made her most recent assertion.’ Mr G collected all the cards from where he had dealt them in mid-air and came close to peer over my shoulder.

  I went to the first of January and there was written in violet ink, ageing into brown, A lovely crisp start to the year.

  ‘It is the last entry that worries me.’ Lucy’s voice had a slight tremor. ‘I have bookmarked it.’

  ‘For the benefit of idiot detectives,’ Sidney Grice mumbled, but she did not react.

  Lucy Bocking’s eyes were fixed on me as I went to the back of the diary.

  The final few pages were blank and crumbling to my touch, and the last entry was badly charred, but I could still make out the words.

  I hate Steep House and everybody in it. I shall destroy them all.

  ‘I assume it is Freddy’s handwriting,’ I said, and Mr G bffffed for he hated anybody, especially me, to assume anything.

  ‘I am positive,’ Lucy said. ‘As you can see, I have a letter here that she wrote to me a few months before that.’ Lucy brought a folded sheet of notepaper fr
om an envelope in a pigeonhole. ‘The style is exactly the same – the way she dots her I’s with curved lines, for example.’

  Lucy unfolded the sheet of paper and held it up for comparison.

  My Dearest Friend Lucy,

  I trust that you are keeping well.

  Things are much the same here but we miss you dreadfully.

  ‘Close the book with exaggerated care,’ Sidney Grice instructed and I obeyed, aware that, in his eyes, my extreme caution would just about match his most careless actions. ‘Hold it out.’

  He took the diary from me as a monk might handle Holy Scripture. ‘Where, precisely, did you find it?’

  ‘In the bottom of her linen chest at the foot of her bed.’

  ‘Front? Back? Left? Right? Middle?’

  ‘The front left-hand corner, underneath her petticoats.’

  ‘I should very much like to see those,’ my guardian declared.

  ‘I shall not ask why.’ Lucy wrinkled her nose. ‘Aellen can fetch them for you.’

  ‘That will not do at all.’ Mr G placed the book on a nearby table. ‘For I absolutely must see Miss Wilde’s undergarments without delay. Describe how one might most conveniently gain entry to her room.’

  Not for the first time Lucy gaped. ‘On the first floor at the front of the house, on the right.’

  ‘What a pity.’ Mr G stood, legs akimbo. ‘I had a morbid fancy to turn left.’ He pointed in the manner of Napoleon urging his army to one final effort.

  ‘You could walk backwards,’ I suggested. And then, as he took one step in reverse, ‘That was a joke.’

  ‘I am sorry that Miss Middleton finds your predicament hilarious,’ my godfather said in all sincerity. ‘I have tried to improve her manners but, when all is said and done, she is only a woman.’ He raised his stick towards the ceiling. ‘Farewell, Miss Bocking. Unless I acquire a compelling motive for tarrying, we shall rendezvous here in five and a half minutes. Come, Miss Middleton. We are already nineteen seconds behind schedule.’

  With that he shouldered his cane and marched back into the hall, dipping to his left as if that were his shorter side.